A friend had this idea to put together easy to make recipes for the home cook during this quarantine. How else to occupy oneself during this time, he thought? Cooking and…? Well board games! And I agreed! The two have come to be the mainstay of this quarantine.

I have been experimenting for a while creating abstract images out of various food powders and ingredients and it was time to progress from concept to a commercial application. After discussions with the team, we came up with the idea of illustrating various board games using food ingredients.

Like all projects, taking something from concept to reality is a process riddled with doubt, dead ends, obstacles, and problems to solve. And during COVID, the challenges increase: from conceptualizing the shots, shooting solo without a crew or stylist, to getting it all done in a short time frame. But, there is a sense of wonder when you work on something not fully knowing if the idea will play out visually. These images afforded me that experience. This cookbook does not feature any renditions of the recipes. Instead, it asks the home chef to envision the final outcome and take a stab at it—much like my process of creating these images.

While I do think we can do more with less, a surplus of one ingredient was crucial to the making of these images—creative freedom. Freedom to let the idea run its course no matter how winding the path, and dictate the outcome of these images. It’s like driving without a map or cooking without a rulebook.

Here’s how we did it. How would you play?