I'm going to divulge a deep and dirty secret about being a food blogger. We live and die by daylight. Artificial overhead light ruins the look of food and the right light is tricky.

So, when the fall/winter light disappears by 3 p.m. in our north-facing apartment, it's difficult to take photos. Although, I do foolish things to still keep shooting. I've taken photos in the dark with the camera on a tripod - which can help. And I've tripped over our cats to get to the tripod, in the dark because I have to shut off all of the lights in the room to get the last glimpse of sunlight before twilight, without any incandescent light to confuse the camera.

“Ow, ow, ow.” Silly cats and coffee table.

And because I've been picking up a lot of food writing jobs with deadlines that don't necessarily coincide with weather, it's been getting ridiculous to keep up with the daylight.

So, a couple of weeks ago I said to Jedd: “I would love studio lights so that I can take photos past three o'clock in the afternoon.”

The next day he was home from work and watched me frantically cook and photograph a dish for a client before dusk, and then he got...weird.

We are flush with vegetables and gourds from our winter CSA. And one of my favorite things in the world was prevalent this week – tomatillos. So, I whipped us up a batch of tomatillo salsa, and that was dinner one night with nachos.

Then when the winter turned colder almost immediately (Hey, Hurricane Sandy, hey!) and we still - thankfully - had power, I realized that what we needed to fight the chill was a big batch of green chicken chili. And because I already had the fresh salsa on hand, I knew that I could have dinner on the table in less than an hour.

Poor Demeter. Her daughter, Persephone, was taken by Hades and carried away to the underworld. Demeter was the goddess of agriculture and the earth withered as crops dried up because Demeter was only concerned with finding her daughter. The cries of the hungry forced Zeus to get involved, and he ordered Hades to release Persephone from the underworld and return her to her mother.

But, there was one small hitch in the plan.

Hades had tricked Persephone into eating four pomegranate seeds. Normally consuming food would destine someone to spend eternity in the underworld, but Zeus managed to convince Hades to release Persephone anyway, with one small caveat.

She had to spend a month back there for every seed consumed.

So when Persephone is imprisoned below earth, Demeter is so saddened that she can't concentrate on tending to crops and that's why we have four months of winter.

Or six, if you live in Vermont.

But, it's easy to empathize with Persephone. It's very difficult to resist the beautiful seeds of a pomegranate. And this salad lets them shine in a bright champagne vinaigrette.

(Nobody was sitting, everyone wanted to stand in line for an autograph!)

There are a lot of food “personalities” that we love, but only one has ever gotten us out of the apartment (and kitchen) to drive the length of the state on a rainy day.

And that's Lynne Rossetto Kasper of the Splendid Table. It takes a lot to inspire this kind of dedication in us.

I love the Splendid Table podcasts and have all of the shows from the last six years on a hard drive. Why? Because Kasper is the perfect combination of the women in my family, Julia Child (but with a more soothing voice) and a cool broad who you met in a pub and develop a friendship with over a couple of glasses of wine. She's just awesome.

So, when I heard on VPR that Lynne Rossetto Kasper was going to be at their party to celebrate food and their new station opening up in Brattleboro, my husband, Jedd, and I promptly decided to go.