eat your veggies

Apparently I really am a city girl. I had no idea that brussel sprouts grew on stalks!

So cool. Makes me want to try to grow these myself someday.

Way too shallow on the DOF here.  Too tired to do over tonight.  I have a the equivalent of a lead foot when it comes to aperature. Always going so low. Too low sometimes!

photo fruit salad

portrait of a best friend

ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/8s, 50mm

Coffee.  My relationship with these little brown buggers is an intimate one.  Some days I literally cannot utter a single word to another human being until I have had my coffee fix.  We meet early in the morning and again in the afternoon.  Sometimes, on a particularly rough day, we even see each other in between.  Coffee stands by me through tantrums with 2 year olds, inexplicable 4:30am wake-ups, and bad days at work. A warm embrace when there is too much to do and too little time.  Coffee is my friend.

I guess I was a bit of a late bloomer, as far as coffee is concerned - not even trying it until my 20s!!  How on earth I ever survived hangovers and boy trouble and final exams and all nighters in college without it is one of the great mysteries of my life.  For me, it began much like new romantic relationships do.   A friend introduced me and we hit it off.  And you know how new relationships go....the excitement at the very thought of seeing each other again.  One small encounter and a wonderful jittery-ness sets in.  Your body is just not used to this kind of thrill!  But then maybe one day you have a little too much of this new love or perhaps it disagrees with you.  Your stomach hurts.  You think to yourself, maybe I won't do this again tomorrow.  

But tomorrow comes and you are back at it.  The adrenaline rush is addictive and the mental clarity unmatched!  Before too long, it's part of your daily routine, and something you simply cannot live without.

ISO 400, f/3.5, 1/80s, 50mm

Hard to believe something so small is responsible for so much.

ISO 400, f/3.5, 1/50s, 50mm

ISO 100, f/2.5, 1/20s, 50mm

I have so much fun photographing food.   I think I said it before, but can I just reiterate how nice it is when your subject doesn't move?
Btw, this was the first time I took the 24mm off my camera since I got it about 2 months ago!! awesome lens, but have missed my 50mm.

Summer on a Plate

Giada's Baked Caprese Salad. The perfect almost-no-cook-hot-summer-day-meal.  I used the toaster oven to keep the preheat time to a minimum and the kitchen temperature down.  yum!  

a little tikka

a Fun Friday is...making everyone's favorite Indian takeout dish at home.

I love cooking shows.  Top Chef, Next Food Network Star, Iron Chef... really any show on the Food Network will do.  But one of my favorites is Aarti Party.  Who doesn't want to learn how to make Indian food at home?  She's adorable and funny and really entertaining to watch.  She has a recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala that everyone raves about online.  I had to see for myself.

I always think it might be fun to be a food blogger, but really, it's a lot of work.  It's hard to stop and take photos of every step, make those photos look good, and oh yea don't burn the children circling your feet while you're cooking.  Maybe when the kids are grown up a bit I'll make exquisite dishes and photograph them.

So here goes. You can find the recipe here, so I'm not going to repost it.

This is what you'll need: (this is my favorite part of food blogs, btw)

Make your ginger garlic paste.  Aarti suggests making a bunch and sticking it in the fridge. I did that once and I ended up using it once, forgetting about it and throwing the jar away a few weeks later. I just don't cook enough Indian food to be keeping a vat of paste in the fridge.  I made enough for just this recipe.  Use a small food processor if you have one. The ingredients will just get lost in a large one and won't get pureed properly.

Do your chopping.  This is the part where I make a plug for the Knife Skills class at the Cambridge Culinary Institute.  Totally worth every penny. It is SO nice to know the proper way to cut things. I'm so much more efficent in the kitchen now and that is priceless when starving whiny kids are waiting for dinner.

Marinate your chicken in yogurt and garlic/ginger paste.

Now, put the chicken in the fridge and go take a break for a couple of hours.  The above steps took me exactly 15 minutes. I timed myself because I like recipes that don't take too long to prepare.  I'd say this recipe falls into the medium prep time category.

About 30 minutes before you're ready to eat, pull the chicken out the fridge. In my experience, meat always cooks better when it's close to room temperature.  That way you don't end up with a charred outside and raw middle.

Saute your peppers in butter and oil for a couple of minutes

Add your spices.  If you want to be all fancy pants when you have guests over for dinner this is called blooming your spices - (cooking them in oil/bringing out flavor)

Add your tomatoes and water.

Bring to a boil and then turn heat down to simmer for about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook your chicken on a HOT grill pan.  Rub oil on the pan before you cook.

Blend your sauce ( an immersion blender is probably one of my favorite kitchen tools. So much easier than transferring to a blender)

Add your chicken. Simmer 10 minutes more to finish cooking the chicken.  Make rice.  Stir cream in to sauce at the very end.

Add chopped cilantro on top and serve!

ugh i'm so not a food stylist or food photographer.  this looks like doody, in my opinion. like one of the photos you see on a cheesy cheap chinese food restaurant menu!!

In summary:
1.  I made it too spicy. left the seeds in with the peppers.  I'm a wuss - I just don't like it that spicy. I think it really overwhelms the rest of the flavor in the dish. Next time: no seeds.

2.  Despite overwhelmingly positive reviews on the food network website, I didn't think it tasted as good as Bukara's in JP.

3.  I did, however, think it looked just like Bukara's and it also tasted better the second day so maybe the flavors just needed to marry a bit.

4. I used chicken thighs, as suggested by Aarti, but they seemed too fatty.  I'm going to try breasts next time.

5. I will make it again. You should try it, too!

first born

Right on schedule, our first ever crop of June bearing strawberries produced it's first ripe berry on the eve of June 1st!  I still am in disbelief when something I plant actually grows.  A long history of killing plants has seriously traumatized me!  Check out this beauty.  We will fight over who gets to eat the first one.  I've approximated we have about 75-100 berries coming.  Hopefully the birds won't see them before we do :)

ISO 100 f/3.5, 1/25/50mm

This whole daytime job thing is really cramping my weekly photo lunchbreak time.  ABCs:  Boston will have to be postponed until next week.

taste of memorial day weekend

wanna feel like a kid again?

Eat a cupcake. 

Seriously. 

Lick the frosting off the top first.

Then eat the cake.

Just go do it.

this pretty much sums up my In Town Tuesday this week:

I did, however, manage to squeeze in a little macro fun this morning:

I'm babysitting a macro lens this week. so fun! thanks, Liv...

Oh my darling, Clementine

Homework for week one completed.

Shallow depth of field (f/1.8)

Deep depth of field (f/22)

I almost always prefer a shallow depth of field. Much more interesting.

In other news,
Ben & Lillian are becoming quite the playmates.  Lillian is finally old enough to understand what Ben is saying and she mostly wants to do whatever he tells her.  Lillian is a typical 2 year old and alternately screams, stomps, and/or falls into a heap on the floor when she doesn't get what she wants.  Sharing is a completely foreign concept to her and it's hard for Ben to be patient with her sometimes.  Still, we have lots of very sweet moments like this....

Early spring treat

Anyone sense a theme here? I like to take photos of food.  It's fun.  And it doesn't move. 

How excited were we when we found mini watermelons at the store this weekend?  And they're pretty darn red and sweet inside. I know, I know, we're so not Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; I'm pretty sure this watermelon wasn't grown in Boston.

But guilt trip aside, you'd be surprised how much happiness this fruit has brought into our house.  Ben is exceptionally fond of watermelon and has had it with every meal for the last three days.

ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/100, 50mm

ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/50, 50mm

Watermelon spells hydration for this little girl who is finally on the mend after a long 5 day illness.

ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/400, 50mm



finger lickin' good
ISO 800, f/2.8, 1/400, 50mm



say cheese!
ISO 800, f/3.2, 1/400, 50mm

In other news, our oil company is having a contest:  Send in a photo of your boiler. If you have the oldest boiler, you get a new one!  Think we'll win?

1954.  That's probably not old enough for a win in this city.

Sweet Surprise

While I was working from home yesterday, the strawberries I had on the kitchen counter caught my eye as the sun streamed in my from the sunlight above.  Within minutes I had the shoot set up.  I really like the contrast of the metal bowl against the soft fruit.  Shooting food is so much fun.  I couldn't pick just one.


This photo is a little dark, but once I saw it on the computer, I kind of liked it. It's dramatic. Underexposed or mysterious strawberries? You tell me..

ISO 100, f/3.2, 1/100, 50mm

Same shot with a slighter slower shutter speed:

ISO 100, f/3.2, 1/40, 50mm 

I like this viewpoint.  Just a little peek from that guy on the top.  I should have washed the strawberries ( and picked off the brown leaves and washed and the bowl) first.  But I was in a hurry. I think they would have looked cool with some drops of water on them. I love shooting at a low f-stop, btw.  I'm itching for a macro lens so I can take some really close detail shots.

ISO 100, f/2.8m, 1/50, 50mm