I DON’T BELIEVE IT

Crowds queue up for snacks at the Festival of Nations. I guarantee you there is no such thing as a Korean corn dog. Mozzarella? Italian, degenerated in this country. Hot dogs? Based on German sausage but first served in this form at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Coating it in corn meal and deep-frying it? American county fairs. And, moving right, Chan  is a Chinese name but teriyaki is Japanese. You can’t believe anything these days.               

STL DPB AT THE NIGHT MARKET

Tamarindo has a weekly night market. It's not very big but it is bustling. Lots of crafts, jewelry, art and also several food vendors. This was one of the bigger operations. I'm not sure what they were making but this man seems to be working a very large wok with cauliflower, broccoli and carrots. We didn't sample any because we had dinner plans for Mrs. C's birthday.             

FOUR BASIC FOOD GROUPS

What's not to like? It may not be endorsed by your doctor but maybe you will die happy. Or senseless. Seen at Union Station.            

PLASTIC FOOD

I could have saved this one for tomorrow's City Daily Photo April Fool theme day. It is in an old building downtown whose street-level retail space is unused (like so many others). Someone went to the trouble of setting up an elaborate display of fake produce. It's all plastic as far as I can tell. Heaven knows why - it's not a high pedestrian traffic area. Maybe it's for Frank Zappa's plastic people.               

A Better Than Average Portrait IMHO

Shooting an event or crowd is like a treasure hunt. A photographer circulates, eyes open for interesting nuggets. Lighting is catch as catch can and the visual nuggets keep moving.

Sometimes you get lucky. This was back by the food table at the Creatives Pot Luck with some electric lights to camera left. The result was what my superb portrait photography teacher, Bobbi Lane, calls Rembrandt lighting. One side of the face is fully illuminated. The other is mostly dark but turned just enough into the light to catch a highlight on the cheek. The Dutch master used it a lot.          

City Daily Photo Theme Day: Let's Eat

Hedonism simplified. Get your life in order. I suppose it's a matter of taste and priorities, but some people might ask for seconds and never make it any further. My father, who was in commercial sugar business, would have approved.

The location is Clare, Michigan's famous Cops & Doughnuts. It's heaven for those with a sweet tooth and a nightmare for endocrinologists and dentists.   

Essen wie ein Deutscher

A bit more from Hamburg: eat like a German.My first tip is to be ready to consume large amounts of meat. They do eat fruits and vegitables (Früchte und Gemüse) but be prepared for a lot of Fleisch. A Brötchen, pretty obviously, is a little sandwich and in a port town it's easy to find them with fish. Schinken und Käse is ham and cheese.

Which reminds me - it's time to go to dinner here. Heading for the Bremen Ratskeller.

Eat International

Our International Festival has a long, long line of tents serving munchies from around the world. I got there to shoot at opening time yesterday and bought an Israeli pastry, a chunk of cheddar baked inside a small roll of challah bread. When Carolyn went later she had a Bosnian lunch and brought home Afghani for dinner. I don't think we have a big Burmese population here but they were enthusiastic. Their cuisine smelled wonderful.

Below, a very short video showing how tempt people into trying something new.                    

Canned Goods

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When you're between local events to shoot and you need a subject for a filler post, why not bulk canned food? Great idea, especially if that's what's lying around on your hard drive.

St. Louis University has a ten thousand seat arena for its sports teams and traveling music shows. My son in law is assistant director of food service there. One summer day when nothing was going on he took me and my wife around backstage, as it were. The big commercial kitchens were interesting. Imagine how much fun you could have with almost 3 kg of red enchilada sauce!

The bottom picture is from Soulard Farmers Market. Definitely not the stand catering to locavores, as seen here on July 16. Wow, what could you do with three and a half kg of hot fudge sundae sauce or a like amount of sliced beets? It might be a blast but, at the same time, too horrible to contemplate.

Locavores

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It sounds like it should be a word in Spanish: Perdón, señor. ¿Dónde están los locavores? But no. The neologism is defined on the banner. People assume that most or all of the food in Soulard Farmers Market is locally grown. However, I've read that the majority comes from the area's wholesale food distributors and could be grown anywhere. It's just cheaper here because of the low overhead operation.

STL DPB On The Road: Food Shopping in Gyantse. Tibet

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Gyantse is a modest town southwest of Lhasa, more Chinese than Tibetan. Someone observed that the old town had a Tolkienesque appearance. Now the visitor sees dull, repetitive state architecture. The fruit and vegetable, market, however, is an eyeful. The offerings were gorgeous and very fresh. This stall sells spices, sauces and chili powder.

Leaving Kathmandu in a few hours. Possibly more later during our layover in Delhi.