Yesterday worked out smoothly. Maybe I'll stick with M, W and Th swim days, it does clear some serious time out of my always-packed Fridays. After a quick run to the store for some mustard I had run out of, and a lettuce for DH, I returned home and settled in front of my computer for my live cooking class. It was a lot of fun, Chef Giles was very confident in the kitchen and the entire dish was actually quite easy to make, Of course, if the ingredients had actually specified "ground" lamb, I would have looked for ground pork. Instead, I had a pork tenderloin.
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I would have looked for ground pork if I had known Chef was using ground lamb, but since I had a pork tenderloin, I cut it into small chunks instead, and after coating them in the spices, put them into the oven on parchment paper to cook. It turned out quite tasty, although I'll increase the harissa spice next time. |
Most of us were not cooking along, rather watching and taking notes. It only took about 45 minutes total time, and that was without pre-cutting any of the vegetables. It was quite lovely to watch his knife skills. I think if there was ever a cooking class I would like to take, it would be the use of knives. I'm nowhere near as comfortable with a blade as he was, and he was most certainly much faster at food prep than I am.
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I almost forgot to add the two zucchini to my ratatouille, but fortunately remembered in time to add them to the pan. Chef actually cut out the seeds portion before adding them to the pot. He said it kept the mixture from becoming too wet. I didn't bother, and yes, it was a bit wet, but I didn't mind. I might cut out the seeds the next time I make the recipe. |
We had all gathered a variety of meats for our meal, I had pork, one woman who was actually cooking along with the chef had chicken, and of course, Chef Giles had lamb. I doubt any of us actually had ground meat except Chef Giles. But after the live stream was completed and I read over my page of notes, I realized I could put this together successfully, and determined to do that for my lunch. In the early afternoon I cubed the pork and coated it with the spiced before putting it into the oven to roast. I cut up and stir-fried my ratatouille, then pulled out my pork and added it to the veggies, and it was a lovely lunch. I have enough left over for a couple of nice meals.
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This is Strand A on a white sweep with my portable light box. Mali Wedding Beads are antique, quite lovely, and still used today in Mali for weddings and other ceremonial occasions. |
I started taking photos of some antique trade beads that I'm probably putting up on Etsy. I have a portable light box that I love, it's lighting is LED powered from my laptop or any convenient computer, and it has sweeps of both black and white. I'm investigating Etsy to see if it will be a good place to sell some of the items that I have large stock in, and I determined to put 10 strands of our trade beads and probably some of our Swarovski crystals on the site to give it a try. So, it was time to take some photos.
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Here is the same strand on a black sweep. These aren't high-end photos, just taken with my phone, but even in full size pixels, they came through pretty nicely. I'll need to count the beads on each of the three strands and set up a database for them before I continue on and add more beads to the file. I'd like to get something up on Etsy before the end of the month, if possible. |
I had brought three strands of "Mali Wedding Beads" home from the shop to photograph. I took four different photos of each strand - two against the white sweep, two against the black. After sizing them and working a little bit in Photoshop, they looked quite nice. Usually there are 5-8 photos of items on Ebay, so I'll need to think of what else I want to photograph on these. I also need to start a master list of which strand is what, what my computer number is and the price. I'll take a few more photos today, and possibly start pulling and working on some photos of the crystals if I have the time.
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I want to make a montage similar to this for my crystals, but with the name of each color below. I've seen something similar on Etsy, so I know it can be done, but I've never made a montage like this using Photoshop before. It'll be a learning curve. Time to search the internet for assistance, and if any of my readers have done something similar, please give me some hints on how best to accomplish it. |
Well, I should probably wrap this up. I hope all of you have a wonderful and relaxing weekend. I'll be checking out how to make a montage in Adobe Photoshop, and whether or not I can get good photos of my sparkle queens - the larger Swarovski crystal cubes. Enjoy your weekend and I'll be back on Monday. Peace & love to all.
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