Category: photography

When winter feels like it’s dragging on, I share with you a photo of three dogs on the Asbury Park boardwalk, taken sometime last summer. My daughter was working on a cover for a Cinquain poetry booklet for her class, and she wanted a dog to represent friendship. We were going to use this shot, but instead we chose a vertical image of one of the dogs standing up against his master.

On My Blog

  
  

Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

• Hannah wrote a post on garnishes in cooking, and it inspires me to consider a series of posts photographing beautiful bits of food: a bowl of parsley, a dish of grated carrots, a plate of purplish red beets. The photograph series hasn’t happened, yet, but if I write it here, maybe I will proceed.
• There is a review on Jewaicious of a book called Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter: “The primary character, Itsik Malpesh was born in Kishinev during the the Russian pogroms, to a well off family. The events of his birth, as told to him by his mother, are what has shaped his life, and shaped his perception on love. This novel is Itsik’s story, although it reads like a memoir that could be based on an actual person. “
• Batya has a preview for next week’s big event: Tu B’Shvat.
• I wrote a post on how one might use Pinterest for a small business. I have ideas for this blog (meaning my Here in HP blog) regarding Pinterest: maybe Pinterest and the Parsha or the much more general Pinterest and fine art. I posted my cardinal watercolor on Pinterest, as this week’s parsha B’Shelach, we are taught to feed the birds.

Cardinal in my backyard: As Carver said the last time I posted this bright red bird, “Male cardinals are the flowers of winter.” This cardinal looks like he owns the place.

I saw two chickadees in my backyard last week. My, do these little birds jump about.

My daughter and I visited Donaldson Park on Sunday. There were many gulls hanging out by the pond; this one was swimming in the middle, apart from his buddies.

Near a slope of Donaldson Park many geese congregated.

This exposed tree trunk is on the edge of a brook on the border of Donaldson Park near the Meadows.

For more Nature Notes:

We just came back from a fun ski vacation at Stratton Mountain in Vermont. The skiing went well, despite the fluctuating ski conditions (rain one night) and up and down weather. My daughter now eagerly skis a longish trail on the side of the mountain called Lower Tamarack.

On the food front, finding food for us to eat for 3½ days is a bit of a struggle. This year, I packed various homemade food over the past two months that I had frozen in advance for vacation. The potato latkes from Chanukah, for example, were OK since I had packed little applesauce cups as well, so they had a nice condiment to go with them. Spaghetti pie (recipe in Honest Pretzels by Mollie Katzen), however, normally one of my daughter’s favorite dishes did not freeze and defrost nicely into a tasty dish. Most of it got thrown out, unfortunately. The homemade mushroom barley soup was a hit, but the prepared Tabatchnick’s frozen mushroom barley soup not as much. My kids normally like macaroni and pizza slices, but how many of those can one eat? Ditto for Streit’s canned minestrone soup – all my kids like that soup, but not for every meal. My family eagerly consumed leftover chicken soup last night when we got home.

For myself, I made brown rice in the crockpot two nights in a row (1 part rice to two parts water). I bought scallions and parsley in a supermarket right before we got to Stratton. Scallions are an improvement over bringing an onion and a knife and then ignoring the onion for the duration of the trip. You can cut scallions with a plastic knife, if necessary. Also, one year I brought lettuce on our winter trip, only to find it had frozen and wilted on the journey. Parsley holds up better in the winter weather. I’ve also learned to bring a few bags of frozen vegetables – easy to store, easy to prepare.

If you bring your own food on vacation, what tips do you have for storing, preparing or serving the food?

It’s cold out there! I took a walk through Johnson Park last week; I couldn’t find much other than these ducks. Then I headed over to the Native Plant Reserve to see brown remnants of last spring’s joyous perennials. You can see more if you click on each thumbnail above.

In the above photo are the ducks with the colorful reflections around them (the image in the thumbnail is a cropped version).

In other nature news, my daughter taught me that the New Jersey state bird is a goldfinch and the New Jersey state flower is a violet.

For more Nature Notes:

Last week I had an opportunity to meander through the Native Plant Reserve in Highland Park. I went as far as the edge of the Raritan River, and that’s where I photographed this shot of graffiti on the New Brunswick side. It’s really the only color around at this time of year. You can see photos of the bridge over the Raritan River between New Brunswick and Highland Park on this post.

I saw this ball rolling on the street outside the library, and I snapped the photo, not knowing I would get a moment when it lifted off the ground. Seems like a slice-of-life moment, perfect for Straight-Out-Of-the-Camera.