Posted in As Pictured Below, Cats, Photographs, tagged animals, catnip, cats, Doritos, iPhone, kitchen, munchies, photograph, Trader Joe's on August 13, 2009| 1 Comment »
I recently broke out the catnip, hoping to stoke 13-year-old Yang’s appetite. I also added two Double Wide Cat Scratchers from Trader Joe’s to a expansive collection of cat accessories.
Now I have two stoner cats who sleep on their respective cat scratchers for hours at a time until they’re forced to make a mad dash for the kitchen when they hear the refrigerator open.
Anyway, they’re eating better, although I don’t think they should be scarfing down so many Doritos.
Posted in CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged baking, co-workers, CSA, dehydrator, food, homemade, iPhone, photograph, souffle, vegetables on July 27, 2009| 5 Comments »
This week's CSA haul.
I’m up to my neck in CSA vegetables: Swiss chard, zucchini, cucumbers, poblanos, cherry tomatoes, squash and more. I made tiny souffles (my first ever) on Friday night with a recipe for Poblano and Cheddar Cheese Souffle from the 5 Star Foodie Culinary Adventures blog. I give credit to the Inspired Bites blog for helping me through the pepper-roasting process.
Oddly, I was more scared to roast a poblano pepper than I was to attempt a souffle. Go figure.
Truly, I could not handle this culinary adventure without the world wide web. Thank you, Internets.
You’ll note that there is no photograph of these alleged souffles. That’s because about three-quarters of the way through the 20-minute baking time, I realized that I WAS ACTUALLY MAKING A NOTORIOUSLY DIFFICULT DISH and I SHOULD BE SCARED and THEN THE TINY SOUFFLES ACTUALLY PUFFED UP and there was no way I was taking the risk that my first-ever homemade souffles would be served all sunken and non-poofy just so I could stop and take pictures.
They looked just like the ones here, and they were delicious. Trust me. I’m a woman who can make souffles.
I leave you with photos from the other half of this weekend’s food experiments: the Dehydration Debacle. Really, it was only half a debacle. Someone at work brought in some freeze-dried snap beans last week, and they turned out to be a crunchy, tasty snack. Having an excess of snap beans AND cucumbers crowding the CSA box, I decided to drag out my old-school stackable-unit dehydrator.
The results: crunchy bean curls that don’t really taste like anything, and thin cucumber chips that I would definitely pay good money for. I put just a slight sprinkle of salt on top of most of the slices before cranking up the dehydrator, and it seems to draw out the cucumber flavor.
Next weekend, I’ll bring out the dehydrator again to take care of all the pesky zucchini and squash taking up room and dealing out guilt in the hallway closet.
Dried snap beans.
Dried cucumber slices.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Photographs, tagged iPhone, photograph on July 24, 2009| 2 Comments »
I’ve added a new feature to this blog, titled As Pictured Below. I admit, it was inspired by an unexpected love for my new iPhone’s camera. In under five clicks, I can take a photo, upload it to WordPress, and post it with commentary.
It’s addictive, really.
Be sure to check out the hover text for each photo – just position your pointer over the photo and wait for the text box to appear. Sarcastic/funny/sad/illuminating messages await you. (This function was inspired by the online comic A Softer World. Check it out. And don’t forget to hover.)
Posted in As Pictured Below, Home, Photographs, tagged home, iPhone, photograph, ToyCamera, weather on July 23, 2009| 3 Comments »
Posted in As Pictured Below, CSA, Photographs, tagged Apple, CSA, food, iPhone, okra, photograph, ToyCamera on July 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Okra slices, shot in natural light with the iPhone.
Okra slices, shot in natural light with a random filter applied by the iPhone app ToyCamera.
OMG, iPhone. After downloading the ToyCamera app, I worry I may never want to pick up my regular digital camera again.
What’s the matter with the digital camera companies that they can’t make regular photography this much fun, with so little effort on the user’s part? Does Apple have to do EVERYTHING?
This is a sampling of the okra from last week’s CSA delivery, BTW. It got dropped into a simmering pot of onions, zucchini and tomatoes. Six more weeks of CSA deliveries, and my no-fry rule is getting more and more difficult to enforce.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Photographs, tagged animals, camera, cats, husband, iPhone, photograph, travel on July 20, 2009| Leave a Comment »
I didn’t see this coming: I LOVE the camera on my new iPhone.
I barely get along with the family digital camera, so I didn’t think I’d have much going for this one. It is four shades of AWESOME, though. It’s always at the ready, and I can use the images without dragging out USB cords and the laptop for the transfer process.
As a bonus, it has some very cool special effects – note blogger bbum’s observations and examples of iPhone images shot by watercolor artist Paul Jackson. Movement of the subject or the camera can result in a gorgeous, stylized blur. Of course, it can also result in a simple bad-picture blur, but that’s what the trashcan button is for.
My husband shot the image above with his iPhone and e-mailed it to me while I was out of town for the weekend.
Posted in As Pictured Below, CSA, Photographs, tagged ancestors, CSA, eight-ball squash, farm, food, iPhone, photograph, Southern, squash on July 14, 2009| 2 Comments »
During my most recent CSA adventure, I made stuffed eight-ball squash. Don’t tell the generations of ancestors before me who were Southern farmers, but I still just don’t like squash.
I did like the seeds, however, roasted at 350 degrees with a little olive oil and salt. They were crunchy and delicious, plus they looked awfully nice in my favorite green bowls.
Posted in As Pictured Below, CSA, Photographs, tagged CSA, farm, food, iPhone, photograph, Southern, tomatoes on July 7, 2009| 5 Comments »
The green tomatoes from my weekly CSA delivery almost redeemed themselves in what I thought would be a snazzy salsa recipe, but no. Can somebody please explain the South’s obsession with these things?
Posted in As Pictured Below, Photographs, tagged animals, cats, iPhone, photograph on July 5, 2009| Leave a Comment »
“What is this ‘cheeseburger’ of which you speak, and why aren’t you using standard English?”
Posted in Photographs, tagged 1970s, 35mm, animals, childhood, digital, dogs, memory, mother, naming, photograph, Polaroid, Scancafe on May 22, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Morgus (maybe)
This is Morgus, my mom’s long-lived dog. I found him in a cemetery when he was a puppy. Ever since I got my digital photo scans back from ScanCafe, I had been thinking it was Newsted, the psychotic hound dog that I found outside my high school gymnasium.
Obviously, I shouldn’t be in charge of naming animals or making sure their stories live on in memory.
I have to highly recommend ScanCafe. They’ve scanned a few hundred old images for me over the past couple of months, with impressive results from 35mm negatives, color slides, and even Polaroid prints from the 1970s.
It’s beyond cool to see old pics that were formerly just laying around in boxes brought to life on the computer screen.
Also beyond cool: accurate recollections of names and faces. But I guess sometimes a girl can’t have it all.
Entirely Adequate 