Dance After Dark Photography

Don’t ask how we got on the subject of manly endowments, but here’s an excerpt from a conversation with my cousin Joe.

Joe: “Mine is like a bulldog.”
Me: “What, drooly with big jowls?”
Joe: “Ummm, no. Maybe more like a boxer.”
Me: “Still drooly with not so big jowls?”
Joe: “No! I mean that it’s friendly and inquisitive.”

More photos in Salem Jade’s gallery.

It’s been a long time since I’ve experimented in the kitchen. Coincidentally, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted a recipe. Amazing how that works out, eh? Tonight’s experiment was a great success. It could use a little polish, but I’m rarely entirely happy with anything I cook. There’s always room for improvement.

I started off with chicken tenders, which I covered in kosher salt, cumin, smoked paprika, and ancho chile powder. In hindsight, a dash of lemon or maybe some hot sauce would be a nice addition. I let the chicken sit with the spice rub for about 30 minutes, and then I seared each piece over medium-high heat with just a little olive oil. Depending on thickness, each piece averaged 4 minutes per side. It made for a nice, almost blackened crust. While cooking the quesadillas, I sauteed some more vidalia onions in the same pan. That little bit of sweetness topped things off nicely.

I never would have thought of potatoes as a quesadilla ingredient, but it really worked out. I had some baked potatoes that I cubed and turned into a (failed) attempt at a potato & black bean hash-thingie. ( I cooked it with a little cumin, salt, pepper, and not much else.) This was a salvage attempt which gave much better results than I expected. Sauteed onions, garlic, cubed baked potatoes, green onions, corn, and black beans (thoroughly smooshed.) Cooked together for a bit, then mixed with salsa, sour cream, and hot sauce to taste. I mixed in cheddar & monterey jack cheeses, and because of the potatoes I wanted mozzarella to make it smoother. I think that was a good addition. As with all of my quesadillas, I spooned about 1-2 dollops of the filling into the small 8″ tortillas, added more cheese, and folded ‘em over.

Served with a spinach & baby romaine salad. If I do say so myself, I’m pretty good at making individual dishes. This was the first complete meal I feel like I’ve done in a long time.

I tried my hand at jazzed-up tuna casserole again, and I have to say I liked it better this time. Things have been a little stressful around here, so it’s nice to indulge in some comfort food.

Basic breakdown:

Sauteed onions, garlic, carrots, and mushrooms with 1/2 stick of butter, kosher salt, black pepper, five spice powder, a little Italian seasoning (oregano, basil, garlic), soy sauce, and balsamic vinegar. (I used a half stick of butter because I made enough for 8 people. Of course, it turned out that there were four people, but we still ate almost all of it.) At the same time that I started the pasta, I added two cans of tuna (drained and rinsed) to the sautee pan. That gave it about 15 minutes to simmer. Once I got those going, I started on the cheese sauce. 1/2 cup of flour and the other half of the stick of butter cooked together into a roux. I cooked it longer this time before adding milk, which got rid of the floury taste from last time. Slowly stirred in about 4 cups of milk, and then I melted in two cups of shredded cheese - a mix of romano, asiago, and mozzarella. Once the pasta was done I drained it, put it back in the pot, and tossed in 1/2 a bag of frozen peas and about 4 cups of fresh shredded spinach. I let that sit (covered) with the pasta for a minute while I mixed the cheese sauce into the sautee pan, and then I combined everything in the big pasta pot.

Everyone agreed that the tuna casserole was good last time, but this was much better. I think the cheese was smoother, and this didn’t have the flour taste because this time I did it right. (heh) Mozzarella was a better choice than the cheddar I used before, and the green onions I chopped and added to each bowl as a garnish really set the whole dish off.

“Walker was killed by the pachyderm while he was walking with a friend near a lake inside the sprawling park.”

Meme stolen from Stacie via MySpace. Go to Google and search for “name was killed by” - and be sure to include the quotation marks.

So I watched High Tension with Charlie and Daniel tonight. It wasn’t at all what I expected, and I really enjoyed it. I knew it would be bloody and inferred from the title that it would be suspenseful, but I had no idea about the direction the movie took. I’m glad no one spoiled it for me. We all laughed because we expected Transporter 2 to be a great movie and High Tension to be passable, and the opposite turned out to be true. Transporter 2 was too outrageous to be believed. I wish they hadn’t gone so overboard. I really liked the first movie and expected something along the same lines, not such an all-out, physics-defying debacle.

Well, today was enjoyable. Despite the frustration of being sent home from the Toaster Tech Support job and losing out on part of my paycheck, I managed to accomplish a lot today. I didn’t get through as many photos as I’d like from Sunday’s shoot, but I did have a lot of fun showing my newly-relocated-from-NOLA friend Barbara around downtown Sanford. We met Theo, one of the (relatively) new owners of the Willow Tree in Sanford. As Theo says, the Willow Tree used to be “a little old ladies drinking tea” kind of place. Theo and his wife are German, so now it’s officially Hollenbach’s Willow Tree Café. They bought it four years ago, but I didn’t realize until recently that it had changed hands. The menu has changed significantly, and I’m eager to have dinner there sometime soon. I don’t believe I’ve ever had a schnitzel, but thanks to Diana I know I like rouladen. (The latter isn’t on the menu yet, but Theo said it’s requested often enough that he’ll add it eventually. In the meantime, he offers it pretty frequently as a special.)

Talking with Theo, Barbara and I found out that The Alley is a blues bar on Park Ave with live bluegrass on Wednesdays and a jazz open mic on Thursdays. I’d seen it and the Emerald Hen Irish Pub next to it, but I have yet to darken the doorway of either. It sounds like Sanford is finally getting a nightlife, albeit a very sedate nightlife compared to downtown Orlando.

Soon I’ll be organizing a group jaunt to the Willow Tree, which will move over to The Alley and possibly the Emerald Hen. We’ll see what else is going on in Sanford, too. Any takers? It’ll be a few weeks before I can (in good conscience) spare the cash, so we’ve got planning time.

After wandering around Sanford, Barbara and I met up with Daniel for dinner at my favorite Chinese buffet, Golden China in Lake Mary. Then we went walking, and I finally found the eastern side of the Cross Seminole Trail’s suspension bridge over I-4. I hadn’t been on that particular stretch of trail, and when I go looking in the daytime I can’t find the place. We spotted it from the road at night because it’s illuminated, so as we navigated the back lot of the postal distribution center with the bridge as our beacon I was at least marginally reassured that we weren’t running afoul of the multitude of “No Tresspassing” and “US Postal Employees Only” signs. Now that I’m comfortable getting there I’m planning long-exposure night traffic shots. At this time of year, rush hour and sunset are at the same time. We’ll see how that works out

(nearly lost my camera)

This is one of only two shots I took while kayaking on New Year’s Day. The current was very strong, and every time I’d stop to take a picture, I would very quickly drift backwards and off to the side. I had so much trouble trying to line up shots that I gave up. The fact that my camera almost went overboard once also played a part in the decision to pack it safely away.

Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? Well, farfalle is just a kind of bowtie pasta. It’s not as fancy as the name implies. So, here goes the breakdown.

In a 13″x9″ pan I combined about 3 lbs of chicken breast with an onion, a head of garlic, and four big carrots. Topped it off with olive oil, kosher salt, & black pepper, and then baked it for an hour at 400º. I’d cut a pound of mushrooms into quarters, and I started those in a sautee pan with 1/2 stick of butter, salt, and soy sauce. While that was going, I started some water boiling for the pasta and melted a stick of butter in a medium pot. To the butter I added a cup of flour to make a roux. Added kosher salt and pepper and cooked it together for a bit, then added about 2 cups of milk a little at a time to create a bechamel. I stirred and melted in a pound of shredded garlic cheddar cheese. At about this time the water boiled, so I added the farfalle and salt. 15 minutes later everything was done. I mixed the mushrooms and the very-reduced, almost gooey butter goodness into the garlic cheddar sauce and poured it all over the pasta. Served the chicken, carrots, and onions with the pasta on the side.

Now the disclaimer: My timing was off, so the sauce was ready well before the chicken. For anyone else, I’d recommend starting the sauce when the chicken has 20-25 minutes left. I intended to take some of the juice from the chicken and add it to the bechamel. Because of my timing snafu, I forgot that step and the sauce was a little heavy on the flour. Mom and Jenn didn’t complain, but I could taste the difference.

I’m a little late, but Happy New Year to everyone.

New Year’s Day was supposed to be my big kayaking trip with Jennifer. Many of my fellow fogeys will remember Jennifer as the blond, curly-haired bartender from Barbarella when the stage was still out back. We hadn’t actually confirmed the time we’d be getting together, though at one point I suggested 8:00 or 9:00. I wanted to go early, which is why I didn’t go to any New Year’s Eve celebrations. I’d left a message for Jen the night before to call me when she woke up. At 10:00, I gave up and called her. As I expected, she’d gotten in late and was in dire need of sleep. No lasting grudge here, but if I had known I wouldn’t have waited around.

I went kayaking on my own. It was too late to try someplace new, so I went back to Wekiva Springs as Jen and I had planned. This time I rented a single sit-on-top kayak and took it up Rock Springs Run. Man, was that a mistake! It was good exercise, but paddling upstream in shallow water through a series of switchbacks is very, very hard.

Downstream wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be. With the strong current I was definitely able to get some speed up, but with all of the twisting and turning I kept hitting trees. Cruising speed very quickly became ramming speed. Combine that with the multitude of sand bars, and it took me almost as much time to get back downstream as it had to struggle upstream. My arms & back were burning by the time I got back. At least I know it was a good workout.

I don’t think I like the sit-on-top kayaks. For a tandem, it’s not bad. For single, though, I’ll stick with the traditional sit-in. It wasn’t as stable side-to-side, but it felt more natural. I’ll just have to stick with higher shutter speeds to avoid blurry pictures, and maybe one of these days I’ll actually get sunlight when I’m out shooting. Yesterday was very overcast, and I got back to the canoe beach just as the rain started.