Scottsdale

These are from my recent trip to Scottsdale, hence that cacti. I have been high on the stress and low on the creativity lately, so yesterday I decided to turn that around by photographing three recipes, editing photos and reading. I must say, it felt really good.

Kale with Blue Cheese and Pears

Hello, world! Here are some photos I took this weekend of a raw kale salad I made with pears and a blue cheese dressing. This salad was the product of a listless walk through Whole Foods. I saw the pears and thought they would be nice to photograph. I saw the kale and thought I may as well grab it while I was there, as there was no change to find such nice kale at my neighborhood stores. Anyone who knows me knows that cheese is my kryptonite, so it may be no surprise that I picked up a generous hunk of blue cheese with very little thought. I decided I would make a dressing with the blue cheese to toss with thinly sliced kale, it wasn't until Sunday that I realized the pears would make more than good models.

I usually keep the background and props light and white, but I wanted to experiment with some dark and shadows. I lucked upon the rusty dish on my way back from running on Ocean Beach on Saturday. It was a gorgeous day, I had a great run and then hung out on the beach in the sun for a while and found a new prop on my way home. Not a bad deal, right?

Those of you who are phobic of blue cheeses best shield your eyes, it's about to get veiny. To make the dressing, I smashed some cheese in the bottom of a bowl big enough to accommodate the salad. The I added some lemon juice and olive oil to loosen it up to the consistency I wanted. I remembered how well blue cheeses and honey pair, so I added a little bit of honey, to taste. Plus a few cracks of fresh pepper.

 

Beginnings

Hello, I hope everyone had a great weekend. Mine was very busy and I didn't get to shoot much, but I wanted to quickly share these two frames from Mandeep and Michael's engagement party on Saturday night. They should look familiar. It was great fun, great food and an open bar! And Mandeep looked absolutely gorgeous, obviously. Gotta keep moving, happy hump day!

Have some cake, it's Friday!

As promised, here is the orange poppy seed cake from always with butter mentioned on Tuesday. Even though this was a short work week, it sure didn't feel like it. At all. But thankfully, I have made it to yet another Friday. And on the bright side, it's no longer pitch black at six o'clock so I can actually see some light when I leave work. What a difference that makes!

This cake came out delicious. It's like a variation of a poppy seed muffin, but with the density of a bundt cake. The only issue I had was with the consistency frosting. I only made half a recipe for the cake but decided to go regular with the frosting. Yeah, that's right, double frosting. The first time I made it it was soupy, so I tossed it. Then I started with the powdered sugar and added the orange juice much slower and at a higher mixing speed, which yielded an actual frosting. This is the only advice I can give you, as I totally disregarded the recipe at that point. Hope you have a good Friday and fun weekend!

Mandeep and Michael

Hello! I have been on a bit of a blogging hiatus, but I couldn't be happier to kick things off with a photo shoot with one of my best friends, Mandeep, and her fiance Michael. I can't believe that February is almost over! This year has started off really fast for me with long, long days at work, night classes and working on building a website on the weekends. Yes, that is what has been hogging all my blog time, but it feels good to get back to writing and sharing. Speaking of sharing, I made an orange poppy seed cake from Always with Butter that I will have to share later this week because I just can't wait to share these! Mandeep and Michael, thank you so much for being good sports and off-trailing it and climbing trees, you were awesome! Without further adieu...

 

More from Michigan

Here are a couple more pictures from Michigan from the day before Christmas Eve. This was the most snow I encountered during my trip. Just a light dusting, really. We all took it easy at the house in the morning, except Daisy, who watched for and chased squirrels that tried to steal food from the bird feeders on the deck. Then we went into town for a little shopping. A couple scarves later, we stopped in at the new spice store in town. It smelled wonderful but all the choices were overwhelming. I ended up with two bags of fragrant loose tea which I'm hoping will last me a while. After, we stopped at the market to pick up ingredients to make this ribolita recipe from Heidi, which was absolutely delicious! It's my new favorite soup recipe. But don't try to make it on a week night, it takes some prep time. And it tastes even better the next day. I also made these after dinner, but they did not turn out very well. Can't win them all, right?

My grandma wearing my sister's ear muffs :)

This is about a quarter of the spices in the store. I loved the big jars and the rustic shelving. It's like a little spice cabin. They had a whole shelf of different salts from specialty sea salts to infused salts. And different kinds of chocolate to eat or to melt into warm milk. Bonus points for the big, super-sweet dog.

Life's a Beach

Hello! I'm don't know about you but I am very, very glad it is Friday. I know this was a short week, but it didn't feel that way to me. Here are some photos I took a couple weeks ago on my way home from getting my hair cut in Half Moon Bay. I decided to take the scenic route home and stop for pictures. It was less foggy than usual along the coast so it was very bright, but still kind of misty-looking. I have plenty of pictures to share from my Michigan trip so hopefully I'll have a chance to sit down and get through them this weekend. I'm hoping my weekend consists of: a latte or two, a chance to sleep in, editing photos, a new recipe cooked/made and possibly some de-cluttering, which actually makes me more excited than it really should.

By the way, I don't know these people but I couldn't resist taking a picture of them. They were pretty much asking for it. I like to take street photography to the beach, no big deal.