Things I did today

I already photographed my herbs, and have moved to the "fruit section" of the garden since peppers and tomatoes are technically a fruit. While the plants haven't yet produced anything I'd want to eat, they have been producing lovely flowers! I took this photo with my macro lens and made sure to frame the flowers with the rest of the plant. Also, I'm reminded of the excellent saying: Intelligence is knowing tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing to not put it in a fruit salad.

Along with my collection of guitars and wine glasses and hot sauces, I also thought about my collection of trumpets. I used to have more, actually. I previously owned a pocket trumpet and a student trumpet, but I ended up selling those when I moved, and now only have my professional trumpet and slide trumpet (also called soprano trombone). I remembered that I was also gifted some Christmas ornaments and added those to the photo. I think this composition worked nicely!

This photo was fun to do. I was looking for an arty way to capture my wine glasses. I tried different configurations from the three white and one red wine glass (the fourth white broke when I moved down here seven years ago). I could have done the four red as a set, but I've been drinking white wine as of late, and they were already on my kitchen counter. I photographed them from above while standing on a chair, I photographed part of the collection trying to get the curves of the glasses in sync, I photographed them from below, and nothing really seemed to work. Then, looking at the four glasses while sitting in the chair I was previously standing on, I thought it looked pretty cool that the farther wine glass looked kind of like it was inside the closer wine glass. I lined up the glasses so I could only see the stem on the closer and took a shot. The photo ended up looking neat, but I thought it'd be even better if I could remove the base of the second wine glass just to b

I made some Aji Verde sauce recently, and sadly, didn't care for it. I like the ingredients, but the recipe I followed called for mayo, and the author mentioned that mayo isn't in the original recipe, but she preferred it as it gave the sauce a bit more thickness. I put in less than what she suggested, and it just tastes like mayo that was colored green. I put in 3 jalapenos, a large bunch of cilantro leaves, plenty of lime juice, and all I got back was... green mayonnaise with green flecks. How disappointing! However, I love this picture. I wanted to create some sort of direction for this photo, and decided I liked the almost-3D feel with the pile of cilantro leaves getting higher in the center and in sharp focus. It was a happy accident that I decided to change the direction of the cutting board so that the corner is in top center and helps the viewer's eyes back to the center.

The garden is planted, and I now have Curled Parsley, Mint and Chamomile. I've snipped a few bits of parsley off just to try it, and found it absolutely lovely! I had no idea why people would plant parsley - it's just a garnish, right? It doesn't add anything except color to the plate. Except fresh parsley is delicious in just plain rice. It explodes with fragrant flavor and adds to just plain rice. Absolutely fantastic! The mint is tasty, but I need it to grow a bit longer before I can start cutting much off of it for tea or other drinks, and I learned that chamomile tea is made with the flowers instead of the leaves and stems. Parsley:  Mint: Chamomile:

I made some Hokkaido Milk Bread a week or so ago, and it was relatively easy, but very delicious! The only issue was the yeast that didn't activate, so instead of making actual Hokkaido Milk Bread, I made something more like Hokkaido Milk Cake or Hokkaido Dense Milk Bread. It was still tasty, and reminded me of shortcake - so I ate it with butter and strawberry jam. I'm looking forward to making it again, just with some better yeast. Here's the recipe I followed and will follow next time. Even as a dense bread or cake, it was excellent.

I had fun with this photo, because I wanted the lettering on headstock on my ukulele to be sharply in focus on a black background that just disappears. However, to get good lighting, I had to prop the uke up on my legs while making sure they didn't get in the frame or move while the shutter was open. It was a fun photo to take, feeling ridiculous with a uke laying on me while I fold the rest of me up to get the correct angle between the camera and instrument.