Lately I have been reading about the Japanese cooking philosophy, washoku, in a wonderful book of the same name by Elizabeth Andoh. Included in the principles of the washoku philosophy are considerations of: the five colors (go shiki), five tastes (go mi), five senses (go kan), and five ways… of preparing food (go hō). These principles are used to prepare meals daily, from elaborate multi-course kaiseki to the simplest of breakfasts. While they can easily be identified in Japanese cooking, and the Japanese certainly do a beautiful job of interpreting their philosophy, guidelines like these are an excellent way of exploring any meal or cuisine. While the list may seem daunting, it’s quite simple, and quiet effective in guiding us to create healthful, satisfying meals.

It’s freezing in here. Is it freezing out there? Time to build a fire. Outside our window the trees twist and bend and blacken against the first clouds I’ve seen since we arrived. Yet somehow it’s still light and warm outside. In this filtered light the adobes across the street are a beautiful sienna. I remember loving the name, and by extension the color of burnt sienna in my fourth grade art class. If you squint your eyes here, it’s as far as the eye can see, this deep, ruddy, rich color. The earth, buildings, food, and sometimes the sky all bleed together. If you look closely, this land has gradations of all colors of the wheel, some more saturated and some just hints and flecks.

Matt and I did some driving during Christmas break. Quite a bit, actually. We finally, after almost 10 years, moved out of NYC. It involved not only an anticlimactic exit culminating in hours of Jersey traffic, but also countless hours packing our car chock full of everything we felt was worthy of making the trip. It was a liberating and slightly nauseating experience.

We drove 2,300 miles through PA, Ohio, and Missouri, narrowly missing the snowstorm I’m sure covered many of you back east. We then met up with the Mother Road, Historic Route 66 and drove through the heartland, across the Panhandle and into the Southwest. Our little car and all our worldly possessions headed up the mountain to Santa Fe, New Mexico on Tuesday, December 22rd. The following day we surprisingly found an adorable adobe house, were all starry-eyed at how this would never have been possible on Christmas Eve in NYC, and settled in for a dry, snowy Christmas.

Lately I’ve been interested about the impact quality of light has on quality of life. I’ve been dreaming about kitchens. A beautiful, soft and naturally lit kitchen is… well, a dream for me until I no longer live in a major city. Light not only gives life, it restores the living quality of food when we present it chopped, boiled, seasoned, and cooked down. When photographing food in a real kitchen the right quality of light is an ongoing mystery. Our lighting options appear simple enough: natural, artificial, or a combination. We aim to capture the kitchen’s “best side,” when the indirect sunlight is in its full glory. But few of us are probably even home then. Of course there’s artificial lighting to hopefully soften, warm, and make something that tastes delicious look delicious. Artistically, I am capturing light as I wish it to be.

Happy New Year! Holidays behind us (and soon resolutions as well), I am busying myself with my college final, set for Inauguration Day. Two days following I will be shipping off to Tokyo for two weeks! This somehow excuses my lack of updates.

The last time I posted I was making Christmas dinner. After Christmas we went on a road trip with friends from New York down to Tennessee, and celebrated New Year’s Memphis-style. There was The King, blues, luscious barbecue, and good company.

The last five days for me have been filled with programmers, Mickey Mouse, gators, and guns in where else but the sunny, now blue state of Florida. Matt’s RubyConf in Orlando gave me the opportunity to revisit as an adult the place where dreams are made. After three days of theme parks and visits backstage at Disney, I’d had my fill of screaming children, long lines, and well, sugar. On our last day we headed out of Orlando to find some of the more backwater Florida entertainment. Simply put: guns and gators.

If you like food, live in a walking city, feel personally punished by the illusion of good quality and diverse produce, despise Whole Foods and other overpriced Organic marts, and long for your childhood pick-n-patch, you’ve considered visiting a pick your own. OK. That was my own personal moment. More likely it sounds novel and fun.

What do you imagine? My visual goes something like this: sweeping hills, quaintly terraced vegetable patches, produce so beautiful, flavorful, and cheap you feel like you’re stealing the farmer’s children, and trees with sagging limbs under the weight of sweet, plump fruit. Growing up I picked a lot of fruit from our local farm in sub-rural Connecticut, and would leave red-faced from eating raspberries off the bush and dragging a bag full of apples. I decided to test the fruit and vegetable landscape in upstate New York.

My parents live in the woods in northern Connecticut. My mother has always had a garden and grown vegetables whenever she could. Matt and I had the good fortune of taking a final peek at her produce this weekend, before the frost steals the rest.

The amount of edibles growing in what she calls her “little organic garden” makes me feel like an ass for living in New York and periodically buying herbs that come wilting in little plastic containers for $4 when I’m in a pinch. A pinch for my mother would be attempting to procure mint in the backyard while throwing a dinner party for twenty during a hailstorm when everyone is just finishing their main course.

Oh Big E, you overwhelming state fair/expo/carnival, do you have anything fried I can eat? Why sure dahlin’, we got fried dough, fried pickles, fried mushrooms, fried cahliflawa, fried awreos, fried puhtaytus, fried cawn dawgs, fried mahs bahs, fried clayams, fried shrimp. Awwww yeah. Get a look at that fried dough. That dough is sexy, with it’s air pockets, greasy sheen, and that oooy chewy center. The first couple bites of that doughy goodness definitely makes living in sin feel worth it.

For any unfortunates who are unfamiliar with the Big E in West Springfield, Mass, it honors the New England states of Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island (oh, you thought New York was part of New England?). The expo boasts food (mostly fried), product exhibitions, animal competitions, state houses, and a carnival, and is also the 8th largest fair in the country. It’s a syrupy concentrate of Americana, straight out of the coffee table books, but east coast style.

My highlights would be: my first bite of fried dough, my first in person glimpse at a horse cock, experiencing a rural interpretation of what “international” means, looking at all the show sheep get gussied up, and the life-sized butter cow in a glass case donated by Cabot which even sports a life-sized artist to be observed “live.” And of course walking through each “state house” where we sampled New Hampshire apple pie and maple candy, Mass staties (oooh, whoops…), Vermont cheddar and flatbreads, Maine blueberry crumble, and Rhode Island crab cakes.