He’s no Matt Armendariz, but “Bob” Wigington is still a food photographer definitely worthy of praise…

I almost never celebrate my birthday. Well at least I never really used to. Maybe dinner with some friends, I always spend time with the family, but usually that’s it. I’ve been with Meghan for over 4 years now and ever since we started dating she’s managed to come up with some of the best surprises for my birthday.

For my 25th birthday this year I figured she was up to something but she gave me strict instructions to go right home after work. Later that evening she came over and told me that we were going to have dinner at one of our regular places Mykonos, but that they would be serving us something special, something new on the menu. A romantic evening, just the two of us. That was hardly the case…

When we arrived I was greeted by at least 30 of my closest friends and family. Actually it was quite the mash of worlds that I belong to. My family was there, my block family was there, and my hustle family was there. It was really something special.

Honorable mention goes out to Avi and his awesome Skateboard G Piñata!

But that wasn’t the kicker… Meghan took the entire day off to bake me the ULTIMATE cake. A sweet analog version of the camera that I’ve been shooting with for the past 2 years… the Nikon D80.

I’m not going to lie, this could possibly be the best cake of all time.

So I’m sick…. I have a cold. It’s not so bad though, a bit of sneezing, a bit of coughing with a complete loss of energy. So last night Meghan came over to take care of me. As we lay there watching Ratatouille I got this incredible urge for some soup. Soup isn’t something that I have very often so Meghan and I pulled ourselves out of my basement and went to Dominion to grab some ingredients…

Broccoli, White Kidney Beans, Cheddar Cheese Soup was the order of the evening. About $24.00 in ingredients (the 4 year aged white cheddar cost $14.00). The exact recipe we used can be found here.

The instructions said boil the chicken broth with the broccoli. Then add the beans, salt & pepper for seasoning and then pour the contents into a blender with the cheese, and puree. Ok no problem. The instructions also said “be vary careful when blending hot liquid”. Understandable. So we go ahead and blend half the soup and transfer it into a bowl, taste test… mmm, mmm, good. Then we went on to blend the second half of the soup. As we were transferring the freshly pureed soup from the blender to the bowl, the bottom of the blender let out… RECIPE FOR DISASTER!

The hot soup let out all over Meghan’s hand, and as she was rinsing her burnt hand with cold water all I could do was stand there in utter amazement at how ridiculous this mess was. It took about an hour to clean it all up and by the time it was done there was barely enough soup left to enjoy. So I drove Meghan home and when I got back I had about half a bowl to myself… which, If I do say so myself, was extraordinarily well made.

Kudos to me and my messy evening.

Am I really getting paid to eat great food, drink wine… and snap some pic’s while I’m at it? Yes! Courtesy of Meghan (writing girlfriend extraordinaire) I was able to get a free pass to enjoy a Food Network event held in the Distillery District…

Lunch with some co-workers. This is Stevo’s first appearance on Anotherfaceinthecrowd and what an appearance it is…

So this past long weekend was a really slow weekend. I tried my very best to stretch it out by doing absolutely nothing. I didn’t go out with friends partying, I didn’t enjoy any of the Caribbana celebrations, I didn’t do anything… except for hitting up the Ribfest @ Thompson Park on Monday…

Today we say goodbye to a REALLY good guy, Greg Bolton. I’ve only been lucky enough to work with him a mere 2 months but in that time I’ve witnessed to some of the most witty and down right hysterical comedy, period. Undoubtedly the funniest person I know and its sad to say but he’s leaving Teehan+Lax to move on and pursue other opportunites…

I caught a cold over the weekend. Now that I think of it, it was that damn T+L Summer Party on the boat. So damn cold and only a dress shirt. So today at lunch the guys convinced me to come out to Pho, saying that Pho heals all, and they were right. I felt a lot better by the end of it…

Coming back, I ran into a couple people which reminded me that, yet again, I missed Style In Progress. What a douche bag I am…

Skam and his boys just finishing up another piece.

Also ran into my main man Tobias Wang… photographer extraordinaire.