My Ghetto Setup

Here's my "studio".  I pushed all of the crap on the dresser top to the sides and lay down a black curtain drape which I got from Wallmart. The lens in the photo is a 100mm macro which is the lens I used to shoot the jewelry.  The scotch tape is to pick up lint and dog fur that is constantly floating around and landing on top of the black surface.  My reflector on the right is a foil-wrapped binder.  I like it because I can bend it to my liking.  I didn't use any flash.  Light is coming from the windows in back of the dresser and to the left of the dresser.  Our neighbor on the left built a second floor extension which reflects beautiful light onto the dresser top. I opened up the shades wide on the left.  I closed the shades halfway down on the window in front of me.  I used a stool so that I could shoot from up pointing downward.

Here's another one of my ghetto setups:  My New Rocks.




With macro shooting you should ALWAYS use a tripod to get sharp and crisp photos.  That's what the books say anyway.  But I'm too lazy to set up my tripod. Plus my tripod is a cheapy $35 one that doesn't adjust quickly or easily . . . there are screws and hinges that you gotta move and tilt to get things just right and it takes too long.  And then I would have to move the bed back just to fit the tripod between the narrow space between the bed and dresser. So never mind . . . FOGET IT.  That means though, that by hand holding the camera with a slow shutter speed, I gotta be reaaaaaal steady.  But then . . . I am . . . and that's why they call me . . . "da rock".  LOL.

Having Fun with Patricia Greene's Jewelry

Despite the rain (and the humidity) we had choke good fun playing dress-up with Patricia's beautiful jewelry pieces this past Sunday. Thank you so much to the models for being such troopers and thank you, thank you, thank you to my awesome sisters for helping to dress the models and for keeping things organized. 

Here are a few of the photos.

Beaded Jewelry by Patricia Greene

Thanks to Honolulu Aunty I got to take pictures of some of her friend Patricia Greene's beauuuuuutiful beaded jewelry.  I was even able to get a few people to model them for me yesterday.  I'll post those photos next time.

Lemon Plants - One Year Later

Remember when I did this to some Meyer lemon seeds?  Wouldja believe it was one whole year ago?



Here's Kona posing for me next to my best plant.  Cool yah!


And here's the rest of my orchard. The plants in the red pots are calamansi.  I got couple oranges too.


But look at this.  Something's been eating one of my lemon plants. I searched under all the leaves for bugs or worms but never found any.  And no . . . no more any Damn Rabbits around either.


It even got to one of my calamansi plants.  This morning I moved all the pots around searching . . .


And look what was between some pots.  Do you think this coulda ate um?  Could it have crawled up the side of the pot and up the plants?  I can't imagine it doing that.


What a coincidence!  Kay of Musings blog talked about her lemon plants today too.  You can check it out here.  She's so good . . . she gave away her stronger plants.  Me . . . I kept mine.

Unpopular Truth by Mariko

I liked this article:  Unpopular Truth

It is written by Mariko (The Little Foodie) who is Akemi's (Nippon Nin) daughter.

My Chinese Roast Pork Soup

Wouldja believe I made this?!  Not Wendell.  Not Landon.  ME. Okay, Wendell did make it before here, but I made this one.

Here's my recipe:

1 small package long rice noodles (palm size package, was $1.00 at Foodland)
4 cups chicken broth (been boiling chicken to add to Kona's food so I neva like throw away the broth; that's actually why I made the soup)
2 small bunches of bok choy (maybe one bunch is good enough)
1 small package Chinese roast pork (I got from Foodland; was like 8 bucks for one small package! Expensive!)
2 tbs. shoyu
1 tbs. Chinese rice wine
1/2 tsp. sesame oil

Soak da long rice in warm water.  Heat up da chicken broth. Wendell's recipe calls for ginger but we neva have so I left it out.  Add chopped up bok choy to the broth.  Drain da long rice and add to da broth.  Add in roast pork (I cut um into smaller pieces), shoyu, rice wine and sesame oil. 

I think I did not bad.  Me and Aunty ate um all up.

My Dad's Fishing Pole

On Duck Dynasty last night, Uncle Si broke Willie's samurai sword. Si and Jase tried to fix it by welding the blade back onto the hilt. It reminded me of kid time when my dog's chain got caught in my dad's 6-foot fishing pole and broke it clean in two. I fixed it by inserting a piece of wire inside the center, joining the two pieces together. I put some glue and then wrapped it up real tight with some string and more glue. I did such a damn good repair job that you couldn't even tell that the pole had been fixed. I didn't think it necessary to mention the mishap to my dad. 

 A few day later, my dad went fishing. He came back and asked if somebody had broken his fishing pole. I confessed. He said that on his first cast, when he flung out his line, the top half of his pole went sailing about 30 yards out onto the water. He said that had plenty people there who saw what happened and he was so shame. What I remembered the most about the incident was that he wasn't mad when he told me what happened. In fact, he was laughing.

Stacy's Angel Food Cream Cheese Cupcake

Coworker Stacy said that she and her sister kinda made up this recipe.  

She first made a batter with Angel Food cake mix according to the directions and filled muffin tins 3/4 full with the batter. She baked according to the directions for about 12 minutes. She then spooned a mixture made with one 8 oz. block cream cheese, one tub Cool Whip and a few tablespoons of powered sugar into a well she had created in each cupcake by pressing down the cake  with her fingers.  Then she topped with Comstock blueberry pie filling. Refrigerate.

Wendell's Bulkogi

I think Wendell might've gotten this recipe from the same magazine that the jerk chicken recipe was in. Wendell couldn't find "skirt" steak which the recipe called for so got "flap" instead.  It was kinda tough to me. But the taste was still ono.

2 lb. skirt steak

1/3 cup tamari soy sauce

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

2 tbsp. fresh lime juice

2 or 3 cloves chopped garlic

1/2 cup scallion

2 tbsp. sesame seeds, toasted

1/4 cup sesame oil

2 tbsp. coarse salt

Marinate 1 to 24 hours

Wendell's Jamaican Jerk Chicken

Hi!!!!!  Surprise!!!  I've been returning here every once in awhile just to see if got more comments and to remove any spam comments, if got.  I don't usually check my Sitemeter 'cause it would make me sad to see the numbers slowly dwindling. I decided to check it out this morning though and was surprised to see a lot of visits recently.  When I looked further I found out that they were coming from Ono Kine Recipes on Facebook.  It made me happy.  So I decided that if I had an ono recipe to share, that I would post it.  Safe enough, right?  

Wendell made this a few nights ago. Was winnahs. He found the recipe in an issue of Redbook Magazine which he read while his car was being worked on. I'm so glad that I was able to find the recipe online so I no need type um out. You can find the recipe here.