Mulberry Madness

Well, here's the first "official" blog entry - a behind-the-scenes look at a work day shooting food editorial! 

We've done many many photo shoots over the years and the team - I call them/us "Team Awesome" - always has a great time working together. I'll have to introduce these fabulous ladies in an upcoming blog entry.  

Usually, we shoot with a full crew, but this time it was just photographer, Lisa Whalen, and I styling and shooting the gorgeous food created by two talented local chefs: Nikki Baverso, the Executive Chef at Pampas Restaurant in Palo Alto and Melisa Root, the Executive Pastry Chef at Madera Restaurant at the Rosewood Resort in Menlo Park.  

This particular shoot was a food editorial featuring mulberries from the Lynch family's mulberry trees and recipes from Nikki and Melisa.

Mulberries from Kevin & Monica's Mulberry trees.

Kevin and Monica Lynch sell these incredibly tasty berries at the Palo Alto Farmers' Market on weekends. If you have never tried a mulberry, go to the Palo Alto Farmer's Market and get a basket or two of these delicious berries.

This food shoot was particularly fun because Kevin and Monica were amazing to work with. You might recognize Monica from the cover of the current issue of M Magazine. She appears on the August issue with their two sons (see my previous blog entry to see the beautiful cover!). 

 Also, we got to meet and work with Nikki and Melisa. These talented ladies prepared some truly beautiful food featuring these unique berries. You can the find recipes for these desserts as well as a refreshing Mulberry Cocktail from Nikki in the current issue of the magazine (of course). 

This is Kevin "The Mulberry Guy" with Chefs Nikki and Melisa. 

Mulberry Peach Cobbler from Nikki

Melisa's dessert under construction

Melisa and Monica

My custom pizza: garden fresh tomatoes and lots of basil

That oven is HOT! Custom built by Kevin himself.

Once we finished shooting, Kevin and Monica set us up with custom pizzas which Kevin fired up in the custom pizza oven he built in their backyard. Needless to say Lisa and I had a great day at "work." Thanks Kevin and Monica! 

Lisa enjoying pizza and a glass of wine.