Saturday, August 25, 2012

Dinner in the Summer Time/ A lesson in Photography


Lately the hardest part of cooking has been the photography of the food.  I love to cook and create with food and I am good at it, but when it comes to plating it and getting a good  picture I am less then good. I am sure this is not news to you if you have been following my blogs you see my photographs. What you don't see is the 20 or more shots I had to take to get that less then impressive shot I post in my blogs. I read a lot of blogs and am always impressed with the photos and how professional the blogs look. When I look at my blog I see something less impressive. So I have decided to take action and do something about it. I started the program called project 365, my first picture was today the subject windows. it took me 21 pictures to get one I really liked. I also am getting tips and help from some of the best photographers in Allrecipe. With any luck soon we will see much better quality photos from me and I won't need to take 20 shots to do it. I already have a better idea of what my camera can do and what all the settings are about.
 Dinner Thursday was a great deal of fun to make and even more pleasurable to eat. I love fried chicken and Mexican food so this first recipe was just begging me to put a face on it. I picked the Tomatillos from my garden earlier in the day and wasn't sure what to do with them. Leave it to Allrecipe to answer my question.
Suegra's Tomatillo Chicken
   As you see there are 3 little pigs on this picture. The photo may not be great but this chicken certainly was. The Tomatillo sauce was so good and very easy to make. In fact Friday morning I picked more tomatillos and made more of this sauce to freeze so that I have it on hand all winter long. I didn't have the California pepper so I did a little research and used a pepper I had on hand in the same heat range. This sauce has a real good kick to it. Just the way I like it.
 My second recipe made me think of the holidays and that it was a nice twist on an old recipe. I changed a few things out of necessity but I stayed true to the recipe and its intent. 
  Gramma B's broccoli Casserole
  I read the recipe reviews before I made it and one comment kept popping up that the frozen onion rings ended up soggy unless you baked them on another tray. I decided to use Frenches Fried Onion Rings. I didn't have enough broccoli so I added zucchini,and I made my own cream of mushroom in place of a can of soup. That is all I altered in this recipe. I thought it was very good, I liked the zucchini in it and the onion rings were very crispy. I think I like this casserole just a little bit better then the traditional Green Bean Casserole.
  All total I took 42 pictures to get the 3 pictures I used, and I needed to crop and clean them up to make them as good as they are. I love a good challenge and I do believe I have found myself one. One picture at a time I am going to get good enough at taking pictures that you will be able to taste the food when you see the picture.  

2 comments:

  1. Love it... I will learn along with you!!
    Thank you so much for pointing out the "obvious" to food bloggers that pictures are key... however, noone explains anything to you. I don't know about you, but I jumped head first into the foodie world, and I'm leaning as I go...
    Long road, but eventually 1 step at a time I will get there. With and advice like yours, it's a blessing for sure!
    Thank you!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yours is one of the sites I admire so. Yes I jumped in head first and I learn more each day.

      Delete