Big Pot of Chili

Notice; this posting does not include a photograph of a bowl of chili. Oh I have a shot of a bowl of chili only it just does not look like chili. I may be a lazy, cheap cook but I know pictures and that shot of a bowl of chili was not something that worked without smell-a-photo. Sorry

Big Pot of Chili

For any of you who have read my food posting in the past you know that I am a lazy, cheap cook. My mother taught me everything I know about cooking. Of course we had to bar her from the kitchen and make her promise not to feed the neighbors before or after midnight. So is it any wonder that even though it is my job to do all the cooking in our home, I do not even think about what to cook until 5 minutes before mealtime. This usually means everything is frozen solid or normally requires slow cooking. Always an extra challenge, but one I can handle.

   

Being cheap and lazy I have come up with a few tricks. The frozen stuff is easy as long as my microwave is working. That and a little running water and I am good to go as long as you don’t want great taste. Lucky for me my wife is all about salads so if I do add in any meat I can always cover up the frozen taste with lots of dressing. However a slow cooking type of meals requires a little more imagination. Take yesterday as an example. My lovely, slim and trim wife decided she wanted a bowl of chili on this cold winter’s day here in Florida. Since we were dealing with an oxymoron anyway I went for the cans of chili.

Now before you start with all that “yuck” stuff, just hear me out. I used one can of chili with beans, one can of chili without beans, or No Bean chili that I keep around for my chili dogs, to this chili mix I added one can of diced seasoned tomatoes. Now while this was heating up on the back burner of the stove I grabbed a frozen hamburger patty out of the freezer and nuked it in the microwave just enough to thaw it out.

While the burger was thawing I chopped up some sweet onion and some bell pepper. Then onion, pepper and burger went into a sauté pan to which I added in red chili flake, chili power, and a shot of hot sauce. It is chili after all. Although Sharon and I are not big on hot spicy food we do like a little kick every now and then. At our age, hot but not too hot chili is about all the kick we can handle. So once the burger mixture was done I added it to the chili mix and let it cook for a few minutes while I chopped up some more raw onion and got out the grated cheese and a few crackers. I then put all of this on the table to enhance our chili experience. Of course my wife had to ruin a good thing by insisting I serve up a side of salad but if it makes her happy I guess I can put up with it once in a while. Which in this case is all the time; but I do love her even if she does eat funny things. Then again I cook funny things, don’t I?                  

Do More Than Push the Button

It makes no difference if you take pictures just because you want to or you are simply taking a few shots for a friend. Perhaps you are a professional and get paid to take photographs. Not to be confused with getting paid for a picture you have taken. That makes you a Stock Photographer and opens up a whole other set of rules. No I am talking about anyone who picks up a picture taking device and captures an image with that device. If you are one of those types of people and going to take pictures you should follow the picture taking rules. Well rules number 1, 2, and 3 for sure.

Rule #1 is simply that you are in charge. Even if you are using your cell phone to get a shot of your drunken friends in a bar on Saturday night; it is up to you to stand in the right spot and hold the phone so that anyone, even you in the morning, knows the story behind why you took that picture. It is also your job to know about all the settings on whatever device you are using. You paid extra so your camera i.e. phone can zoom in and out. Don’t you think you should know how the zoom feature works? Bottom line you have the picture taking device in your hands, right? Does not this make you in charge?

Rule #2 after you have pushed that button on your picture taking device you are now in charge of getting the image from that device and putting it somewhere where you and others can see it. In my day, that would mean getting the film to the photo lab. With digital this means getting the image from the camera in to the computer. Once your image is in your computer you can then do, or have someone else do for you, everything I used to do at the photo lab. If you do not follow rule #2 there is no reason for you to follow rule #1 because nobody will ever see your pictures anyway.

To prove my point I want to show you a picture or two that was taken 68 years ago. Yes this lost camera story has been going around the internet and you may have already seen the pictures or heard the story. But what I want you to think about today is that you or anyone else would never have seen these pictures if someone today hadn’t follow rule #2 and rule #3. We’ll get to rule #3 in a minute. For now think about a sailor from the USS QUAPAW who 68 years ago took these pictures with his Brownie camera and then left that camera in the bottom of his footlocker. My point here is that you never know how important the pictures you take today may be to someone else at some future date. The attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941 was my generations 9/11. I for one am glad whoever it was who found that camera had the good sense to follow rule #2.

Rule #3 you are in charge of getting the pictures you take to the people you were thinking about when you took the picture. Even if you only want to look at them yourself you still have to have a way to find them and look at them when you want to see them. You are also in charge of making sure that anyone else who may want to see or use the pictures that you took can do so without coming to your house to look at your computer screen. You have to know how to make your pictures available to those you want to see them in a useable format. If you do not follow rule #3 be sure to hide the fact you are taking pictures because someone at some pint is going to ask to see them or ask if they can get a copy of the shots you just took.

Now before you think that rule #2 and rule #3 is too hard to learn or get into, think again. You choose to take pictures in the first place, didn’t you? In my day there were a lot of photographers who only wanted to take pictures and did not want to mess with all that other stuff like rule #2 and rule #3. We simply had someone else do the work for us. That is why the photo labs were there. Computer photo labs are no different today. They will do the work for you if you can get the picture to them. This means you will have to do a little work after you take that picture. So remember, “The rules only say you are in charge of getting the work done,” they did not say you had to do it yourself. 

Photography can be a fun hobby. I know first hand that it is a great profession. But didn’t someone somewhere say that anything worth doing is worth doing right? If you want the most out of your picture taking experience, you should experience all the rules and be in charge. Or just put your picture taking device in a footlocker and wait 68 years for someone else to do it for you.     

Oh Christmas Tree

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, how lovely are thy branches. That’s right folks it is that time of year once again. All though for me it never felt like Christmas until we put up our Christmas tree. In our home it was always the job of the men folk to go out and get the tree, put it in its stand, and tie it to the walls so that the little ones could knock it over. The little ones in this case were my two sisters who were a lot younger than I was. It was also my job to climb behind the tree once it was up and pass around the lights to my mother who was now in charge of decorations. So with the tree in place, safely anchored to the walls because we always put our tree in a corner, and the lights wound around from top to bottom, my job was done. Mom and the girls took over from there.

Mom did most of the garland with the little ones handing her things. Although, both girls were allowed to pick out the Christmas balls and ornaments and put them where they could reach; of course one of us bigger people would lift them so they could put the decorations just were they wanted them. All that remained was the papier-mâché star on the top of our tree that mom or I put on. I say all that remained for the rest of the family because after cookies and milk all of us kids went to bed, me included. That was when my mother did her magic. She stayed up almost all night putting on the tinsel just so. We always referred to the tinsel as icicles because mom put them on one strand at a time and made our tree look like it was covered with icicles. No matter how goofy I thought the tree looked when I went to bed it always took my breath away when I came down in the morning to the most beautiful, breath taking tree ever. I always thought of our Christmas trees as mom’s special gift to the rest of the family. Thanks Mom.

There were other breath taking trees over the years other than ours. One of them belonged to my high school girlfriend. Her parents always strung their Christmas tree with nothing but blue lights and then covered everything with angle hair. That would be spun fiberglass which at the time no one knew that the hair from balding angles was harmful to us humans. All I knew at the time was that making out on my girlfriends couch, with only the glow of those blue lights through all that angle hair was as romantic as it gets for a teenage boy, or as romantic as I am going to talk about here.

Needless to say over the years I have seen lots and lots of stunning Christmas trees. There were trees reflected in water, scrawny Charlie Brown types of trees, and of course that gargantuan one at Rockefeller Plaza in New York. But the most unique Christmas tree I ever saw was at a store called The Mole Hole in Ft Myers Fl. Walking around doing my Christmas shopping one year I happened by the window of The Mole Hole when to my wandering eyes did appear a giant, upside down, fully decorated, rotating Christmas tree. Never had I seen such a site so I threw open the door and went in for a closer look. I still don’t know how they did it and don’t much care. I was only interested in the wonder of it all. So taken was I that I wound up doing almost all of my Christmas shopping at The Mole Hole that year; all because of that giant, upside down, fully decorated, rotating Christmas tree.

So take a moment and think about what starts Christmas for you? What was your favorite Christmas memory? Christmas trees aside, I know what my bestest Christmas memory is. That would be the memories I am going to make this year with my wife, dog, cat, and our little, sit on the table, artificial Christmas tree that Sharon and I both love so much. MARRY CHRITMAS EVERYONE.    

From the Kitchen; Stuff It

Are you now un-stuffed from the Thanksgiving Holiday? I hope so because I am about to stuff your head full of ideas about stuffing. That is assuming you like stuffing as much as I do and you too are a lazy, cheap, and won’t use a recipe, type of cook like me. That is not me calling you names. All I am saying is that a lot of you like to save time and money and are looking for a different way of doing things. See it is all in the way you look at it and how you present it that makes anything enjoyable or not; right?

Since I have always been an “out of the box” cook, let us do that very thing. Take a box of Stove Top Stuffing Mix out of the box and look at it. What you see is bread crumbs with lots of different spices and seasonings. The directions on the side of the box tell you to heat and add a liquid. So for all you non lazy cooks out there this tell you, you can use any type of dried out fancy bread crumbs you want and add in what ever spices and seasonings suit your fancy. For that matter you can add any type of liquid you want also. You could even try a nice dry white wine if you wanted to beef up your turkey dressing.

Notice I switched from calling it stuffing and referred to our mixture as dressing. The only difference is that stuffing you stuff into or onto something. While dressing you serve as a side dish. It is the same stuff no matter if it is stuffed or dressed. Here is something else you may or may not know. You should not stuff your turkey before you cook it because the poultry juices run into the stuffing while cooking. This means you should cook your turkey to 180 to make sure the stuffing is at least 165. A turkey cooked to 180 may be a little dry. To do it right you should pull the bird out around 155 and then put the stuffing you have already cooked into the turkey cavity. Cover the bird and let it sit for at least 30 minutes.   

Stuffing and/or dressing is not just for turkeys or chickens. There are all kinds of different stuffing’s that compliment almost any main course. Remember stuffing is nothing more than bread crumbs, something for flavor, and a liquid. Let your mind run free. Why, I even tried oyster stuffing once. I must say that even though I do like oysters, I have to be in the mood to eat them. So when I was served oyster stuffing in a Thanksgiving turkey I was less than impressed. That was until a few years later while sitting at a bar with a couple of my buddies we decided that Jack Daniels and us needed a little food. What we did was order one serving of every appetizer the restaurant bar had. One of the orders was 6 stuffed mushroom caps. The stuffing was some type of seafood stuffing that I later found out was oyster dressing. I found that I liked oyster stuffing or dressing when served with Jack Daniels, but not so much when served with Thanksgiving turkey.

With this in mind I set out to try my luck at different combos of stuffing. However you have to understand these findings are based on my taste and we have already determined I am lazy and cheap.

Starting with the bread crumb thing, I have found that once you dry out the bread, add in all that liquid and flavoring, no matter how fancy the bread was to start with bread crumbs all taste the same. So I stick with the cheap, quick and easy stuff that comes in a box.

The liquid also can make a big difference in the outcome of your stuffing i.e. dressing. Having said that I also found that while wine does add a distinctive fruity flavor so does cheaper fruit juice. Next to water, remember I am cheap; my most used liquid in stuffing is chicken or vegetable stock.

As for the flavoring I try to match it with the main course of the meal. My version of seafood stuffed mushrooms caps is made with a box of Stove Top Stuffing Mix, vegetable stock, and a can of Chunk Light Tuna packed in water. I add in the whole can, water and all, with a palm full of Grated Parmesan Cheese. This stuffing I place in the mushroom cap, sprinkle on some more grated cheese and put everything under the broiler until the mushroom darkens and the cheese melts. The shot of Jack Daniels is optional but one that I prefer.

Now a favorite of; Stuffed Sausage Burger on a English Muffin.

Start by mixing one third 80/20 hamburger with two thirds sweet Italian sausage. Mix and press into thin patties and fry.

The stuffing I make with my Stove Top, water, and some vegetables that I have chopped very finely in the food processor. The vegetables can be anything I have on hand; onions, peppers, celery, eggplant, or what ever.

Now on a toasted English muffin I spread on some homemade 1000 island salad dressing, one sausage burger patty, my stuffing mix, Cheese of choice, and another sausage burger patty. In this case the lettuce and tomato are optional as well as the Jack Daniels.

There you have it; Stuffing 101 as per little old me. Keep in mind when it comes to stuffing and/or dressing you can never go wrong. After all if you do happen to screw up you can always cover up your faux paw with lots and lots of gravy.        

From the Studio; Just Get Rid Of It.

In photography you may have heard of the rule of thirds. Most people think that it only has to do with the composition of a picture. You know dividing a picture into three parts for a more balanced and astatically pleasing photo. However the rule of thirds pertains to so much more in photography. For professional photographers it also applies to how they determine what to charge; one third going to the photographer, one third for expenses of any given shoot, and the last third to run and maintain the studio. Back in the day when we had to deal with darkrooms there were three chemical baths used to develop a photograph. Then there is my favorite, three things you should do to managing your photos.

This managing of your photos applies to anyone taking pictures. It makes no difference if they are a professional photographer charging money for your services, or just you average fancy cell phone user; everybody taking pictures has to manage what they do with the pictures they take. If you don’t you could end up like the guy back in 1941 that did not do his job and the entire world lost out because of it. To find out more about this guy, how badly he messed up, and why it was the entire world that missed out, you are going to have to come back next Monday Dec. 6 to read and see what happens when you do not manage you photos like you should. Mark your calendars right now.

For now I am going to go over the basics of How to Manage Your Photos but first let’s go over the rule of thirds that we will be dealing with today. First you take the picture; next you develop the picture; last what to do with your pictures. “Wait a minute” you say. “I shoot digital not film so I don’t have to develop my pictures any more.” WRONG.

Assuming you are not a perfect photographer like me, ha ha. You just might have to adjust the pictures you have taken. Lighten or darken, color correct, crop or even add and removing objects from the background and foreground is still something you have to do even if you are shooting digital. Then there is the filing and storing of your photographs. To accomplish this you should number each picture and store those pictures under a file name that makes sense when you want to find those pictures again. Now days it also helps to name each shot or individual picture too. Something like File name; Toys for Tots Bike Run 2010, photo # 116, name of photo; Bikes Arriving at Post; will let you find that group of photos and the exact picture you want when and if you ever want to use that photo again. Also keep in mind that most programs and/or picture storage sites now offer a database that will let you find pictures easily using keywords if the photographs were imputed correctly. So if at some future date you want to see that photo of the 2010 Toys for Tots Bike Run and wonder how many bikes showed up you can type in Toys for Tots 2010 Bikes Arriving and shot # 116 will be there.

This also brings me to my point of this article. If you are doing what I told you to do and taking lots of pictures you might have well over 100 photos to go through each time you drag out your camera. That is a lot of pictures to go fix, name, and file. What I suggest is just what I did back in my darkroom days. I just got rid of the pictures that didn’t tell or show what I was trying to photograph. Then I just got rid of all the pictures that I screwed up when I took them. As an example if you are photographing a dog and he runs out of the frame just as you snap your photo, just get rid of it. If someone bumps you and the picture you are trying to take is crooked or out of whack, just get rid of it. You pointed the camera at the sun and the picture is blown out, get rid of it. Even if you did what I told you to do and took several shot of the same subject, pick one and just get rid of those extra shots.

Can’t bring your self to delete all those unwanted and bad shots? I don’t blame you. I never could either. What I use to do was in each job file in my filing cabinet was an extra folder marked Not Used. When I switched to digital I simply did the same thing. Each event or subject has a file name. Under that file name is an extra folder marked Not Used. Even if I was going to use an on-line picture storage site like Flicker.com I would only store the good or useable shots there. The Not Used folder that contains all those bad shots I would store on my computer so only I would know how often I messed up. Bad photos should be kept a secret anyway. Like Mr. Scott said, “How else are they going to think you are a miracle worker.” Or in this case what a great photographer you are. ONLY SHOW THE SHOTS THAT WORK and lock away the ones that didn’t or just get rid of them. That is if you want to be as good of a photographer as I am. Now you know.

As for the last third or what to do with your pictures, well we did hit upon that a few weeks ago. Professional photographers sell or display their work. This may sound like a no-brainer but selling and displaying photo opens up a whole other can of worms for us pros. For all you average, I like to take pictures, type of folks you too should think about what you are going to do with all of your pictures. Put them in that shoe box, album, or store them in your computer? Maybe you want to send them to a friend or family member. Bottom line is now that you took the pictures and you fixed them, marked them, and stored them, you should now find a way to use them so that everybody can enjoy them. As a matter of fact, this article and your photos might have a lot in common. In this case what ever you do with this article? Do not just get rid of it. Read it, Store it, and Do it.          

From the Porch; Grandmothers and Grandfathers

Maybe it isn’t right to post something someone else has written, but my blog is about retirement and even though I could rewrite this and make it my own I choose to post it the way I received it. Because I am lazy and this is good just the way it was written?

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between Grandmothers and Grandfathers? Well, here it is: 

There was this loving grandfather who always made a special effort to spend time with his son's family on weekends. Every Saturday morning he would take his 7-year-old granddaughter out for a drive in the car for some quality time -- just him and his granddaughter.

One particular Saturday, however, he had a bad cold and really didn't feel like being up at all. He knew his granddaughter always looked forward to their drives and would be disappointed. Luckily, his wife came to the rescue and said that she would take their granddaughter for the drive.

When they returned, the little girl anxiously ran upstairs to see her grandfather who was still in bed. "Well, did you enjoy your ride with grandma?" he asked. "Oh, yes, Granddad, it was really wonderful. We didn't see a single asshole, blind bastard, dipshit or son of a bitch anywhere we went!"

Almost brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?

Now before you call me a son of a bitch, I promise I will not exercise my right to use my copy and paste feature to post cute things people send me ever again. At the very least I won’t do this again until I run out of things to say on a holiday weekend. Just so you know it is not that I am lazy, overstuffed with turkey, or that it is the day after Thanksgiving that made me resort to cheating by using someone else’s work; although I really don’t want to write anything right now. Come to think of it I am so stuffed from yesterday that all I want to do is nap. No, the real reason I stole this e-mail and used it as my own posting is because I am home alone.

What does being home alone have to do with anything? Well it is Black Friday and my idea suggesting, proof reading, spell checking, nagging, lovely wife is out shopping and there is no one to suggest to me what to do, or read what I have done, to say nothing about that there is no one I can yell out to about how to spell that word I would want to use if I knew what words to write after she told me what I should write about. No the only way I can hope to post anything today is to resort to subterfuge and hope my wife does not spend all of our money. Happy Thanksgiving and Good Bargain Hunting on this Black Friday.      

From the Kitchen; Put a Lid on It

Tomorrow is a big cooking day for a lot of us. Here is an idea I picked up from the pros. Put a lid on it. That is how the pros get all that wonderful individually prepared food to the table still warm and tasty. I had to use this trick myself last Sunday when my wife invited our neighbors and friends over for breakfast. Apparently Sharon, my wife, was going on about my omelets to our neighbors when they admitted they had never had omelets prepared the way I fix them. Sure enough she suggested they come over Sunday morning and try one of my omelets for themselves. She didn’t even ask me if I wanted to cook for 4 people; just committed me to cooking breakfast for the whole damn neighborhood.  

Now the truth of the matter is that I enjoy cooking and love to show off my culinary skills and my wife knows this. What she didn’t know or take into consideration is that omelets are individually prepared; meaning you have to cook and serve just one omelet at a time. Meaning by the time the last person gets his meal, the first person has finished his or her breakfast. To me this defeats the purpose of having a meal with friends. Unless of course you want 3 people to sit around and watch one person eats. That is not very neighborly if you ask me. This also brings up another point. Should I put all 8 eggs in one bowl at the same time then ladle out 4 servings or only mix up 2 eggs at a time? The things my wife gets me into.    

Getting all 4 omelets to the table at the same time, making sure they were still warm but not soggy, was only my first challenge. What was I going to serve with the omelets? When the wife and I eat we generally do not have side dishes. I had no problem cooking up a mess of grits, firing up some home fries or hash browns with or without onions, or even slicing up some fresh fruit or tomatoes. But how much food can 4 people eat? That and the fact that Sharon and I usually only have a one egg omelet with a cup of coffee; no side dishes, no toast, and of course nothing to brag about either, or so I though. Dag-nab that woman, why didn’t she brag about my meatloaf, my chicken alfredo, or even my spaghetti?

Here I am cussing my wife out when it was she that came to my rescue. I said something to her about how omelets should be individually prepared. She suggested keeping them warm in 200 degree oven until ready to serve. The pros sometime use heat lamps to keep their food warm don’t they? This got me thinking in a new direction about my problem. I remembered back in Jr. High, we didn’t have Middle School back then; I had a friend whose father would make pancakes every Sunday morning for his family. Pancakes are another meal served individually. He kept his pancakes warm by putting them into a pot with a lid on it. He was then able to serve everybody hot pancakes and sit down to eat with the rest of the family. All I had to do was put a lid on my individually prepared omelets and everybody at my table would get a hot omelet and I could even join them.

With that out of the way I was able to think clearly about my other challenges. I boiled up some small potatoes for dinner Saturday night making sure I boiled extra potatoes for our Sunday morning breakfast. When it came time to start cooking Sunday morning I cubed up my extra potatoes and fried them up with a few cut up onions. While the potatoes and onions were cooking I took out a monkey dish. If you do not know what a monkey dish is it is a small one serving size bowl. If you ever ordered extra lemon for your ice tea in a restaurant they more than likely brought it to you in a monkey dish. Now you know. Anyway I cut enough onion to fill a monkey dish. I did the same with a bell pepper, some mushrooms, and chopped smoked ham. I placed each of these ingredients into a larger bowl and added that bowl into a large fry pan with a drizzle of olive oil that I had preheated to medium low. After I got everything coated in oil I put a lid on it to trap in the moisture escaping from the vegetables. I prefer this method of cooking vegetables as apposed to just frying them. The outsides are moist and tender while the insides have a slight crunch.

When my potatoes and onions were done I put them in a small mixing bowl and put a lid on it. In this case the lid was a bread plate. My side dish was now cooked and could be served warm when I was ready to serve them. I did much the same thing with onion, peppers, mushroom, and ham mixture. They were now ready to use and would remain warm until I was ready for them. All I had to do then was to wait for our guests.

When they arrived I started my omelets while Sharon and our neighbor’s wife made the toast. I can’t be bothered with something as trivial as toast. I had decided on 6 eggs instead of 8 because Sharon and I really only wanted a one egg omelet. So with 2 eggs in a bowl I added a teaspoon of sour cream, a splash of 2% milk, a sprinkle of parmesan grated cheese, and a shot of hot sauce. Then I whipped and whipped until frothy. This I poured into a frying pan and put a lid on it. That way the center of my omelet cooks faster. It is kind of like frying and baking at the same time. Once the egg liquid gets firm I add in one large spoonful of my vegetable and ham mixture along with a good hand full of graded cheese right from the bag and put the lid on it again. I wanted the cheese to melt a little before I fold over my omelet which I then slide onto a plate and put a lid on it. This not only keeps my omelet warm but also will help finish cooking the middle of the eggs. To cover the omelets on the plate I happened to have several 3 qt sauce pan lids but I have been known to use another dinner plate as a lid. That was one down and 3 more omelets to go, thanks to my lids.

Once we were all done eating and everybody was full and happy we all went our separate ways for the day. I had fun cooking for more than just my lovely wife. The neighbors got a free meal out of the deal. Even Maggie the dog was happy, because she got two extra plates to lick up. I didn’t tell you, Maggie is our pre-wash plate cleaner. Bon Appetite’   

From the Studio: Holiday Photo Ideas

With Thursday being Thanksgiving I thought this would be a good time to give you some ideas on how to improve your holiday photos. I used some shots from my archives for a visual aid. Some are family pictures but others I took while on the job and at someone else’s house. However all the pictures were taken under the same shooting conditions as you will be facing this holiday season. You can even discount the fact that I was using a Nikon camera with a zoom lens and a big old flash. Most cameras today can do the same job as my camera did. A lot of cameras today can do better without a flash as mine did with that flood light flash I was using. At most you might have to find a wall with nothing hanging on it. More to the point is you should crop out or zoom in until you get rid of all the unwanted stuff you see in most people’s pictures.   

You’re right about this picture. It is not an in-home holiday table food shot, but it could be. My point is that if something looks good or interesting, take a picture of it. Not all photographs work and you may have to get rid of a picture or two later. But you can’t get rid of that shot if you didn’t take the shot in the first place. Table setting and holiday decorations almost always make for great memories and few people think to photograph them.

Kids can be tough, especially the small ones. Here is the most important thing you will need to remember when taking a child’s picture. “You can not reason with them.” You can fool them, lie to them, even at times bribe them, but reasoning with a child never ever works. Having said that; here is how you can get around a few of the pit falls and get the perfect photo of that curtain climbing, crumb snatching, ankle biting, loving child you have always wanted.   

Let mom hold the baby. You can zoom in or just step in closer to crop mom out of the picture. Although there are times you might want to include mom in the picture too.

Take lots of shots of the same pose. Sooner or later you will get what you want. It never hurts to be fast when shooting this way. Oh, here is hint; once they start to cry give it up for a while. The only thing you are going to accomplish it to make it worse. Wait 10 or 15 minutes and try a new approach to get the same shot. Now to really get a great shot you may have to play with the child while trying to get their picture. It can be done. Hint no. 2, when trying to get children to get their picture taken you will need lots of patients, act like a fool, and a shot or two of bourbon helps when you are done.

As strange as it may sound when it comes to photographing kids the one thing I learned was they are smarter and better at posing themselves than I ever could be. Let the child be themselves, take lots of shots of the same pose, play with them, and you might have to get down on their level to get the best shot. Come to think of it these rules also work on the big kid too.

It is now time to get serious or speak to you serious photographers out there. You may have come to this Thanksgiving dinner prepared to take some great family photos but everybody is there to eat and have a good time. A good time to them has nothing to do with listening to you tell them where to stand and what to do. So your first job is finding a way to make it fun to have their picture taken. This means you yourself have to be fun and inventive. All the while you have to remember all those things that go into making a good photograph. That is what being a photographer is about. You have to be in charge of the people who don’t want to have anyone in charge of them and act as if you are having the time of your life doing it.

Photographing Groups: First thing I do is put a chair out facing the group. I put my camera on the chair and go up to the group and move people around so they are facing the way I want them to face and fix what is out of place. I may run back to the chair once or twice and look through the lens to make sure I have them where I want them. Then when I am ready I stand on the chair and shoot down on the group. That way I almost always get the back row. You have to keep talking to them so they will be looking at you and not talking to one another. Take a minimum of 6 shots because people are fast and will turn their heads away or blink. Keep in mind that the longer you have them standing there the better your chances that you are NOT going to get a good shot. Have fun, make them have fun, and be fast.  

Need for Props: Some props are going to come in handy. Props can be anything you find that will help you get a better picture, like a chair, a foot stool, or even some pillows can be helpful. The idea here is to have the subject’s head where you want it for a good picture. Having someone lean on the back of a chair will tilt the body forward. This can be done while he or she is sitting or standing. Placing one leg of your subject on a foot stool, again sitting or standing, will give him or her a way to lean forward by having them lean out on the raised leg.

 



Having someone stand on a foot stool raises the head for a better composed shot. The rule here is that the top of one head should be at eye level of the next person. Notice the word should? Nothing is written in stone. If it looks good to you then shoot it that way. If you want you can always do it the other way too. Then pick which one works best for you.  

If a person is too short when sitting you can always have them sit on a pillow or two to make them taller.  

But most of all do not be afraid to have some fun and try a few things that you think might reflect the personality of those you are photographing. You never know when something is going to work. That picture of the family on the couch having fun in now used as the grandmother’s facebook profile picture. They did it all just goofing around and I happened to be there to get the shot.     

Joys of Getting Old

For the most part getting old is kind of a bitter, sweet victory of life. To me the fact that I lived long enough to get this old is an accomplishment in itself. Thinking back on my youth I suppose I could have written a book titled “A Wild and Crazy Guy” except somebody had already used that line. Which is one of the downsides to getting old; most of what you come up with, someone has already used. Case in point my three marriages and two live in girlfriends. On the up side my current loving wife was also married twice before. Guess I wasn’t new to her either.

Discounting all the aches and pains associated with old age, being old has lots of advantages. For one thing I don’t have to worry about what to ware or even how clean what I am wearing may be. If I miss my mouth every now and then when eating, who cares? The up side is I don’t have to remember what I had for lunch. All I have to do is look at the front of my shirt. That way I can always fix something different for dinner. Because variety is so important to us old codgers; except when we are telling stories.

There is a reason that old people tell you the same thing over and over again. You see the things we tell you are of interest to us and therefore we feel they should be of interest to you too. But in our long lives we have met lots and lots of people. It is not our fault that all you young people keep showing up at the very moment we are relating that interesting story, again. You could always just not listen. We do that all the time; and there is a reason for that too. We are trying to remember that interesting story but it is hard to do when you keep telling us that you know it already.  

Another joy of getting old is that almost everything we own is paid for, including our cars. Think how much peace of mind that is for us not to have a car payment or a lease payment. We no longer have to run around here and there to justify having to shell out all that money each and every month. We have been there and done that, so now we can take our time whenever we are behind the wheel of our paid in full car. Let’s face it old people don’t have to participate in you young whippersnapper’s rat race. On top of that we have no where to be at a certain time. All we have to do is cruse down the road with no worries about who is in front or behind us. We earned that right, right?

Although being old also means we have a few things that don’t work as well as they used to. We don’t really care because for us the hardship happened so slowly we still think things are the way they used to be. My first clue that my hearing was going was when I asked my wife a question about a TV show we were watching and she yelled back the answer because I had the sound turned up so loud. However she has her own set of non-working parts. For her it is her nose. Back in the day she would use a dab or sprits of perfume here or there on her body. She uses the same parts of her body to put the perfume on only now she uses the same method as I did when I had enough hair to use hair tonic. Anyway I think that is the reason my eyebrows are so curly now a days.

Even with all these advantages to getting old there does seem to be one or two drawbacks to this old age thing. I am talking about that extra 20 or so pounds that just showed up for no reason what so ever. No matter what I do to try to get rid of it, it just won’t go away. At first I thought it was just me and I had some sort of ailment causing me to gain this extra weight, but it seems my friends are also afflicted by this strange ailment. Perhaps it is an old epidemic. All I know for sure is that it can’t be my diet because I am eating less food than I did 15 or 20 years ago. I am also eating healthier food. No salt, 2% milk, little or no sugar, very little red meat and yet that 20 pounds showed up and stuck around. By around I mean around my waist. If you see me from the side you would think I am smuggling bowling balls. I exercise, take long walks after meals, and still the fat remains. Nothing I do seems to help. Nothing my friends do help them either. They are having the very same problem as I am. We all eat less, exercise more, and look fatter. If I had only known this is what they meant when they told me I was living in Fat City I would have moved to the suburbs.         

From the Kitchen; What Did I Forget Now?

Just what does this tub full of fired shrimp have to do with this article? Absolutely nothing at all. It is just that every now and then I like to look at foods my wife will not let me eat anymore. Now for the real article.

It all started a few years ago when I wanted to jazz up our oatmeal a little. I diced up an apple and opened a small box of raisins. I then added both to the skillet I had heating up on the stove. I had already melted some butter and dark brown sugar in the skillet. After a few minutes or about the time that the apple became soft on the outside but still crunchy on the inside I sprinkled in a palm full of chopped walnuts and continued cooking only until the walnuts were warm. All of this, what ever you want to call it, I poured into our oatmeal. It was not until I was half way through my bowl of oatmeal that I thought that this would have tasted better if I had added in a sprinkle of cinnamon or nutmeg. Shame on me, I am really good at these types of afterthoughts because I do not write anything down or follow a recipe. What I didn’t say out loud was that I would have to remember not to forget the spice the next time.   

The next time turned out to be a few weeks later when my wife suggested we have English muffins with some jam or fresh fruit for breakfast. While I was thawing our muffins, because I always freeze my bread products to keep them fresh longer, I remembered my oatmeal concoction. I could use that on our muffins instead of jam. That way my wife could have both, jam and fresh fruit. Would you believe I forgot the cinnamon and/or nutmeg again? Perhaps there is something to this write it down and do it the same way next time thing. Again I kept my mouth shut and didn’t say a word. That was partly because I had my mouth full of muffin topped with my apple concoction. I’ll have to remember not to forget next time.

This next time was a lunch time thing. I asked my wife that same stupid question I always ask her. “What do you want for lunch?” I say stupid question because I know the answer. Why ask a question when you know the answer before you ask it unless you are stupid or a lawyer. Her standard answer to my standard question is always, “Salad”. Doesn’t she know that salad can mean so many different things? There is fruit salad, meat salad, fish salad just to name a few. If she just wants a dinner type salad of onions and tomatoes on lettuce she has got to know that that salad is a side dish. What does she want as the main course? However no amount of questioning, no amount of begging, pleading, or explaining has ever done any good. All I ever get when I ask the question is her one word answer, SALAD.

It is not that I object to salads. It is just that when I think of a meal I think of something that is warm, and most salads are served cold. When I think about having cold cereal for breakfast, a cold fruit salad for lunch, and a cold fish or meat salad served on toast or crackers for dinner I do not get all warm and fuzzy. I want a good hot meal every now and than. But my very shapely, good looking, slim and trim wife would eat salads three times a day if I would let her. I need something hot. After all isn’t that part of the reason I married her in the first place. Then it hit me. I knew the answer to my always asked question. I could put hot over cold.

I went back to my apple concoction. This time I added in cubed leftover pork chop instead of the walnuts. I then poured that hot and juicy mixture over cold spring mix salad. She gets her salad and I get my hot meal. Pretty cool, huh? I was so proud of myself until I remembered that I forgot the nutmeg and cinnamon yet again. It is not just nutmeg and cinnamon that I forget. Quite frequently during the course of a meal I remember that I was going to add in this or that but forgot to do it. Of course anyone who eats my meals doesn’t know I have forgotten what ever it was I forgot because all my meals taste differently every time I make them. So how are they to know that I forgot the cumin in my sautéed shrimp? All they can taste is the Old Bay Seasoning because the cumin was only met to be a hint of flavor in the background. Only I know it was not there.

Now to the real point of this article; I never tell what I forget to add. If I was to tell what I forget to add into a dish, each time I remembered that I forgot it, then those at my dinner table would think I was a forgetful cook and therefore a bad cook. By opening my mouth only to put in a bite of food I remain a good cook in my guests’ eyes. Forget about my wife, she knows better. I don’t care how hot she is, I gave up trying to fool her a long time ago. However to the rest of you out there who have enjoyed one of my meals all I have to say to you is; “You will never know what you could have remembered if I had not forgotten to add in that ingredient that would have made the meal more memorable instead of simply unforgettable.”      

From the Studio; Now What Do You Do?

With all of the point and shoot cameras, picture taking cell phones, and web cams, there is no reason for you not to take pictures. That is assuming you want to take pictures. Then again if you don’t take pictures and don’t like taking pictures, you more than likely are not reading this blog anyway. So those of you who are not reading this, you can just ignore anything I am about to say.

However for all you picture takers and people who are reading this article I ask you this question, “What do you do with your pictures after you take them?” Most of us, or at least those who like photography, want to take that perfect photograph. By perfect photograph I am talking about a photograph that is perfect to us. That could be a vacation photo or a picture of our loved ones. Remember our perfect picture does not have to have perfect lighting or perfect exposure. Our perfect photograph is all about the subject matter. This fact is the reason you see all those child and family photography places in strip stores and shopping malls. Let’s face it; no mother has ever seen a bad photo of her child. We money hungry photographers know this and some of us have made a good living based on that principle. So even if you have a professional photographer take family portraits or family members send you professional portraits of their family my question still stands, “What do you do with your pictures after you take them or receive them?” 

Back in my day almost everybody used an old shoe box to store the extra pictures that did not fit into a family or vacation album. Of course these albums and shoe boxes full of pictures were usually shoved in the back of a closet or under a bed. The only time we ever took these pictures out to look at them was when we were putting in more pictures. Not a very good system, so some very smart people invented a computer just to answer our picture taking and photograph storage problems. Heck, if we were willing to spring for a few extra bucks they even invented a full service dark room to use right in your own living room. For all of us hard core photographers we not only could have the original picture but we could do 16 different things to that photo, then make and keep all 16 copies. Some of us even printed or had printed hard copies of all 16 of those computer dark room enhanced pictures. A guy has to show off to his friends and family doesn’t he?  Sure enough those 16 copies eventually wound up in the closet or under the bed with the rest of our unseen photos.

So here are some quick tip ideas of what you can do with all those pictures in the closet, under the bed, or stored somewhere on your computer. Start out by buying standard size pictures frames that are made so that the picture can be easily changed. Arrange these frames on your walls so that whatever is displayed in the frame will enhance the rest of the room. Then pick out a group of photos that kind of go together from your stock pile of pictures. What I mean when I say “goes together” is anything from the subject to the color of each picture. You can even have a holiday theme. As an example some time in the month of June you could change all the pictures in your frames to shots from last years 4^th of July photos. This could also work for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Birthdays, Anniversaries, or just photographs of the seasons. That way your house will always have a newly decorated feel with very little trouble. Most of all each and every time you walk into that room you will be reminded of what a great photographer you really are. Because I have learned over the years that so many of you photo hobbyists do not know just how good you really are.   

Another tip would be to personalize your correspondence with a photo in the corner.  Think how much more readable your correspondence would be with your picture, their picture, or a picture of whatever you are talking about to enhance your message. Christmas cards cannot only convey seasons greetings but also answer that always unasked question we always seem to ask ourselves, “Oh ya’, I wonder how they are doing?” With a personalized picture card the folks getting your card will be able to see at a glance how you are doing. I had a photographer friend of mine who would send  a picture of himself, under a palm tree, in a lounge chair, on the beach, with a six pack of beer and a couple of good looking models all gathered around a Snoopy type Christmas tree. It always said “Bet You Wish You Were Here”.  

Bottom line; do not simply hide your picture but think of ways to share them. People in general are visual and think in pictures. I’ll bet you can see my buddy on that beach can’t you? I often said when I spoke on marketing your products, “If your customer can’t see it, you can’t sell it. So why not show them.”                    

From the Porch; Technology No No’s

No, no I am not saying this outhouse is a technological advancement. What I am saying is this is how a lot of us retirees see technology. Mistakenly we want to keep the old way of doing things. I remember sending a letter to a friend. It would take 3 days to get there. You always had to give them a day or two to answer and of course 3 days for the return letter to get back to me. Technology gave us texting and instant messaging. Yet there are still some of us old geezers out there who do not or will not use the internet. They still want to write and send a letter the old fashion way, using snail mail. There is a reason they call it snail mail.  

Not to long ago I was watching the DVD of Deadwood, that HBO mini series. One of the first things you notice is that everybody was talking funny. Oh they are using the same words we use today but they are using them in ways we normally would not. When you first hear the actors talking that way you think that the writers of the series must have went nuts with the thesaurus. Nobody talks that way. Well you are right about that, nobody does talk that way, today. However 75 or 80 years ago they did. This means, that in the span of one person’s life, the English language has changed. As one who is a lot closer to that 75 year mark than some of you I will say that I was able to understand what the actors on Deadwood were talking about; but I had to listen real close and pay close attention.

The reason I tell you this is because our children, or more to the point our grandchildren are the ones running most of the technology we have today. They really do not make the HELP section of any program impossible to understand on purpose, like those actors on Deadwood they just talk funny. The problem is that we don’t have an up to date, computerize thesaurus to understand what they are trying to get us to understand. These young-ins simply do things differently than we old folks do. That is because they not only think differently than we do; these young whippersnappers assume different things than we do. When our grandparents had to use the facilities they put on their boots, coat, hat, and grabbed a stick to beat away the varmints. Move them ahead into our generation and think how strange it would sound if we told them that the facilities were up stairs, first door on the left when they asked us where the little house was. That just wouldn’t make sense to them. We would not think to tell them that the crapper was in the house because to us that is where the crapper has always been. That’s why the HELP section can seem so strange to someone who did not grow up with computers. The kids that write those HELP segments assume you know stuff because that is the way it always has been, to them.

Nobody is saying this learning thing is going to be easy but if you are one of us old geezers and are not keeping up with technology, shame on you. If and when everybody around you is younger and more knowledgeable than you, there is no way you will be able to relate to them or understand what he or she is saying. It is called, self imposed isolation. I think it is also one of the reasons that so many of us wind up in a home. We couldn’t keep up so we give up.

So the next time you want to do something that you thing that technology might have improved, ask yourself why are you still doing it the old fashion way. Then do whatever it takes to learn how to do it better, faster, and easier. One of my first technology improvements came when I was reading a newspaper. I learned about news web sites and which ones are for which subject. I found that I could find any news I wanted faster and in more detail on the internet than I ever could from the newspaper. Don’t get me wrong, I still get the Sunday paper delivered to our front door. I tell myself it is because of the ads but I can get those faster and more plentiful on the internet too. Maybe I still get the paper for old time sake. After all, old guy that I am I still write my name in the snow every now and then. Of course for me I do my writing in the sand since I live in Florida. Thank God my name only has 2 letters.       

Raw Spaghetti Revenge

When I say, raw spaghetti revenge, you might get a mental image of something like this picture, or I could be talking about starting with the raw, naked, ingredients and building the revenge from there. A friend once commented on how I am a palm full, pinch of this, and a dash of that, type of cook. This got me to thinking that in the 30 some odd years of cooking for myself, and others, I have never made my spaghetti dinner the same way twice because I do not follow a recipe or measure anything. Still my spaghetti is always good even if it does come out differently every time. I have always thought of my spaghetti dinners as starting out as a kind of a raw concept meal that I build on from there depending on the mood I am in or the likes and dislikes of my company. Those who have consumed one of my always different spaghetti dinners always seem to like my cooking. Those who didn’t; I can always whip up some of my famous raw spaghetti revenge which I sometime serve cold but a meal that always warms my heart.   

Back in the day, before I honed my cooking skills my version of a raw spaghetti dinner was Franco American Spaghetti in a can. I loved that stuff. I would eat it cold right out of the can not bothering to heat it. The sauce was almost like tomato soup so whenever I could I would always have Ritz Crackers with my canned spaghetti, Yum, yum.

If I really stop and think about it I probably owe my culinary skills to my, can’t cook anything, mother. She would throw a glob of hamburger in a skillet or pot and then add in anything that we had left on the pantry shelf. Back then my Dad was in the Army and only got paid once a month. I will give Mom kudos for inventiveness during the last 10 days of the month. The good news was that she did stir her spaghetti sauce pot every now and then so it did not burn all that often. Then she would pour, whatever you want to call it sauce, over boiled, lumpy spaghetti because she rarely stirred the boiling spaghetti pot. Is it any wonder I loved Franco American Spaghetti in a can?

However the idea of adding what’s on hand instead of following a recipe that requires you to go to the store and purchase several items you don’t really need or want, appealed to me. Another palm full, pinch and dash cook was born. During my growth as a cook I learned that different people like their spaghetti dinners served different ways. Thick sauce, thin sauce, lots of meat, no meat, sauce with or without mushrooms or onions, no sauce at all, and of course they want their spaghetti over cooked or under cooked. Trying to please everybody with only one type of spaghetti dish is a raw deal for any cook. Someday I am going to find the real meaning of the word “al dente”.   

So here is my revenge for all of you who like to take spaghetti, then spaghetti sauce, and then combine them into a spaghetti dinner. I will make my spaghetti my way but never the same way. However I will not make it your way using a recipe. I CAN always whip up a quick spaghetti dinner for you picky eaters. Why am I such an obliging cook? Because raw spaghetti revenge is a dish best served warm.