Triangle

Hey dudes. So last week in my photography class, we shot for an hour from six to seven pm on the University of Texas campus. Our assignment was to shoot geometric shapes.  Here are some of my favorite shots:

Side note: best part about being on campus again? Eating Wendy's for dinner.

Chosen

OK, so I said that I had an announcement to make today.  Those of you who read Weddingbee may have already figured it out...

I signed a contract with eHarmony to work part time as an editor for Weddingbee!  Seriously, I still feel the need to pinch myself from time to time. Working as an editor for a website that I have devoted so many hours to over the past two years? A website that I love and admire? Doing work that I love? Crazy! Here's a video the Dude took of me the day after I got the news (apparently 24 hours wasn't nearly long enough for me to calm the eff down):

Yeah, so now that's on the Internet.

So does this mean I have everything figured out and I don't need to blog about my career turmoil anymore? Not quite. This gig is 15 hours a week, and the Dude and I still have to pay our mortgage (plus my mortgage-sized student loan), so for the foreseeable future, I'll be working two jobs.  By day, I am a government lawyer—by night, a rogue wedding blog editor! But I can't complain too much—at 55 hours a week, I'm still working less than my friends in BigLaw (sorry, guys!). But yes, I do believe that I am now on the path to the career that I want for myself, and it feels really good.

Oh yeah, and I still have to figure out where my fledgling Etsy shop fits into all of this.  I'm supposed to be making oodles of headbands for an upcoming show in October, but not sure when I'm gonna have the time. This is when it would be nice if my cats had opposable thumbs.

The Pack

Well, I didn't share my photo project from last week with you guys yet because it was kind of a FAIL. The concept was to learn "depth of field," which is basically how much of your shot is in focus.  You can tweak the depth of field by changing your f-stop.

In this assignment, we were to turn the f-stop down to its lowest setting, and then take a photo of a series of objects lined up behind each other.  You focus on the object in front, and take all the photos in the exact same spot (on a tripod), changing only the f-stop (and then tweaking the other settings to get your light meter to zero each time).

With each photo, you raise the f-stop, and the focus of the photo should expand accordingly.

You see what I mean when I say I didn't quite nail the project?  First, I wish I'd been closer up on the subjects. Second, I really didn't see the objects coming into focus as clearly as I would have liked.

Here's an example of a decent depth-of-field project:

Source

The top photo has a broad or large depth of field, and the bottom has a more narrow one.

As someone who's always done well in school, it's kind of hard to be at the bottom of the barrel in a class. But I'm not getting discouraged—at least I feel like I'm learning a lot every week. 

Well, tomorrow I've got some very exciting news to share, and then the rest of the week I'll be posting about the remaining projects from my photography class.  The last day of the class is Tuesday—I really can't believe it's almost over, already!

End of Days

Told you guys I'd be back today with a peach crisp recipe (and photos!) for you. All this baking is so unlike me! It's been fun while it lasted, though. Probably won't attempt to bake again until the Dude's birthday. Speaking of which, anyone have a cookie-cake recipe?

Fruit crisp (from Better Homes & Garden cookbook, courtesy of MIL Anne)


Ingredients:
5 cups fruit (I used our remaining peaches, which worked out to about 3 1/2 cups)
2 to 4 Tablespoons granulated sugar (I used 2 since I was working with less fruit)

1/2 Cup regular rolled oats
1/2 Cup packed brown sugar
1/4 Cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp Ground nutmeg, ginger, or cinnamon (I used nutmeg! Highly recommended.)
1/4 Cup butter
1/4 cup chopped nuts or coconut (I chose pecans, my fave. I luuurve coconut, but somehow it didn't seem like it would be as good in this recipe.)

Easy-Peasy Instructions:

1. Place fruit in a 2-quart square baking dish, stir in the granulated sugar.

2. For topping, in a medium bowl combine the oats, brown sugar, flour, and nutmeg.  Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. (Use your hands!)  Stir in the nuts.  Sprinkle topping over fruit.

3. Bake in a 375 oven for 40 minutes or until fruit is tender and topping is golden.  Serve with Vanilla ice cream. (We bought Dreyer's Slow Churned, Vanilla Bean flavor.)

The verdict? Quite tasty and much easier to make than a peach pie.

By the way, you could make this dish with any fruit: apples, berries, cherries, etc. But I have to say, it turned out quite nicely with the peaches.  Gonna miss having those fresh guys right out in my backyard. Maybe next year I'll try some more adventurous peach recipes. Maybe something savory?

Smashed

The Dude and I moved into our current house in October 2008, but it wasn't until this June that we found out we have a peach tree in our backyard!  It must have not produced fruit last summer because of the drought. But this year we've got so many peaches we hardly know what to do with them!

You guys probably know by now that I don't really cook or bake a lot, but having all of these delicious peaches around really inspired me.  I cheated and bought a ready-made crust at the grocery store because the idea of making an entire crust from scratch intimidated me. But the recipe I found on Epicurious called for a bottom and a top crust, so I went ahead and made this for the top.

I decided to half the recipe, since I already had my bottom crust pre-made.

All-Butter Pastry Dough (via Epicurious, modified by moi)

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 rounded teaspoon salt
• 1 stick of butter, cold and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 3 tablespoons ice water

Whisk together flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Blend in butter with your fingertips just until most of mixture resembles coarse meal with some roughly pea-size butter lumps. It should look like this.

Drizzle 3 tablespoons ice water over mixture and gently stir with a fork until incorporated. 

Squeeze a small handful of dough: If it doesn't hold together, add more ice water one tablespoon at a time, stirring until just incorporated, then test again. Do not overwork dough, or pastry will be tough. 

Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide into four portions. With heel of your hand, smear each portion once or twice in a forward motion to help distribute fat. 

 Gather dough together, with a pastry scraper if you have one (I don't), and press into a ball. Form the ball into a disk. 

 Wrap the disk in plastic wrap and chill until firm, at least one hour. 

Note: Dough can be chilled up to one day. Let stand at room temperature 20 minutes before rolling out.

If you have one, you can use a food processor or a pastry blender instead of your hands. But I think it's fun using your hands.

Here's where I took a break to make and eat some black bean tostadas. Baking makes me hongry.

Now for the good part: the filling!

Honey Caramel Peach Pie (slightly modified from this recipe on Epicurious)

Ingredients:

• 3 pounds ripe peaches (about 10 medium peaches)
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar, divided
• 1/4 cup mild honey
• 2 tablespoons water
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 tablespoon whole milk
• pre-made crust and/or pastry dough

Cut an X in bottom of each peach, then blanch peaches in two batches in boiling water 15 seconds. Transfer with a slotted spoon to an ice bath to stop cooking. 

Peel peaches and cut into 1-inch-thick wedges. Somehow I read this as 1/2 inch thick, so mine are a bit on the small side.

Toss peaches well with cornstarch, flour, lemon juice, cinnamon, and salt in a large bowl. This is the part where I accidentally added the extra tablespoon of sugar to the peach mixture. Oops.

Put a foil-lined large baking sheet on bottom rack of oven and preheat oven to 425°F. 

Bring 1/2 cup sugar, honey, and water to a boil in a 1 1/2-to 2-quart heavy saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar has dissolved, then wash down any sugar crystals from side of pan with a pastry brush dipped in cold water. Boil without stirring, swirling pan occasionally so caramel colors evenly, until dark amber, about 5 minutes. 

Remove from heat and add butter, swirling pan until butter is melted.  

Pour over fruit and toss (caramel may harden slightly but will melt in oven). 

Here's where you would prepare your bottom crust if you'd made it from scratch.  You can go to the original Epicurious recipe I linked to above for instructions.  I simply moved my store-bought crust from the freezer to the fridge.

Roll out the dough you made earlier (though it needs to thaw for about 20 minute first) into an 11-inch round on a lightly floured surface with a lightly floured rolling pin. Because we don't have a rolling pin, we put a piece of parchment paper on top of the dough and then used a cylindrical salt container to flatten and shape the dough. It actually worked out pretty well.

 Transfer filling to pie shell, mounding it. 

Cover pie with pastry round. You could get fancy with kitchen shears and pastry crimping tools and all that jazz. I simple folded the top crust over the side and trimmed the overhanging bits off with a small knife. Brush top all over with some of milk, then sprinkle with remaining tablespoon sugar. Cut 3 steam vents in top crust with a paring knife. 

 Bake pie on hot baking sheet 20 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 375°F. Continue to bake until crust is golden-brown and filling is bubbling, about 50 minutes more. (I baked for 40, and it was plenty brown.)

Cool pie to room temperature for three to four hours before cutting into it.

And the verdict is...the pie tasted delicious, but it came out really runny, and the bottom crust wasn't quite solid enough. As you can see, I couldn't get a solid piece out. Maybe next time a little more peaches and a little less lemon juice and honey-caramel mixture? Or I could always leave it in the oven a bit longer and put some foil over the top so the top crust doesn't burn. 

We still have peaches left, so tomorrow I'll make the peach crisp that my mother-in-law sent us the recipe for. Yummy!

Consequences

My mom came over to hang out tonight, and we got started talking about babies again. She told me about an article she'd read recently that touted vaginal births as better for the baby than C-sections. I was interested to read about this subject because it seems like I've heard a lot of chatter recently about women electing to do C-sections when they aren't medically necessary.

From the article:

Researchers who tested 10 babies found those born vaginally tended to get colonized by bacteria such as Lactobacillus from the mother's vaginal canal. C-section babies, however, got more Staphylococcus, a type of microbe usually found on the skin and one that sometimes causes nasty infections.

The article also said that C-section babies who don't get exposure to the mother's bacteria from a vaginal birth may be more at risk of infections and even asthma. And asthma is something that can affect a person her whole life! The researchers stated that the majority of antibiotic-resistant skin infections occur in infants born by C-section.

I didn't have a strong opinion on the topic before reading this article.  My feelings were (and still are) to each her own. But after reading it, I know that when my time to have a kid comes along, I want to do everything I can  to prepare myself for having a vaginal birth. If there are complications and a C-section becomes necessary, then I wouldn't hesitate to do whatever is in my baby's best interest. But if I can have the baby vaginally I definitely want to.

Click here for a link to the full article.

Go Fish

I'm guest-blogging for new mommy Kelly of Blush!nk today!  Head on over to her beautiful blog to check it out (and stick around to look for the super cool nursery that she designed and DIY'd).

Shadow

Had my second photography class tonight and wanted to share some photos and a little of what I've learned so far.* We shot for an hour at the beginning of class and were told nothing except "shoot from your knees or lower." Our location was the Littlefield Fountain at the University of Texas at Austin, my alma mater (times two!).

I had to color-correct these first two photos using iPhoto because my white balance was majorly wacky for the first 15 minutes of shooting. Oops! Luckily my teacher Carlos showed me how to turn the white balance to auto.

The above photo is an example of "bad" white balance. Too much blue! I was so proud of the composition, too. Oh well.

The above was also color corrected. All I did was go to "Effects" and choose "Antique." It brought the warmth out of those blue-tinged photos. Not sure why yet, but I think it must have something to do with RGB.

The last of the color-corrected photos. Note how the water is blurry.

Now see how the water is crystal clear? If you zoom in even further, you can see the little individual drops. So cool! Carlos showed me how to do this. It involves turning your shutter speed way way way up (the Nikon D40x maxes out at 1/4000th of a second) in order to capture the water very rapidly.

Yes, I was trying to take a photo of that bird poo. But I ended up really liking this photo for some reason.

I'm a dork, but these two photos are my faves of the day. I was trying to play around with the manual focus, focusing on the tippy tops of the buildings and then dragging the frame up.

Taking photos in the sun for an hour is tiring! And honestly, kind of boring. I ran out of ideas after awhile and just wanted to go inside. I hope I get more into it as I get better.

*If you're a photographer, and you catch me writing something that isn't correct PLEASE feel free to correct me in the comments. I am just barely grasping this stuff right now!

Surprise

Anything wrong with a Saturday post filled with pink peony photos?

Yeah, I didn't think so.