Feast by Firelight

When Emma’s cookbook comes out in April, I’ll have known her for 5 years (yes, I went back in my email and checked out our thread about our first coffee date).

In those 5 years, it feels like Emma has nourished our community in so many ways– when we first met, her energy was focused on supporting non-profits with thoughtful fundraising support, while building her reputation as a food blogger. Since then, she’s built a solid following with her thoughtful, outdoor-focused recipes, established her reputation as a representative of the Finger Lakes food community, kicked ass on Food Network Star, taught workshops and demonstrations, became a mama, all while working with her husband Bobby to co-found Firelight Camps! Oh, and it seems like she’s feeding everyone she knows with locally-sourced, purposefully made delicious delicious food.

Work can be draining. But you know you’ve hit solid gold when you’re working on a project and it feels regenerative– I almost always walk away from collaborations with Emma more nourished (energetically and nutritionally!) than when I walked in.

I’ve been collaborating with Emma on cookbook-related things for more than a year now, and I’m so pumped to share. Over the past few months we put together a trailer for the book. It was a low-budget project shot over two 2-hour shoots– Emma rocked out a record-breaking number of recipes in a very short amount of time so we could cover breakfast, lunch, and dinner in one minute of video.

Last fall, in preparation for the cookbook, we did some location scouting and a shoot to help the California-based publishers get a sense of our region in the fall and get some images to support the book design process before amazing photographer Christina Holmes came in for a week-long food and lifestyle shoot. I’ll post more of those photos once the cookbook comes out– I don’t want to give too much away! I can, however, share images from a different, more recent collaboration that I did with Emma– a shoot for a few fall feast recipes in collaboration with Bare Bones cast iron cookware.

Emma wrote a beautiful blog post about the journey to this announcement, and you can sneak a preview at the book and learn how to pre-order at emmafrisch.com/feast-by-firelight.