Cooking Healthier

Audio quote of the day:
“Because I like to eat, is that such a crime?” – School of Rock (click above for audio)

Yeah, I’m sorta on a diet. I really want to go on a diet, but unfortunately, I’m at this point where I’ve really started loving to cook. I sit at work and when I’m not drafting in Autocad, writing up meeting minutes, or walking around the US Capitol, all I can think about or talk about is cooking. I just read Soul of a Chef, which was probably not the best book to read if you're wanting to stop cooking so much.

For the first time in my life I actually have good things to cook with AND someone to cook for. I had to have the basics of oven cooking and sautéing down from when I cooked for 50 guys every week in college. Now that I’m scaling back the cooking though, I’m learning about pan frying, starting things on the stove and finishing them in the oven, broiling, making pan sauces and gravies, seasoning, and all sorts of other fun activities.

Cooking is actually relaxing for me, assuming I’m not trying a recipe I made up for the first time with 20 people eating. I like that when I’m cooking my brain doesn’t start thinking about work, bills, or any of life’s other little attention grabbers. I’m focused on the done-ness of the meat, whether the water is boiling yet, when I should start steaming the vegetables and making sure the pasta isn’t going past al dente. The kitchen is full of the fragrance of onion, garlic, oregano, chilli powder, or whichever other aromatics are being used in the nights meal.

And absolutely best of all, when it's over I get to enjoy a nice meal and the satisfaction that “I made this.” Honestly, it’s a great feeling knowing that the meal your eating might cost you 20 or 30 bucks in a restaurant.

However, it’s also a great way to NOT lose weight. Originally, I would make too much, and then it would all get eaten because it tasted good and was there. The last few weeks though, I’ve started portioning out the “left overs” before I even plate up the meal, this makes it less tempting to eat too much.

Now, I’m trying to come up with recipes that are fun to cook (lots of chopping, cooking, seasoning, etc.) but are healthier. Amon isn’t a big fan of fish, which would be one easy method for making things healthier, but she does like quite a few vegetables so I’m going to start trying to feature the vegetables more prominently with the carbs as more of an accent and make sure to use chicken and turkey more than fatty cuts of beef. I noticed that ground turkey seems to be much cheaper than ground beef so we’ve been using more of that recently.

So now you all know, my evil secret’s out. I like to cook, is that such a crime? Now I just need to balance loving to cook, with cooking healthier.

Cherry Blossom Kiss

CHERRY BLOSSOMS 2008!!!

Yes, the pandamonium that is the yearly Cherry Blossom Festival is upon us. This means that it's time for people who never come into DC to break out the bikes, the strollers, and the group T-shirts and clog the metro system. Smithsonian is once again hung with the banner, "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here (have ticket ready when entering and exiting, stand back - doors closing)".

Little bit of cheesy romance for the sheer fun of it.

As usual, head over to my Flickr account (a link now lives permenantly over on the right hand side of this page with the other links) to see the rest of the pictures from this year's Cherry Blossom Festival outing, as well as all my other pics I've posted to Flickr.

CHEERS!

Jefferson Airplane II

Another interesting shot while at this year's Cherry Blossom Festival. We went in the evening, as we've heard that's a tradition where the trees originally came from. Certainly got some photos I've never taken of the blossoms before.

I also never realized that the flight path from DCA (Regan International Airport) took the planes in such a great route. I'll have to keep this in mind for future night photographs.

Abstract Cherry Blossoms II

Not your typical Cherry Blossom shot, but then, I've shot the cherry blossoms enough times that you start to say to yourself, "Self, how many more times can I take a picture of a cherry blossom against a blue sky?". Then you answer..."Ah Ha! I'll take the picture at night when it's cloudy, and the lights from the city are making the sky a dull red. Then, when I set my white balance for the flash, it do amazing things with the sky."

Ok, you don't say that, but when you see what you accidently did while playing around with the white balance settings, and you realize WHY it did it, you start tweaking things a bit and get the resulting picture. And now you've answered your original question. "There's at least one more way to photograph a cherry blossom."