Pancake Ninja: March 2012

Some of you have been asking me about how I take pictures of food.

Well I feel highly unqualified to write this because I’m learning as I go. I read read read articles by anyone who’s work I like. I’ve read a few books about food photography and each time I pick up the book new things make sense to me.

I’ll got over the yellow eye hummus photos and what I did.

I chose a good light source with sorta north facing windows. I read something about north facing windows being good. I didn’t know why and went to where I have good light in my house and then realized it was a NORTHISH facing window!

Next I took a half used half sheet of white tissue paper and used half a piece of tape an taped it low on the window to diffuse the light that will be coming in at food level.

Recently I have done some reading about reflectors. I think it was Sommer at A Spicy perspective who said she used a tripod and a reflector. Since her photos are really mouth wateringly good That got me curious as to what a reflector was. I read somewhere that you could DIY with aluminum foil or white foam board. So I looked around my house and found this foil like stuff that came out of some packing.

I must say a reflector does a lot!

Once I’d made the hummus I was ready to build my plate. I chose a plate color that wasn’t brown because my hummus was brown. The table was almost the same shade as the hummus so I looked around real quick for some other color. I spotted the curtain on the door. Two seconds later the curtain rod sat empty.

I looked at it and did not like how dull the raw broccoli looked.

So I grabbed a few and sprayed them ever so lightly with olive oil spray. I’d vaguely remembered reading something about some food looking better when it shines.

f/6.3 ISO400 50mm 1/50 sec

I looked at it on the computer and decided that red and white checkered pattern was competing with, not complimenting at all. Even after de-saturating the red it was still annoying me.

f/6.3 ISO400 50mm 1/50 sec

So I took the table cloth away!

And I will never take the curtain off the door again.

I hope I’ve helped with some of your questions.

~PN

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I’m on a hummus kick, this is my second version of hummus I’ve made in the past few days. Never mind the other one I like this a lot better. I think it was the turmeric and almond butter that make it so different from other hummus I’ve made.

I didn’t want over powering garlic flavor so in a little olive oil

I cooked about 3 cloves of garlic

until just barely starting to brown.

In the blender I put lemon juice, olive oil, turmeric, about 2 cups of

cooked yellow eye beans and a little bit of their juice.

And the garlic and olive oil. I pulsed the blender and used a spatula to make sure everything got blended.

Then I put in some almond butter, chopped parsley and a bit of salt and blended it up until smooth but parsley still visible as little green bits.

Next I did what you should do too, grab some flat bread and see how it is.

Serve right away or make ahead.

Yellow eye bean hummus

ingredients

2 cups cooked yellow eyed beans
3 cloves garlic cooked lightly brown in olive oil
3 tablespoons lemon juice
3 or 4 table spoons olive oil
1 tablespoon turmeric
salt to taste
4 tablespoons almond butter
1/4cup chopped fresh parsley

In a blender place beans, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, turmeric, and salt blend until smooth. Then add in almond butter and juice from the beans by spoonful as necessary lastly toss in parsley.

Serve, refrigerate or freeze for later.

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Blue grape hyacinth

There’s something about blue that says happy to me.

I’ve always had a thing for blue. In fact at 4 years old I took things to the extreme that my sandwich could only be served on a blue plate.

One day my sister got to lunch before me and ate the sandwich on the blue plate my plate instead of the one on the pink plate like she was supposed to eat. When I got there I was more than upset and to make matters worse, add insult to injury my mother with her lightning fast hands slid the remaining sandwich off the pink plate onto the blue plate and said something about eat your lunch. Deep down I knew it was all wrong, you couldn’t fool me I knew I was eating a sandwich from a pink plate. I had no interest in the fact that it tasted the same as it would had it sat on a blue plate right from it’s creation.

I survived and life went on.

Later I learned other people had much bigger problems to live with in their life.

Over the last couple of days my view has been pretty blue.

Blue grape hyacinth

Scilla

Bachelor button

Veronica

onion sets.

I know these aren’t blue but they were just sitting there near the garden and they made me smile.

Camissia.

Periwinkle.

My new twig straight from Canada.

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Savannah is one of “my kids” I coached this winter. We call her “Sneaky”, and she has Sneaky on her jersey. It’s a name she got from coach Bob. If you play for coach Bob you’ll likely get a name. There was the quiet boy who didn’t say much and when asked what his name was he didn’t say anything Bob said you look like a Fred, yes your name’s Fred. The boy promptly said his name, but the Fred name stuck despite his protesting.