Technology! Upgrades!
Happy New Year!
I’m wired and ready!
Upgrades and saving money with them, along with family and friends closed 2015 on a high note for me.
The past, is past. What’s coming is what will be.
Her First Father’s Day
What a special day.
I was able to meet up with Aaron, Brittney and Madilynn on Father’s Day, June 21, 2015 at Lamar Park in SW Grand Rapids.
Madilynn was reaching her sixth month of seeing this big old world with her mom and dad.
With some help from a friend and Madilynn’s noisy toys, we were able to get some great expressions from her.
It was also Aaron’s first Father’s Day. 
Here are some of our favorites from the photo shoot hosted on my flickr page.
-Dan
Don’t Blink
Things are going very quickly and I am finding that I have a limited amount of time on my computer.
I just moved my older blog over here to my server that my friend Mike is helping me get rolling.
Be right back…
Five Bandaids
It’s currently the end of my work week.
I light a few candles after work while I’m washing up and just realized I’ve been sticking a used bandage on my shelf each day when I take it off. Call me a slob if you must. I’m only using them as cushions and to keep my nail clean but I don’t want them to get wet while washing or everything gets all wrinkly.
Looks to me like I’ve got another two months before it may be closer to normal.
I don’t think it is ever going to get back to its beautiful birdlike appearance. It may enhance how I could “give the bird” for the rest of my life though.
Forward ho.
-Dan
Hullo? NE1 Home?
It appears a long time has passed since I last posted here on my WordPress site.
I’ve been busy with changes and challenges and a lot has been going on.
I HOPE to get this zipping along again very soon. I had an accident on August 21, 2014 and have a healing broken ‘distal phalange’ on my the middle finger of my right hand. I’m off work for a few more weeks and watching the bills begin to come in. So, more challenges.
Since I haven’t posted anything in over a year, I’m a bit rusty on giving my posts some pizazz and this to me is more of a refresher posting and I can see if this still works… I’ll be back.
Peace.
-Dan
Up or Down?
Landscape or Portrait? Telling Your Story in Photos.
While visiting my mom and sister one evening, sis mentioned that she had been making dog biscuits for her dogs. She only has two of them but they’re big enough to eat for six being German Shepherd, Husky, and Rottweiler mix. So she makes them herself to save money. She’s got a couple of cats too but that’s a different story.
I used to think of my sister as Ellie May from the Beverly Hillbillies if any of you remember that show and her love for critters.
While taking some close-up photos of her freshly baked dog biscuits, my mom said “Let me take your picture Dan.” So I smiled for her to take my photo.
I noticed how she was holding her camera and suggested that she turn her camera upright and put my head toward the top and try it again since I was standing upright.
So she obliged and took another one.
Good job mom. What a handsome son you have. I even noticed that you are bracing both of your arms against your body for stability.
Later as they were looking at her photos on her camera, I started taking photos of them looking at the photos and I had to remind myself to rotate my camera to capture the subject.
As a horizontal, I could only see them and not what they were looking at. They could have been dissecting a frog or playing cards for all anyone could tell.
Every picture tells a story right?
Some of these photos don’t tell the story as clear if the entire subject isn’t in the frame.
I was sitting on a couch opposite them and had a fixed length lens on so I couldn’t move back any further. Simply rotating the camera tells the story more completely.
I am aware that many people are using cell phone cameras now and they are more naturally shooting vertical photos of vertical subjects because of how the phone is held.
I thought I’d just mention this in passing to think before you shoot. Or in this case, re-shoot after if you can because you ARE taking photos to tell a story aren’t you?
I Have a Dog
Well, let me correct that. Onc
e in a while I have a dog. A friend of mine asked me if I could take care of his dog while he went on a few short vacations this summer. So for the third time this year I’ve watched a small dog named Winston He’s fixed, chipped, and a good protector of his home.
Many of you have dogs and I’m impressed with all of you that have chosen to provide a home and love for them. I’ve never had a dog of my own due to the attention that they need. As for the other common household pet of the feline persuasion, I’ve had numerous in my lifetime. Cats are a little more self reliant. Give them food, water, and a litter box and they are fine for a couple of days if necessary instead of only eight to ten hours.
This little guy gets very excited and looks at me with a twinkle in his eye and smile on his face when he sees his leash and knows it is time to go out. He jumps excitedly a foot in the air in anticipation of going outside. But he isn’t one that likes to be let out alone in his fenced in back yard to do his duty and always expects me to go out with him. When the door is first opened after working all day and he has to go out, he greets me at the door and runs out about three steps, turns around and waits for me to come with him or he will try to come back inside with me while I am putting my stuff down so I get to go right back outside with him while he takes care of business.
When I took him for a walk the other night he sniffed, stopped, and ‘marked’ every spot where other dogs left theirs. I didn’t know he had that much in him.
He does not like walking in the rain to do his duty, and neither do I like taking him out in the rain if I don’t have a cap on my head. When we had to go out in the rain, he avoided the grass. He is so short the wet grass drags across his belly and he seems very uncomfortable so he stays on the sidewalk. Nevertheless, he had to do his duty and eventually he did what we went out for.
The day after the rain, I brought him in the back seat of my car without a pet carrier and he happily rolled around on my back seat and then enjoyed the view and air as we headed to the park for a walk. The next morning my car smelled like ‘wet dog.’ So I bought an edible air freshener. A pizza; and brought it home in my car to help cover the smell. The only problem then was my car smelled like a wet dog sat on a pizza for two days.
I really like the adjustable length leashes available when I take him out because when we are walking along I can let him out to sniff a tree or hold him close to my side so pedestrians, joggers, and bikers can pass by. As we strolled through Riverside Park and using that leash a biker came zipping past from behind us and he began barking and chasing her before I could stop his. She yelled at me and said. “That’s not funny!” Well, I was just as surprised as her and hollered out, “Ma’am I’m sorry but I wasn’t laughing. I’m just dog sitting and I didn’t know he would do that.” Good dog. Guarding the world from those mean bikers.
As for companionship, Winston will snuggle right next to me as I watch television, read, or work on my laptop. I’ve slept at my friend’s house a few times while he was gone and Winston loves the company. As for sleeping next to me, it just doesn’t work well, we both move around too much so neither of us get much sleep so he ends up getting his mat on the floor and I get the couch by myself. Oh, he snores a bit too.
Feeding time has been fun. I was told to just keep his bowl filled which is contrary to how I’ve taken care of other people’s dogs. Another couple who I dog sat for earlier in the year have two dogs and they feed their dogs in separate rooms with one scoop of food a day. Their dogs are both in great shape. So Winston has gone on a diet whenever I have watched him. Less in, less out, less chance of having doggie bombs in the living room when I get back from work at the end of the day.
If I ever do get a dog, it will be one that can use the toilet like us grown humans do. I am not fond of picking up their bombs from lawns and house floors and carrying poop around in a small plastic bag.
I still don’t think I can have a dog of my own because of the attention that they need. I like the companionship that they provide but my life hasn’t settled down yet where I can have one full time. So, again, a tip of my hat to those of you who do have a place for probably the most popular household pet in the world. Cheers. Here’s a doggie treat for your friend.
Marinara, Pizza Sauce, Gravy.
Here’s a savory sauce that I make once in a while. I can make as much or as little as I want. This takes as little as a half hour to make but needs continuous attention on the stove top so it doesn’t scorch. The longer you cook it the sweeter it gets. My mom used to cook it on the stove top for up to six hours. I still have her recipe and others in my files. Another one that I have is from Madonna’s step-mother Joan who has some nice marinara that I enjoyed with her a couple of years ago up at Ciccone’s near Traverse City during an LPVA wine touring weekend but that’s another story.
The smallest amount that I make is with one can of diced tomatoes and a small can of tomato paste. This makes about two cups of sauce and the leftovers (if you have any) can also be refrigerated for up to a week or frozen in a ziplock bag if you want to reheat it later in a sauce pan or add to a new batch.
Modify your marinara / pizza sauce / gravy to taste with different amounts of garlic and onion after you try it this way. Sometimes I add cooked, drained ground beef or Italian sausage, homemade Italian sausage and ground beef meatballs that I bake myself, or sliced and cooked Italian sausage links.
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Recipe for the sauce (The smallest amount that I make:)
Two Tablespoons of Olive oil.
One 12 oz can of diced tomatoes. I will use three freshly chopped tomatoes if I have them.
One 6 oz can of tomato paste.
A tablespoon of dried Italian herbs. Fresh, finely minced basil will enhance this if you have it.
Salt and a bit of black or white pepper to taste. Take it easy on the salt and pepper.
One 6 oz can of tomato paste.
A tablespoon of dried Italian herbs. Fresh, finely minced basil will enhance this if you have it.
Salt and a bit of black or white pepper to taste. Take it easy on the salt and pepper.
One or two bay leaves (do NOT eat the bay leaves though or you’ll slice your throat and insides.)
Cook on LOW, stirring about every ten minutes. Stick around the kitchen and pay attention or you’re going to be sticking around a lot longer trying to get scorched sauce out of your pan. I also recommend a spatter screen on top or you’re going to have a lot of red spots on your stove top and clothes or face. I use a stainless steel stick blender by Cuisinart to liquefy the sauce to hasten the cooking process.
If you cook this for a long time, have a cup of water handy and a bit more olive oil because it will thicken and keep cooking down add a little of each as necessary so it doesn’t thicken too much. If it goes brown, you went too long.
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Garlic butter for toast: Place a half stick of butter in a ceramic or glass dish on your stove top with a bit of garlic powder in it when you start cooking and it will be melted by the time you need it on the griddle. You can apply it with a basting brush or just pour some on the griddle and place the bread in the hot butter.
Bread / pasta options: I use French bread, sliced Jimmy John’s Day old, or other medium sized bread sliced to make toast. I and my family have also used small flour tortillas toasted slightly with olive oil or garlic butter (a teaspoon of garlic powder mixed with a half stick of butter) on a griddle or 9 inch saute pan. Makes for some super thin crust pizza.
For pasta, get a 4-5 quart pot or pan of boiling water and add your pasta and cook about 8-10 minutes and strain and rinse in your sink with cold water to stop the cooking process and you won’t have sticky pasta. You don’t have to cool it completely, just stop it from cooking by getting the boiling water off of it.
Topping options:
Finely shredded Mozzarella cheese, mushrooms, onions, small diced tomatoes, pepperoni, etc.
Cookware: I can’t emphasize enough that you have to use low heat / flame for both making your sauce and toast.
8 – 10 inch skillet or sauce pan. Cast iron or stainless steel. I do not use or recommend non-stick pans. Teflon is not a healthy option in my opinion.
8-10 inch griddle or comal, or a two burner griddle for toast.
Stainless steel stick blender for using in hot liquids.
Bamboo, wood, or stainless steel utensils. I have used silicone spatulas and tongs. The spatulas work well for scraping the sides of the sauce pans.
Keeping this from scorching in cast iron or stainless steel is worth the effort. I have done my sauce on stove top with a 9 inch cast iron skillet with great results. I have cooked the ground beef and minced onions in cast iron, drained on a paper towel and let it set for a half hour while I began the sauce and added it right back into the pan after the tomatoes were cooked down.
I use a cast iron griddle on low flame for making the toast also. Using a clear glass lid to place over the bread will help to melt any cheese topping by bringing the steam on top. Again, this is where you need to pay attention to what you are doing so STBTO (Shut the boob-tube off) and enjoy some music. After toasting your bread in a drizzle of olive oil and / or garlic butter, top it with your sauce with a spoon or small ladle, shut off your flame under your griddle, add toppings and cover for five more minutes while getting your serving dish or plates ready.
Recap abbreviated directions with more notes, tips:
On low heat, place diced tomatoes and tomato paste in pan with spices and olive oil and stir frequently for 30 minutes. If your bread isn’t sliced or cheese isn’t shredded, this will give you something to do while the tomatoes cook down. if you have a large griddle (two burner) you can make almost all of your toast at once. The smaller the griddle, the more work you have cut out for yourself. You can begin toasting your bread with a light drizzle of olive oil or garlic butter. If your butter browns quickly as it melts, your griddle is too hot. Once you’ve made your toast and spread on the sauce, add the cheese and any other toppings you desire and cover for a few more minutes for the cheese to melt. I use a stainless steel stick blender by Cuisinart and liquefy the diced tomatoes to about 90 percent sauce and leave a few chunks in there. I’ve used minced garlic but isn’t appealing to the eye so I stick with garlic powder.
Quickest time pan to plate: 30-45 minutes. If you consider this compared to cooking a TV dinner with their fresh conveyor belt taste, you’ll be eating better and enjoying the flavors a lot more while doing something creative. Why don’t I normally use Barilla, Prego, etc? Because I enjoy taking time to cook and I know what’s in my food. Plus I have something to take photos of. :c )
Serve with salad, black seedless grapes, grape juice, red wine.
Mmm Donuts…
I like donuts but…
I think I need to reconsider my joy of eating them very often.
I belong to a photographer’s group at flickr.com called Macro Mondays. Each Monday we have a suggested theme to follow to help pique our interest in macro photography. I’ve been a member of this group since March 2008 and have posted an image or two almost every week since then. On Tuesday, they post the suggested theme and we have the rest of the week to come up with something.
Six months ago, they posted a weekly a theme called “diptych.” A diptych is a single photo created from two images.
As I was shopping at my local grocery store, I came across some colorful donuts and the idea hit me. I chose a pair of pink and blue frosted donuts and bagged them up and brought them home to take a few photos to compile my diptych.
Here’s the original photo linked from flickr.com:
I like taking photos of food and was planning to eat this food after I took the photos but I wasn’t hungry at the time so I put them back in their plastic bag for another day. Well, after one or two days, I thought differently and decided to set them aside for a future photo. I like taking ‘before and after’ photos for comparison and decided to save these for a while to see if they get moldy or go bad.
Six months have passed since then and I took the donuts out of the dark corner of the shelf where they have set and I took a peek in the bag for mold or rotting and they were only slightly discolored from the sugar sprnkles merging with the frosting. They weren’t as hard as hockey pucks and no, I didn’t taste them but I did re-plate them and shot new photos for an updated diptych six months later. I’m guessing the sugar and oil that they were fried in helped to preserve them like McDonald’s french fries that you might find under your car seat that have been there for months.
Here are my six month old donuts…
Not much difference is there?
It kind of changed my desire for eating donuts on a regular basis and I am debating on putting them back on the shelf for another six months for a follow up photograph. I promise I won’t try it with beef or chicken. That would just be sick and twisted.
My So Called Diet
My so called diet.
The years go by. Some are with regret, some are with joy but all are for learning.
I’ll be the first to admit that I did not see myself as overweight and hurting my body until I checked in to the hospital for chest pains in October 2010. A year ago in June, I changed my life very simply and lost a lot of weight.
For a long time, I cleaned my kids plates or my wife’s plate after dinner and ate a lot of fast food of various sorts at work. Later in life I began drinking too much alcohol and still eating a lot of food. I peaked out at 230 lbs a couple of years ago. When I was a young man of 22 and was first married, I was about 160lbs.
I’m back.
Now my friends call me skinny, I hear “Looking good Dan,” etc. And I’m asked how did I do it?
I’ll tell you for free. It would be really cool if I made $29.99 in three monthly payments for this advice but I don’t think I can market this one.
I finally listened to my doctor’s advice. It only took 20 years to get from my ear to my brain. He held up his closed hand and said, “Your stomach is this big. Why put more in it than this in a sitting?” So, one year ago I began eating less and drinking much less alcohol. It wasn’t that difficult. I drank more water, ate apples (which are as big as our hand by the way,) a bowl or plate of food and sensed when I was full and stopped eating.
I enjoy ALL kinds of food. I enjoy real butter, real cream, a slice or two of pizza, I don’t drink high fructose corn syrup in soda pop and I try to avoid its presence in everything that I eat. I don’t use Aspartame or fake sugar or fake butter. I enjoy real sugar, real meat, real vegetables, even Peanut M&M’s are an okay snack for me. I believe our bodies need fat to burn so I give it some. No low fat anything or fake sugar. I don’t have a microwave for those convenience foods that are highly processed and just fill our gut with non-nutritional, irradiated junk or destroy our leftovers. I re-heat my food on my stovetop in a cast iron or stainless steel pan. I don’t drink a specially blended shake or eat five meals a day.
“I eat to live, instead of living to eat.” I saw and heard Johnny Carson say that 30 years ago. It took a while to apply that advice, but thanks Johnny.
At my maximum overweight, obese size, I was up to a size 38 waist and wore extra large shirts and still couldn’t button up my collar to wear a tie.
For a while, about five years ago, I was riding my bike for hundreds of miles a year and running up to 5k a day and dropped my weight down to 172 lbs before I injured myself from running so much. I was eating to replace those burned calories and enjoying beer, wine, and hard liquor along the way. When I injured my hip socket, I stopped that strenuous activity and put the weight all back on because I didn’t reduce my caloric intake.
I am keeping my overweight photos visible to remind me that I was there and I’m not going back. I did not see myself as fat then. Maybe my eyesight is bad after all but now that I am back in a size 30 waist, medium shirts, and smaller shoes. I am happy though nearsighted.
How much exercise have I done since I’ve lost weight? Practically none. I walk when I can. I haven’t pumped up my bike tires yet this year and I can no longer afford a membership to the YMCA so I can’t go there.
ViSalus shakes or other diets? None. What would I do when I reached my goal with those shakes or other diet? I did try South Beach, Zone, and other diets over the years when I couldn’t button up my pants or shirt but none of that worked or stayed effective.
It’s much easier to just stop eating and drinking so much. I eat when I’m hungry, sense when I am full and stop eating. I get up and do the dishes, refrigerate the leftovers for another meal tomorrow.
Yes, food is amazing, I love it, I love cooking and taking photos of the food that I cook. I know that we need to eat something every day if we are a normal human. So I enjoy it. In moderation. Share when I can or refrigerate the leftovers.
I hope that for the rest of my life, I continue this way and if you or someone you love feels the urge to get back to your ideal weight, try moderation. It’s free. Save the money that you would be spending on food and drink and start shopping for smaller clothes because you are going to need them. By October 2011, I had given away all of my larger sized clothes to my son at MSU to use and give away to others there.
-Dan. 52 years old, Weight: 210 to 230 lbs, I now average162 lbs. Waist size: 38 down to a 30, shirt size: 17.5 down to 15.5. Diet: Moderation. Value: Simple, cost effective.