Delicatessen with love: portraits of beautiful grandmas and their cooking around the world.

If grandmothers around the world had a rallying cry, it would probably sound something like “You need to eat!”

Photographer Gabriele Galimberti’s Tuscan grandmother Marisa said something similar to him before one of his many globetrotting work trips. To ensure he had at least one good meal, she prepared for him a dish of “ravioli ripieni” before he departed for his tour around the world by couchsurfing. She was not so concerned about the possible risks or mishaps her grandson might face in his adventurous travelling worldwide, but her major concern was, “what will he eat”? That is because only at home you can eat well and healthily. And above all, only your Italian grandmother (and sometimes mum) knows what is best for you.

With the taste of his grandma’s ravioli in his mouth, Gabriele travelled around the world and, next to thousands of other adventures, turned into a curious and hungry grandson for the grannies of all the countries he visited.

Appealing to their natural cooking care and their inevitable pride in their recipe, common factors to all grandmothers in the world, Gabriele persuaded them to do their best in the kitchen. This means moose stake in Alaska and caterpillars in Malawi, delicious, but ferociously hot, ten-spice-curry in India and shark soup in the Philippines.

Delicatessen with Love honors the many grandmas who have shown their grandchildren love through their culinary skills. You can’t help but smile as you flip through the series of happy women who are proudly presenting their favorite dishes, and an unexpected pure overwhelming happiness washes over you.

Buonappetito!

Maria Luz Fedric, 53, Cayman Islands. Honduran Iguana with rice and beans

Once upon a jar: my homemade rose petal jam.

Impressions on an almost-May afternoon.

I like unusual spring gifts, but I totally wasn’t expecting this. :)

Old buttons make beautiful flowers.

New York Times’ Snow Fall may not be the future of journalism. But it’s for sure the future of storytelling .

Ever since the New York Times launched its interactive web project, Snow Fall (a 5 part story of skiers and snowboarders trapped by an avalanche in Washington State’s Cascade mountain range), hypotheses of its effects on journalism and publishing have been ping-ponging between online news outlets. The debates over whether or not Snow Fall’s storytelling model (that recently hit 3.5 million page views) is the future of journalism, in fact deliver something more: lessons in content integration and the opportunity for brand-publisher collaboration.

If you haven’t read the feature yet, do. It’s something like magic — a visceral adventure story about a deadly avalanche that feels more like an interactive documentary that happens to have paragraphs than a newspaper story that happens to have interactives. Particularly ingenious is a section where a map traces doomed skiers’ paths down the mountain face as you scroll down the corresponding paragraphs. Further along, an animated video follows the contours of the avalanche sweeping down the same glade, with a clicking sound whose frequency indicates the changing speed of the barreling snow pack. Not just clever. Utterly ingenious.

Shortest horror story ever.

I hate getting haircuts on the road but I was turning into Rapunzel, so I went to a place recommended by this person that I’m probably going to kill. It was blocks and blocks away – I passed five other hair salons on the walk. I’m presented to a middle-aged, Hulk-woman, who’s living the Romanian dream with a Russian accent. She has streaming black tresses to her shoulder, like d’Artagnan, and asks me what I want. A little trim, the smallest possible, I tell her. She nods. She throws a fierce look at my fingers curled around a Starbucks espresso tumbler. She grabs it out of my hand and places it right in between two fat bunches of curly hair from an old lady who smells like naphthalene meatballs cooked in Chanel No. 5. Her young assistant walks in. He’s the perfect cross between Kurt Cobain’s mesmerizing face and Tobey Maguire’s insanely mesmerizing eyes. “I am married, but he is my boyfriend”, she informs me, while I’m presumably staring at KurtTobey slack-jawed. Then, with a great flourish of scissors, she whacks into my hair, and I realize I’m going to get scalped. After that first cut, it’s inevitable. I think she must be anti-Starbucks. I now look like a Russian conscript.

Game over! Steaua 1 – Chelsea 0

If you expected Chelsea to win Steaua, think again; this is Europa League, certain clubs rule this division. In short, Raul Rusescu’s 1st-half penalty gave Steaua a 1-0 win over Chelsea in our Europa League last-16 first leg tie. Besides this, Torres was brilliant again. He hardly put a foot wrong all night. He stopped every single one of Chelsea attacks. Best defender Steaua had! And I always knew Benitez had the potential to do this to the blues. All by all, Steaua looked ten times better than Chelsea with and without the ball. Good job, guys!

Steaua – Ajax, epic!

Waaaa, unbelievable! Ajax Amsterdam sent home by Steaua after a fantastic game! This means Steaua Bucharest will play Chelsea in the last 16 of the Europa League as they overcame Ajax 4-2 on penalties. Having said that, the Steaua keeper is big and has a great name. Congrats to our boys! Watch out, Chelsea!

Foto : Hans van Tilburg/De Telegraaf

Stairs and unfinished stories.

“There is no such thing as a dull product. Only dull approaches to interesting products.” ~ David Ogilvy
The wit and wisdom of Mr. Ogilvy can be extremely valuable to marketers and advertisers because pretty much sums up everything. Nevertheless, the same is true if you replace “product” with “photo”.

Let’s take the example of photos depicting stairs. What could one say about stairs? They come in various sizes and widths, they’re made of cement, wood, or maybe skateboards and salt, if you leave it to your imagination. That’s pretty much all there is to it, right? Stairs. Elevators are better, anyway. Stairs. Pretty boring, eh? Well, not quite. Stairs are pretty awesome, actually. You don’t have to believe me. You just have to scroll down a bit.