Cooking Experiments

Periodically I attempt to make English Muffins. Over time it has become more desperate. There is now only one store near me that sells Cinnamon Raisin English muffins, and they're more than 5o cents a muffin. Every other store now carries LIGHT English Muffins, and is no longer ever sold out. I wonder if they'll ever discover the connection. The light muffins taste nasty. My most recent attempt worked out better than before. These ones taste like English Muffins. You can even taste the Cinnamon now. However I'm having a portion problem. They're maybe half the size of store bought ones. Obviously I have to cut them bigger before they're second rising, but I keep following the instructions that keep steering me wrong. 3 inch circles obviously don't work for me. However at 3 inches they cost something like 11 cents to make. So I guess if I ever manage to get them normal sized maybe 25 cents a muffin. Half Price vs Store Bought.

SF Gardening

This winter has been killing me. Daylight Savings Time finally ending was a salvation. I hate driving home in the dark and after months it's no longer a problem. This weekend it was even warm enough to call it maybe spring, or at least a nice prequel. When I first set up our vegetable garden 8 foot pieces of wood were the cheapest, so I made a 8 foot by 8 foot box. Quickly I decided it needed an aisle, or we were never going to be able to harvest the center. We lost about a foot in the middle. I then found The Square Foot Gardening book. I read it lightly a few years ago, and tried to follow the ideas with mixed results. Thanks to the economy this year I'm trying to get the most out of the garden, so went back to all the books I read previously. I found Square Foot Gardening again.

As I reread it one thing popped out at me. Something I'd ignored the first time. It only really works if you have the grid. If you don't have a grid you're out there trying to measure distance every time you plant something, and it never really works. I went and got some cheap 8 foot strips and then decided the grid didn't really work if you weren't using raised beds. I originally had set out with raised beds in mind, but gave up buying dirt and compost before it really got more than 2 inches high. With those two problems in mind this weekend I dug out one side of the garden and dropped it in the other side. Now I have one finished side with the grid, and one side we need to buy more dirt for. It's quite amazing though how much the grid helps with visualizing the amount of space you actually have. This year I even managed to set out the soaker hose, so won't be carting water like last year, at least not to that garden. The angle of the photo makes those squares look less even than they are in reality. I ended up buying the book when I noticed all the nice charts in the back with planting dated for various plants. I've found similar ones online, but not all next to each other, and I like encouraging helpful books.

Shaped Bokeh

I should not browse blogs. Photography blogs especially. On this one http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/ I scrolled through ten pages of posts and came across how to make shapes out of the out of unfocused lights in the background of pictures. Quick explanation is you cut a shape out of paper or card stock, set the focus on something close to the camera, and zoom in until the shape disappears on the viewer, with my camera that was about 72 mm with a 1 cm across star. You also want the largest Aperture you can get, i.e. the lowest number.

I haven't quite figured out how to focus on something closeup, but I did manage to make shapes out of some Christmas lights. I suspect it would have worked a little better if I could find lights in my house that didn't blink.

This is the first shape I cut out, notice the fuzzy bits of paper on the edges.

Made for fuzzy stars. The sharper the edges the sharper the images.

More in depth instructions than mine can be found here: http://www.diyphotography.net/diy_create_your_own_bokeh and here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/shaped_bokeh/discuss/72157610869813179/