Eat my blog

When I agreed to show Jay Rayner around town early this summer for a piece in the Observer, I had no idea this was in the plan. (I really didn't, I almost gave it to Heidi because I wasn't sure if I would be in town, even.) A little piece about my San Francisco somehow became this, and I've been blushing since Sunday.

Also, somehow, a little photo that I agreed to do -thinking it would be in the same vein as the one I did for the Chronicle a while back, with the Alice B.Toklas book in front of my face- turned into be this big production that had us setting up a living room right outside of Propeller in Hayes Valley. It's the photographer's (Barry Holmes) metaphor for blogging. I must say I thought it was rather fun.

Barry spent the day before shooting Alice Waters, and somehow managed to convince the famously aloof Ms.Waters to pose in a barrel overflowing with lemons. So you get the idea how persuasive he could be. The running joke of the day was something along the line of, "sweetheart, I had Alice Waters standing in a bucket, you shall do what I say." And that was that.

And if my smile was rather frozen, well, I was. Posing on the windy street of San Francisco in a little summer dress will do that to you. I felt almost like a swimsuit model when Barry's sweet assistant had to cover me up between shots to keep me from catching my death in cold! That's why I insisted on keeping my coat on for the photo with the bridge, even if it really didn't match the dress, but that's what I had in the car, and so it had to be.

For you new readers who just got here from the Observer, hello there. Jay was being far too complimentary, so don't expect much. At the end of the day, this is just my silly little blog, you know.

Also, a big congrats to my blog friends, Clotilde, Kate, Graham the Pieman, Heidi, and the good work of Alberto and Ron over at Is My Blog Burning! for being singled (plural-ed?) out for their excellence. There are plenty of other great blogs too, so those of you new to this sphere might want to look at the sidebars of all these blogs, mine included, where we list our favorite blogs. Be sure you're not rushing somewhere though, blogs are known to make hours of your day mysteriously disappear.

cheers,
Pim

P.S. For those outside of the UK, you can get the pdf of the first page with the lead photo from the Observer here. Also, page 2.