The Sunny Kitchen - An Italian cook in Amsterdam

Beautiful street photography

Vivian Maier, a French street photographer who lived in Chicago, left thousands of marvelous pictures full of beauty and intensity taken during her whole life, a life dedicated to photography.

Look at some of her work on this beautiful blog. 


 

Elephant Parade

Beautiful little elephants were on display for the last time in Amsterdam yesterday, Sunday 8th of November, before being sold on a charity auction that will be kept on November the 12th.
The Elephant Parade has seen a hundred full size art elephants colouring the streets of Amsterdam during an open air art exhibition dedicated to the Asian elephant that took place from September to October 2009.
From the Elephant Parade site:

The Elephant Parade is founded by father and son Mike and Marc Spits. With their project, they aim to raise attention for the Asian elephant, that is threatened with extinction. Their project has proven to be succesful: the first two editions of the Elephant Parade, held in Rotterdam and Antwerp, raised a total amount of over 700,000 euro.  The benefits of the Elephant Parade are donated to the Elephant Family, the largest elephant charity in the world and was founded in 2002 by Mark Shand. He is a globetrotter, philantropist and writer and maker of the BBC documentary Queen of the Elephants.

In one of the big halls of the beautiful Westergasfabriek complex all the elephants have been admired, stroked, cuddled and photographed by hundreds of people among which my friends Leny and Villia and myself. :)

Click on pictures to enlarge.
 

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One night at the Dutch Design Hotel

Yesterday evening my friend Claudio Varone, architect, interior designer and artist, and his artistic partner Anneke Copier presented some of their wonderful felt carpets and wall tapestries at the Dutch Design Hotel in Amsterdam at the opening of the "PUUR" exhibition.
Claudio's and Anneke's work always manages to stun me with its beauty so I expected to be "hit" by it but what I didn't expect was the very interesting setting of the exhibition, the Dutch Design Hotel. The Hotel is just outside the "obvious" part of Amsterdam, I mean the one in which I live and work, and is situated right between the city centre and Schiphol Airport in an area that until 20 years ago was all green fields and empty spaces. Now it's an ever growing office and hotels area just like many others in this town.

It's an interesting building with modern and hip design and wall paintings - not all of them quite to my liking, I must admit - a spacious restaurant that I definitely want to try very soon and a wonderful terrace on the water where we sipped Italian wines in trendy design bottles and had sexy - I cannot define them in any other way -  nibbles until after dark.
I actually found all of the artists represented quite fascinating, especially Claudio and Anneke, of course, and Marloes Duyker of Naked Design.

Here some pictures of the evening. The "PUUR" (Pure) exhibition can be visited until November 25th.

With the artist :)








 



My favourite tapestry made by Claudio and Anneke.



Two more artworks by Claudio and Anneke






Another installation by Claudio and Anneke



Work from Naked Design



The restaurant with more Naked Design work



Aren't they gorgeous?



Luscious smoothie with blueberry (left) and white chocolate mousse with blueberry and other wild berries (right). Beautiful to the eye, sexy textures and fabulous to the palate. The crunchy bit is made with blue corn.



More Naked Design.



Puur written with watercress.



The Dutch Design Hotel, terrace side.



Lovely verrine with cauliflower mousse, diced beetroot and curried mayonnaise.



Anneke and Claudio in the "love seat". :)



Naked Design.

Tonight, playing in Montecatini: The Vegetable Orchestra!

The most original orchestra in the world, the Vegetable Orchestra, is playing tonight in Montecatini Terme (Tuscany) at the Nuovo Teatro Verdi, starting at 21.30 hrs.

"The Vegetable Orchestra performs music solely on instruments made of vegetables. Using carrot flutes, pumpkin basses, leek violins, leek-zucchini-vibrators, cucumberphones and celery bongos, the orchestra creates its own extraordinary and vegetable sound universe." (from their site)

I won't be able to go to the concert since tonight I'm cooking and hosting the farewell dinner for my cooking students but here's a fantastic video on how they make their instruments and play their incredible music clapping aubergines, blowing into carrots and beating up pumpkins!

Edible landscapes: Carl Warner

Photographer Carl Warner creates wonderful landscapes with all sorts of edible stuff, from lovely wavy pink salmon to bright green broccoli.

I've spent quite some time looking at the details of some of his pictures to discover what he used. Take for example the home curtains made with pappardelle pasta and the little bowls made with mushroom caps and green olives: pure genius. :)

Warner's portraits remind me of the beautiful creations of Italian Reinassance painter Arcimboldo.

It's great to see how this guy transforms everything he uses into fabulous settings in which I'd definitely like to stroll like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz!