Say what? Are my eyes really seeing what they see? Does that sign say ‘Heirloom Tomatoes’? It’s the middle of winter…must be a mistake. But they look like heirloom tomatoes. They have variegated colors and bumpy exteriors, they must be heirlooms.
Imported from Mexico….ahhh, that’s right, not every place in the world right now has two feet of snow. I just couldn’t resist taking home a little bit of someone else’s better weather conditions into my own home. Everyone deserves a reprise, and since a vaca to Hawaii is not in my near future, these tomatoes will have to do.
Plus they give me the perfect opportunity to discuss a little food photography. Sometimes it’s hard to decide how to photograph food. Picking out all the accessories is fun, but shooting food in a unique and different way, well…it’s difficult.
I knew that I wanted to keep my recipe very simple to highlight my wonderful tomatoes. I also thought they might look beautiful just shot by themselves. I put them in a gorgeous bamboo bowl and set them down on my hardwood floors, a nice tone on tone look so you only notice the tomatoes….that is until you get photo bombed by Summer (the dog).
Look at that, don’t you just want to take a bite out of that big juicy burger? Although I think that the burger looks appetizing I made some errors in photographing it. That’s what happens when you are a starvin marvin and want to snap the shot and get on with eating.
It’s a fabulous tasting burger, but I wasn’t happy with the photos. I decided to turn my negative into a positive. So this post I thought I’d go over some tips rather than entertain you with my bad puns and food inspiration stories. And now I have the perfect excuse to share the recipe even though I think the photo is less than stellar.
To start off I’m going to point out what I did right, because it makes me feel better to point out the good stuff.
It’s one week after Thanksgiving, how are you doing on your leftovers? Have you gobbled them all up, did you stash some in the freezer for later? This year there was only three of us and the smallest organic fresh turkey I could buy was nearly 14 pounds. That’s a lot of turkey for 3 people, even for my large appetite family. Needless to say, leftovers abounded.
The day after Thanksgiving I always boil up the bones and make turkey stock for turkey reinventions. Only this year, I didn’t do much innovating. My baby boy was here and he had offered to help me paint his old room to convert it to an office/studio for me. That took up more time than I planned…mostly because college kids on vacation don’t start functioning until after noon, sigh.
Anywho, I ended up a week later with some turkey and a lot of stock. It would have been easy to make a turkey noodle/vegetable soup, turkey chili, turkey pot pie, etc. You know the usual’s. But I wanted to do something different(ahh, the bloggers bane).
Plus I’ve been missing some friends from school, one of my friends, Richard (a fun-guy) is a mushroom (fungi) freak, see what I did there…! At lunch one day he told me that when he was dating, if a girl didn’t like mushrooms, it was a deal breaker for him. So I’m dedicating this recipe to my fungi/fun-guy friend Richard.
You won’t find a cream of mushroom soup as mushroomy as this one which should make Richard a happy fun-guy (ok, I’ll stop with the pun). It’s a combination of multiple recipes that I cogged together, it gets it’s wine and leek influences from Ina Garten, the dried mushroom and sage idea from Smitten Kitchen and I like how Elise at Simply Recipes chopped up her mushrooms first, making the soup a perfect cross between creamy and toothsome.
I finished mine with a crouton of stuffing. I simply cubed cold stuffing and browned it on each side in a little butter. The poultry seasoning in the crouton was a perfect match with the sage and thyme in the soup and it added that crunchy texture that a smooth soup just cries out for.
Ever wish you could get a do over? Where you could magically go back in time and right the wrong? Burnt biscuits…do over. Doing 80 mph in a 65 mph zone…sorry Mr. Policeman…do over. How about that conversation where you should have had a great comeback, but it only comes to you later. Wouldn’t it be great to go back and say that clever and oh so witty comment…do over!
I haven’t figured out the whole time space continuum, not that smart. Plus I know me, I’d be just like one of those dumb asses in the movie and change all of history by recooking my biscuits, or avoiding a speeding ticket or actually being super clever and witty at the perfect time. I’m also the goof who wouldn’t be able to go back again and make it right and put history back like it should be. Time traveling would be a bad idea for me.
I may not have a time machine or a blue police box (Dr. Who reference for you non-geeks) to take me back in time (the world should thank me), but I can cook and do recipes over and over. After all that’s how we perfect them.
I’m inviting you to climb in my imaginary time machine and go back nearly three years ago with me. We are going back to T KW’s first ever post. Oh how proud I was of that! I put my little WordPress blog together, took step by step pictures (I just got my brand new Nikon D5000 and I was photo crazy) (I also need to point out here that I thought a better camera would take better pictures, I gave no credit to the person taking the photos) and with a push of a button…err more of a click of a mouse I was published!
Anyone who’s ever blogged knows the feeling I’m talking about. My poor co-workers, I made every single person that I could drag into my office read my post. Oh and look at my pictures, don’t they look soooo good! Don’t you just want a bowl of that creamy chicken noodle soup NOW.
Last weekend I went to Bozeman, I was delivering a much anticipated microwave to my Baby boy/freshman college student. I had a lovely weekend, he showed me his room that he supposedly cleaned up for me (lets just say that I am grateful…). We went out to dinner, fell asleep at the movies, errr, I mean I fell asleep at the movies, we went shopping, antiquing and generally catching up.
I also met Janice from Everyday Healthy! Everyday Delicious! A fellow Montana food blogger, Janice has a lot more cooking chops than me…think Cordon Bleu in London and has published 5 cookbooks. Janice has been blogger for almost one year now so we had much to talk about. I think I did most the babbling, sorry Janice, you’re a good listener. I’m looking forward to seeing her again…there are so few of us here in Montana, food bloggers that is.
After a quick good-bye….boohoo…to my baby I headed out for my three hour drive to Missoula. I never leave as early as I plan, in this case that landed me right at Anaconda, MT during a smoke filled sunset. I’m not a landscape shooter and I generally don’t shoot sunsets….
Here I am in class, listening to Lindsay Adler a top fashion photographer, blogger, social network guru, Creative Live speaker, blogger, workshop maven and all around upbeat and fun person. She’s teaching us about setting up blogs, websites, and the importance of networking.
Then she gives us our homework:
Need two headshots, one that can/is cropped square
Need at least 3 images that best represent your work
Need to have the website url you want, decided on
Need to have logo/branding ready to go
Write a bio: 1 sentence, 1 paragraph and 1 longer
Write a short post on “Why I wanted to be a photographer”
The plan….class after next we were going to set up a blog/website and get our social networking locked in. Of course I am already halfway there and I’ve already written a post on why I chose to become a photographer, you can read about it in my Making Lemonade post.
When Kita of Pass the Sushi left a comment asking about tips for choosing a photography school, I thought that might be a great post. Here are my top selection criteria, listed in my personal order. What’s most important will be different for everyone.
I thought it was high time that I finally posted what I’ve been up too. My last two posts have been for Secret Recipe Club, just because I’m a commitment gal, and I love the club and sadly nothing else.
Rocky Mountain School of Photography has been amazing! The more I learn the more I learn that I have more to learn. After the first part of school, I took a break and went out to Washington State to visit family and friends; a trip long overdue.
I can’t even express how crazy my life is right now! I’m in the last couple of weeks of part one (Summer Intensive) of school and it seems like I have way more to do than I have time for. Even as I say this, I think, how many times have I said this to myself before…
Hello all, just a quicky post as I still have mucho homework and a 6 day school week looming over my head…sigh.
I can’t wait till I have more time to share with you what I’ve learned and what I’ve been cooking up.
I presented my final last week to my instructor and the response I got was:
“wow, just wow!” “this is possibly the best food slideshow I’ve ever seen”
Did you all just hear my heart go pitter patter?
The was some good constructive feed back also, I ended up deleting one weaker photo, but all in all I was very pleased. On Friday we all got to watch all the other students slideshows. It was my turn to say “wow, just wow”. There are some incredibly talented people out there. but I”m happy to say that I am the only one who did a totally food-centric slide show (one other was a restaurant kitchen centered show) and the other two macro shows were flower related.
I loaded up my show onto YouTube…errr, a first for me. It’s only 2 minutes and 40 seconds long, if you have the time I’d love for you to watch it.
Just a quickie post to update anyone who might be interested on my school shenanigans…
I can’t believe how much I’ve learned in such a short time…almost 4 weeks to be exact! I also keep learning how much I don’t know!
Some of you heard me whine mention the rigorous school schedule I have. One day was particularly rough, a sunrise shoot with a Canon tech rep at Lee Metcalf Wildlife Reserve in Stevensville, Montana. This required a 3:00 am wake-up and shoot, then class from 9:00 am to 10:00 pm!
