Getting back into photography, film photography, that is

/

May 30, Memorial Day, 2022

I started the day by making our lunch. I made a savory sauce, roasted sweet potato cubes, smokey collard greens, and barbecued tempeh. All plants. Not a single animal product. Nobody died for my lunch.

In the afternoon my beloved partner and I walked Nacho in the hills above our house. She brought her Polaroid SX-70 camera and took a few pix using 5-year old film. Surprisingly, some of the pictures demonstrate the dreamy Polaroid glow. When you shoot Polaroid, you are sometimes blessed with happy accidents. That’s life with a 50-year old camera.

In one of the pictures, I’m wearing a new pair of glasses that I bought online, from Zenni. I’m using a temporary prescription for the next few months until my cataract surgeries heal up.

I’m going to get back into photography, in a small way this time. I’ll be putting some photos here from time to time.

Brand names I mentioned in this post just because I like the products. Relax — there’s no kickback coming my way.

April 2, 2022 Family Day

/

Today was family day, with the Californians in town. I cooked up a whole food, plant based feast of ragu and spaghetti, spicy buffalo wings, steamed veggies, cheesy sauce, oatmeal cookies. All simple pleasures for a simply lovely day. Tonight we’ll be visiting them at the the Airbnb they’re staying staying in.

It felt great to give my family copies of my two books. It was an awesome day.

Tuesday at the Doctors -- You Are What You Eat

/

Today was a productive day. In the morning I went to two doctor appointments. They were yearly checkups for several of the bullets I’ve dodged over the years. The news is good: I’m ready for another 70 years .

To make the day even better, I dropped by the food truck that does business next to the hospital and picked up four Thai Peanut Curry meals, with organic tofu. In the years when I was seeing a doctor almost every month, I would reward myself with a Starbucks espresso, bear claw, a half-pound of Sees chocolate candy, and then a Thai peanut curry bento. Thinking I was being reasonable, I would ration out the Sees candy over a week or so.

Those days are in the past. After my close calls with the Grim Reaper, I shaped up and started to take an interest in what was going into my body. The more research I did, the more I realized that a whole food, plant-based diet was the best way to go. No more Starbucks, no more Sees candy, no more Taco Bell, no more Chipotle. Just plants. And, it’s good for the animals of the earth.

Chore Day, Oct 17, 2020: Baking WFPB Mac and Cheeze and Almond Poppy Seed Cake

/

Today was a yard work, laundry, baking day. The yard work was part of my long term project to remove the mountain of sequoia needles that our big tree (90-feet tall) drops on our house every year. Whoever planted that tree ten feet from the house 40 years ago wasn’t thinking straight. I have about six more bins to fill before the ground is clear.

The laundry was…laundry.

The baking, however, was intense. It’s been months since I’ve dedicated a day to trying new recipes. The whole food, plant based mac and cheese looked like it would simple to toss together, but it had it’s complications: the preparation was more than I’m used to doing for an “easy” dish. Recipes tend to look simple and easy when you see them done perfectly in an eight-minute well-edited Youtube video. When I try them myself, I experience all of the shopping for ingredients, the preparation, the kitchen gear, and the cleanup of the sink full of dishes these recipes generate. The upside is that I have enough great food to last a week.

Please check out The Jaroudie Family videos for these two dishes:

Chore Day, Oct 3, 2020: Laundry, WFPB Queso Salsa, and Krita

/
This picture need some highlights. I’m struggling with Krita — all of the keyboard shortcuts are neither like Photoshop nor Clip Studio Paint.

This picture need some highlights. I’m struggling with Krita — all of the keyboard shortcuts are neither like Photoshop nor Clip Studio Paint.

My chores today were laundry (check) and cooking (check). There’s not much to say about doing laundry, but I always enjoy doing it. I usually spend my time studying Japanese, surfing the web, watching videos, sketching, or reading. Today I started reading David Chang’s Eat a Peach: A Memoir.

After doing laundry I cooked up a big batch of wfpb (whole food, plant based) queso dip, the recipe for which came from The Jaroudi Family’s Youtube channel. Simple and delicious.