Fibinacci Food Loop

Today I had the slightly psychadelic experience of eating a meal cooked according to recipes I made up, as interpreted by the test kitchen of a food magazine. If you read this blog back in December, you might remember that I prepared a giant meal during the holidays and served it to my friends and inlaws, while directing a photo shoot of the whole thing for Sweden's Allt Om Mat (All About Food) magazine. Well, today was the day the magazine tested the recipes to see if they actually taste good, and they invited me (and Niklas and Ganda) to come and eat the food. It was really interesting to see how my recipes were interpreted not just by another person but by a person of another culture. They tasted great, and because the cook had the photos from the shoot to work with, she could tell what everything was supposed to look like. There were some subtle differences, but everything was really yummy and it was exciting to see ideas that I made up executed by someone else. The soup was thinner and less spicy, but still really smoky and flavorful, for instance. I put a generous squeeze of lime and some avocado slices into it and it was divine. The empanadas were thicker and sweeter than I made them, but still delightfully rich and flaky. And the pecan pie didn't look like my pie at all—she used a modern cylindrical pie dish instead of the old-fashioned American kind—but it tasted fantastic, especially with the chipotle ice cream on top. All small, interesting differences that added up to food that was just as tasty, but with a slightly new twist.

It was fun seeing the photos they chose for the magazine, as well. The got a lot of shots of Keira and her kids, as well as a few of John and me, and a couple of my inlaws, Penny and Gary. I don't think they'll be able to use all of them, but I'll curious to find out what makes the cut. Speaking of photos, isn't the picture above kind of great? The geek in me hopes someone will use the recipes in the magazine to cook the food and then take a picture of it next to a print-out of this photo. Then I'm pretty sure the universe will get sucked into a black-hole and my head will explode.