I first heard Bethany Pickard in a voicemail. She worked at a college radio promotion company called Pirate and it was her job to send radio stations like mine music on behalf of artists and labels. This music industry part of my life is a whole other blog but for more, you can read my post on Medium.

We met in person at CMJ one year. We then saw each other every year in New York. Since leaving the music industry, we both got into catering. While I was juggling another job at The Tank, Bethany was taking photography classes. She eventually moved to Greenpoint and invited me over to have lunch. I was still very new to cooking with vegetarian people and she was trying to cook more! She taught me a few things about flavors and wrote about it on her Tumblr: The Bored Vegetarian.

Fast forward to 2013! Our photo shoot together was a mix of the dishes I learned from Roquette Catering and some of my own. This was my first styled shoot and we spent all afternoon figuring out how to best utilize the one source of natural light in my kitchen. I know Bethany was vegetarian but she was super understanding about photographing pulled pork! What I remember fondly is that I used no spritzers or tweezers, no food styling tools or napkins to perk up the scene. It was the food first and foremost: