Artist Attraction #8 | Emilie De Griottes

Pantone 1797 C

It's been a while since I posted about an artist or a cool piece of art that I liked so I after rediscovering Emilie De Griottes' Pantone tarts I just had to share them! I think pantone colours are pretty well known about the internet now but if I'm wrong for you non designery people they're simply paint charts. Have a look here. There's so many of these floating around the internet but I'm pretty sure Emilie was the first. Created for the magazine food Fricote as a special feature, Emilie made little tarts that resembled specific pantone colour swatches. Bananas made pantone 7507 C, cucumber made 7492 C, and cherry tomatoes made the perfect 485 C colour. Check out all these other pretty colours made by food!

Images courtesy of Griottes.fr - Emilie's blog.

I'm not sure about eating the carrot tart but that berry one just makes my mouth water every time I look at it oh and think about it too. Not only is she a pretty amazing food designer but Emilie also blogs about it all, you can see some of her creations like her moon cake up on Griottes.fr, you will have to translate it from French but I'm sure with all the techiness of Google translate you can do that at the click of a button. She also has a very lovely designed foodie book full of great recipes, although if you want the pantone tart recipe you'll have to dig around for issue number six of Fricote which I'm pretty sure is in french.

What do you think of these creations, which would you like to try? I think if I created one I'd like to create Pantone 116 C with passionfruit pulp, yum!

Mango, Apricot, and Berries... Oh My!

Okay so I'm definitely late to jump on the bandwagon with this one but being a poor student I can't afford berries and other fruit to shove in a smoothie everyday let alone a smoothie maker. But since being home at my parents for some of the holidays I've taken to experimenting a bit with what's in the cupboard and freezer. Some of these haven't gone that well, still drinkable but ya know had a little dodgy aftertaste. This one went great though! 
Warning: you need to be able to deal with bits, I know some people hate bits.  

Here's what you need! 1 handful of ice, two handfuls of frozen mango, 2-3 dried apricots chopped, 1 handful of blueberries, and a couple of spoonfuls of greek yoghurt. Shove them all in a blender in that order and blend to desired consistency which may involve adding some milk (regular or soy). My mum has the Nutri Ninja which blends to about two thirds of a regular glass but if you have a larger blender feel free to double the recipe. 
I like being able to have so much fruit in my diet as I normally have just a banana or some grapes in my regular diet. I think I should probably go surfing around Pinterest for some other recipes, what's your favourite ingredient to add to smoothies? 

Portofin-e dining

This weekend Brad and I met up with his Mum and Gram for dinner along the waterfront. As it was around the 5th there were meant to be fireworks on the waterfront at around 9 that night so a lot of the restaurants were fully booked. We aimed to go to this Italian restaurant Portofino along the waterfront that wouldn't let anyone book so we just turned up and although it was a wee bit chilly we managed to get a lovely table outside on the waterfront. As soon as we got the alcohol and warm food in us it was nice and warm. Now I'm a really picky eater so it was a bloody miracle that I had a hard time deciding what to have for dinner, usually I don't have a choice. I ended up going with the Pollo Camembert which was obviously lovely grilled chicken covered with melted camembert, apricot and a bloody marvelous creamy sauce with potatoes and vegetables. I'm not a very foodie person when it comes to savoury meals but I could eat this again and again my god it was amazing. After stuffing ourselves with dinner and sides of cheesy pizza bread we decided to dive in for pudding as well. But not before we sat at our table and watched the beautiful firework display from the water, I actually didn't take any photos I'm afraid as I just spent the time taking it all in - but you know what fireworks look like, just imagine huge really well composed fireworks. Then came the desert, a glorious caramel cheesecake that unfortunately I couldn't get all the way through. We then pretty much rolled all the way to his family's hotel where we had to get a taxi as we were so stuffed we couldn't manage walking all the way home! 

Artist Attraction #3 | Dawn Tan

I came across this artist whilst browsing Pintrest a while ago and ended up spending quite a while browsing her various pieces. After coming across her again on Tumblr I thought I might include a little post about her work on the blog. Dawn Tan lives in Australia and specialises mainly in landscapes, food and plants, her art is laid back and fun to look at. I wish I had the confidence she has with watercolour. I think she's been one of my latest inspirations to my work especially as I discovered her shortly before purchasing my first watercolour palette set. I wonder if you could actually make what she's drawn just from seeing the ingredients, the pieces are really unique and I really wish I could have one for my room! Even just the soy bread and smoothie piece, which shows how easy her inspiration comes to her - just from breakfast. I think from looking at her architecture pieces that the year 10 art class at my school studied her, that's a bit freaky coming across the actual artist years later!