Feeding My Passion

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.

I’d already gotten my daily photo assignment in the can (the senior exercise class), but I didn’t think I was going to get another day this beautiful for a while, so I checked to see if there was any new construction going on in the new subdivisions in Merced. Score!

This puts me one ahead for my daily photo assignment, but I only count multiple assignments in one day to catch up, not to get ahead. It feels very nice to 1) not be behind, and 2) actually looking for photos when I don’t have to make any.

Since the beginning of the recession, Merced has been one of the hardest-hit areas in country, with unemployment over 10% since April 2007. It’s estimated to currently be at 22%. Before the recession, there was a lot of construction on the north side of town since the University of California just built its newest campus (and the first research institution of the 21st century in the US) on the north side of Merced.

Plumber Alan Callahan (in the top set of photos), who started working on the Bellevue Ranch subdivision four years ago, had to stop two years ago. He and Victor Vasquez (bottom set) just started working on the home recently.

I made this photo on 3 March as well, so this catches me up, yay!

Finally got permission from the Merced Fire Department to take photos at one of the stations. While I admit testing and fixing the breathers (the masks they use hooked up to air tanks) isn’t the most exciting stuff to photograph, I wasn’t exactly looking to go out on a call with them, which they wouldn’t have allowed anyway, so I was just happy to have some access to fulfill my 30-day assignment.

Fire captain Tony Giotta shows fireman Matt Alley how to fix a breathing regulator that failed to pass an initial test.

Actually the station call letters are KABX, an oldies station, at 97.5 on your FM dial if you’re in Merced. The DJ Dave Luna, a 27-year radio veteran, is an extremely exuberant guy, far too peppy for so damn early in the morning.