olive

When the naked beet (Fig.1) approached me about writing “a brief bio” for her blog, I knew I was in trouble.

I was born in 1972 and since then I can’t remember ever being brief about anything except pauses between sentences. Also, I happen to be in love with the naked beet and proud of her and—

“Olive, a brief bio… about you.”

See? This isn’t going to be easy. And, to quote John Locke from LOST, “It’s never been easy.” But that’s not entirely true and I’m getting ahead of myself before I’ve even got started.

The Easy

The first time I visited my wife’s family, when the friendship we formed in college that would bloom into our long-term romantic project was itself a fresh peach waiting to be picked, the naked beet’s mother and grandmother entranced my tastebuds with the ethnic poetry of their homemade Romanian-Russian cuisine. It was a preposterous feast, a journey through space and time to an alien nexus of cultural collisions and family-forged traditions.

Garlic infused vodka. Thinly sliced radishes mixed with fresh dill and sour cream. Olivier salad. Egg-battered chicken cutlets. Aspic. Dense black bread and caviar spreads.

I didn’t like radishes before that day. Wasn’t a big fan of sour cream either. Now I put it on… spoons. Gelatin with bite-sized pieces of chicken floating in it… on purpose? I ate it. And then I had seconds. It was eye-opening.

And there was real borscht, zesty, titillating beet soup, the scrumptiousness experience produced by this recipe (minus the juniper berries).

“Olive, the trip down memory lane is very sweet, honey, but how about just one sentence about you!”

But I have a point here. As I got to know the naked beet better, I learned to appreciate her sense of adventure about discovering cuisine (see Fig.2) and preparing her favorite family dishes.

I cherish her open-mindedness about food and her excitement about imagining and conjuring specific flavors and textures. It’s joyful work, easy to share… most of the time.

The Not So Easy

The brutal and wonderful truth is that the naked beet and I are creative types, which often means we’re both “right” even when we disagree.

Our process goes something like this. Unlimited by me in any way, the naked beet brainstorms and peruses cookbooks and web sites to develop ideas for new recipes. She experiments with spice combinations and sauces, she finds inspiration in fresh ingredients or colors or the season or a deep-seated desire, and then she settles on something. Like an assassin, she preps and cooks and tastes and tastes again. Eventually, she indicates to me that she’s done: “Olive, do you want to take a picture?” Translation: Grab your camera and get in here! And then I do my thing. But I don’t have the final say on my thing.

At the beginning of the day, there are two chefs in our marriage, but by the end of the day only one of us has the final say on this blog and that’s the naked beet. I’m olive. I take the pictures. And, when I manage to coax her, I sprinkle in some video, too. Sometimes I get excited about a visual concept and I go for it. Like including an elephant sculpture as a background object.

Or making a tray of donut dough appear to be floating in the air.

Then we have a passionate conversation about my shots, and I upload the ones she prefers (“No elephants or optical illusions, please”) while she plates the amazing food she’s prepared for both of us. I can’t complain, but I also can’t say that we take the straightest path to truces over aesthetic differences. But her food…

“Olive, have you ever read a bio?”

The naked beet loves attending to details in her cooking, as she loves attending to details in just about every other aspect of her life, the one I am fortunate enough to share with her. Working on the photography here is delightful when we have time to set things up and the natural light is just right, and it’s challenging when we’re caught between a finished dish, a rigorously self-imposed deadline, and nothing but tungsten bulbs and my flash. Some of the shots, particularly those dating to the time when neither of us was sure about what this blog was supposed to be, are what I would charitably describe as passable. Just as she’s working on refining her recipes, I’m working on improving the pictures. That’s probably my favorite thing about this collaboration— we’re always discovering and learning.

In our life together, I feel simultaneously like a co-creator and a major ingredient in a recipe subject to taste-testing and revision, constantly, deliciously evolving. The site is not a perfect metaphor for our marriage because it isn’t nearly as balanced. She’s in charge, she knows it. I’m not in charge, I occasionally need to be reminded of that. Oh wait, it is a perfect metaphor!

I kid.

So, this has been a treat. Not a typical bio, but by now I think you know more about me than I do about you, for what it’s worth, and I’m glad we had this time together. And now I’m hungry.

“Olive, people might want to know what you use to take the pictures.”

Sure. As a professional photographer and videographer, I have some terrific gear at my disposal. I use a Canon 5D MarkII and prime lenses for the photography on this site. Whenever possible, I shoot the naked beet’s food in natural light. Point-and-shoot cameras can be used to compose a shot just as well as an SLR, but it helps to have tools that can find focus and deliver accurate colors when you’re up against suboptimal lighting conditions.

The naked beet’s creations taste better than they look. I hope you’ll find that out, ideally with friends and loved ones, and chime in here with feedback and your own creative ideas and experiences.

Bon Appetit!
Olive