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Emily and Tony Emily and Tony were awesome to work with. Images reflect a small portion of their entire wedding day.
This weekend has been a travel disaster. I missed both of my pre-booked advance trains and had to buy a new ticket. The second missed train wasn’t exactly my fault so I got my ticket stamped so I could get onto the next one home. I didn’t get to see the Terra Cotta Soldiers at the British Museum with The Other Gem. All of the tickets they release on the day had gone by the time we arrived, just like all the ones available in advance had gone before I knew I was in London that day. So we just had a wander around the Africa and North America rooms and all the random things in the Enlightenment rooms, such as my personal favourite; a faked taxidermied mermaid made from half a monkey and half a fish. Then the evening was alarmingly ‘goth’. It was spent first in The Devonshire Arms in Camden with Patrick, Sel and Sarah and then Slimelight for the Seabound gig with just Patrick and Sel. Sarah escaped on the way there, despite Sel’s best efforts at detaining her. I love Seabound and I think they did a good gig, but the Slimelight PA is even more of a bag of shite than I remembered from when I was a member and went there quite often. I was planning on renewing my membership to get cheap tickets to some other bands they are putting on but I am not going to bother now. I’ll have to go somewhere in mainland Europe to see The Legendary Pink Dots now because I don’t want another good band to be ruined by a shit PA in my presence. After than I visited Guildford, Patrick’s new home, for the first time. It is rather different from his previous one in Anglesey. Now that most of my friends live in the south east (apart from the ones in Leeds and elsewhere of course) I am very tempted to try to move down there myself at some point. I’d also rather like to live a short, cheap train ride away from London with the last train home at 1am. His flat has an iPod dock built into the wall connected to the integrated speaker system, it is possibly the most bizarrely cool thing ever. Another great thing is Guitar Hero, which I attempted to play on Patrick’s Playstation 2. I really need to buy that soon. I need a Nintendo Wii as well, even more so now I’ve played one.
For the past two days, I was at the Hagley Museum in Delaware attending a culinary history conference. I have to say, Delaware is basically a place I drive through to get to other, more promising spots, like DC. Mostly, what I saw in the First State was the usual suburban sprawl. But there is an area near Wilmington where the Du Ponts resided, that’s definitely worth a detour. It’s marked by rolling hills and lush gardens, not to mention fabulous estates and homes. For this conference, the International Association of Culinary Professionals arranged a special tour of Winterthur, the 60-acre estate that was built by Henry Francis du Pont (1880-1969), an avid antiques collector and horticulturist. Antiques lovers make pilgrimages to the place because of its unparalleled collection of early American furniture, porcelain, rugs, and other objects. The garden is lush and extensive, planted with numerous varieties of plants and trees in a naturalistic manner. We got the cook’s tour so to speak of the dining room, living room and other period-appropriate furnished rooms. There are 85,000 objects set in 175 gorgeous period settings. For this crowd, the tour guide focused on the culinary. It seems that Dupont was a locavore way before the term was ever invented. By 1925 Winterthur had its own turkey, chicken, sheep, pig, and dairy farms as well as vegetable and flower gardens, greenhouses, a sawmill, a railroad station, and a post office. Dupont raised Holstein-Friesian cows for their rich milk and personally oversaw menu planning. When traveling, he had his staff prepare watercress sandwiches and such so that he wouldn’t have to eat foods he hadn’t raised himself. On Saturday, we all congregated at the Hagley Museum. There, we heard a terrific overview of the history of service from Gary Allen; a history of the fork from Gastronomica editor, Darra Goldstein, also a Russian professor at Williams; and a fascinating history of the hot dog from Roger Horowitz of the Hagley Museum. Ruben Garcia, Director of Research and Development at Jose Andres’ THINKfoodGROUP in DC (they own Jaleo, Cafe Atlantico, Zatinya, etc.) dazzled the audience with his molecular gastronomic derring-do. The olive oil bon bons, crafted from olive oil and a sugar extracted from corn, were a particular crowd pleaser. Garcia plopped one on my tongue. The texture was like velvet with a quick crunch from the membrane surrounding the tasty globule.
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09/30/2007 
