I made lunch for 5 days from three leftovers (from front to back): collard greens, cauliflower dal with panch phoran, and taco meat.
Lunch for a number of days
Jester King tasting
I got together with two friends and held a Jester King sour beer tasting. Which composed of…
Running a triathlon
Palak paneer omelette
This was a quick and easy omelette to make give that I had leftover palak paneer from Teji’s sitting around in my refrigerator. It turned out quite tasty!
Corney Keg Residue
Residue at the bottom of my corney keg…
Chocolate Milk Redux
My previous attempt at making homemade chocolate milk used cocoa powder. But I recently had the bright idea to melt a dark chocolate bar and pour that into the milk. So I calculated that 10 grams of a chocolate bar would be equivalent to two tablespoons of cocoa powder. I melted it in a glass cup. mixed in 60 grams of agave nectar, and poured it into some whole milk. Unfortunately, something was very wrong. It tasted pretty weak. So I melted in 30 more grams with not much of a change. You could tell what was wrong when the milk was poured out. There were still large clumps of chocolate left at the bottom.
So I tried again. This time I bought some Texas Daily Harvest Milk at Monument’s market. And I switched to using a 99% dark chocolate baking bar. But, instead of melting the chocolate in a microwave and then pouring it into milk, I melted it on the stove with milk. The recipe follows:
Pour off 230 grams of milk to create space for the new ingredients. Melt 60 grams of 99% dark chocolate along with 240 grams of milk in a pot on the stove over medium heat. Stir constantly and watch that the milk does not come to a boil. When the chocolate has melted completely, add 120 grams of agave nectar and 4 grams of salt (as another test of a theory). Place the mixture in a blender and mix it on medium for 5 minutes (just to be extra sure). Pour the mixture back into the milk and chill until cold.
This time it is more homogenized. Not completely as some particles will settle down to the bottom. Still not sure if the salt is a good thing or a bad thing…
One food photography setup
Here is my current setup for food photography using small camera flashes. Each stand is built from:
- LumiQuest ProMax SoftBox III (35.95)
- Canon Speedlite 580EX II Flash (404.95)
- Pocket Wizard AC7 RF HardShield (35.00)
- Pocket Wizard FlexTT5 Transceiver For Canon TTL Flashes and Digital SLR Cameras (229.00)
- Manfrotto 026 Swivel Lite-Tite Umbrella Adapter (33.10)
- Manfrotto 5991B Nano Black Light Stand 6.2′ (56.50)
The camera taking the picture is a Canon EOS 7D. On it, sitting on the hot-shoe, is a Pocket Wizard MiniTT1. And, sitting on the hot-shoe above that, is a Pocket Wizard AC3 Zone Controller.
Friendship
Friendship is a fickle thing somethings. I’ve gone from one of the best times with someone when they were the only one to celebrate my birthday with me. To that person dropping me as a friend on Facebook because of some imagined reasons during a surprise divorce. All within a span of 6 months.
Eeyore’s birthday party
I went to the 48th annual Eeyore’s birthday. It was crazy crowded and trying to find parking was a definite problem.
There were a couple of drum pits with people dancing and playing different drums. But it was very odd. They were closely surrounded by people watching and taking pictures. I think at least half of the crowd had cameras of one type. Maybe about 10% had professional DSLRs. I definitely felt out of place. Did people want to just dance and play music without being watched or photographed? Did they mind photographers taking their pictures from a long distance? Or from a close distance? Or at an extreme close up position? I saw Kirk Tuck there taking pictures. He posted his view about this here. I wonder if he was talking about me? I was using my Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens with the lens hood on. So it might look like a “big ass zoom lens”, but it is pretty equivalent to a 50mm lens. 70mm does not get you that much farther away from a person. Some more viewpoints about street photography are here.
There was a game of unicycle tag football going on. I don’t know what it had in common with Eeyore. But it was interesting to take pictures of.
More after the cut, including some possible NSFW pictures of painted costumes…
Tamarind Agua Fresca
I tried recreating another of my favorite Agua Frescas from the local Mexican Ice Cream store. I bought some “Concentrate Cooking Tamarind” from the Asian section at H.E.B.. I then diluted it with water and added some raw Blue Agave nectar. But it tasted horrible! Very earthy and gritty. Hrm. Maybe next time I’ll try straining it through a lot of cheese cloth…