Selby with Spice

Hi! It's Deborah. After hearing an interview an with Todd Selby on NPR, I ordered his new book Edible Selby. It's really great... a combination of travelogues, photo essays, sketches, interviews and short bits of inspiration from many unexpected sources. (I'd been searching for a fresh idea to share with you for this spice theme... and I found it in this book!)

Each section in the book follows a similar design: a snippet of text, a simple sketch of the chef/cook/restaurateur/farmer, several pictures and a hand written Q&A ripped from a sketch book. I thought it would be fun to use this same format for some sketchbook pages about me, my kitchen and the spices found there.

I decided to make my husband's favorite cookies for the photo shoot since they contain lots of spices. I asked my daughter to look over the Q&A pages in the book and write me some questions in the same style. She did a great job.

Here is my four-page imitation "Edible Selby" feature. It required a number of steps... take lots of pictures, format the pictures along with a text box, scan the handwritten Q&A, print out the pages, add hand written notes and sketches, re-scan the whole thing and upload. It was a really fun project. I'm actually going to stick these pages in the back of my Edible Selby book -- an addendum! I encourage you to document your own kitchen -- and spices -- in this format. Upload them to our flickr group. I can't wait to see them.