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Category: Personal - Page 11

Jane and I love food and wine so in between photo news we wanted to write some food-related posts….here are three items to kick it off:

First, for my recent birthday Jane gave me the new Barcelona Cookbook written by the the owners of the Barcelona Wine Bar tapas restaurant group in Connecticut.  It’s a nicely written and photographed book with a great wine section in addition to the tapas recipes.  Jane also booked a date to go to Barcelona in West Hartford Center to a “Cook the Book” night hosted by Executive Chef Adam Greenberg.  We and 40 others enjoyed everything from his potato latkes with applesauce to the churros with chili-chocolate dipping sauce.  Barcelona also has restaurants in Greenwich, Stamford, South Norwalk, Fairfield and New Haven…they’ve got a very cool urban and relaxed atmosphere along with great tapas and wine…and live music some nights.

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Second, Jessica and James Vanderberg, the very talented and fun couple whose wedding we photographed at the Hill-Stead Museum in ’08 have started an outstanding  foodie blog called “Plated” out of their Brooklyn home.
“Plated” features classic and eclectic recipes as well as dinner parties that you can sign up on their blog to attend.  Jessica and James (photo below) are great writers and their love of food, wine, traveling and people really shines through in their blog.  Check them out at http://brooklynplated.wordpress.com.

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Lastly, I love food markets and I’ve been meaning to check out Hartford’s own CT Regional Market down under the highways past the old Colt Firearms factory (the address is 101 Reserve Road).  A few Saturdays back I headed down there at 6am and 15 degrees and saw a small group of customers shopping at several of the mostly fruit and vegetable purveyors selling from their shipping docks.  Even within this small group in 30 minutes I met people from Bosnia, Portugal and Jamaica…highlights the great diversity of recent immigrants in the Hartford area.

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Jane and I went into NYC last week for the PDN PhotoPlus Expothe tradeshow and conference for all things photographic. Walking to the Javits Center, we saw a NYC scene in great light and Jane snapped a photo of a painter enjoying his java before starting work.

Good classes, especially the Adobe Lightroom session and great keynotes by Nigel Parry on his celebrity portraits and James Nachtwey on his photojournalism over the past 25 years.

Went to The Ten Bells for wine and tapas down on Broome Street just north of Chinatown before heading to the PDN party in the Hammerstein Ballroom where we met some new photogs and had a blast with old PUG friends.

Checked out Robert Frank’s The Americans photo exhibit at the Met of his trek around the US in the 1950s–great stuff.  Stopped at Anthony Bourdain’s old workplace, Les Halles, for a bistro bite before heading out of Penn Station (albeit 3.5 hours late due to lightning strikes) for home in Hartford…but today we got a call from Amtrak with free train tickets due to the delay!

Speaking of the Mayor's Ball, last year we attended with a group of friends and my friend, Jen and I bid on VIP tickets to see Live with Regis and Kelly in NYC.  Being VIP means you can pick which day you want to go and we went just before the holidays.  Daniel Craig (yes, James Bond) was the guest star and I have to admit, quite charming in person. David Archuleta was the musical guest who we also happened to see the night before in the Virgin store in Times Square:

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Well you've got to get up early for this type of thing….

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Here we are post-coffee waiting in the line (yes, even with the VIP tickets…although we had a shorter line!)

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A big perk of VIP tix was front row…here's Jen waiting for it to start:
 
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Kelly was amazing how quickly she could turn on bubbly at 8 a.m. … there was no warm-up…they just went right into their high energy banter:

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All the talk shows are a great time and I can be talked into an NYC trip for any reason…one of my goals is to get to SNL though…maybe this fall!