Macaron Painter

Yesterday I had lunch with Viv from my old watercolor class...

We spent the hour talking about nutrition, nutrition doctors, diets, how bad our dressing-free cardboard chicken salad was,

blah, blah, blah

Then I walked down the street half a block to La Maison du Chocolat... and their windows were filled with macarons!
Naturally I had to enter for research purposes...
Yesterday K & S said, macarons! :) When she saw the Bouchon macs and she planted a thought in my head. It was time to drop the coffee cups and come home to MACARONS!!
They really are fun to paint. And I love the idea of all the crazy flavors and colors, even if I'm quite content to never try virgin olive oil macarons, the thought of them is fun.
So I've been thinking, jacket painter, chef painter, wine artist, shoe designer, etc., etc. Did I tell you about the 18 months I spent day-trading!!! I still can't believe I did it :) But macaron painter seems like something I could sink my teeth into...
I was listening to the Angelina Jolie interview and she tells of her experiences at
The Actors Studio - she had to become an ORANGE!
Kind of the way I feel when I'm painting macs...
You have to get in touch with your inner macaron
You have to become a macaron...
What flavor macaron would YOU be???

Bouchon Bakery

I'm late visiting chef Thomas Keller's BOUCHON BAKERY

at 10 Columbus Circle, near 59th Street, third floor.

For some odd reason I thought they might have Pierre Herme Ispahan knockoffs for me to paint. But that is Bouley Bakery!

They do have MACARONS!
But only in a "medium" size?!

Why? I like the little/petit ones best - that way you don't feel such a pig eating them

These giant-looking chocolate "bouchon" are just the right size!
Only 2" tall and full of molten chocolate...YUM

Remember le bouchon is the word for a Champagne cork and that's how these are shaped.

Very pretty "Cherry chocolate cremoux (?)"
Are there cherries inside as well as on top? Qui sait?

This 1/2 globe is a popular French pastry shape with Herme and others.

My room mate is rescuing me by having this loaf-cake for breakfast!

What I actually ate, after all the browsing...
A plain old ham and cheese sandwich.
But all the bread is made in-house and the baguette is nice and chewy.

Quite Frenchie in my opinion - the bread was buttered as well as mustared like the French do it.

There are informal cafe tables nearby to munch your sandwich..

And for your hound. Foie gras–enriched doggie biscuits to keep his mind off your Chocolat bouchon!

Painting Chefs Jackets

The next chapter of my  ‘brilliant’ career path - Chefs jacket painter!

As I mentioned, I had nothing to wear to the chef portrait exhibit opening at the James Beard House.. So I painted a Bragard chef's jacket to wear covered with portraits of the chefs!

A back view with my favorite back views of reknown chefs.

I wore 4 different jackets to Paul Bocuse award luncheon. I rotated them in the ladies room. 

A tall, dark, thin man came over and said he wanted to order a painted jacket. I asked for his business card. He had none. I asked could he write his name on a piece of paper.. 

He wrote ✍️  George Duboeuf!

I did a special "Flower Label" jacket for a woman friend of his.

At the same Bocuse event a chef invited me for lunch at his Lyon hotel restaurant. I ate my first whole black Perigord truffle en croute. After I finished his dish. I assured him it was wonderful (what did I know of truffles, chocolate or otherwise) 

He informed me, 'Now you will paint me a chef's jacket. You have just eaten your payment!'
Pas de choise / I had no choice..C'est la vie. Sometimes you have to ‘play’ 🎻 for your dinner.

I met famed French chef, Roger Verge at that luncheon. He asked me to paint him a special jacket for his upcoming vegetable cookbook tour. Payment would be a stay at his fabulous French Riviera inn,Le Moulin de Mougins. Malheureusement, I never got around to visiting. 

 Wendy Brandes at the Wall Street Journal did a little story on the jackets,
"Michelangelo liked ceilings.
Diego Rivera preferred murals.
Carol Gillott goes for...chefs jackets." 

I never ever worried what to wear to a ball or any foodie events I was shooting. I was a walking sandwich board for the jackets. Mothers liked the jackets for their graduating culinary school kids. Chefs liked them for special events. the chefs were just entering the celebrity arena at that time. I threw in this back view of the "pasta jacket" of a hilltown for all you returning sojourners from Italy!

Bronte -> Pistachio -> Pozzetta -> Parigi

One of the BEST words in the world...

Yesterday, Merisi, just back from a week in Italy, commented,

First time in my life that I had 2 ice cream cones with 3 flavors each in a row

and was left wanting for a 3rd one...

NO NO NO Merisi!

There is ONLY ONE FLAVOR gelato you should eat!

And that is Pistachio di Bronte!

Any Gelateria worth it's (rock) salt get's it's pistachios

from the Sicilian town of Bronte.

Did you know it takes TWO YEARS for a pistachio nut to ripen?!!!

Here's what GROM has to say of Bronte's pistachios:

The operation is almost acrobatic: balanced on blocks of lava and holding onto the branches with one hand, with the other they pick the pistachio nuts one by one, dropping them into a canvas bag tied around their necks.

In a day’s work, they manage to pick 20 kilos of pistachios at the most.

WOW! This is definitely S L O W F O O D !

The best gelato shop in Paris, POZZETTO, is located conveniently on

39, rue de Roi de Sicile 75004 (king of Sicily street)

Did you know gelato was invented in Sicily?

I once got to spend a week at a fine Sicilian vineyard, REGALEALI.
I was supposed to be sketching the harvest but all I did was eat gelato...

For some unknown reason Pozzetto is following GROM's bad example

and has placed hats/lids on their ice cream bins I take deep offence at this :(

I always like to study over the menu and prices before I go somewhere...

Then there's no sticker shock and to make sure they have PISTACHIO!

A stolen shot here of Pozzetta's interior kitchen...shhhhh
I dragged up and down this street before before I noticed Pozzetto's shop...
I changed my mind when I tasted the PISTACHIO!

Here's a map so this doesn't happen to you...

I don't know which I love more - maps or menus..? But aren't they the same thing? Do you think I should run off to Italy on a 3-day-pistachio-gelato-research trip?

Would you be willing to foot the bill? :)

Why I Love Ice Cream!

Maybe it's a silly premise for a post.

Why I LOVE ICE CREAM?

Like who doesn't!?

But just take a look at my watercolor paintbox. Pretty delicious no?

It's all gouged out like these ice cream bins. I love my watercolors as much as I love ice cream. Although lately I'm thinking more about ice cream than painting

When GROM recently opened their gelato shop in Florence, a friend told me there was a big stink because you couldn't

gaze at all the different flavors (with anticipation and angst)
like in most Italian gelato shops. Isn't that part of the fun of getting ice cream? Looking at all the colors and imagining what they taste like?

Which would you choose?

Painting is like that too. Here you can gaze at a VERY expensive paintbox with tons of colors/flavors. But if you had to choose between this 924 Euro paintbox and say 500 ice cream cones.

My paintbox looked like that for 5 minutes when it was brand new

These La Maison du Chocolat ice cream containers are nice and neat and tidyHere are some big BLOCX watercolor pans. You can't get these in the USA. Is it because they look too much like ice cream?Doesn't it look an awful lot like these containers of gelato?

Party Sketcher

Becs said, How did you manage to land all these sweet gigs?

When you're known in the family as the "artist" it's a natural you'll end up doing caricatures at Sweet 16 Birthday parties. Better than baby sitting.

But I didn't know I was laying the groundwork for sketching chefs at fancy dos... Here's an invitation I did for a benefit party of Julia Child with Great Chefs held at restaurant March.

I proposed to FOOD ARTS MAGAZINE that I do some sketchbook pages for them at the Lyon Food Fair - also known as the Salon des Metiers de Bouche (meaning Salon of the Careers of the Mouth!) SIRA, It's an international catering, hotel and food trade exhibition held bi-annually in January.

The French take it so much further than the Fancy Food Show! With real fish mongers, crepe makers, cheese vendors - The WORKS!

I illustrated an invitation for D'Artagnan's big anniversary party at Grand Central station for Ariane Daguin. Sketching the party was part of the fun of photographing and attending these events.

After Paul Bocuse's M.O.F. party, George Duboeuf gave a bang-up chef soiree... More doodles.

Sketching at the James Beard Awards. Out of these party sketches I ended up doing a series of ads for Restaurant Associates showing the Tropica chef creating in the kitchen. I went in, taped his conversation and made it part of the ads seen inside New York Magazine too. Party sketching is a FUN career!