Blether

Bacon & brown lentil soup a la Delia Smith (but without cabbage); sandwich of Nisshin World Deli salami and shungiku leaves:

Yes, lentil soup works really well with some sharpness - lemon juice, or tomatoes as in the brown lentil soup I posted above. Also, especially with a poultry stock, adding white wine takes it to another level.

Two versions here. 1 - sweated onions & carrot, chicken stock, orange (i.e. split, shell-less brown) lentils, salt & pepper. Serve as is or blend smooth; consistency depends on the stock to lentil ratio, anything from thinly creamy to stand-your-spoon-up. 2 - "Bacon and brown lentil soup" after Delia Smith. Brown lentils, chicken stock, and various chopped veg including celery, carrots and broken-up tinned tomatoes, and garlic. I tend to leave out the cabbage. Number 1 takes well to an Indian seasoning.

Easy egg, mushrooms (again) and tattie scones:

This is breakfast prep rather than breakfast: I made an extra-large bowl of mash last night so that I could make tattie scones today. Look out for them appearing here again soon.

We had grass-fed New Zealand fillet steaks, rare, with mashed spuds and champignons a la creme: Obligatorily crappy cell-phone shot (camera battery dead again) includes the tip of my second finger at no extra charge.

No - just salted and with the little garnish you see in the picture. And better than I expected too - I'm not really a Kobe beef fan, myself, but the flavour was good.

It's good for Kobe beef, which can easily run JPY20,000-30,000 each for dinner. I was forewarned enough to do get in some research !

A guest asked to go out for Kobe beef for dinner. We went to Heijouen yakiniku, as seen here in the obligatory crappy cellphone picture: The five pieces of meat on the grill are "extra top quality Kobe beef rib", running a grand total of JPY3500 or 40-odd dollars. We mixed in various less expensive cuts, had assorted kimchi, grilled veggies and chijimi and got away under JPY15,000 for two, with soft drinks only. Good traditional ambience, privacy, hori-gotatsu for comfortable legs, and a good deal for Kobe beef. Worth a return visit.

I made these rolls last spring. Details of the method are there in the linked post - you pull out a flat rectangle by hand till it's 3 long x 1 wide, then fold one end over, and the other over on top. A slightly varied version is here. Seen in action here and here.

A quick carbonara, with home-made bacon and farm egg: - and garlic. So sue me.

Oh yes - I didn't particularly buy it for the feature, but I think it's the EXR sensor-jiggery-pokery that gives the kind of dynamic range you see in the second photo here - look for the definition both in the black frills of the oysters and in the white highlights on the shells.

The Indian joint gives as good eating as you'll get at places charging JPY3,000-4,000 for the same amount of food; in the end the noodle dinner (tried later) showed its price more. The Camera's a Fujifilm Finepix F80 EXR (the other one in the comparison I posted - you can read reviews for each via the link near the top of the column). I too bought this particularly for its low-light capabilities - and because I'd been using a Fujifilm for years and like knowing my way around the interface - including for example layout and function of the buttons, not just 'interface' in the narrow software sense. I think you might have the wrong idea about me...

I did all of these hand-held. Low light shooting's a lot of fun.

What, because when the question is economy for the end user, the end user should be worrying about everyone else's economy ? Not just how much it costs me, but how much will the poor utility company be suffering ? BS, baby.

It's a waste not to stand in the garden with a toasting fork every time the gas furnace is running. You definitely need to buy a toasting fork. Bread, marshmallows... the possibilities are endless.

Camera comparison... here, I did it for you (throwing in my own out of curiosity, so, well, for me too...) - comparison at dpreview.com

Nice, but BTU's convert into joules (both are units of energy), not watts (a unit of power), don't they ?

I agree with a lot of what you said, but not with this part. There are things you clearly can't do with most P&S cameras: sophisticated remote flash is one of them; changing lens is definitely another. You can get round parallax by knowing your P&S. The only point I can think of beyond which SLR leaves P&S in the dust is well beyond an A4 image size: it's simple resolution and the difference only shows when you blow the image way up. And just to drive the point home, I give you the Sigma DP2s and a gallery of an owner's global samples - you can work backwards from the linked page. (I wouldn't recommend the Sigma and its fixed-focal-length lens for the casual user). ETA: going backwards, you'll find the first significant volume of P&S shots from page 154.

... and so in terms of heating power, the electric oven is a far better proposition. If you only need a puny 1500watts to heat the space, you'd soon turn the oven down to that level, and it would do the initial warm-up much more quickly. And if you really want to crank the heat up, you can turn on the hob too. Spot heating (huddling over / sitting by the heat source) is something to consider, but in winter as soon as you start running the heating in a space, in general every electrical appliance in the space is suddenly 100% efficient, because all the 'waste' is now useful. In particular, the fridge / freezer become 'no fuel cost' appliances (if you sleep in the kitchen too, which is something you might want to consider, eh, Shel ?). Country, are you really imagining what I think you're imagining ? You're a bad man !

That bramble & custard tart is a beauty, food & image both.

I can see an argument that the oven element, on without a break because the oven never "reaches temperature", might be damaged over a long period. But how can it be uneconomical compared with an electric heater ? The oven might be rated X% efficient, but in this case the waste is lost (to the room) as heat in the same way that the work power is. There might be comparatively slow heating at first because the stove itself absorbs the first 5 - 10 minutes' worth, but even that will come back to the room after the oven is switched off. Uneconomical vs an electric heater ? I don't think so. Uneconomical vs mains gas ? Probably. Uneconomical vs canister or cylinder gas ? That depends. I'd say, if it's an occasional thing, go for it. If you're going to work in there a lot it seems a strange everyday way of heating the place.

Hahahaha. Hmm. Scratch all that.

You won't normally go shorter than a normal lens (50mm length in the 35mm SLR format) for food photography. I'd say a portrait lens or just a bit longer (80-100mm) is as long as you'll need to go to cover more than 90% of your needs here. A zoom lens covers all the lens lengths from its minimum to its maximum (so for example a 28mm-105mm zoom would be a good starting place). The trade-off with zoom lenses is that (at maximum aperture) they let in less light than 'prime' (single-length) lenses. So you might see a 28-105mm lens with an aperture range f22 - f3.5; but a fixed 50mm lens f22-f1.4. A macro facility (lets you get real close and real detailed) is also an asset in shooting food.

Yes, wider apertures give a shallower depth-of-field (and of course you have to use a faster shutter speed to go with them). I can't believe there's not more love for tripods, at least in the home kitchen: dcarch, your suggestion of self-timer is a good one. Another tip is to drink 30 less beers the night before With an SLR now, Dakki, you've the chance of using bounced flash - buy a flash unit with a head that swivels between straight-forward and straight-up, and work out how to set the aperture in various situations (trial and error for your particular kitchen, say). Some of the folks round here who produce exceptional photos are using bounced flash regularly. You also now have the option of multiple flashes (wired together or with the 'slave' sensors that are common now), if you want to get into serious studio-type photography. 2/3 of the light from above and to one side; 1/3 from the other side; a little backlighting for depth. It's still a trusim that when real expert phtographers talk about equipment, it's about their preference for tripod mounting head.