Fell sick last week. I usually don’t but when I do it hits me bad. I couldn’t keep my promise to myself on at least taking one set of pictures a week, so I fished this practice shot out. I took this as a practice shot. Trying to use something simple with no props and a plain background, to achieve the effect I saw on plate to pixel. I was also trying to test out the different use of lighting, reflectors and white balance + exposure settings.
Question. Is taking in RAW and post processing the same as photoshopping an image, adjusting for brightness and contrast+hue+exposure? The quality is much better of course, because RAW images retain alot more information. But isn’t it effectively photoshopping?
Dragonfruits are a common sight in Singapore. But I hardly buy them because nobody at home likes them other than my sis who believes it helps her constipation 😉 They were having a promotion today and it suddenly caught my eye and I could suddenly see them in a photo. I love the bright pink, almost fuschia tone, perfectly co-ordinated with the green tips.
When you cut it open, surprise! It’s white with lots of black seeds. There are also red fleshed ones but they really stain your clothes I heard. Haven’t tried those before. Anyway, I just halved them and ran the knife around the skin. Just like a kiwi. It’s soft and easy to run your knife through it. Look at those bright pinks!
Ready to be sliced up for eating. How will it taste?
Kids were freaked by the hundreds of seeds. Little C refused to go near it. Big R was a lot more brave and tried one. She hated it. her exact words “I hate it”.
Sigh.. The things (and language) they learn in school 🙁
Anyway, I tried some. The last time I had any must have been ten years ago? The one I had was tasteless. Not sweet, not sour, not anything… just gritty from the seeds. The texture was similar to kiwifruit. This one was abit better. A little sweet, a little sour, a little taste, but the aftertaste was abit grassy, DH said it’s related to the cactus family?
Oh well, somethings never change, including the taste of the dragonfruit. But it is a beautiful fruit blessed with beautiful colors, so I guess life is fair? 😉
Golden kiwifruits are in season again! Big R loves kiwifruits, even the sour green ones, but these are her all time favourites cuz they are wonderfully sweet and yummy. I find the seeds less tart too. Apparently these were created by New Zealand Kiwifruit growers by crossing seeds from a Chinese female plant and a male plant from New Zealand. This is the yummy result 😉
strangely, little C doesn’t like them. She can eat blueberries and strawberries all day long but she just doesn’t like kiwifruits. Yellow or green.
So how do you eat a kiwifruit? They get soft and mushy when its nice and ripe, so what you can do is to slice it down the middle, and scoop out the flesh with a little spoon. I prefer to peel the skin off by running a knife around the sides, it’s easy and neat and doesn’t mush up the flesh, and you can get these nice slices with the beautiful pattern inside.
Had lunch with Yeye today. As usual, he bought the girls some wonderful goodies. This time, it was long stem strawberries which are in season now. So red, so delicious, so juicy, so yummy! They were begging to be eaten, right after I get a chance to take a photo of them. It’s been really hot and sunny lately, so I wanted to portray the golden sunlight streaming in from my window.
3 strawberries and left over blueberries
The next day, I was having the blues. It was the weekend but we were cooped up at home because Daddy was working. Was too tired to cook, but really wanted to get more photos of the strawberries. Thought of making a tart but the thought of making the crust and blind baking beforehand was too time consuming and I was feeling much too lazy for that. Then. voila! I just remembered the failed cookie dough I made a week ago for father’s day. I was going to make cut out cookies with the kids, surfed and found a recipe for the best rolled sugar cookies on allrecipes. I tend to google all my recipes from there because somehow it’s hard to go wrong with thousands of reviews (on 1 recipe) and many of them giving 5 stars right? But this time it failed me. The dough was way too sticky even after leaving it overnight. It was so hard to manage I gave up. Whatever i managed to bake looked out of shape and not worth any pictures. Before I found that out though, I’d already left one third of it in the freezer, thinking that we could make another batch later on. So now I was wondering. Could i use cookie dough to make a tart shell or some kind of pastry crust?
I couldn’t find anything similar on google so what the heck, i just flattened balls of cookie dough (Still sticky!) between two sheets of cling wrap to make circles, laid them in a muffin tin (no greasing/lining required). sprinkled some flour/sugar mix on top (I found some recipe that mentioned that but i don’t really know what i did that), and then added my slices of strawberries and blueberries. Baked in the oven at 180C for 12mins. And this is what i got!
Strawberry and blueberry tart. (Jap words say berry tart)
I know. I’m pure genius. Or lazy people have all the luck. 😉
The best part is, it was actually yummy! Sugar cookie crust but soft in the centre, almost like cake, moistened by the fruits. The berries were juicing over the tart and making it juicy and sweet. Take a look inside!
The insides
Kids needed second helpings. Hubby couldn’t stop praising (maybe just guilt from being out on a Sat afternoon..heh). But I did like it myself, which is quite a rare thing cuz usually after cooking I don’t feel like tasting anything. But I loved how it looked. and that’s enough for me cuz I get to take pictures of it.
One of my favourite shots recently. Big R finished 2 big collections of enid blyton books, plus the entire series of Little House books. And she’s not even 6 yet! Think i will make more money than Lorna Whiston in teaching kids how to read. I only read the same books in upper Primary and this girl hasn’t even started Primary school yet!
Party favors with translucent lace printed plastic and rabbit themed tags. Baby C loves rabbits (she calls them babbits). Big R claims they were not kiddy enough, and that for her own birthday she will make all the decisions herself… not any of these design design stuff… sigh
One of my favourite shots recently. Big R finished 2 big collections of enid blyton books, plus the entire series of Little House books. And she’s not even 6 yet! Think i will make more money than Lorna Whiston in teaching kids how to read. I only read the same books in upper Primary and this girl hasn’t even started Primary school yet!
