Happy New Year!!!! I hope 2011 is full of love and light and dreams coming true... and lots of time for creative adventures, too!
As mentioned in my last post, I had initially hoped to cook some Christmas cookies for a Step at the end of last year. However, food guilt set in over Christmas :-))) and I made a promise to myself, that instead of a holiday completely filled with refined sugars and dairy, I would teach myself to make one raw food treat.
This recipe came from a book that I was given as a Christmas present, called 'Naked Chocolate' by Shazzie and David Wolfe. It's a recipe for fudge squares, made from nuts, dates, coconut and cacao nibs.
To make the fudge look a little more treat-like, I rolled each square into a ball and then covered it in either shredded coconut, or raw cacao powder.
They tasted very good... not "excellent", but pretty darn good for my first adventure with raw treats. I'm looking forward to improving on the recipe a little.
My ultimate goal is to invent raw treats that will taste soooo good, that everyone will like them... even friends who don't really understand the whole raw food concept and think it's all a bit crazy! :-) I shall certainly know I've achieved that, when my husband likes them!
Today's Step was really two creative adventures in one. Not only did I make the treats, I also persuaded a photographer friend to show me how to light my pictures. I styled these pics, with the Christmas tree behind and an old, wooden, chopping board that belonged to my Grannie... and then I ran out of props! (and began dreaming of trips to Paris, to browse flea markets for pretty ceramic plates and saucers!)
In the end, I just made a quick origami gift box, using these instructions. In hindsight, I should probably have left it out of the shot, but I hadn't really planned the shot, it just kind of fell together... so, well, that's why there's a weird paper box in there! heeee! :-)
I learned so much about lighting today. We played around with lighting the bonbons from the front, then the side and then from slightly behind. The pics I liked most, were lit from slightly behind. It seemed to give the bonbons much more shape.
I'm exhausted from all of the work. This was supposed to take a couple of hours and ended up taking far longer! Especially when you're trying to take the pic and a curious and hungry puppy sneaks into the background of the shot...
... so, you shoo them out of the shot, run back to the camera and take another pic, only to discover ANOTHER curious and hungry puppy, attracted by all of the noise... and then the chocolately smell wafting down off the counter, has sneaked in to the vacant space...
:-))))
Lots and lots and lots of love to you! Happy, Happy, Happy New Year, sweetpea!
Fi
xx
