So, you better see this week Appetite column on focaccia and say to yourself, "I'm going to run out, get some ramps and make it." Mind you do not have it, "Where in the world they find ramps to shoot two weeks ago?"
Problems involving natural deadlines sometimes play havoc with what we have to prepare the camera. With all the bad weather that hit our farmers this past year, certain items proved difficult to find the beginning, but the beginning is the stock and trade of food photography. We need to have in advance to make the dish, so that when they're available for you all in the market, there are pictures to accompany the recipes. This one is very complicated.
The Union Square Greenmarket has signs that read "ramps are Coming," is intended to assure everyone that they are delayed but will be ready for their planned primavera soon. "Soon" does not help me because my deadline is 10 days prior to arrival near them.
A food photographer should have a relationship with neighborhood grocery stores and farmers markets, as well as passing knowledge of the local Chinatown. But you also have to establish relations with importers and wholesalers who can get things when you need them.
These ramps come through Baldor Specialty Foods, spawned the original Balducci at Sixth Avenue. They had just arrived from Michigan, but instead of having a day of sunshine and optimism of spring in the Greenmarket to go and pick them up, I was in the 200,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse in Hunts Point.
Deadlines are deadlines, and is part of the show, like playing for the Yankees, was able to hit a curveball in the spring.