84 Pounds of instant mashed potatoes later....

In a casual conversation about doing some new food images our associate photographer Tiffany Matson suggested I do a shot of a winter scene that was made of all edible items.  Hmm,  That sounds like a fun challenge.

84 pounds of mashed potatoes, 25 pounds of sugar, rock candy, cauliflower, pretzels, mushrooms, sugar cones, jerk spice, etc. later we came up with a fun winter scene.

Shots of the scene being roughed in.

Food stylist Sarah Hunt putting the finishing touches on the winter scene.

Putting powdered sugar on the sugar cone pine trees.  Although it didn't appear in the final images you can see we included a small stream in the set.

Set assistant Braden Edwards mixing another batch of instant mashed potatoes for the base of the set.

Braden adding rock candy as a rock wall next to the road.

Nothing like the smell of beef searing first thing in the morning!

I thought you might enjoy a little behind the scenes grill marking show and tell.

Our grill marking guru and food stylist Trina Kahl prays she gets it right the first time. (;-)

We try to mark the spacing and angle we want the grill marks before we sear them in the meat.  As you can see if you look at the sticks on the meat above, they look off and at a weird angle.  Now, from the camera angle they look perfectly spaced and at the correct angles.

Different food stylist make grill marks different ways.  Sometimes it's done on set, sometimes they use hot skewers, sometimes it's done on the stove in a super hot grill pan.  No matter how its done it always give a great look of grilled meat to the final shot.