Feeding My Passion

Actually, it wasn’t bad at all, Dr. Thida Mahasucon (right) and her assistants (Stefanie shown here) are great. The crown prep took almost as much time as the root canal (which also wasn’t as bad as I expected), but it was a lot easier, at least from my point of view. And in both cases, this was basically my point of view:

Playing with shutter speeds mostly to see the amount of blur would look the best. More isn’t better in this case. And it only took 396 frames to find that out! Taking lots of pics without going broke is one of the biggest benefits (and curses) of digital.

In reverse chronological order, so up first, the radish (kkakdugi) kimchi.

Radish kimchi is much easier and faster than the white cabbage (baek) kimchi I made a few weeks ago and have already consumed (yum!). There’s very little salting, no rinsing, no stuffing (except the jars at the end), and it doesn’t take as long to ferment.

The name, kkakdug, is onomatopoeic as it’s the sound of chopping the radishes into cubes to make this dish. I got the recipe (and the trivia) from Growing up in a Korean Kitchen by Hisoo Shin Hepinstall.

Portrait of kimchi as a young pickle – I’ve already covered the one on top with napa cabbage leaves.

This is before I’ve topped it with water. There’s chopped napa cabbage in there, along with watercress, mustard greens, green onions, grated ginger, lots of garlic (of course!), chopped walnuts, sugar, lemon juice, Korean dried chili flakes (duh!), sweet rice flour, fish sauce, and salt. Yum.

I’ve topped these off with water and they’re ready to start fermenting. The kimchi will sit out on the counter, with the lid on, for 2-3 days before I stop the fermentation by refrigerating it. Between now and Monday, I’ll be tasting, oh yes, I will be tasting.

Chocolate-Almond Buttercrunch Toffee – Kitchen alchemy at its very finest: Turning butter, sugar, salt, vanilla, baking soda, chocolate, and almonds into this glorious pile of delicious joy. David Lebovitz, who worked at Chez Panisse, is the awesome pastry chef who came up with this recipe. He has some amazing looking cookbooks as well, and I hope to be buying one sometime soon.

While the expense of making this recipe is considerable (2 1/4 pounds of candy calls for 1 pound of almonds, 10 ounces of chocolate (I prefer Ghiradelli 60% cacao because it’s assertive, and it needs to be), plus 2 sticks of butter – the cost of everything else is negligible), the technique is simple, and the results are stunning. I’ve made it probably a dozen and a half times now, and it is still remarkable to me.

I also still find it completely irresistible. I give the stuff away as quickly as possible since I can (and have) devoured the better part of a 2 pound batch in less than 3 days. Luckily I have selfless friends and photojournalism classmates who have volunteered to save me from this batch. Thank you thank you!!

Rebecca Manandic (Aunty Betty) teaches Hawaiian and Tahitian dance classes to men and women of all ages.

sigh…did I have to cut off the toes on the right?

Get it done by half-past two;
Stitch it up and stitch it down,
And then I’ll give you half a crown.

These are a subset of my 1-Day Picture Story.

Making pictures of sports events is different than the bulk of my work so far, and it presents its own set of things to learn, which I generally don’t do often enough to learn. I could have turned this into my 1-day picture story assignment, but I think most of the pictures are ok, not great or even good. Perhaps I’m being a little tough on myself. I was trying to do some different things (motion blur, close portrait, action, establishing shot, etc.), but none of them worked particularly well, for one reason or another, the fault being mostly mine and lack of practice with the techniques I was attempting.

But hey, it was a beautiful day for a bike race!

One of the most thought-provoking and mind-bending things I experienced at the race was the number of amateur photographers with killer gear. While the guy I met (I’m still searching for name and website address) was probably the king of the amateurs since he had traveled from the Bay Area (San Fransisco and surrounding areas), which is about 2 1/2 hours away, and he had a 300/2.8 on the very newest professional Canon body, an EOS-1D Mark IV. We were shooting side-by-side, and I heard the flutter of his shutter, like a hummingbird’s wings beating the air, which at 10fps, turns out not to be much of an exaggeration.

He said, with some embarrassment, that he shoots 2000-5000 frames every time he photographs sports or almost any other event. This raises a few questions for me, most of which I’d rather discuss with my professor and class than ruminate on here.

(2000-5000?! Really?! And I thought that was going a little crazy when I took over 250 frames at the martial arts studio. I feel positively frugal!)

Here is my relatively modest contribution to the bazillions of frames that were taken during the races.