Do you have something that holds a permanent spot on your inspiration board, that has helped your ideas flow for years and years? I loved this charming piece on the author Douglas Coupland in Sunday’s New York Times. It figures that the author who captured the zeitgeist of Generation X and the technology bubble (Microserfs – personally I liked that one better, maybe because I am a member of Gen X, I don’t know), chose this cusp-of-the-eighties postcard from Fiorucci 1979. It did seem a sign of everything that was to come, and it affected Coupland so deeply that he dumped science for art then and there. I don’t think a postcard has ever done that much for me, but I do know that are quite a few images from bulletin boards that seem to make the cut during every clean-out and every move. Care to share yours?

photo from Bayne Stanley for The New York TimesÂ

Pim “was raised in Bangkok, educated in other places, now lives in San Francisco” where she authors her blog, Chez Pim. She offers up a brief entry, but there’s lots more to feast on in her Flickr photostream, so be sure to check that out.

Her entry is the final entry of our ‘Pass the Mic: Delicious Design’ event that brings together food bloggers and designers to mark the Thanksgiving holiday and the launch of our new Modern Tabletop category. We’ve also created a Flickr group “Aesthetics of Food” to make your mouth water. Enjoy!

What is more beautiful than a plate of pristine fish, so fresh they were practically alive? So fresh, it would have been a crime to cook them. We parted the filets from the finicky bones and buried the little pieces in a mound of gray salt. A few hours later, the glistening flesh retired from the salty interment, they were placed in neat rows on a plate. White, of course. Colors would only be a distraction. Now, all that was left to do was to give a generous splash of fragrant olive oil, and perhaps decorate with fennel pollen, freshly picked from the garden. Dig in with your fingers, letting the oil gently drip down your wrist. When you are done, don’t forget to wipe the plate clean with a chunk of crusty bread.

Beautiful food is elegant design: complex in conception, masterful in workmanship, simple in presentation, and, at the heart of it all, a utilitarian soul.

It’s UK Friday! OK, actually our second Brit blogger actually lives a stone’s throw away here in SF, but she is an English Girl-Abroad. She writes Becks & Posh:

And when Sam isn’t blogging, she’s working as a visual effects artist at George Lucas’s ILM. Her entry is the ninth of our ‘Pass the Mic: Delicious Design’ event that brings together food bloggers and designers to mark the Thanksgiving holiday and the launch of our new Modern Tabletop category. We’ve also created a Flickr group “Aesthetics of Food” to make your mouth water. Enjoy!

The Height of Edible Fashion!

Fêted by the world’s fooderati and darling of the Parisian Pâtisserie Circuit, Pierre Hermé is a man who clearly epitomizes good taste. A trip to one of his stylish French or Japanese boutiques will illustrate the ease with which he satisfies the visual senses as much as the palate. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s UK Friday! Keiko lives in Suffolk, UK, and writes Nordljus — one version in English, one in Japanese.

Her entry is the eighth of our ‘Pass the Mic: Delicious Design’ event that brings together food bloggers and designers to mark the Thanksgiving holiday and the launch of our new Modern Tabletop category. We’ve also created a Flickr group “Aesthetics of Food” to make your mouth water. Enjoy!

This is the first recipe I’ve tried from my recent purchase target="_blank">The Accidental Foodie by Neale Whitaker. He has been the editor of target="_blank">Vogue Entertaining + Travel (my all time favourite magazine) for a while – but as he writes in his introduction, he never set out to be a foodie – he became one accidentally. My good friend Cheryl, who is an old friend of his, describes him as a passionate perfectionist and his careers in fashion and PR led to magazine editorships. Before he moved to Australia (he is actually English and grew up in the culinary wasteland that was 60s and 70s England), he edited the beautiful target="_blank">Food Illustrated (another of my all time favourites) magazine.

More than just a recipe book, this is about his journey to becoming the foodie that he is now – the book features recipes from his own food heroes, those who he has personally worked with, hence the absence of perhaps more obvious choices such as Nigella Lawson, Gordon Ramsay, Rick Stein or Fergus Henderson.

Read the rest of this entry »

Oliver & Nicky live in Munich and write Delicious Days, which is not only a great food blog but also one of the most aesthetically beautiful websites we’ve ever seen. (If you haven’t yet, surf over there and check out the photography). According to the two:

It would be the understatement of the year to say we like to cook. In reality, we are addicted. We love to dive head first into shopping sprees for new kitchen equipment, reading and (of course) buying new cookbooks and continiously growing my amazon-wishlist – which will be hitting it’s maximum number of items anytime soon.

Their entry is the seventh of our ‘Pass the Mic: Delicious Design’ event that brings together food bloggers and designers to mark the Thanksgiving holiday and the launch of our new Modern Tabletop category. We’ve also created a Flickr group “Aesthetics of Food” to make your mouth water. Enjoy!

Shopping lists rarely work for me. To be more specific, in the sense of adhering to what I actually had in mind when I wrote the list. Often times I change things on the fly or end up with more than I had planned. One thing I have successfully managed to avoid, is to go shopping with an empty stomach. Bad idea. Regardless of any list, walking by a well assorted food stand is what always gets me in trouble. I fall for any eye-candy-qualifying fruits and have to know what they’re like. Fortunately not all exotic fruits are as expensive as pink pitayas.

What made me stop this time where limequats. Miniature limes or the green equivalent to the kumquat, in fact they are a cross between the two. Had to have them. Didn’t want to go overboard and in an attempt to control damage I only took a handful of each, limequats and kumquats (which I had before). Read the rest of this entry »