This morning we had a lecture about labeling with Caterina. She told us that back in the 1980’s, wine labels were a mess. There was often too much info so they weren’t easy to read. She wanted to clean them up and asked how can I stand out from others in such a busy world? She explained the importance of a good concept and storytelling in labeling and told us that the image is the base of her work. She used Nike as an example. The logo is inspired by a winged Greek statue of the Goddess Nike, which can be found in the Louvre. It gives power and strength to the design when you know where it comes from. She also talked about the importance of printing, as it tells consumers about the products value and quality.
For Caterina, it is important for labels to be clear and simple, so that it’s easy to understand what is in the bottle.
Box design is another important element. Bottles are usually recycled, but people keep boxes.
She told us that the flavours impact the design, but the type of wine, the area, and to who you want to sell it are just as important as the taste. She also mentioned the importance of the physical feeling (type of material) of the label.
We talked about olive oil too. Labelling for oil is very different from wine and can be more joyful. For example, a bright green may not be acceptable for a wine bottle, but it is acceptable for olive oil.
After the lecture I went grocery shopping to prepare for the second student hosted dinner, which will be potluck style. I will be making Manicotti filled with spinach, mozzarella and ricotta and cooked in a tomato sauce. I was originally just going to do appetizers – Caprese salad and melon with prosciutto – but then Kalina asked if I had any ideas for something she could make. She doesn’t cook very much, so I suggested she do the appetizers. I started working on my spinach and ricotta filling right away.
Next, we had a lecture about food in the classroom. I started feeling really exhausted during this lecture. Maybe it’s the heat, or maybe I’ve caught the bug that’s been going around. I stayed for a while, but eventually decided I just needed to rest a bit before making dinner. I did stick around for part of the discussion about chemical analysis & analysis by chromatography to better understand what is in the food. This is something I would love to learn more about.
Now it’s almost dinner time!
I felt a lot better after having a short nap. Siobhan was in the kitchen trying to cook the fish her and Kaleena are preparing for dinner, but then the power went out! Apparently you can’t have the oven and the AC on at the same time, and they were having the same problem at the farmhouse. She texted Virginia and someone came by to fix it shortly after. Once the electricity was up and running I brought my ingredients over to the farmhouse and started cooking my Cannelloni. I cooked it for about 3 minutes. Big mistake. It was too soft so it was falling apart when I was trying to add the filling. Luckily, I had bought an extra box of pasta just in case. Indy helped me out by boiling it until it was just right and I got to stuffing. Everyone kept eating the filling while I was getting the cannelloni ready! I added the tomato sauce and threw it in the oven as everyone started arriving. For dinner we had the fish, Kalina’s appies, my manicotti, risotto, pasta salad, focaccia, tortellini, and Kaitlin made some baked Brie and a really tasty garlic butter. There was a lot of food. I didn’t try everything because I filled up on the focaccia and garlic butter before we even got all the food on the table! We all spent a while hanging out at the Farmhouse and drinking wine before heading to sleep.
