What's for dinner? Sat 13th of October

[Snip 13]

Thank you so much for the Birthday wishes all Dinner was lovely! Had some grilled calamari to start with a scrummy eisbein with sauerkraut for main and chocolate fondant for dessert! Brought home 3/4 of the eisbein for the kids though and shared the fondant with hubby. Way too much for me to eat alone lol!

 

[vitauta]

Twelve hours. Good time, Steve.
I need to replenish my stash of freezer butt soon.

My dinner.
I have a little piece of steak leftover for tomorrow's breakfast.
I am feeling very garlicky right now

it never fails, pac--here i am once again, begging at your table-side...and just look at those sprouts, yummm

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

Greg, That's pretty much how I cook fish too. Seasoned flour, shake it by their "tails" and pan saute. Plus, for me, that's one of the few ways I can make fish turn out without overcooking and still allow the delicate flavor to shine. Speaking of Shine, your photography has leaped ahead in a big way. Your plating looks terrific. Screen licking good !

Thank you so much for the compliment! Not to sound smug but as soon as I saw my results I realized I had taken a quantuum leap forward. Yesterday I hit a dollar store plus Pier 1 Imports and bought a selection of twosie dish sets, plus a nice white serving dish (used in my jalapeno popper topic), plus a piece of white foam board at the dollar store to get a neutral background. It provides a large enough space that it excludes extraneous objects so I don't have to twist around to get a shot without unrelated items intruding.

As far as plating, I've most often cooked just for myself and usually skip the fancy stuff (parsley twig, lemon slices) because there's nobody else to appreciate it. I've realized however that if I want to shoot Internet quality photos to accompany my recipes I'll have to put a lot more effort into plating, and you're looking at my first attempt to improve plating above.

It will be fun in the coming days and weeks to use my other dish sets (if pairs can be called sets), the others being more colorful. In my earlier shots I was using an 8" clear glass plate; the white plate pictured above is 10-1/2" so now I can get the food on the plate without stacking it and have some reasonable room to work with plating.

It's sure a lot more work to not only cook dinner but shoot progressive shots (blog style) although I did that only on the poppers recipe yesterday afternoon, and then plate it aesthetically and shoot it, all the time while it's getting cold and I'm getting hungrier by the minute! It takes self control to shoot it instead of just eating it!

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

Nice presentation and photography of your talapia dish. One of my favorite cooked fish...

Thank you for the compliment! As I said I'm trying harder now. I can't advance to the next level until I get the plating and shooting to improve. I'm looking forward to future efforts in that area. It's fun to have a challenge!

Actually, just west of Frazier Park, on Mount Pinos. Being October, I wasn't really prepared for the cold so I packed up and headed down the mountain at 3am this morning. A bunch of die hards spent the entire night though.
Here's a pic. The crowd was smaller than usual.

My earlier post was in error, I spelled Cerro Noroeste wrong. On your way to Mt. Pinos you take a right instead of a left when you reach the "Y" and drive through Pine Mountain Club and hang a left immediately after leaving PMC, then you completely circle Mt. Abel on the way up before you reach the top. Mt. Pinos is about 5 miles SE of Abel and you can see each from the other as one of the biggest nearby mountains. IIRC Pinos is a bit higher in elevation.

I've camped at Abel many times over the last few decades during the ham radio worldwide emergency test and contest weekend, going with my ham radio friends. I'm no longer involved in the hobby but I still went last year, and even in June, even at a lower elevation, it can get quite chilly up there. BTW if you visit either of these mountain tops in late June you'll find antennas strung up all over the place!

 

[pacanis]

it never fails, pac--here i am once again, begging at your table-side...and just look at those sprouts, yummm

Yaaay... another sprout lover
Thanks, Vit.

 

[GotGarlic]

That sounds pretty darn cool.. my 10 year old son is in a gifted program sponsered by NASA ... Hes driving me crazy to take him to the mountains to use his telescope..and watch shooting stars..

Have they told him about SkyWatch? It's a program you can download and it will tell you when space satellites are going over your area of the country. We have a friend who runs the planetarium at our town's children's museum; he uses it to wow people: "Watch right there - the space shuttle's about to fly by! There it goes!"

NASA SkyWatch

 

[Kylie1969]

That looks wonderful Greg

I got some better fish than the swai I had a few nights ago, I got talapia this time, not quite the sole I was looking for but definitely a step up from swai. I think the swai would be great for battered recipes and like that but IMO are just not suited for more delicate recipes. The talapia I got tonight wasn't ideal either--they looked thinner in the display case but when I got home I discovered they were still thicker than ideal.

I made the Meuneire recipe again tonight--just flour the fish and saute them in butter, then set them aside and make a sauce a la minute from the pan juices plus lemon juice, and pour that over the fish to sauce them/it. I had brown rice and asparagus with.

In a few days I'm going to go fishing (at some better seafood markets) and find some real sole and make this recipe right.

I went on a mad/crazy shopping trip and hit BBB, a dollar store and Pier 1 Imports and scored a whole bunch of stuff including props to further my food photography, and I think it worked! Here's for starters:

 

[Kylie1969]

Actually, just west of Frazier Park, on Mount Pinos. Being October, I wasn't really prepared for the cold so I packed up and headed down the mountain at 3am this morning. A bunch of die hards spent the entire night though.
Here's a pic. The crowd was smaller than usual.

You certainly are a die hard RF...looks like a good spot!

 

[love2"Q"]

Have they told him about SkyWatch? It's a program you can download and it will tell you when space satellites are going over your area of the country. We have a friend who runs the planetarium at our town's children's museum; he uses it to wow people: "Watch right there - the space shuttle's about to fly by! There it goes!"

NASA SkyWatch

Thanks.. i will check it out..