I had a lovely and thoughtful message from Kelaine after I posted my faux pas with the PR person the other day while taking photos at the DQ festivities. Kelaine sent me my own toy camera business card to download and print off so I can take them with me. The next time someone asks, “Are you the press?”, this is what I will do. Step by step.

1) Smile. (Thank you Chris!)

2) Hand the person my custom-made-by-Kelaine super business card:

3) Say this verbatim:

“No, I am not with the media, but I am a blogger and this will be documented later today!” – thanks to Lelainia for the actual words. I’m putting them on flash cards and will practice this until I know it by heart and Mike wakes me up in the middle of the night begging me to stop saying that in my sleep! Please!

4) I sure won’t say “No” to the press question again – ala Ariane.

I guess it really does take a village to help some of us get it together. And my village is on the internets. Thank you buddies, fellow bloggers and commenters. I can use all the help I can get.

*Special thanks to Kelaine for my cool and arty new logo.*

Sooooooooo….I picked up my roll of film today and got a big goose egg. Blacks Photography gave me a new roll of film, though. I guess it’s the pity policy, but the woman at the cash register assured me it’s the policy of the film company. So, even though the only 2 photos I have of Malcolm’s birthday are on my blog here, I don’t feel discouraged by my lack of film skills at all. I’ve got a free roll of film to figure things out with.

After that errand, I went to London Drugs to pick up some food for the kitties and then decided to head over to the cathedral to see what I could take photos of over there. I hadn’t been in some time, so I thought I’d check it out. I got there just in time to see the bride!

I stumbled on a wedding at about 1:30 on a Monday. Odd, but seizing the moment, I took a few photos. There were two professional photographers hovering around – with huge lenses and lots of gear. I tried to blend in to get a photo, just because it was happening right in front of me. But then it seemed a little weird that that a wedding photographer would have 2 grocery bags full of cat food with her, so I thought I’d better move along before anyone asked.

And that’s my story.

Also, my story today? I got a PILE of plants for the garden today from Cathy Mechanic. She’s moving into a new place and gave me all types of potted plants! We moved them tonight at around 10 pm. I’m all sweaty and hot. Mike was really happy to help move gigantic plants about. But in the end, this weekend I’ll be planting all weekend long. With sedges! And lilies! I have to admit, over the last few months, I’ve totally lost interest in the garden – whacking down weeds is not much fun. But now I can fill some pieces in with plants! Huzzah! I feel I’m in the mood to take care of the outdoors again.

I love this photo my Aunt took of my Grandma. Look! Fresh cookies!

Meanwhile, I tried out Grandma’s potato salad for dinner last night. For the cookbook, I’ll keep the recipes exactly as they are. But last night I added a couple of ingredients to the salad, so I think I’ll put those things right here on my blog. Here’s what I made last night:

Original recipe:

Grandma’s Potato Salad
4 or 5 peeled potatoes
3 or 4 eggs
1 or 2 green onions
1/4 cup of mayonnaise
milk to thin mayonnaise
1/4 tsp mustard
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

• Peel potatoes and cut into pieces. In a large pot cover potatoes with water and add salt. Boil until soft, drain and then leave to cool.
• Boil eggs until hard boiled.
• Put cooled potatoes in a bowl, cut up eggs and mix with potatoes. Combine mayonnaise as desired with milk to thin and add 1/4 tsp of mustard.
• Mix with egg and potatoes.
• Add salt and pepper and add sliced green onion.

Simple and yummy. And perfect just as it is.

My additions:

I wanted a little pickle action in there, so I added 6 baby dill pickles, sliced chunky and 1/2 tsp of dill.

That worked!

I  looked up some tips for getting the potatoes the right texture. I found a suggestion to under-cook the potatoes a bit. I tried this and cooked my taters for 12 minutes. I think it may have been better to cook them for 10. They were nearly too soft. After I drained the water off the potatoes, I sprinkled some apple cider vinegar on them and seasoned them with some pepper while they were still hot. The vinegar keeps them from turning grey and apparently seasoning them before they cool off is better for flavour. I read somewhere they don’t absorb the same amount of flavour when they are already cold in the fridge.

For the eggs, I wanted to make sure they looked nice and fresh, and to avoid getting that grey-colour on the egg yolk. It just looks bad. I tried this technique (boil for 3 minutes, let sit for 8 minutes) and that worked just fine.

This was a test run so I will have some good final products to take photos of for the cookbook. I’ll have photos for the potato salad soon.

On the balcony at the Browne’s – Summer 2010

Oscar

I had the great idea to start shooting in film last night at Malcolm’s super late birthday dinner. Due to a busy schedule, the reservation was set for 9:30 pm. Hey! We were eating like the French do! Super late. Unless you’re the French Soccer Team – then you can eat whenever you want, because you’re not playing football against the Norwegian team, is all I’m saying.

But enough about the French team’s situation. I had a situation myself to deal with. I wasn’t a total bonehead. I brought my digital camera with me. I fact, I loaded up my Nikon with a card I pulled out of my camera case without looking at it. I had my film camera and my backup digital camera (at one point, both around my neck simultaneously) at the restaurant – feeling very proud of myself and all my photographic bravery.

I snapped photos of the birthday boy and all the dinner festivities with the silly blue camera and the old fashioned flash, not really sure if I was really winding the thing right or not. But I decided to take out my Nikon once the cake arrived – which was funny because Malcolm had no idea that was going to happen and thought the waitress was being rude and rushing us out by “resetting the table”. He thought the plates and forks they were putting on the table were for the next guests. Heeeheee! In the whole time I’ve known Malcolm, I’ve never seen him get snippy, but here he was, on his birthday, getting a little testy. This was the perfect time for me to take photos of him! I clicked 1 photo and then my camera stopped working. I checked the message on the LCD screen to see this:

CARD FULL

What? I took 1 photo. How did that happen? I pulled the memory card out and looked at it. Apparently a 16 M card can only handle 1 photo when shooting in high resolution. I just learned that at that moment. So, I changed the settings on my camera and was able to take 2 photos. I would take a photo and if I didn’t like it, delete it. Here are the only two digital photos I kept from the evening.

Actually, this first one is a keeper. At the time I took the picture, the whole restaurant joined in with us singing Happy Birthday to Malcolm. It was totally spontaneous on the other guests’ part. So. Fun.

For my other photo, I was determined to get the Jello in somehow. And I did.

This is Tyler and his girlfriend, Ashley, looking lovingly at the little Jello squares. Heh. I certainly Forrest Gumped those 2 photos.

However, this may be where my luck ended. Once I got home, I figured I didn’t want to ask Mike how to wind the film out of the camera, did it myself, and opened up the back of the camera to find the film hadn’t been wound at all. I then closed the back of the camera, handed it over to Mike and went to bed, feeling terribly sorry for myself.

I took the roll of film to be developed today, explaining my film faux pas. The person at the counter said it’s possible that some of the photos I took may be okay despite being exposed to the light – just not the section that was saw the light of my craft room. I’ll find out on Monday when my photos/photo/strip of nothing will be available for me to pick up.

Things I learned from this scenario:

1) I need to read the manual for the film camera. I also need to watch more youtube videos on how to work the Diana+. I also need to ask for help instead of just assuming I can figure it out on the fly. I’m not sure at all how forgiving film can be. I’m assuming it’s not.

2) Check the memory card before I put it in the camera next time.

And I’m throwing away that 16M card immediately.

I found this licence place on a car in the BCIT parking lot downtown – located at 555 Seymour Street, Vancouver.

Just an aside – that’s a good parking lot because 1) it’s $14 for the day = a good price for an entire day in these parts and 2) it’s well lit and very clean. And by clean, I mean it doesn’t smell like a toilet. For realz.

But I laughed when I saw this because it was only a few hours after Mike found out he got a new job that he’ll start on Monday morning. Thank goodness. The last few months have been pretty worrisome, but I don’t like to talk about that here. This is the place I get to talk about my favourite things, and I’m glad to have my blog to remind me to remember the good things.

Anyway, tonight we drank iced tea and watched a show called Monkey Thieves on the Oasis Channel.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…..

This mysterious person on the scooter is not my Grandma. I’m not sure who this is, but this photo was found in one of Grandma’s photo albums. Currently my mom and sister are on a photo finding mission and the best ones will be an addition to the Wilson family cookbook – our current project. My mom has been very busy typing up 29 recipes WITH an index. Mom’s a medical transcriptionist and types very fast and very accurately. My favourite part of the index (yes! the index!) is that mom put it in this order:

• Desserts
• Pies and Pastries
• Entrees

Makes perfect sense.

So over the next month or so, I’ll be making all the recipes in the index and taking photos of them all. Good thing I get the newsletter from the food photo blog – they have all kinds of great tips for taking photos of food. And, I thought I’d post the recipes and photos here while I’m at it. Maybe you’d like to try Grandma’s pastry recipe, too. My Grandma is a pastry champ, and I’m thinking that if I can pull it off, the cover of the cookbook will be a pie recipe. Although, where the heck can I find Saskatoon berries locally? I’ll have search the farmers’ markets.

I think I’ll start this project this weekend, and I’m looking forward to trying the pineapple squares. Anything with coconut makes me think of oldie-times and The Little Rascals.

Pineapple Squares
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 egg beaten
1 cup crushed pineapple

Method:
Mix flour, baking powder and butter together. Mix with well beaten egg. Press into large pan (9×13).

Spread 1 cup crushed well drained pineapple on top of first mixture.

Mix:
2 eggs well beaten
2 cups coconut (or a little less)
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter (melted)

Put on top of pineapple.
Bake at 300° for 30 minutes. Store in fridge (can substitute jam for pineapple).

It looks like I may have to roast a turkey in the near future. For the photoshoot, of course.

Mike’s going to hate that part for sure.

I ran out of stuff to do with Mom & C@thy yesterday, so we ended up in Stanley Park and walked about 5 kilometers along the beach. The temperature was perfect with a nice breeze. I’ll have to remember that the next time it feels too hot at home – the seawall is where it’s at.

We took them to the airport early this afternoon after watching the British Open for a few hours this morning. For some reason, I’m unable to stop watching any competitive sports. Now I’m watching golf – I know the difference between a birdie and a bogey and I know that a South African is pretty much cleaning up after today. I can’t wait to see guys in funny pants whack a ball into the wind – and where many of the competitors have nearly the same score. That’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow morning. Thanks Mom!

Meanwhile, Donner’s been keeping cool on top of one of the cabinets in the dining room. It seems to be his favourite new spot. He can lay flat and still see everything going on around him at the same time.

We were on the road quite a bit today – first to the Vancouver Police Museum, and then a road trip up to Squamish where C@thy (bottom, left) found a rather large moth in her salad. It was pretty gigantic, actually. Good thing the bread they served was good, or else I would have totally mentioned their name just then.

After the Silence of the Lambs dinner, we took a little walk around Murrin Park – a tiny glacial lake just outside of Squamish.

I’m not sure what the plan is for tomorrow, but we’ll do our best to stay out of trouble.

Now wait just a darn minute. No washing a) unpaid berries and b) feet? What kind of place is this?

I guess running a berry farm is a tough gig. How many people did they have to stop from washing their feet in this very tall sink? And who thinks washing their feet in the sink is a good idea in the first place? I think I’ll get a sign like this for the kitchen. Better safe than sorry.

Today we washed the 3 buckets of berries we picked yesterday…

and made 6 batches of jam – which made 27 assorted sizes of jam. We froze the rest of the raspberries after about 3 hours of slaving over the hot stove. Phew. If I need to make more jam, I can make it from the frozen ones.

We opted for a simple recipe – just berries, lots of sugar and some Certo. We gave the jars a hot water bath of 13 minutes each. Tomorrow we’ll try it on some toast.

And just because I liked this sign when I saw it at the farm:

I share it with you.