Day 279 - The Dish

Very yummy peanut chicken and noodles. It was so pretty I just had to take a picture!

Day 275 - On Tap

Out to dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants - they have the best beer selection!

Day 274 - Cookie Crumbles

My very favorite cookies from the grocery store - they have them at Valentines Day and St. Patrick's Day and I can never resist buying a pack!

Day 270 - Sultry Red

I loved the name of this wine "Hey Mambo" and loved the description even more - "California Sultry Red"! You can't help but want to buy a bottle!

Day 257 - The Pasta Experience

So if you remember back to mid December, I took a cooking class and made this to-die-for ravioli dish. I had the recipe so we were on a mission to duplicate it at home. Challenge number one - finding pre-made pasta for the ravioli. I was told by the chef at the class that you could find it at any grocery store freezer section - after calling nearly every possible grocery and speciality store in Southeastern Wisconsin with no luck, I decided to try these small flat lasagna noodles that come in a box like regular store bought pasta. I figured all I needed to do was boil them and presto - we'd have the wrappers for our ravioli. Well friends, that simply did not work - when we tried to fill them they just tore open. At this point it was probably 9pm - and our only option was to make the pasta dough ourselves. Now I have never done this before - so we were heading into uncharted territory. Turned out I had JUST enough flour to make a batch. It took FOREVER to roll the dough thin enough to make the ravioli and it turns out, even what we ended up with was much too thick. We ate very late and it was not overly great - but it was an experience!

Exposure: 1/500 sec

Aperture: f/1.4

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO Speed: 800

Day 250 - Lemon PEZ

You all thought I gave up on my project, didn't you??!! Well I didn't, it just fell VERY VERY behind in posting to my blog. So here is to catching up! This pic was actually from the day before as I must have been bad again! More playing around with my new lens!

Exposure: 1/50 sec

Aperture: f/4.0

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO Speed: 1600

Day 236 - Cooking Class

Ray bought me a personal session with a local chef for a cooking class and today was the big day! I told them the type of things I was looking to learn and they chose a dish that fit. We ended up making shrimp and scallop ravioli with saffron cream sauce - it was SOOO freggin good! I had a great time making it, learned a lot, and LOVED eating the end product! As a side note, I tried to make them at home but had an unfortunate turn of events on the pasta dough and ended up trying to make my own (never done before) with just a rolling pin. Needless to say I they were WAY too think - but such an adventure we had trying!

Exposure: 1/60 sec

Aperture: f/4.0

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO Speed: 400

Day 233 - Brittle

Mmmmmm one of my favorite things to make around the holidays - peanut brittle! I believe this was a batch I whipped up for some Christmas goodie boxes!

Exposure: 1/60 sec

Aperture: f/5.0

Focal Length: 73mm

ISO Speed: 1600

Day 202 - Homemade Granola

One of my favorite breakfasts - homemade granola with milk -YUM! I love this recipe and it's pretty easy to make - only problem is that even when I double it - it only lasts about a week!

Exposure: 1/100 sec

Aperture: f/2.8

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO Speed: 800

Day 199 - Happy Birthday to Me

Yay - it's my birthday! We had an awesome dinner of fish taco's with coconut rice and cupcakes for dessert!

Exposure: 1/125 sec

Aperture: f/1.4

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO Speed: 640

Day 168 - Apple Bistro Pizza

It was a great Saturday - started out with a brisk 8k doing Al's Run with Todd (and Mark to cheer us on!), then some yard work and a few errands, then dinner with Todd and Mark where I made the now infamous Apple Bistro Pizza (YUMMY), and they brought home made tomato soup and chocohotopots for dessert - between all the awesome food and the 3 bottles of wine - it was a fantastic night!

Exposure: 1/200 sec

Aperture: f/4.0

Focal Length: 70mm

ISO Speed: 1600

Day 159 - Winey Bitch

Not a bad bottle of wine - I especially like the pink label!

Exposure: 1/125 sec

Aperture: f/1.6

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO Speed: 1600

Day 148 - Superb Salsa

I have more tomatoes from my garden than one person can eat - so I decided I wanted to find a recipe to make some type of tomato & avocado salsa to have with tilapia and coconut rice (YUM!). So I found this recipe for tomato, avocado and mango salsa - it was one of the BEST things I have ever eaten!! I'm not sure my picture does it justice - taking photos of food and making them look appetizing is much harder than it looks!

I did some slight adjustments to exposure as the originals were a tad dark.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Avocado-Tomato-and-Mango-Salsa/Detail.aspx

Exposure: 1/30

Aperture: f/2.5

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO Speed: 100

Day 141 - Garden Fresh

It's that time of year when the tomato plants really start to produce! This is just one small bowl of the harvest I had on my counter this particular day. I liked how the colors really pop in the white bowl.

Exposure: 1/60

Aperture: f/1.4

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO Speed: 100

Day 138 - Hot Tea

Admitted cheat day. But in looking for a fun photo to post, I found this one which I took when we were out in Wine Country in July. Mark had a very hot cup of tea and I was trying to capture the steam on camera. This was the best of the bunch - not the best shot, but something that would be fun to work on again.

Exposure: 1/640

Aperture: f/1.4

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO Speed: 800

Day 125 - Kabobs

Had a lovely evening tonight sitting on the patio, grilling some kabobs, drinking wine and Facebooking (my latest addiction)!

Exposure: 1/60

Aperture: f/1.4

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO Speed: 1000

Day 122 - Bubbly?

It was a horribly humid night and my wine glass had a ton of condensation on it. I thought it would be an interesting pic to try and get the water bubbles. I ended up having a hard time getting them in focus! I take quite a few pictures of wine, so I did like how this was was a bit different.

Exposure: 1/13

Aperture: f/4.0

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO Speed: 200

Day 106 - Cupcake Sadness

One of my favorite places to stop in San Fran is Kara's Cupcakes (www.karacupcakes.com). In the very simply shop, the cupcakes are displayed under glass like jewelry - SO fun! We of course stopped and enjoyed one right away - and took two to go. The to-go boxes even had holes cut out of the bottom to keep them from sliding around. Well apparently it was not enough to withstand being hauled through the airport, a 3 hour delay, a 4.5 hour flight, and a car ride home, as when we opened them - they looked like this :-(

Exposure: 1/15

Aperture: f/4.0

Focal Length: 58mm

ISO Speed: 1250

Day 103 - Cave of Dreams

We visited 3 different wineries today and all of them were fantastic. They all included tours and this particular one included their barrel storage caves. Mmmmm just look at all fantastic wine... one barrel produces about 25 cases of wine or 295 bottles! Heaven in a cave! I was using my 50mm lens as it does much better in low light without having to use my flash. I had to bump up my ISO quite a bit as you can see below.

Exposure: 1/13

Aperture: f/1.4

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO Speed: 1250

Day 85 - Oreo

Last of the senses today - taste! So as I mentioned in an earlier post - I had to work all day today. And when we have a big cutover weekend, one staple is Oreo cookies (have you tried the mint oreos??? they are like HEAVEN)! I must have had at least 10 oreos on Saturday.... but they were also a fun subject!

Exposure: 1/6

Aperture: f/4

Focal Length: 60mm

ISO Speed: 800