Deep Thoughts

"The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face."
-Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy

Memorial Day weekend

Its been awhile since I have posted. There are just so many things to tell y'all. Just kidding; my life is as bland and boring as always. I did get to go on vacation. Hurray!!! I am going to post some vaca pics below. Don't be jealous! I went to Destin and stayed with my friend Kelly. I laid out on the beach most days except for going out on the boat with Brittany and Tim. It was a blast and a half and I am now rejuvenated. Oh and on the way back I got a speeding ticket for 24 over. I really need to by a Yugo so that I quit putting my pedal to the medal. Perhaps I just need a governor on my car- that would be nice:)

The first morning was so sad and rainy. See those spots, they aren't birds. I have something on my lens. Not Good!

The boatride wore John out. Notice the difference in sky color. Oh sunshiny day!

Fireworks for Memorial Day....on Sunday?



How many Jack Russels do you have if you bury 4 bodies? I guess 4 heads?

What a badass.

Action shot of me peeing in the water. I promise the water was that color before I got in.

Boathouse picture of a crawdady boil. Make sure you say boil the proper way.. say it with me "bo-oil"

At the Boathouse, bras and panties stay. The only thing that is kept is your dignity: yeah right.

Kelly, my fabulous host, and her beau John

This heffer didn't want her picture taken.

Recipe: Chicken Tacos with Mango Salsa

Like the forgetful person I am, I can't find the recipe for these low fat chicken tacos that I made. I thought I got it out of my Weight Watchers cookbook, but I didn't. I have no idea where I got this recipe from, cooking light perhaps. OH well I am going to give you the ingredients I think were in it and you can try and recreate this dish yourself. Sorry in advance. I served the tacos with a souped-up version of Traders Joes Fat Free Refried Beans that I added hot sauce, salt, red pepper flakes, and a pinch of cheese too. It would have been better if Trader Joes fat free refried beans didn't suck so bad. Do not get there brand of refried beans, whatever you do.

Ingredients:
For Tacos:

-1 pkg chicken breast bought or pounded thin and cut into strips

-1/2 tsp chili powder

-1/2 tsp cumin

-salt to taste

-1/2 red onion sliced thin

-1 cup lettuce- can slice thin or use regular

-1 pkg of corn or flout tortillas, depends on what you like and what you can find

-optional

- add sliced bell pepper

-add ground pepper flakes

For Salsa:

-1 mango cut into thin strips, to cut slice sides off, then make checkerboard shape with knife to "meat", then flip inside out and scrape off of skin

-1/2 to 1/4 of the red onion sliced thin

-1/2 of a lime juiced

-pinch or 2 of sugar

-a bunch of cilantro, chopped

-salt and pepper to taste

Optional:

-Jicama, peeled

-Bell Pepper

-Jalapeno

-Pineapple

-Cantaloupe

For salsa, just combine and let flavors meld for about 30 minutes or more. A great item to make a day ahead.

For tacos, heat oil in a non-stick pan.

-Add chili powder, cumin, and salt to both sides of chicken.

-Add onions to pan and let them cook for 3 or 4 minutes.

-Add chicken to pan.

- Cook until chicken is done, which is fairly quick, 5 minutes or less, if chicken is sliced thin.

-Remove from pan and assemble tacos.

-Add low fat sour cream if you need some.

AHHHH!!

I am so behind. Sorry. My lack of recipe-posting is sad and I don't have my hard drive with me so I have no pictures to post either. Wow! Well, its been a busy weekend and looks to be turning into a busy week. I have so many things planned and I am way behind. I do want to let everyone know that I will be going to Destin next weekend and some of the following week. My friend Kelly is letting me crash at her family's condo and I am so excited; I need the time off work and life:) Bella is going to the beach as well but not with me; David is taking her with him and Hobie to his parents new house on Jekyll Island. I know Bella will be pumped to go hang out with the Weese clan of Labrador retrievers, but I think she feels like the odd woman out since she towers over the other dogs. I am going to leave you with 2 pictures on my computer. One was created my moi when I was bored as heck one day. The other is one of my fave pictures of my brother and his son. Too cute.

Crazy picture

I found this picture here. I am not sure what to say about this photo, other than to point out how disturbing it is that the daughter is fondling her dads stuffed junk. What in the hell is wrong with these people.

No recipe today

Forgot my written recipe today so y'all are all forced to suffer through more random photos. Try not to cry will ya'. Not a lot for you today; no rantings, no ravings, no Jew jokes, no nuthin'. I am just in a stoic and unimaginative mood. I have class today... should be good though my pictures are not all that great. Again, it is hard as hell to get good pictures when shooting subjects all over a park and having your setting be on manual. I would take some what I thought were great shots only to see that they were completely under- or over-exposed. Its enough to make me want to cry. I'll get over it. Oh and FYI my lazy ass has barely worked out in the past 2 weeks so if you see me out and about call me a fatass and tell me to get to the gym pronto. Thanks a bunch!

Not part of the group homework but I love Sauly peeking out between Matt's legs. What would be better is if I hadn't cut Matt's head off, but I was working with a 50mm prime lens that has no zoom in/out function so I had to take the shot as soon as he did it.

One of my slowww shutter speed pictures. I sort of like it since the car in fronts lights make the car behind give the weird effect of moving but I think the picture is way too busy.

I like this picture of "Running Man" as I prefer to call him. I especially like that his veiny leg is close to crisp (would be better if it was fully crisp). I am going to have to work on my blurred action shot and I really need to use a tripod at all times. I am way too shaky to hold the camera still for long.. long being 80th of a second or more.

This picture is also not for class. I like it because of the extreme graininess which i made more pronounced in photoshop. I don't like it because, again, I was using a 50mm fixed lens.

This shot is showing long depth of field (f14). Not a favorite, but I really like Tracy's expression. It must have been something Sarah said.

Another depth of field shot, this time showing a much shorter depth of field (f4.5 or so), which you can tell by the blur out of Theo in the background. I had some other funny ones of them to with Tracy in front and Theo blurred but they were too close together to really make the photo work so being the impulsive person I am I deleted it without thoughts towards the future. Oh and check out Tracy's rock.. her and Matt are tying the knot soon. Saul will no longer be the bastard child that he is at the moment.

One last depth of field shot. This was taken with the 50mm fixed lens again at a really low ap setting, f 1.8, which made even some of Rory fuzz out.

Hilarious Flickr Groups

So I have a flickr account but right now I only have a few pictures on it. To find me search in people and enter moke076 for my screen name. I will hopefully post all of my pics as soon as I feel like dropping $25 for an unlimited account. Right now I am feeling cheap towards flickr so I am just going to wait out the only-allowed-to-download-a-certain-amount-of-megs-per-month free account, but you never know when I am feeling un-jewish and will pay so I can begin adding all my pictures. Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I was talking to some friends about how one of my favorite blog sites mentioned some crazy groups on Flickr. I belong to some groups but they are ones that fit in with my pictures' themes so they can get more exposure. For instance some of my groups are Nikon D80 Users, Nikkor 50mm f1.8, and, of course, Dog Days. I do not, however, belong to groups like Granny Panties or Clowns Eat People nor would I have ever known about these groups had List of the Day not posted an enlightening post on hilarious Flickr groups. I ask you all to please go and check out this post. It is rather funny and oh so disturbing.

More Dog Pictures

It seems as though I am turning into my dog parks historian. It is one place I know I can work on my photography skills so I bring the camera a lot with me. I then feel obligated to give the owners their pictures so I feel I am now the sole provider of cute action shots. Its fun though I and I am working on manual mode in my cam so its teaching me a lot about putting setting aperture and shutter speed to get the best picture. The problem is trying to get a good and well laid out shot of a moving dog. Well, composition can wait until I get the basics down. Funny how much harder it is shooting in full manual vs aperture or shutter speed priority or program mode which I LOVE!

Full speed ahead

Someone needs to control their foot fetish

Tag, your it

Look at that concentration

Resting

Also I wanted to let you know that I got a Flat Screen LCD TV. I am pumped!! No, I did not get cable. I knew you were going to ask that. I did however get a fabulous flat antenna so I hope that baby pulls me some mega channels. If not, I will survive. It will be sort of odd if I get more channels because I am so used to watching "that's so raven", "Hannah Montana", and "the suite life of zac and cody" while getting ready on Saturday mornings. Speaking of Saturday mornings, I met up with my bro and nephew this past Saturday morning and we took a fast jet to the plains of the Serengeti and the wilds of China. Isn't it grand to be jet setter like yours truly? I will post pictures of our grand and extremely short trip either today or tomorrow depending on how the mood strikes. I also wanted to let you know that I am sorry for the lack of recipes lately. My goal was 2 to 3 a week and it looks like I am not going to get anywhere near the quota. It's because I have been a lazy sack o' shiz these past 2 weeks and have been eating out almost exclusively. So now cooking=no pictures= no recipes. I am going try and stop this vicious cycle though so I can hope to provide you with some great new recipes soon. Also in the works is Dip Week 2009. Where I will be throwing out a dip recipe out at you, one per day, for a week. You're pumped right. Well mark it on your calendars but that is coming soon. Also had a fabulous meal at Fontaine's in the Highlands yesterday. Ate some deeeeelicious and huge raw oysters, freshly fried okra ( which was in dire need of some seasoning), and perfectly made hush puppies. This food was topped off with some Yuengling, the hot new cheap beer on the Atlanta beer scene. It's no porter or stout but it is cheap and tasty.

Crappy Blogger

I have been a sort of crappy blogger this week. I have had no time to do anything it seems. I did go to Photography class yesterday and learned some new stuff I didn't know. I am going to be doing my homework this weekend and will post the results next week. I will also give y'all a couple of new recipes next weekend. I am now going to leave you with some soothing nature shots so relax, turn up the bird call cd, and focus. Have a grrrrrrreat weekend.

*All images were taken at Sope Creek in Marietta

The Tudors

My dad loves history. He only reads non-fiction books about historical events. He loves traveling to places and reading every historic plaque in sight as well as seeing every historic site that place has to offer. I distinctly remember going to Canada with my dad, mom, and brother and my dad dragging us from the oldest church on this side of the hemisphere to the largest church, to the church with the most windows, to the church with the tallest steeple etc. The fact that my dad drug us to all these places is ironic since we are jewish. I dont know of many jews who go on Church tours, but my dad will gladly fill that niche. My brother and I would whine, bitch, and complain but to no avail. We still saw every intriguing church that Toronto and Quebec City had to offer.

Fast forward to high school. History was my least favorite subject.

Lemon Spaghetti recipe

I told you I would hook you up with this recipe. I had been meaning to make this recipe ever since I bought Giada De Laurentiiss’ cookbook last year, but it seems that I never had fresh lemons or I always would use them before I got to this recipe. For once, I bought a lot of extra lemons and had all the other ingredients on hand (rare for me) so I decided to try this recipe out. The one thing I didn’t have was spaghetti but I did have a package of rotini and I figured that would be good to hold the sauce. The one thing I forgot to do when making this recipe was reserve some of the pasta water. Oh well I think it turned out pretty well anyways.

This recipe is very quick and takes very few ingredients which is always nice. Be sure and use the freshest ingredients because of the simplicity of the dish. If you use less then a pkg of pasta then tone down the rest of the ingredients. If you don’t like overly acidic foods, then either use less lemon juice or don’t make this dish.J This would be a great dish to accompany fish or just throw some cooked shrimp or chicken in with it. Good eats my friends!

Ingredients
-1 pkg of spaghetti or any noodle you prefer
-2/3 cup olive oil
-2/3 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Regiano
-1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (about 3 lemons)
-Salt and freshly ground black pepper
-1 tablespoon lemon zest
-13 cup chopped fresh basil leaves

Directions
-Cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally.
-Whisk the oil, Parmesan, and lemon juice in a large bowl to blend.
-Drain the pasta, reserving 1 cup of the cooking liquid.
-Toss the pasta with the lemon sauce, and the reserved cooking liquid, adding 1/4 cup at a time as needed to moisten.
-Add salt and pepper to taste.
-Add lemon zest and basil and toss.

Braves Game

Bark in the Park @ the Braves Game. Always fun, much cooler this year than last.

Eating through the world

Actually, I was eating through Atlanta. It was fun, but I gained about 5 lbs or so. Never mind, I would prefer to say I gained 2.3 kg, it make me sound less fatty. I think I am going to start telling people my weight in kilograms too because it makes me sound so tiny. For instance, 150 lbs = 68 kg. Isn't that awesome? Ah, what we ladies do to hide our real weight. Too bad mass converters are all over the Internet.

Getting back on subject now: my weekly eating went as follows (I would just like to add that I ordered multiple dishes for you people so that you (and I) could get a full flavor of the regional cuisines eaten. I still have leftovers in my fridge because of this) Say Thank You Stephanie:

-Mexican chicken soup at Caramba Cafe on Monday (no Pictures)

-Vegetable plate at Cottage Ethiopian Restaurant (no Pictures)

-Lemon spaghetti from Giada's Italian cookbook (recipe this week)

-Chicken Rendang at Hot Spice Malaysian Restaurant

-Hae Mool Paejon (seafood pancake), Bibimbap (rice/vegetable dish), and various free accoutrement's at So Kong Dong Korean (no jokes please;))

-Stir-fried Peruvian chicken and seafood ceviche at Machu Picchu Peruvian Restaurant

-Falafel sandwich and hummus appetizer at Mediterranean Grill

All in all, a delicious and pricey week. I think I will be eating/cooking in for the next month. Hope y'all enjoyed my around the world eating adventure. This should inspire you to get out and try some new regional cuisines.