tanabutler

I am peeking in to say that the learning curve on my new Canon is very steep. Even though the body and functionality are related and similar to the G1 Powershot, there are a lot more buttons and dials. I hope I live long enough to become intuitive with the camera. Right now, there are a great many lip-biting moments when I'm staring at it, wondering how to get it to do what I can get the G1 to do. No complaints. Further: the colors are just extraordinarily brilliant. This is completely unretouched.

...never mind.

Chef Kinch told me that he brought local (local to us) produce with him for the event.

You mean you can't run sheets of white chocolate through a printer? Bummer. Great cakes, all. I'm glad I clicked into this thread.

All dried lasagne noodles are no-boil. I never buy the more expensive so-called no-boil noodles, but use Barilla regular lasagne noodles, and assemble as usual.

Just none of that orange processed cheeeeeese, pleeeeease.

Bless me, Father, for I am a Southerner. I really did think I'd had a Philly cheese steak sandwich, without ever having been to Pennsylvania. We had a Lum's in Marietta, Georgia, back in the Seventies, when you could order that sandwich. And those sandwiches never ever contained American "cheese," or any such. It was probably my first intro to sinful, good food. What a combo (is this the same sandwich?): The Bun. The sautéed onions and green bell peppers (never my favorite in general, but I'm okay with them in this work). The juicy meat, the whole thing. It had cheese, and in defense of my teenaged ignorance, I still don't know what it was. But it was so not Cheez Whiz or anything of the Agent Orange blend. It was white, like Monterey Jack, but not. A juicy, wet, dripping sandwich from Lum's, served in a red plastic basket and lined with grease-catching paper: my culinary passport out of the South.

I still don't think I comprehend. Can you link some posts or threads or something? One of the basic rules (as I understood them, before I ever held a camera, but just read in educational books in my Memaw's house as a child) was that the edges of subjects (e.g., the edge of a shirtsleeve) should not line up with the borders. I understand it to be like having a telephone pole or tree out of the top of someone's head: be aware, and don't let this happen to you. I really would like to see an example of the base of a bowl "sitting on the bottom of the picture," or whatever it is you're talking about. I can't imagine that you can possibly be describing what I am imagining as any kind of a good photographic technique. Thanks, pjs. (PJs? Jammies? Initials? Heh.) Um, I am enjoying my camera. The learning curve is steep. I want a mentor. Wah!

That is such a sweet site. Farm and website.

Disagree about the "just touch" thing. I need to see proof. This is something I would just never do. Can you link to some images that show this, because I'm likely misunderstanding.

My Canon Powershot Pro1 came today. It is light, small, gorgeous, ergonomic, and as mysterious and powerful as a newborn baby. It has more buttons than a shipful of sailors, and it pops open even quicker. I have much to learn, and meanwhile I am knock-kneed, honeymoon, bleary in love, smitten with this camera. Maybe y'all with your big heavy cameras think you're closer to God than I am. I can live with that. I look forward to learning how to use this tool. I took them both out tonight on a date at Ristorante Avanti (glorious local/seasonal/organic), and wound up using my G1 Powershot for most of the shots. This is only web work, and the G1 is beautifully suited for that, and more.

At the farmers market here on Saturday, we met an entire family from southern India. The father is an engineer at Borland, living in Santa Cruz. He acknowledged the utter dearth of decent Indian food in Santa Cruz (our only Indian restaurant, Royal Taj, is long past its prime). He goes over the hill to one of three places for good Southern Indian food: Pasand Dasaprakash Saravana Bhavan 1305 S. Mary Ave. Sunnyvale, CA 94087 They are vegetarians. I wish they'd open a restaurant.

The small screens are 640x480. So no photo should be taller than 480.

Here are my fiddles. I used the airbrush tool a little on the shiny spot of the egg, and did some adjusting with the levels (command-L on a Mac) in Photoshop. This I cropped, turned into greyscale, then back into RGB. I added three layers and scaled back their opacity to 20% or less, and filled each layer with a certain red, yellow, or ochre. I also adjusted the levels a bit. EDIT: the second one is completely different for me, emotionally. The mysterious nighttime aspect is gone: I can see the things on the wall, and what once looked like a light on in the other room is not that at all. Not better or worse, but different. Interesting.

We're going to all have to give each other permission to "borrow" each others' images in this thread, if we are going to use them for own own tweaks and suggestions. Right? I, for one, will hereby grant permission to anyone in this thread to take any photo I submit in this thread, if they want to "borrow" it, tweak it, and upload their results into their eGullet images folder. No copyright violations in this thread. Sound good?

Actually, the reading light in the other room is not a distraction for me. It's compelling. Like, "What's back there?" Moody, even. Nothing beats a good macro lens for focus, in my book. It's one of the first features I made good use of.

I don't get it. Who's pouring? What dinner?

Okay, you asked. I can't address things like f-stops or apertures or techno, but I do know the language of composition and design. In the second shot, I would have come in closer or stepped back more, so that the bottom of the glass doesn't rest on the bottom of the picture. And I would have framed it with the glass and bottle off center, farther to the left. As it is, the bottle has the effect that a telephone pole "growing out of someone's head." In the photo of the egg, I really like the texture of that mat. It's visually intriguing: it looks both metallic and organic.

Go to Manresa. Just go. Just do it. If money's an object, sit on the patio and have tapas, which range from $3-$12 (in my opinion, the cheese course is not worth the price, but the rabbit is slobberworthy, as is the ham...my God, the ham). Tell Chef Kinch you are an eGulleteer. How long will you be in town? What's your timeframe? More in a bit. Meanwhile: dinner al fresco at Manresa.

Anyone else here flinch and think of someone else they knew who lost a fingertip in the kitchen? OwOwOwOwOwOW. Mean trick to play on us, man.

Yet another plug for LocalHarvest.org: enter your zip code and find a CSA (or anything related to organic living) instantly.

I read your post, rdaily, and you report on seeing Chef Keller in his kitchen. My brain might kick out gospel or something, but instead this sweet line from 'Pippa Passes': "God's in His Heaven/All's right with the world." Lovely post. You have enjoyed great privilege, and blessings.

Yum. I had a chilled cucumber soup this week at Gabriella Cafe; it had guajillo chilis in it, and a drizzle of creme fraiche. It was damned good, and I was wishing I had a recipe for cucumber soup. This looks like something I could make. Thanks, Tommy. Hey, that recipe is from Josiah Citrin. He's coming up to Manresa this month to cook a special meal with chef David Kinch. Double cool.

Though I am not a chef, nor trained in those hyper-disciplined arts, I must say that reading this thread is not unlike my first encounter with the poetry of Emily Dickinson. I feel the thrill of poetry. And being a typographical geek and former calligrapher, and one who once used the OED in amorous amusements (okay, "bedroom word games with smart people"), the glyph for, and meaning of, "Alinea" is sublime. I predict a wave of babies with this name in about two years. It's so pretty and full of potential for use. I love that, while Alinea indicates a new train of thought, it's still one paragraph in a larger body of thoughts. Best of all things to you, chefg, in manifesting your beautiful vision, and may your path be one of synergy, happy creativity, and contentment. I know, artists generally aren't content, but I hope you get a slice or two of that. I guess contentment is the conscious occasional appreciation that this is as good as life gets. If you're giving "this is as good as life gets" moments to people, then you should have some inner peace. (Gee, now I wonder if that's even desireable for a chef.)

My knife sharpener guy (what a guy!) told me that some knives need to be sharpened when you buy them. Don't worry, JAZ, I believe you.