PROPS! In addition to developing 150 recipes and writing I DREAM OF DINNER, I thought it’d also be a good idea to do the prop styling for the photos. It was fun mostly because of the incredible generosity of friends and talented ceramicists who donated special things for us to shoot with (photo shoots are very expensive, for good reason). I loved getting to use ceramics by @meilenceramics @jonopandolfi @matthallyb @alexmarshallstudios because their objects are this sublime mix of durable/functional and homemade/special. Even when I’m prop styling, my focus is on the food (really, I didn’t even want glassware in the photos but I gave in—sometimes.) All of these people make tableware that accentuate food’s good sides. @sarahjampel gave me everything in her kitchen and a cabinet to store it all while she traveled for a few months, and @thereforesamiam let me take all her family heirlooms, including this wild platter from her honeymoon in Spain (bottom right in the third photo). It can be easy to get distracted by the shiny things available to rent at prop houses, and while I couldn’t resist all the time, I tried to so that the imagery looked like they could come from one person’s house. We shot a lot of the book on my actual butcher block counter and I was delighted to find a green slate from @surfaceworkshopnyc that looked like my kitchen counters growing up. All these details are small and probably only noticeable to me but I hope in some way they made a homier book.