It was heavenly. Everything I expected and then some. I swam in the deep cool pool at the bottom of a giant waterfall, was woken up by the deep roar of howler monkeys each morning, saw a teeny tiny baby lizard scurrying on a table and saw a dog chasing a giant iguana. The dogs here are so happy, so free. Sleeping in the middle of the road, on the beach, loving life. How can they not?
I snorkeled and visited a charming little island, where fresh fish was cooked for us on the spot. I swam at the most amazing beach I have ever visited, miles of serene unspoiled and almost barren beach, save for a few people who were laying under the shelter of palm frond huts that are there for the taking. The waves were huge and fun, and my friend Melissa said that it was the closest to feeling the way she did when she was a kid, in the ocean.
And yoga in a shady bungalow with open walls, letting in the sea breeze and the startling contrast of green green green trees against the blue ocean. And the food, oh the food. Everything organic and healthy and absolutely delectable. Our one splurge at an expensive beachside restaurant, Lisa's chorizo appetizer and Melissa's red snapper stealing the show, until the cat that hopped up and curled up with Melissa on her chair decided to steal the show from them. Delicious Typico breakfast of eggs, beans and rice with 'magic' sauce was my favorite meal of the trip. And the batidos con leche, oh my god. Mango shakes, delicious like mango lassi, I drank so many.
That little dusty hippie town is probably the best secret I've ever been let in on. It's hard to get to, but so worth it. The people are so kind, so chill. It was far and away the most relaxing vacation I have ever had, and I'm already contemplating going back for my birthday, next year.
I'm addicted to twittering. It's just so much easier than blogging, so simple and quick and clean. So I've been doing that instead of this here thing. If you want my twitter name, email me at karastokes at gmail.com and I will hook you up.
A friend just made me a logo for my website, and I am focused on trying to get a portfoilio website up. I'm sure when that happens, I'll have a photo blog up there to post new images (without having to constantly update my portfolio.) So that will be at myname.com, and possibly also mynamephotography.com in the near future.
One other thing I want to share is this site, which I think is pretty awesome. It's basically a way to share and bookmark cool food related blog entries on the web. I made an account a few days ago, and while I haven't submitted any good stuff yet, I have bookmarked/starred quite a few entries. Today I'm trying this, based on one entry I bookmarked there:
Ok so maybe I might end up making a food blog. Who knows. It just won't be here, so drop me a line if you want a link. Otherwise, see you on the flipside...
Wednesday night I went to a yelp event at Via Matta, and even though the food wasn't as abundant as we'd have liked we did try some delicious bites. One thing I managed to snatch off of a tray was a toasted baguette slice heaped with homemade ricotta and drizzled with chili oil. Right before leaving work on Thursday, I looked up a few recipes for homemade ricotta. I unwisely went with a random recipe I found, rather than the one used by the ladies who write at 101 cookbooks and chocolate and zucchini. The one I used just called for whole milk, cream, a pinch of salt and some fresh squeezed lemon juice, and the one that those two much admired ladies used just called for whole milk and buttermilk. While my experiment was fun and the outcome was edible, I wasn't wowed. I have a feeling that the buttermilk recipe will be more flavorful, so I will try that one next.
The greatest thing (aside my friends allowing me to hijack their kitchen to do this experiment) was that the people at Formaggio Kitchen, near Melissa's South End apartment, were so enthusiastic once they heard what we were planning to do. They even went out back and found us a big roll of cheese cloth, and let us cut some for our project. They also had an addictive, tangy goat cheese on their sampler table that I need to buy soon. So if you live in Boston and love a good cheese, go and ask for the new goat cheese that they had samples of recently (if you don't see it out for samples.) It was probably the best soft cheese I've ever had. It really is an amazing store worth a visit, if you are into food and/or entertaining.
Above is a picture of the giant lemons we bought at Formaggio's, which contained an insane amount of juice.
Heating our milk and cream mixture until it got frothy and almost boiled.
Right when we added the lemon juice, the mixture immediately separated into curds and whey. It was pretty awesome to watch. I switched to a wooden spoon, because I love wooden spoons.
After we let it sit for a few hours, we then poured it into a colander lined with the cheese cloth and squished the liquid out.
Then we hung the ricotta ball BY WAY OF A HAIR TIE to the kitchen sink, to continue to drain while we ate delicious buttery hummus from Lionette's (another amazing little market in the South End) and watched trashy tv.
And the finished product, topped with a quick chili oil I made with some crushed red pepper flakes and olive oil. When I try the other ricotta recipe, I want to make a chili oil to go with it that has a chance to really marinade for a good long time. It looks pretty, even if it wasn't the most successful outcome in world.
In case you don't know, I'm a photo researcher. Today I was looking for portraits of Julio Cortazar to put in a book and I stumbled across this film, apparently shot by Cortazar and his third wife in Paris in the late 70s, early 80s. I am in love with archival footage of New York City in the 60s and 70s, and I think I'm equally enamoured by this footage of Paris.
They both died in the early 80s, not long after this film was shot.
So. October roll #1 finally reemerged, but ended up being one of those stray rolls that I threw in with my study abroad photos. These were taking with a fish eye lomo, which I bought at the ICP in New York when Tina visited. These pictures were taken in Cobble Hill, my favorite neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Which reminds me, I need to take off some Saturday soon to spend the day wandering around MoMA and eating delicious food. In the meantime, I will be picking a November roll this week and dropping it off for processing.
One roll came back, the other is either not ready or lost. Roll #2, the roll that was processed, had a lot of images on it that I would never take today; unremarkable buildings, boats and swans in Galway harbor, groups of people with no real focus, etc. The shot above is the only one that really wowed me, the only one I feel is worth keeping. It's the arm of a street performer, one of those guys who paint themselves gold and pretend to be a statue.
I'm in the process of building a website for my wedding and portrait photography which will have a blog component. Most likely this blog might take a back seat for a bit, while I get that going. So there may be little activity here until I pick a November Roll of film to process, just a friendly FYI.
The project I'm working on at the ole day job is wrapping up, and is very stressful. Lots of last minute things to do, I feel like my head is spinning. I often have to click the finder icon in my dock, to pull up this or that folder I have open somewhere on my computer. Here is a visual, for non-mac users who are scratching their head at the word 'dock'
That's my dock. And so I often go so quickly to click on the finder, that I accidentally hit that funny looking orb next to it. What is that, you might ask? Not exactly sure what it does, it was on my dock when I was upgraded recently. So when I accidenally click it instead of the finder, this pops up:
And then, if I'm really tired, I sit and stare at that prompt and I think "what if?" and envision some time warp tunnel or worm or whatever they call it to open up in the center of my monitor and just slurp me up.
I'm very, very tired. I can't wait for the next two weeks to be over.
