Crush Shoot

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Online magazines seem to be all the rage right now, so when we were approached by Crush Online to be featured in the magazine, we were ecstatic. We were basically given free reign to write about anything and had to provide a few of our favourite recipes to go along with the feature.

At that stage, The Counter was nearly one year old and Ian and I decided to tie in the photo shoot for Crush with a big ‘thank you’ lunch for a few special people who have helped us every step of the way.

Jen and Meg (yes, another one) from You&Me Design were first on the list. Not only did these two wonderful human beings get us involved in the foodie market scene, but they also designed our logo, bought sammiches and brownies from us nearly every Sunday, took beautiful photographs of our food and have been our cheerleaders from day one. There are no words to describe how grateful we are for their help, ideas, guidance and criticism (always necessary) and most of all – the laughter and amazing friendship that came alongside all of that.

Next up were two wonderful (albeit crazy) men that, just like Jen and Meg, have been there rooting us on from day one. Schoemie and Paulie have spent countless Saturdays and Sundays at markets, selling our products as if their lives depended on it. They too have lifted and lugged, helped with new ideas, bashed down horrible ideas and been by our sides for the duration of our existence. We know that there have been so many sacrifices on their part to make sure that The Counter runs smoothly and we cannot thank them both enough.

So we all gathered at my house on a sunny Saturday afternoon in March. Meg, armed with her camera, Jen with creative ideas and the boys with beer – which is always helpful. Meg’s boyfriend Ryan came along for lunch as well and managed to keep Plum (my cat) entertained while we took photos. We setup our little photo shoot, made sure the beers were on ice, lit the fire (for our famous Pizza on the Braai) and started cooking. On the menu for the shoot (and lunch) was a vegetarian pizza on the braai, salmon burger with skinny fries and Smartie marshmallows. (And after a little begging and pleading from the group – Rocky Road Bars too.)

The afternoon went down without a hitch. Okay, I lie. The afternoon went down with a hitch. While prepping a thousand things, I was mindlessly frying skinny fries in hot oil. After a few batches, I added the last lot of thinly cut potato, and watched in horror as the oil bubbled over onto the stove top and down to my floor. I hadn’t dried the last batch properly and the oil had reacted pretty badly. I screamed for Ian who was outside (he is a trained chef and a man, so I thought it best if he deal with something like that) and as he ran inside, my stove caught alight. Ian screamed (very reassuring) and danced around the kitchen not really knowing what to do. Thank nine pound, three ounce baby Jesus that I took just a couple of seconds to screw my head on straight and extinguished the fire by covering the flame with a large pot lid. That was pretty scary.

Regardless of the fire, we all had a wonderful (beer-filled) afternoon. The article is featured in the latest issue of Crush Online, click here to read it. Although there was a slight mishap with the photographs, I think the article is great and super cute. All of the gorgeous photies featured in this post were taken by You&Me Design and all of the recipes can be found in the article. Trust me, the skinny fries are worth a little fire…

Megs

Love.Eat.Live