We decided to blog every day this week leading up to today, Happy 420! There is an event tomorrow in Richmond, California, its called Deep Green, its the 2nd annual Earth Day celebration of cannabis, health, and ecology. See their website HERE, we wish we could go, maybe next year!

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These images and recipes are to educate and entertain, we do not in any way condone the use of prohibited substances.

Prop Stylist Alicia Buszczak, Food Stylist Karen Gillingham, Art Direction Steph Fowler

We picked up a great book called Aunt Sandy’s Medical Marijuana Cookbook. She has quite a few pages that give step by step instructions (with photos) on how to make cannabutter, cannaflour, cannabis oil and tinctures. This last one I had never heard of, in the book it says, “Marijuana tincture is a great additive to enhance your favorite beverage. Adding a dropper to a cup of tea can make for a relaxing and holistic experience.”

And let’s get back to basics here with a tried and true pot brownie. I found an amazing recipe in the Stoners Delight cookbook, its called The Ultimate Chocolate Brownie.

These images and recipes are to educate and entertain, we do not in any way condone the use of prohibited substances.

Prop Stylist Alicia Buszczak, Art Direction Steph Fowler

Start your morning out right with “baked” eggs.

I found a great popsicle recipe on the NUG Magazine website, its called the NY Diesel Icesickle. You can make any flavor you like, they are super easy, and the marijuana is optional. We also made a pomegranate shaved ice!

Cheesecakes in Mason Jars are a unique way to serve a dessert at a party, and who doesn’t love a macaron?

Marijuana can be added easily to any of your favorite foods to transform it into a healing recipe. Marijuana has been known to relieve pain, nausea, vomiting, anxiety, and the loss of appetite. You can read more about its healing qualities on the National Cancer Institutes website HERE.

These images and recipes are to educate and entertain, we do not in any way condone the use of prohibited substances.

Prop Stylist Alicia Buszczak, Food Stylist Karen Gillingham, Art Direction Steph Fowler

Chicken Dumpling Soup!

If  you’re thinking about cooking with Marijuana, I stumbled across this website, The Stoners Cookbook they give really detailed instructions, including how to make butter, cooking oil and flour!

We will be posting more beautiful imagery with this theme all week!

These images and recipes are to educate and entertain, we do not in any way condone the use of prohibited substances.

Prop Stylist Alicia Buszczak, Food Stylist Karen Gillingham, Art Direction Steph Fowler

We had the opportunity to work with prop stylist Alicia Buszczak again on this gorgeous shoot. We were inspired by 18th century still life paintings. This particular shortcake recipe can be found on 101 Cookbooks, one of our favorite sites for recipes. We did however add blackberries to our version. We also added a whipped cream filling, which is optional.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Make the shortcakes: Sift the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar into a large bowl or food processor. Using a pastry cutter or 25 quick pulses of the food processor, blend until the mixture resembles tiny, sandy pebbles. If you are using a food processor transfer the mixture to a big bowl and using a fork stir in the milk until just combined.

Either drop directly onto a parchment-lined baking sheet (like drop biscuits), or turn the dough out onto a floured countertop, knead just once or twice to bring the dough together, roll out 3/4-inch thick and stamp with 1 1/2-inch biscuit cutter. Brush each shortcake with egg white and sprinkle with just a bit of coarse sea salt (and a bit more sugar if you like). Bake on the middle rack for about 12 minutes.

Make the syrup:Put the honey and sugar in a small saucepan over low heat and stir until the honey loosens up and the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and whisk in the champagne and fruit juice. We squeezed our blackberries through a cheese cloth to get the juice.

Makes about 12 medium-sized shortcakes.

We had a lot of delicious recipes on day two of our glamping shoot at El Capitan Canyon. You can see day one HERE and our fun behind the scenes photos HERE.

We started with one of my favorites, grilled figs with burrata cheese served with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, I pretty much ate half of this plate once we got the shot.

What’s better than a huge Mexican breakfast outdoors? The menu consisted of a large iron skillet filled with fried eggs and topped with cheese and tomatillo salsa, refried beans, corn tortillas heated in foil packets, grilled pineapple and mango skewers, sliced avocados, tomato juice with lime in salt & chile rimmed jars and fresh Mexican hot chocolate!

These are grilled lamb chops with rosemary and one of my favorite new salads, Israeli couscous with grilled corn and arugula, and pears with honey. The Israeli couscous recipe was adapted from a cookbook called Good Food to Share by Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan, who also happens to the daughter of our food stylist Karen Gillingham.

At El Capitan Canyon, you can order a BBQ kit for your evening meal, they deliver it right to your cabin, but you have to add your own seasonings if you want to make it extra special. This one is the Tri-tip, we added grilled onions and charmoula. The kit came with baked beans,vegetables, salad and garlic bread.

The last meal we made on day two of our trip, was the Grilled Salmon, it is also a kit you can order from the campsite, our awesome food stylists made little hobo packs and cooked the salmon, seasonings and veggies together. I love the colorful styling of this one.

The perfect way to end a day roughing it outdoors is with a sweet treat of grilled pound cake with tres leches sauce and a cuddle by the fire.

Happy Holidays!

We really got into the spirit of the Season with this shoot. We were especially excited to find Labrador retriever cookie cutters! Enjoy the recipe, these cookies are delicious! Prop styling by Alicia Buszczak, art direction by Steph Fowler & production by Chrissy Cassidy.

Last week we worked with the talented prop stylist Alicia Buszczak on a tea themed shoot. I love how everything turned out, especially the colors and textures. You can imagine the amazing aromas in the studio that day. It did get me thinking though, what is the history of tea? I’m not going to bore you with a long rant that you could find anywhere on the internet, but here are some interesting facts, along with some of our favorite images from that day.

Legend has it that the Chinese Emperor Shen Nong in 2737 B.C. was having his usual cup of hot water when some leaves of a tea plant fell into his cup. He fell in love with the flavor and tea was born. There is no proof that this story is true, but I like to believe it is!

For hundreds of years, people drank tea for its herbal medicinal benefits. It was also used as a religious offering in the time of the Western Zhou Dynasty.

During the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD), only royalty and the wealthy drank tea because the tea plants were so limited. More plants were discovered during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and so tea drinking became more common in lower classes.

Tea is often associated with Zen Buddhism in Japan because priests drank tea to stay awake and meditate.  They also developed the Japanese Tea Ceremony for sharing tea in a sacred and spiritual manner.

Tea arrived in England during the 17th century, King Charles II married Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese Princess, she made Tea the drink of Royalty.

There are four main types of tea: white, green, oolong, and black. But depending on the influence of culture, these four types can turn into thousands of varieties. The most interesting of tea facts is that all tea comes from the same plant, Camellia Sinensis.

Check out this documentary All in This Tea , we just ordered the DVD, it’s supposed to be really good.

We blogged a few weeks ago about our camping trip to El Capitan Canyon,  if you missed it, you can see some of our fun behind the scenes photos HERE. These are a few images from our first day there, we hope you enjoy!

We started with an upside down apple cornbread, grilled bratwurst, grilled grapefruit halves with honey and fresh coffee.

Then we did another breakfast of Hot Granola in mason jars with blueberries & almonds, grilled pears, and a delicious citrus tea.

For our dinner recipes, we decided to shoot a couple of the El Capitan’s BBQ Kits. They deliver everything you need to make your dinner on the grill! This one is the Chicken with baked beans, salad, and garlic bread.

What would camping be without a night of Hot Dogs & Hamburgers, don’t you just love the El Capitan mug?

And finally…..S’mores!

Look for more delicious food photos from our camping days 2 & 3 soon!

We’ve been planning a Camping Cooking & Foods shoot for a few months now, and last week we finally made it happen! We found the perfect location at El Capitan Canyon near Santa Barbara. We wanted to thank all of the amazing people involved on this shoot, especially Kendra,the Sales & Marketing Manager at El Capitan, without her this shoot wouldn’t have happened at all. If you’re looking for a place to get away for the weekend, we highly recommend it there, it’s not camping, it’s Glamping!

This shoot was a lot of hard work, but we had fun as well! In the early mornings we would see herds of Deer walking by our Cabins and then grazing peacefully nearby. The food was delicious, from burgers and corn on the cobb, to eating the leftovers from the shoot, especially the figs and burrata cheese with balsamic vinegar. We all enjoyed throwing the stick for Abbie (the service dog) and watching her run through the creek, she had the most fun of all.

And a very special thanks to Erin & John for all of their hard work, and to Greg, Amy, and Louie, our gorgeous models!

Here are a few behind the scenes photos, look for our finished shots next week!