Pick: ‘Le Pollen’

Lil fruity cake with orange blossom buttercream, dyed with turmeric

Shot at Rose Lane Farms, Los Angeles

Slow roasted leeks with fig balsamic vinaigrette

My favorite little market when I was living in Toulouse, from late summer till early winter. I miss my kitchen and my friend Bastien who took me to this market one Saturday morning. It is in a little garden called Jardin Montplaisir, and we took the scooter there while it sprinkled a bit of rain. All the producteurs use sustainable, ecological and permaculture methods, and even forages. The most beautiful items you will ever see, from one producer of bread, to oysters, to squash. Just one of each, and the BEST where you don’t even have to choose. My favorite part is to take a rest, have a coffee from the 3 seat shack “cafe” which is when I took this picture, and admire the community garden in the back. Then before I leave I make sure to do my second rounds, but only enough for us to carry on the scooter since we live up a big hill and can’t afford to be weighted down.

Sometimes certain meals your burn into your memory, as does this one last year on my 23rd birthday. I can still taste how sweet the new onions roasted on the plancha, the nuttiness of the black olive tapenade, the crispy grilled bread, the mussels cooked marseillais styled, the loquats we picked off the tree, and drinking cheap red wine into the night. I’m glad being eaten alive by the mosquitoes is a faint memory now.

One more portrait of Maxime Navel, who has in the past year traveled throughout Japan, in search of inspiration via Ikebana ~ the Japanese art of minimalistic, therapeutic, sculptural floral arrangement to sourcing and indulging all over the south of France. He is still inexplicably neurotic and lovable, and we share the love as digital postcards when we can. We both also moved part time to Toulouse for separate personal reasons. Funny coincidence.

It feels nice to step back and take in the first year this project has come into fruition. Looking at these photographs I’ve just developed, from last May, makes me very thankful and proud to see the progression of where this has gone and how the people I love have helped me along the way. There would be nothing without each sweet or bitter moment, building the strongest momentum off each other. This was a great beginning, to be in Paris that day, in that small, warm place (as is Paris in its best manner), it was magic. We all equally cannot wait to do it again.