As Food & Wine's visuals editor, I was the bridge between the edit and design teams, determining how to best art digital content and then executing on that vision – whether that meant producing a photoshoot, commissioning an illustration, or sourcing stock photography.
RECIPE ART DIRECTION
RECIPE ART DIRECTION
CREATIVE DIRECTION
CREATIVE DIRECTION
A Very Extra Thanksgiving
For "Give Thanks, But Make It Extra", I worked with Noah Fecks studio to create a Thanksgiving spread filled with drama, joy, luxury, and abundance. As always, the food is a large part of the celebration, but in this package we also included tabletop and fashion inspiration. Food styling by Drew Aichele.
The Food & Wine Guide to Plant-Based Meat
For a Food & Wine package exploring the current landscape of plant-based meat and how to cook this innovative protein, I chose a style inspired by a modern take on vintage seed packets. Through color palette, illustration style, and photo treatments, we created a cohesive look despite using a combination of in-house illustration, commissioned and pick-up photography. Recipe photography by Ellen Mary Cronin with food and prop styling by Radin+Croney Collective. Location photography by An Rong Xu.
The Golden Age of Pizza
The Golden Age of Pizza is a celebration of pizza restaurants in America, from the best pizza places in every state, to an explainer on regional pizza styles, to an exploration on how Detroit-style pizza took over the country. Photography by myself, with food styling by Judy Haubert, as well as pickup photography for the city guides. Illustration and photo treatments by in-house design team.
Rice Is Everything
Rice Is Everything explores the world's most popular food, a project involving commissioning photography from multiple artists both on location and in studio. Despite the fractured nature of producing the project, through lighting, editing, and color palette the package feels of a piece. Photography by Antonis Achilleos, Peter Frank Edwards, Rachel Vanni, and Bryan Coppede.
WRITING & PHOTOGRAPHY
WRITING & PHOTOGRAPHY
This Year, I Have to Set the Holiday Ham on Fire Myself
When I realized I wouldn't be going home for the holidays for the first time ever, my family's many Christmas traditions suddenly felt precious, especially the ones I've taken for granted. Taking mental stock of the many events and recipes I've come to know as the holiday season, it occurred to me that it's quite a production. Some of our rituals are pretty typical—trimming the tree, decorating sugar cookies, and caroling. Others are more particular, like Christmas "boots" made from empty Quaker Oats canisters in lieu of stockings, and an idiosyncratic Christmas dinner, the centerpiece of which is the Flambo Jambo, our flaming ham.
This Sweet-Tangy Crisp Recipe Made Me a Rhubarb Dessert Believer
I've never understood the hype around rhubarb, although I can appreciate why someone might be initially excited by its arrival. After weeks of eating cellared root vegetables and overwintered kale, rhubarb's perky, pink stalks poke out of the soil and reach toward the warming sun, a rosy and dramatic welcome to spring. It's all very promising. That is, until the first bite. It's not just that rhubarb is tart—I adore the tartness of foods like cranberries and tamarind, and I keep a bag of citric acid on hand in my kitchen—it's the other flavor that turns me off. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it other than vegetal. It's not that it tastes terrible, but it does make me wonder why someone took a bite and then decided the best thing to do was to make pie.
I Underestimated Lentil Soup Until I Made This Ina Garten Recipe
I wouldn't say I was excited about making Ina Garten's French lentil and vegetable soup. I enjoy lentils and assumed the recipe was reliable, but that was the extent of my feelings on the topic. I should have known better than to underestimate the Barefoot Contessa — or lentils, for that matter.
I Spent an Afternoon Making Canadian Caesars. This One Is the Best
Letterkenny, a fast-talking comedy series about the residents of a rural Canadian town, recently dropped its tenth season on Hulu. If you have already watched it, you know that in the second episode, while Wayne and McMurray do some dickering at the car dealership, the rest of the town participates in a Caesar-building contest. No, they weren't making salads, but more fitting for the setting (Canada and, more specifically, MoDean's): a competition of Caesar cocktails.
