Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Recipes, and photos

Today's writing challenge on BlogHer.com is about photo-inspired kitchen wizardry. More specifically, "Do you sometimes make recipes due to the accompanying photo?"

The visual writing prompt is Bokeh.

I'm not really sure at this point what I'm going to write about, and frankly, I'm not particularly inspired by either of those subjects. I love bokeh -- I just don't feel inclined to write about it.

But here's a picture of my doggie, my little man, Sattva (ZAHT'-vuh ... second half of bodhisattva) (which I just found out is the name of a horse running the Preakness this weekend; the horse is the same color as my little man Sattva!):


It's kind of hard to see his color in this pic because of the filter I put on it. But it's a bokeh filter from a photo editing app on my smartphone, PicsArt. I love PicsArt.

As far as diving into recipes based solely on the photo alone ... umm, have you HEARD of Pinterest? Hel-lo-oo, I gain weight just looking at the delicious yumminess on that website! It's not fair!! And the blogs out there dedicated not only to delicious food but equally delicious photos to go along with them are too numerous to mention. Thank God for small favors, I say. I've seen more than one blogger whose passion for photography matches their passion for food. Here's one: The Simple Veganista. She explicitly states that she loves taking the pictures as much as preparing her subjects. And she's really good at it.

Speaking of food -- and bokeh -- here's a picture I took of the sign outside The Spaghetti Warehouse in Toledo, Ohio. Again with the lovely bokeh filter from the PicsArt app.


The air temperature was in the single digits when I took this picture. We won't even discuss the wind chill. This was taken on January 25, 2014. I just absolutely adore the vintage look the filters lend to this shot. It makes bone-chilling cold seem friendly. And delicious.

I do love living in this digital age.

I love that I can capture pictures like this ... on my phone. 

*** DIGRESSION ALERT***

Last night I saw the movie Hackers for the first time. I was drawn to watch it because the actor Jonny Lee Miller is the lead. Miller is also the star of one of my absolute favorite TV shows (oh; I should add that to my profile) in production right now, Elementary. I can't stand the character Miller plays -- Sherlock Holmes -- but I adore his performance. Miller has a sublime gift. He's brilliant. And he's surrounded by talent matching his in the form of Lucy Liu, Aidan Quinn (mmm, Aidan Quinn ... ....... .....................) ... oh sorry, I'm back, heh, and also Jon Michael Hill. The writing, the directing, the acting ... some of the best commercial production around. I say, kudos to CBS for making TV better with this show! The dialogue is so complex, I have a hard time following it. And I mean, c'mon, who doesn't love Lucy Liu??? She plays Joan Watson. Yes, that's right, Joan Watson. And I don't care what kind of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle purist you are, she owns it. The whole cast absolutely kills it, week after week after week.

I can't tell you how many people I've met who are watching the British version, Sherlock, and they won't even consider watching Elementary. I mean, I get it; when you experience something as well done as those shows are, anything that smells remotely sacrilegious to the original, pure inspiration seems unbearable. But it drives me crazy. If one were going to attempt to rewrite Sherlock Holmes, CBS productions managed to assemble exactly the right people to pull it off with Elementary. It's worth watching one lousy episode, at least.

It just really bugs me when people draw conclusions about something they've never experienced, never looked into or looked up.

*** DIGRESSION END ***

The point of bringing that up, about seeing Hackers, is that it got me thinking about how far we've come since that movie came out. And I love all of it. Life is better now for all the technology we have. It's a blessing.

Yes, it's being used to hurt people.

So are knives.

Knives can be great, when they're used to cut fruit or carve wood. But just like the internet, knives are a tool. The internet and computers (and knives) are not inherently evil, nor do they attract evil by their nature. Because the internet and computers are also doing great things by bringing positive messages to people who really need to hear them, and by bringing people together who otherwise would remain separated.  Among other things. More importantly, I seriously doubt God put the grey matter between our ears to sit there and look pretty. This digital age we live in is, in my opinion, one of the highest achievements human beings have heretofore dreamed up.

It's a beautiful, sublime thing.

Hello, blog. It's good to be back. :)