Happy mid-week, guys! After a week in sunny Poland, I am back to playing hide and seek with the sun in Bristol. The days are short and often grey, which poses a massive challenge as far as natural light photography is concerned. This week is supposed to be fairly bright and sunny for the first 3 days so I am running around like crazy doing final recipe testing, purchasing the ingredients and shooting both recipes by Wednesday as Thursday and Friday are meant to be dark and cloudy so I won’t get anything done.
My resolve not to use artificial light is eroding slowly. As much as I don’t want to give in, I also feel that the stress of sudden light changes is a bit too much on some days. Like today, the sun was out while I was doing the process shots, the moment I plated and styled the dish a big grey cloud came out of nowhere and sat there in front of my window laughing me in the face. The colours and aromas of today’s dish of orange zest and thyme made me realise how close it is till Xmas. While we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here, I am well aware that next week is going to be all about Thanksgiving for a lot of you, guys. I know from personal experience that being vegan at times when meat is an absolute must on most people’s tables can be particularly difficult and alienating so I thought I would come to your rescue with a few Thanksgiving-friendly vegan dishes. First up is a colourful side of maple and harissa glazed carrots studded with jammy cranberries and toasted almonds for much needed flavour and texture contrast. This dish is low on effort and easy to make. If you are not a fan of harissa or it’s too untraditional for you, feel free to skip it or swap it out for a range of dry spices like cumin, cinnamon, coriander, paprika or chilli. They all work with carrots, maple syrup and cranberries rather well too.
