I have been roundly encouraged to feature myself more often on the blog. If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen one of my outfits of the day (#ootd) or heard one of my rants about the limited availability of kumquats in downtown grocery stores.
As you will have seen from my first home decor post, I’m trying to expand Taste & Tipple into a more holistic lifestyle blog. In an ideal scenario, part of the brand evolution will entail fashion, as it is a passion of mine, but I’m occasionally held back by the need for a photographer (other than myself).
I captured some of these images as self-portraits – which, without a remote shudder (something I should definitely invest in) involved a lot of hitting the shudder and then running to the bed and trying to look composed. This isn’t an approach I would widely recommend.
Luckily I did have some help for a few of these photos – which really helped smooth out the kinks in the art direction, or total lack thereof.
Given that I’m now a professional model, after this one photo shoot, I’d like to impart some of the lessons learned, so you too can walk the runways of your home.
Step 1: Keep your lips slightly parted so you look like you’re about to speak or are just really parched. This will prevent your frown lines from looking too pronounced and help to model the kind of thirst you’re looking to inspire. See above.
Step 2: Pose your body so that your top half faces toward the camera and your bottom half faces away from the camera. For this, you’ll need a young priest and an old priest.
Step 3: Try not to look anything like yourself. The camera presents a cruel reality – especially without the fantasy life of smoothed skin, enlarged eyes, and narrowed jawline that you’ve grown accustomed to from your favourite Snapchat filter.
Step 4: Don’t try to eat anything and look cute while doing it. Oh, you think it will be adorable to playfully eat a single strawberry? No, let me dispel that notion. Having attempted this, I looked like I was about to live-stream an instructional video on how to engage your gag reflex.
Step 5: Cut off your hands. You don’t know what to do with them, you never will, just forget about it.
Step 6: Always be looking slightly up, you’re optimistic, you’re turning your face toward the sun and it’s hard to say how thorough you were last time you plucked your beard.
Step 7: Spend the better part of your last paycheque on colour-coordinated accessories. New robe, new tray, new flowers, new shell pillow, who dis?
Step 8: Make yourself some goddamn delicious eats so that you can reward yourself after surviving the ordeal of being fab-u-lous. You’re worth it. Treat yoself.
In my case, I rewarded myself with these gingerbread waffles with whisky barrel aged maple syrup and fresh whipped cream. These would make for a delicious start to Christmas morning.
The pumpkin puree and the baking spices will make your home smell delicious as soon as the batter hits the waffle iron. I recommend topping with some fresh berries for a bit of bright, tartness to cut the richness of the waffles.
Gingerbread Waffles
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 4 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 2 tsp ground ginger
- ½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg eyeball it
- ½ tsp salt
- 4 large eggs
- ⅔ cup packed dark brown sugar
- 1 cup canned pumpkin puree
- 1 ¼ cups milk
- ½ cup molasses
- ½ cup melted butter (1 stick)
- Whisky-Barrel Aged Maple Syrup
- Fresh berries
- 1 cup whipped cream
- 2 tbsp Whisky-Barrel Aged whipped cream
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Preheat waffle iron.
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In a large bowl combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and salt. In a medium bowl, beat eggs and brown sugar until fluffy, then beat in pumpkin, milk, molasses and melted butter. Stir the wet into dry until just moist. Do not overstir the waffle batter. Oil the waffle iron with cooking spray or brush with melted butter and cook 4 waffles. Serve with toppings of choice.
Recipe adapted from: Ray, Rachael. “Gingerbread Waffles.” Food Network.
OMG, too funny! Everything looks splendiferous and tasty. Good work!