Gazpacho

I started the famous Gazpacho last night, as you can see from the photo. Immortalized in digital format, one can see what work I’m willing to give myself to play around with taking pictures – the recipe simply calls for mixing all the ingredients together. Look at all those extra dishes. Clearly the honeymoon is still on for the camera.


I thought I’d keep with the recipe – but didn’t include the thyme (I forgot) and used a purchased balsamic glaze instead of making my own (I already had it)

After marinating overnight, running through the blender and sieve, I had it for dinner with a George Foreman ‘panini’ made with some remaining tomato, pesto, and mozzarella.


Yowza Yum!


And oh so easy ....

Next week: VACATION!

And next Friday I’ll float away on vacation...

This weekend I’m going to be trying to both run around madly trying to prepare for my vacation next week (Oregon and Washington) and relax and feel better rested. Two somewhat incompatible goals, entirely within character for me.

Preparing for my vacation means some shopping, laundry, cleaning the apartment for my return, packing, the fun of making some incipient plans for what I intend to do, and playing around with my camera so that I have a better idea of what I am doing when I’m away.

Not that I haven’t been playing around with it just about daily, but I’ll confess to doing mostly fun play, and not the constructive play that will help me learn more about its features.

Relaxing and feeling better rested … I’ll confess to not having many energized and well-rested feeling days this year. This is, I think, my own damn fault. I burned myself out with the marathon last year and have totally slacked off on getting regular exercise. I’ve also been greedy with my evening classes this year (watercolor and pottery) – which I’ve enjoyed immensely but they have meant more late nights and less “me” time. But I think this term has been fairly proouctive

So my aim in relaxing and feeling better rested is to go to bed early, sleep in, exercise some, and spend some quiet time reading and in introspection. And making some gazpacho from The French Laundry cookbook which I’ve borrowed from the library, inspired by the French Laundry at Home blog.

And thinking about my resolutions. I need goals.

Father's Day

Last weekend I drove up to Boston for Father’s day. For Mother’s day, K (my brother) and I helped my parents sort through and clean out the attic. I persuaded Mom that it made more sense to move the garage sale stuff down to the garage on Father’s day, closer to when the garage sale would be held, so that the basement would remain at least partially navigable. So K and I spent most of Saturday setting up the garage for the garage sale and cleaning out the attic and basement and I gave myself a blister vacuuming out K’s car (and my own).

My Dad has a moderately well-sized collection of slides taken during his various travels – including his trip around the world before he married my Mom (I should say just before – he proposed and went on this months-long trip leaving Mom wondering if they really were getting married. Before you think this is callous, I’ll point out that mom went on a two-week trip to Greece before their wedding without him so she was hardly pining). He’s been looking into ways to make these slides digital and is hoping to find something satisfactory that he can do at home somewhat cheaper than sending them all out. So we did some experiments with my taking pictures with my new camera of the slides projected on a wall:

This was taken when many Japanese women still wore kimono – looking at this picture temporarily gives me a very different perception of time.

While not perfect, I think it does a reasonably good job and can be done relatively quickly for free. He’s going to think about it.



Sunday we met K and his girlfriend KH at Mary Cheung’s, our favorite place for Dim Sum. Naturally I brought my new camera, and KH has recently resolved to take a picture a day so there was a lot of snapping of pictures.

Curiously enough, A, the boy I went to the Prom with, whose parents still live down the street from mine, was at the next table with K’s best friend from High school. It’s a small world, where you grew up.

Asparagus Soup

I did a lot of cooking last weekend – I hadn’t cooked seriously in a while, and must have been avoiding something for I must have spent half of Saturday cooking.

One recipe I tried was for asparagus soup (generally speaking, I would prefer to eat asparagus simply steamed – but these spears were a little old, so I sacrificed them to the soup) from James Peterson’s Splendid Soups: Recipes and Master Techniques for Making the World's Best Soups which I bought in a moment of weakness about a month ago. Judging from this recipe (and my all consuming love of foods served in bowls), it was money well spent. It was simple, delicate, and I’d be willing to sacrifice fresh asparagus to make this soup again.

More Beets

Did I mention that I really like beets? Well, sometimes I love beets and sometimes I’m indifferent – it depends on the preparation – but I definitely love beet greens. So there is ample reason to buy and experiment with whole beets.

About a month ago I experimented with beet risotto, and while I thought it was excellent, it made me want my favorite beet salad. So I bought more beets and made the salad, but reserved some of the beets for another purpose. This made my favorite beet salad heavy on the beet greens, and therefore even more awesome ☺.

This time I experimented with pickled beets. . I used a recipe from Gourmet via epicurious and I think it turned out pretty good. With the roasting and boiling and all, possibly not the best thing to prepare in a weekend where temperatures were in the 90’s, but definitely a good time to snack on them!

Sushi Inspired

I was in Wegman’s Friday, and saw that they once again had Sockeye Salmon. So I took a page from Heidi Swanson and used Sushi as inspiration.

Steamed Sockeye Salmon on a bed of brown and wild rice with onions and garlic, seasoned with a little bit of soy sauce and chili sesame oil, with slices of avocado.

OMG. Yummmm!

Wildlife

I voted in the local elections on Tuesday, and brought my camera out to play. I am really looking forward to taking the time to learn and explore using my new toy, which I hope to do this weekend. In the meantime, I’m just playing around and I thought I’d share some of the wildlife in the lawn outside my apartment:

A groundhog (shy creature that can be astoundingly loud – also, according to Wikipedia, known as a woodchuck or whistlepig) and a rabbit and some robins.

Sunday Brunch

Last Sunday, a bunch of us had brunch in Center City. Every few months we go for brunch, a new place every time. This time we tried Valanni’s. I scored and got parking 50 feet away!

We sat outside, and it was beautiful – although it did get a little windy on occasion and we eyed the awning with suspicion. I ordered a lump crabmeat and fontina omelet with a side of bacon, which was fabulous. The bacon was especially good. I didn’t finish though – I probably should not have shared the bread plate …

Andrew ordered Lemon ricotta pancakes, which he’d been moaning about all week at work. The one curious thing (to me) was that they served French press coffee. It's refreshing in this age of frou-frou coffee choices (not that I don't like frou-frou) to have a simple French Press - but it seems like a lot of work for a restaurant.

New Toy

So I received my new toy at the end of last week. Two years ago, I bought my first digital camera. At the time, I spent a little more than I thought I probably should have, and I didn’t think it warranted a big investment for the following reasons:

1) I liked shooting with my SLR (Nikon FG 20)
2) I didn’t really take a lot of photos

But I did decide to buy a digital camera because I knew that a part of the reason I didn’t take very many photos was the trouble and expense of having the film developed and printed (something I have never done myself), and because I haven’t found a place that I trust near me to develop the pictures well. Also, I was keen on trying a new toy and the ability to see immediately how the pictures turned out. So I bought a Kodak P850 as it seemed to be the best camera for my needs short of a DSLR, which I knew I didn’t really need.

Fast forward a year. I loved the Kodak P850. I took more pictures than I have in years and rediscovered how much fun photography can be. Essentially, I primed the pump with the little camera and got frustrated with the lens limitations astoundingly quickly.

Don’t get me wrong – for all the purposes that I thought I needed in a camera when I bought it, it did beautifully. It just left me hungry for more.

So for about a year, I stewed on the idea of buying another camera – a DSLR – and flirted with review sites, photography magazines, and camera stores. Always circling ever closer to taking the plunge.

Finally I did – and then was frustrated almost beyond bearing when one of the lenses I had ordered was on backorder – and they wouldn’t ship the order incomplete. (Note: when the lens did come in 3 weeks later, they DID send the orders separately … ARRRRGGGGHGGHHGHGHGGHGGHH!)

And here it is:

Without at doubt, it is too much camera for my skills and know-how.

I AM SO EXCITED!!!!

This must be what some people (mostly guys) feel when they buy a sports car.

I went overboard for two reasons:
1) The past two times I’ve made a big purchase, I’ve been sensible … only to revisit the issue within a couple of years and buy again. Figured I’d skip the middle step this time
2) I really wanted it.

Wheeeee!!!!

I took it with me to the Collingswood Farmer's Market on Saturday.

Mini-Break

Over Memorial Day weekend, I took a mini-break and flew up to Toronto to visit some dear friends and their family. . . and my family, and MORE of my family. If I’d been more on the ball, this would be a more extended entry, but I’ll settle for a little of something in lieu of nothing at all.

N&T have a fabulous new house, a gorgeous and bright daughter:
and a charming and delightful new son:


My father’s sister and her children, and their children, and their children also live in Toronto, so this was a great chance to catch up. I was invited to spend Saturday with the family … and found out only Saturday evening that I’d be attending my cousin Angus’ wedding. That’d also be when I found out that I had a cousin Angus.

It was a great wedding, with lots of picture-taking:



I had a fantastic trip. It’s too bad my new toy didn’t arrive in time.