When I first started Bell and Basket in 2017, it was centered around my life and inspiration while living in Brooklyn. The name came from riding my bike, ringing my bell and putting things in my basket along the way that inspired me – veggies from the farmers market, a trashed antique picture frame from the side of the curb – the hot, humid air influencing what I might cook or bake in the kitchen that same day.
Today, I’m no longer riding my bike around Greenpoint, adventuring for inspiration. I don’t have the time to do that – I’m a mom who works full time, in the midst of an on-going home renovation in New York’s Hudson Valley. But I still feel that pang to be inspired and create, even if it happens to strike in 20 minute intervals between work calls and the demands of a toddler. It can be as simple as rubbing a pork butt with garlic and spices and roasting it in the oven for the next eight hours – or a late night filled with cookie experimentation that I 100% regret the next morning.
I want Bell and Basket to be a space where I can share my stories, inspiration and creativity. I want to look back and have hundreds of recipes that will serve my loved ones over and over again. Meals and treats my friends and family will ask for and know by name. Flavors and smells that will evoke memories in my home (and maybe yours, too) for years to come.
So, with that, welcome! Whether you’re new or you’ve been here before, I’m excited to have you. Bell and Basket covers all things cooking, baking, and home. I hope you leave inspired to create.
ABOUT MICHELLE
As the daughter of a chef and restaurateur, my love for cooking and NYC’s food culture runs deep (my dad and stepmom own Clinton St. Baking Co.). When I started working in television (Live! With Regis and Kelly, Who Wants to be a Millionaire), I missed talking about food every day, so I transitioned into producing food content. I’ve produced episodes of TLC’s Cake Boss and cast more than 100 episodes of the Food Network’s hit series Chopped.
Today I work for an amazing media organization where I produce live events but I continue to channel my love for cooking, baking, and home into Bell and Basket. As the writer, recipe developer and tester, I love the creative process from start to finish.
My incredibly talented husband, Colin, takes all of the beautiful photographs you see on Bell and Basket.
ABOUT COLIN
A photographer first, I never imagined that food would become a primary subject for me. Our collaboration on Bell and Basket has led me to the place I find myself today, with a focus on food and beverage image making.
I have been over the years a landscape photographer, inspired as a teenager by Ansel Adams when I first saw large scale prints of his on exhibit in a Seattle museum – the tack sharp ethereal and nearly grainless enlargements were stunning to me as a 14 year old who knew nothing about the technical process of photography. Picking up my mom’s Nikon FE2, I walked around my small town taking pictures of leaves, manhole covers, and frogs.
I became obsessed with photography, setting up a home darkroom and devouring issues of Popular Photography, Shutterbug, American Photo and any other more obscure titles I could get my hands on. I was simultaneously inspired by the likes of Sebastião Salgado, and entranced by the grainy black and white images in his monograph Otras Americas. I got turned onto the mythical leica toting Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photography by my uncle, who had a Canon P, with some leica lenses.
On it went, a continuous thread through my life, at turns it was landscape, street photography, environmental portraits – it has always been photography for me. These days food in all its stages and forms has become my passion.
For inquiries, e-mail bellandbasketbrooklyn@gmail.com.
