-N- – Page 674 – Ink, Yarn & Beer

The Little Luxuries of Summer

I love simple food in the summertime. Fresh vegetables, fruits, breads, grains, yogurt. There is a richness in flavor that is best at this time of the year because the world is full and abundant. Self-indulgence in these areas is not a bad thing. And when one is recovering from a cold, and the mere thought of handling food or eating is not at all interesting, it is a good time to go out and buy unusual and wonderful things. So I did . . . and ended up with:

yogurt from St. Benoit from Sonoma County, CA
Wensleydale cheese with blueberries
organic rolled oats for granola
a custom-made sandwich with, among the ingredients, red onion marmalade and arugula
Firestone Wookey Jack Black Rye IPA

I’ve never heard of St. Benoit, but did a bit of research on them, and think they are really onto something. You can learn about St. Benoit and see what you think. Dinner tonight was a bit of their yogurt, a nectarine, and chopped almonds. Very satisfying.

I used to make my own yogurt. I’m rather tempted to again. Yogurt is especially good with granola, too.

And, at the moment, I am baking a batch of granola in the oven, as I love the crunch of granola and the sweetness of fruit for breakfast. The biggest problem with most granolas is they are horribly sweet if boughten. I prefer to make my own. Formerly, for sweetness I chose real maple syrup, but my husband doesn’t much care for maple. I don’t like sugar in granola. One day I ended up with some agave syrup and a craving for granola, and used the syrup. The result was a bit of sweetness without a maple flavor (I like maple, personally . . . ) nor the intense flavor brown sugar can give foods.

Granola Recipe

6 c. organic rolled oats
2 c. walnuts
1/2 c. dried cranberries
1 1/2 c. raisins
1/2 c. agave syrup
1/4 c. canola oil

Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix together all ingredients in a dutch oven, and bake, stirring every 15 minutes, for about an hour, until toasted to your liking. Let cool to room temperature.

You can substitute or add whatever you want. This is what I had available.

Looking for Organic & Local

All this self-indulgence started making me look for what is around here in Ventura County. Agriculture is a big industry in our county – the history of the county is tightly bound to raising crops, such as avocados, berries, citrus. We have a couple of excellent producers of organic produce – McGrath Family Farms and Underwood Family Farms are two with whom I am familiar. I looked up local honey after reading about the potential that a lot of honey may be tainted and illegally imported. Not a good thing. Locally, it looks like we have a good source nearby at Bennett’s. Meat is another issue. We have free range beef from Watkins Cattle Company.

At heart, I’m a backyard farmer. I would love to have the time to produce more of what we eat, but I have to work, and our backyard is too dark and shady at present for any real crops. Instead, I try to support the local farmers rather than the large chain stores. We also try to cook most of what we eat from scratch, but of course, not everything can be done this way. When we go shopping, we never cease to be amazed at all the packaged foods people buy as the mainstay for their meals. Our baskets are filled with very few boxes or frozen foods.

Kind of snobby, huh? I guess I literally put my money where my mouth is.

Textbook

I am not a fan of manuals and how-to books. My preference would be to just know everything and not have to learn it. Osmosis.

That, however, is not something to be done. For some reason, a painting book is more interesting to me, by far, than a textbook on the camera or software. It is just not interesting. But, I am forcing myself to read a text on the D7000, and truthfully, the one I am reading is far more readable than I thought it would be. I actually am enjoying it, much to my surprise!

The author is pretty good, and besides not being an illustrated repeat of the Nikon manual, it also has little forays into subjects like focus stacking or HDR. And opinions. That surprised me.

Today I learned – not in any particular order – about:

Interval shooting
Setting the camera up to bracket
Different kinds of bracketing
Various buttons (refresher for some, new for others)
Ways in which to use the remote exposure – 3 ways! (Didn’t always work, though – wonder if I need a new battery.)

Oh, and other things, but that is going to get dull.

On the other hand, I did get an Adaptall-2 mount in the mail yesterday, for a Nikon. I have a Tamron Adaptall-2 lens, specifically the 80-210, model 103A. It has constant aperture, and does macro at a about 1:2. I bought it back in the 1980s sometime, and as I had a Canon then, it came with a Canon mount. Luckily for me, I have a clever husband, and with some instructions, he dismounted the Canon Adaptall, and put on the Nikon. It works rather nicely. The colors are good, and it was easy enough to use.

This was shot outdoors, bright light, ISO 100. The petals below were shot indoors, handheld, at ISO 2000, and using the macro portion of the lens.

I think I will enjoy using this lens – it’s really pristine, which rather surprised me after sitting around in various boxes for the past 30 years.

I also did a bit of photostacking with mixed exposures – bracketed exposures – which produced good results. This is a bowl filled with yellow grapefruit, lemons, and bananas.

And I also just enjoyed shooting a box of tomatoes as I was putzing with the camera while I was reading the book.

I was just playing with the focal points, seeing how the camera responded to my choices. I kind of liked this one.

So, not an enthralling weekend for learning things, but productive and useful. And all because I read a textbook!

Slow Down

Last Wednesday, our little photo group met up to shoot a sunset. The initial place we met was rather uninteresting, so we drove up the hill in search of a different spot. A good decision.

We were up above the Simi Valley, and had expansive views in all directions. To the north, the mountains and plains caught the rays from the setting sun. To the south, the busy 101 provided light trails to contrast the twinkling of the city lights. To the east, Santa Susana Pass gave light trails if the exposure was long enough. To the west, the sun was setting, and spread out over the land, sculpting hills and fields, casting long shadows on rocks. Where we were also had some trails, old oak trees, rocks, and fences – what this area must have looked like before the building booms of the 60s began.

I packed the Tamron 17-50mm lens, which is great for general and landscape photography, the Tamron 70-300mm, and the Kiron 30-80mm varifocal. The final and only lens used was the Kiron lens, which is a manual focus lens from the 1980s. All my exposures were manual, from f/stop to aperture to focus. What I should have brought along was my flash – I had misplaced my remote for it, so the flash stayed at home. I could have used it for lighting the foreground in some shots.

Doing a total shoot without depending on any technology except my eye and what the camera says is a good exposure is stepping back in time. I really enjoyed the slowness, and the fact I needed to consider so many elements. In the forefront of my mind were a few major elements: composition and placement of focal points and areas of interest. In each frame, I tried to look at everything in the lens, moving from corner to corner, observing shadows, light spots, lines in the landscape, perspective. It is not really hard to do, per se, but it is hard to do it quickly. Becoming conscious of these bits and pieces eventually develops habits and trains the eye and mind; in turn, this will work in my favor as I continue this practice. I can imagine this will work in quick-changing situations – having an eye to anticipate and prepare.

Above you can see the evolution of the final picture. The very top one is a jpg, straight out of the camera. The middle one is with some push of the color. The sky was really quite lovely, and in retrospect, maybe I will go in and re-do the picture to keep that cerulean, rather than the ultramarine sky of the bottom picture.

Anyway, I couldn’t figure out why the middle picture kept bugging me, and then I looked again, and saw that the bright yellow spot in the middle tilted down, toward the right – it just wasn’t level. In Lightroom, I rotated the picture ever so slightly, and was much happier. In the bottom, final image, I pushed the yellows and the greens and used the gradated filter in LR, as well as used Viveza 2 to create a bit more zing in different areas. I eliminated the spots (on the lens or the sensor – need to check) in the sky using Photoshop, and then Faststone and Photoscape for resizing, framing, and signature.

Compositionally, the lines and the light is what caught my eye. The warmth of the sun on the slopes, along with their curvy lines was a nice contrast to the diagonals of the fore and middle ground. The verticals of the weeds in the very front of the picture played nicely against curves and diagonals. I think this is why the downward angle of the middle picture bugged me – the horizontal wasn’t there, and it is in the final image. Instead, it is also a diagonal, and was one diagonal too many.

I am not displeased with this picture. In post-processing the goal was to re-create the golden cast of the sunset on everything – that evanescent glow never stops fascinating me. My hope is that the image does not look fake – but it could, depending on the monitor.

The above image is the middle one in the grouping above, straightened, and post-processed pushing the warmth of greens, yellows, and oranges. Once more, sky spots removed. Then framing and signature added.

And, I just realized now why having an electronic photo frame is not a bad idea! Just a photo album in a different format. Maybe I’ll go buy one . . .

Focus Stacking

A new adventure into photography – focus stacking. The purpose of stacking photos is to create one very sharp and detailed image from many. There is a lot of software out there, free and pay-for. I am playing with CS5 and Helicon Focus.

To do stacking, you need a tripod, and a steady object. I am using a peony in a vase. Then what is done is to take multiple images, and focus on different parts of the object, taking multiple images. This means that the focus moves through the object at different points, so what is now in focus becomes out of focus, until you have moved from front-to-back or back-to-front. From all the images a final one will be produced.

This first attempt is with just 5 images, which you can see in the combination picture below:

These images were both merged into a single file, as you can see below. The one on the left is using CS5, and the one on the right is using Helicon Focus.

The next one I did shooting 16 different pictures, close in, and using the macro capabilities of the Tokina 100mm macro lens (which I used for the above images, as well). You can see the different pictures below:

I focused from front to back. In CS5, the software got itself into a tizzy when I did all 16 – which are 16 MB jpgs, so they are pretty big. So, I used only 10 or 11 of them, and got this result:

The ragged edge in the above picture shows you how CS5 works by aligning sharp edges with one another. Below is the image generated by Helicon, using all 16 images:

Below you can see the result of only using 10 images with CS5 on the left below, and all 16 images with Helicon on the right:

The result is rather interesting – using only a few of the pictures for the CS5 stack, there is a nice sense of depth because the upper part of the picture is out of focus. The Helicon picture ustilises all 16 images, but because the upper image is not blurred, the sense of depth is lacking – or else it shows that there are even more petals in the flower as we move along.

As this is my first attempt to do this, I don’t have much of an opinion about the final product. I own CS5, but have a 30 day trial running with the Helicon. The CS5 will require cropping, which is not a big deal, but the Helicon produces a very clean, elegant product. And, the Helicon is very easy to use as it is a software specific for stacking.

A Pie!

There is nothing in the world of sweets that pleases me more than a fresh pie. It’s work, and it is seasonal, but pie made with fresh fruit is always my idea of heaven. So, for the long weekend, the pie is – as many others are making – Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. This pie needs to be carefully balanced between sweet and sour, so if you are making it from scratch with a whatever-goes mentality, best to taste it before you bake it. (Isn’t that another reason to bake – to eat raw dough and taste-test the ingredients?)

Method

Preheat oven to 450 F.

Pie Crust
for a 9-inch pan

2 1/2 c. flour
2 sticks (1 lb.) sweet butter, chilled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1/2 tsp. salt
6-8 T. ice water

Pour a cup of water into a vessel; add ice cubes. Do this before you begin the crust.

Cut together flour, butter, and salt until resembles coarse corn meal. Add 3-4 T. water, blend in gently with fork. Add another 2 T. water; blend some more. If it begins to stick together when you mash it together, you are probably ready to roll it out. If not, add another T. of ice water, gradually, testing the dough, which should stick together. Divide dough into two balls, making one slightly larger than the other.

Roll out the larger of the two dough balls onto a floured board, turning as necessary. Roll out until about 4 inches larger than pan diameter. Place dough into pie pan; drape carefully into pan to make sure dough is not stretched. Trim ends to about 1 1/2 inches outside of pan.

Roll out second ball for upper crust. If you want a lattice crust, cut strips about 1 inch wide. On a piece of waxed paper, assemble latticework. Cover with another piece of waxed paper. Refrigerate until ready to place on top of pie. If you want a plain crust, roll out until it measures about 2 inches larger than pan diameter on all sides.

It is not uncommon to have to patch a pie crust, and the lattice is no different. For the crust, take a trimmed slice of pie dough, dampen it with water on one side, and place it like a tire patch over the part of the crust that needs to be repaired. That area should also have a few pats of water on it. Press to seal. In the area of the lattice, if a strip breaks, or is too short, do not hesitate to repair it as for the bottom crust, but to make it look nice, hide the broken strip under an upper strip.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Filling

3 T. brown sugar
1/3 c. white sugar
1/2 c. water
3 c. diced rhubarb stems
2 lbs. fresh strawberries, cleaned and sliced
2-4 T. tapioca
Mace, just a pinch of fresh
Juice of 1 lemon
More white sugar to taste

Combine together two sugars and water in a sautee pan. Bring to simmer until sugars are dissolved. Add chopped rhubarb, and cook slowly for a few minutes. Remove rhubarb from pan, saving syrup and returning to sautee pan, and mix in with fresh strawberries. Sprinkle tapioca into syrup. Simmer tapioca about 5 minutes, letting water evaporate a little bit from pan. If you like a bit of juice with your pie, use less tapioca, and use more if you like your pie to stick together. Taste (cool it a bit!) the syrup, and adjust using the juice of the lemon, and adding extra sugar to taste. When you like the taste, pour syrup over strawberry-rhubarb mixture. Sprinkle a bit of mace onto pie. (I like it plain, or with just a hint of mace – not much as the pie itself is so good!)

Pour fruit mixture into pie pan lined with dough. Cover with second crust, cutting slits into crust if you have not made a lattice; this allows steam to escape. Brush top crust with a egg yolk-water mixture, or an egg white-water mixture, or leave plain.

Bake the Pie!

Make sure oven racks are placed with one on bottom rack, and another in middle of oven. Line a cookie sheet with foil and place on bottom rack. Place pie on middle rack. Bake at 450 F for 10 minutes and then lower temperature to 350 F, and bake another 50-60 minutes until juices are bubbling and crust is golden. Cool on wire rack, or let cool in oven if really drippy.

When you are ready to remove the pie from the oven, get another pair of hands. My husband carried the pie, and I followed underneath, with a wire rack crossing the foil-covered cookie sheet, to prevent goo from getting on the floor.

Serve with cream, ice cream, or just pie itself.