The story of the Boston Globe picture

"Oh no! They want pictures and they want them by Sunday night!" I said to Jason in a panic. It was Saturday and we were spending the weekend in the Berkshires with my in-laws. Somewhere between hiking and cooking, I decided to check my e-mail and found the request for pictures from the Globe correspondent who interviewed me for a story about chefs and YouTube over a month ago. I have very limited media experience, but one thing I know about media is that they don't give you much notice.

I had no access to my pictures from the Berkshires. Even if I did, I didn't have what they wanted -- a picture that includes my face and a demonstration of some cooking technique. In desperation, I googled to see what food celebrities do for their PR pictures. If you have a cool rustic kitchen to show off, you can do from the waist up shot posing by a cutting board with some big hunk of meat, colorful and plump produce, and a knife (my favorite is when they hone a knife while looking at the camera). My kitchen is very functional, but not photogenic, which left the option number two -- lift up the food to your face and fuzz out the background.

After the drive back to Boston, we stopped by Whole Foods and got a bunch of "whole" food, no pun intended. Wholeness seems to be big in food PR these days. Chefs pose with whole pigs, whole cows, 300 Lb tunas. I settled on a whole chicken, whole fish, beets, and chard. We got to work. Getting the food and the face in the picture felt ridiculous. We couldn't stop laughing and started making up funny captions for the pictures as we went along. "Look -- I am Julia! Do I get brownie points if I drop the chicken on the floor?" By 8pm, the pictures were in the e-mail. I told them to choose which one they liked the most. Here are all of them. I like our captions better than the Globe's.

A huge thank you to Jason for the pictures and his endless patience.

Julia Child and Rosie the Riveter in one.
Don't ask what your chicken can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your chicken.

Local, organic produce makes me so happy!

Fishmonger:  "You want me to clean it?"
Helen: "No, I need it to look pretty for a picture." 

Aw -- it's a Swiss Chard wedding.  

Can you believe this egg has a yolk?

Kneeling down by the cutting board is so comfy.
I should chop like that all the time.

Don't mess with me.  I am a tough Russian woman
who does biceps curls with beets.

Now I am a friendly chef who grows beets in her back yard.