Kale Caesar!

Here’s an actual conversation that I would have never in a million years expected to hear around our dinner table.

Beloved, gesturing at salad: “Is there kale in this?”
Me: “No, we didn’t get any in the CSA this week.”
Beloved: “Aw, that’s too bad.”
Me: “I know, but it looks like we get some again next week.”
Beloved: “Yay!”

Funny, for all those jokes about people not signing up for CSA farm boxes beause of the fear of getting nothing but kale, it turns out the kale has been our favourite discovery. Go figure! It’s got a lovely green taste and full texture to it (unlike some more wimpy greens) and you know where it is absolutely delicious? In a caesar salad.

Admittedly, the boys are less fond of it. They love caesar salad and are vaguely resentful of me messing with it, I think, so I mix half kale and half romaine and hope they can’t tell which is which, but they usually can. Beloved and I fight over who gets the picked-out kale bits. Who knew?

I haven’t been doing the bi-weekly blog post about our CSA share from Roots and Shoots farm that I’d planned. Darn summer has been too much fun! But also, there hasn’t been much to blog about because it would just be a series of posts along the lines of “oh, these are mostly just the regular vegetables we always buy (zucchini, onions, peppers, beans, carrots, etc) except covered in dirt because they were picked YESTERDAY and about a zillion times more tasty.”

Aside from some weird turnips whose name escapes me, I have not been intimidated by any of the vegetables in our CSA share. I have, however, learned a few new ways to use old favourites. Have you ever just sliced a zuke in half and grilled it on the BBQ for a couple of minutes? Instant side dish and OMG so yummy! I’ve also started adding zucchini to my fajita vegetable mix of onions and peppers. And the discovery of garlic scapes and kale have revolutionized my summer menu planning.

When we signed up for the CSA, we had the option of a half share (bi-weekly pick-up) or a full share (weekly pick-up). We went with the half share, figuring it was a good way to dip our toes in the CSA water without having too much go to waste. We pick up on alternate Wednesdays and this is the in-between week. I found myself yesterday poking about in the vegetable crisper in the fridge wishing we’d signed up for the weekly share.

CSA share in the fridge

Only a few vegetables have gone to waste before we could figure out what to do with them, including a beautiful batch of beets that I just could not bring myself to roast during that stretch of days when it was 40C+ every day. That and some Swiss chard. I may have learned to love kale in a hurry, but I’m still only tepid on the Swiss chard. Hey, it’s a start, right?

Got a favourite simple summer veggie dish to share? Bonus points if it includes Swiss chard or kale! 😉

Where’s Willie?

I knew the years of dealing with a mischevious teenager pushing limits and boundaries were ahead of me, but I didn’t expect them to come on so quickly. The attitude, the cold stares, the disrespect for rules, the blatant escape attempts… yeah, Willie the cat is turning in to a real handful in his second year of life. At this rate, one wonders if he doesn’t want to see his third.

He’s by most accounts a good cat. He is tolerant of the boys, and seems to genuinely like Tristan. He tolerates the rest of us in a kind of heirarchy, with Beloved and Simon near the top with Tristan, and Lucas and I falling in somewhere after the dog. I think he’d like the dog a lot more if she’d let him cuddle her, but she continues to be surprisingly resistant to that idea.

He’s a nice cat, but he’s not an affectionate cat. He purrs when you pet him, some of the time, but he doesn’t approach you for affection. He sleeps on my bed, or on Tristan’s, but I think in the case of my bed at least, that’s because I have big open windows in my room that let in sunshine during the day and aromatic breezes at night.

Cat studies

Up until a month or two ago, I would have said he’s a good cat, but he seems to have entered a rebel-without-a-catbox phase. He’s taken to pulling his claws on the furniture and jumping up to places he really has no business exploring, expecially because he’s clumsy as well as curious and tends to knock things flying off high shelves. Lucas was delighted the other day to find him perched on top of the front door.

The biggest problem by far, aside from the Delft pottery jar he shattered and the fact that the sofa is starting to look a little bedraggled and the fact that my iPhone charger has teeth marks in it (sigh), is the fact that Willie is now convinced he is an outdoor cat. Every time you open a door, he tries to slip outside. No wonder he doesn’t cuddle with me, the number of times I’ve closed the screen door on him as he’s darted out after I let the dog in our out. (You can almost see their telepathic conversation each time this happens. Dog: “What the hell are you doing?” Cat: “Why do they let YOU out there all the time?” Dog: “Because I come back. You’re evil and constantly try to run away. I’m old and I walk in a slow circle to do my business and then wander back in. They don’t trust you.” Cat: “One day I will find a way to defeat the blasted screen door!”)

Since Willie tries to escape somewhere between three and eight times each day, it’s not surprising that he actually succeeds every now and then. Mostly he gets out the back door onto the brick patio and I collect him with minimal effort. A couple of times, he’s slipped out the front door and I’ve had to crawl under the porch to retrieve him. He doesn’t go out the front door nearly so often since I discovered that a hose is an excellent way to drive him out from under the porch.

But a few times, he’s really gotten away from us. He hasn’t gotten far, but there have been a half a dozen times this summer that someone utters the dreaded phrase — “Have you seen the cat recently?” Some times, he’s hiding in the house, usually under a bed or in a closet somewhere. A few times, we’ve found him exploring the yard. And then there was this past weekend. I was sitting contentedly on the porch early one morning, reading the paper and drinking my coffee (favourite way to start a summer day!) and I don’t know who was more surprised when Willie and I came face to face as he popped out of the garden and on to the porch. He must have slipped out between my legs while I was carrying my coffee out. By the time I got my shoes on (still in my pyjamas, no less) to drag him out from under the porch, he was long gone. It took the best part of an hour to get him back in the house, and no amount of having Tristan walk around the yard shaking a bag of cat treats and calling him would bring him out of hiding.

Willie in B&W

Sigh. I am glad he’s not a biter, and that he’s tolerant of the boys endless affection for him. He doesn’t seem to mind being placed into their pillow forts or being carried like an infant, and he usually comes running when Tristan calls for him. He’s cute and all, and certainly photogenic. Does anybody have any ideas on how I might impress it upon his pistachio-sized brain that he is not an outdoor cat after all? I’d hate to actually look forward to November’s chill to do the job for me.

This week in pictures: In which she embraces the strobe

I like to think I’m pretty comfortable with my camera by now. I know my aperture from my exposure compensation. I know how to take a decent picture of the cat and a flower and a child running full tilt away from the camera. The one thing that continues to intimidate and elude me, however, is how to properly use my flash.

The flash is one of the first accessories we bought to use with my D40, way back in 2009. I think I used it about four times and gave up when it made everything look like a deer caught in headlights. I took a workshop at Henry’s and realized I was supposed to take it off camera, but that my camera wasn’t properly equipped to take advantage of that functionality, so I lost interest again. When I upgraded to the D7000 last year, I figured I’d solved the problem and pulled out the flash again, and even bought myself an umbrella kit. And my flash pictures? Still sucked. I started researching and reading, internalizing concepts like guide numbers and the inverse square law and balancing ambient light.

I ran into a bit of a circular dilemma. Books and magazines and blogposts are good for some theory, but you really just gotta get out there and take the pictures. But when I looked at the pictures, they sucked and I was discouraged. So I started looking around at photographers I admired here in Ottawa, wondering if I could approach someone to do some mentoring, or maybe just sit down with me for a day and walk me through the basics. And that’s when I stumbled across a workshop at Harry Nowell’s studio for on-location portrait lighting. Eureka! This was EXACTLY what I wanted. I was so excited I tried to register on the spot – and found out it had just sold out. I was so disappointed, and equally delighted when a few weeks later Harry said they’d be offering a second workshop in the summer. I’ve been patiently waiting ever since.

The workshop was three days this week, and the instructor was Ottawa photojournalist and wedding photographer Blair Gable. If you ever get the chance to work with Blair, as a client or as a student, do it. He’s a good teacher, probably one of the best I’ve had in various photo classes over the years. But more compelling for me, he specializes in exactly what I love most about photography – people and storytelling. We spent a couple of hours in the class looking at some of his work for Reuters and Macleans, and discussing both how and why he chose to light them they way he did. And then we had to (gasp!) get out of our chairs and actually take some pictures.

This was the first time I worked with a professional model, and it was a lovely change of pace to be photographing someone who was not actively trying to resist me. And I didn’t have to bribe her with Oreos or video games, either. On the other hand, knowing she had probably posed for more than a few photographers who didn’t forget key steps like actually turning on the flash was more than a little intimidating, as was working while being watched by three classmates and the teacher. (Funny, by fluke the class comprised all female students – I’ve never been in a photo class or workshop with just women before!) This is the most successful of a few shots I took during the class. The flash is behind her, providing what was supposed to be gentle rim lighting to separate her from the background but I kind of overcooked it a bit.

Krystal (alternate)

Learning how to balance the ambient light and the flash was one of the major goals I had for the class, so I could make photos like this one I took the next day in during our most excellent Wakefield adventure.

Wakefield

While I got the exposure right (and Simon is awfully cute) I think the overall composition worked better in this one, which is why I ultimately chose it as the photo of the day.

Wakefield

I’ve been thinking about this shot ever since I attended the Joe McNally workshop (also on the use of flashes) a month ago. My dad has such character in his face, with the fur and the lines, and I wanted to use a flash to bring that out in an interesting way. Turns out that’s a lot harder than it looks. My sweet dad sat through probably 50, maybe closer to 100 shots as I moved the flash around, tried shooting through and reflecting out of an umbrella, rolled paper into snoots and even tried diffusing with a piece of tissue. I could not for the life of me get the shot I wanted, and he was so patient with me the whole time. There’s something to be said for still being Daddy’s Girl well into your forties. 🙂

Dad

In addition to being a week of fascinating lessons and flash photography, it was the last of three weeks of vacation for me (well, for now. More on that later.) So we did some fun stuff like visiting the splash pad in Barrhaven to chill out.

Fun at the splash pad

And we made another little day trip (how grateful am I that my boys are good in the car) down to Morrisburg to check out what turned out to be a very boring antique show and a very interesting St Lawrence River shoreline.

"I dare ya!"

A sunflower, because I simply can’t resist them.

Sunny flower

And last but certainly not least, a fun shot from a funny family porch portrait session this week. On one of the hottest days in 2011 I chased this little guy around a park for portraits, and this year it was blessedly cooler when he and his family came out to the porch for photos. He really wasn’t much more interested in standing still for the camera now than he was a year ago, though!

Zombie bubble chaser

(He’s chasing the bubbles that you can just make out over his head. There is something about this posture that I absolutely adore. Three year olds are my muse and my nemesis in equal photographic measure!)

Now I just have to commit to learning to use my flash with the same ease and comfort with which I use natural light. If you see Willie squinting and twitching a lot in the next little while, you’ll know it has less to do with Lucas chasing him all over the house and more to do with being glareblinded by me. 🙂

Dani’s excellent birthday adventure in Wakefield

Yesterday was my (gasp!) 43rd birthday. I was going to write a post about wondering about how I got to be so old, but I don’t really feel that way. The number still freaks me out a bit — it’s a really far stretch from my 30s, where I seem to live in my heart — but I had a really terrific day with my menfolk and so I thought I’d ramble on a bit about that instead.

We had no real plan for the day except to do something when Beloved mentioned a road trip to Wakefield Quebec, somewhere we’ve idly chatted about going several times. There’s a bakery there that had been recommended to him (it’s one of Beloved’s ongoing laments that there’s no decent bakery in Manotick) and I’d wanted to visit the covered bridge for ages. Less than 20 minutes later, we were in the car.

Wakefield, if you don’t know it, is a tiny little community about 20 minutes north of Ottawa on the Quebec side of the Ottawa river. In fact, I called our day trip the three rivers tour, because we followed the Rideau north, crossed the Ottawa, and ended up on the shores of the Gatineau. If you’ve heard of Wakefield, it’s probably either for the Black Sheep Inn, a great spot for live music, or because of this gorgeous covered bridge.

Wakefield

Wakefield

Wakefield

The original bridge burned down in 1984, and the community came together to rebuild it. It was re-opened in 1997. There’s a set of steps down to the river from one side that leads to a set of flat (and as Lucas wetly discovered, very slippery) rocks where you can wade to cut the heat of a muggy summer day.

Wakefield

I’m taking an on-location portrait lighting workshop right now, and I had a homework assignment to complete. (On my birthday! Shameful!) One of my goals in taking this workshop was to master this type of shot, where you use your flash in a fairly bright daylight situation. I had a few very patient models, especially when they were able to take turns being my “voice activated lighting stands.”

Wakefield

Wakefield

This may be my favourite shot of a very photogenic day:

Wakefield

The covered bridge isn’t quite within comfortable walking distance of the heart of the village, especially when you’re wrangling a hungry herd and the skies are growing more threatening by the minute, so we hopped in the car and looped back into town for lunch. Maybe it was because I was hungry myself, but everything looked delicious and on a summer Wednesday at lunch time, we had our choice of places to eat. We settled on Kaffe 1870 because they seemed reasonably kid-friendly, and had a delicious and inexpensive lunch. The light in the front room was also delicious:

Wakefield

And then we just wandered for a bit, in and out of some interesting shops including the bakery and a candy store and the eclectic fun of Jamboree. It’s an incredibly picturesque little village.

Wakefield

Wakefield

Wakefield

The one thing I didn’t get a picture of (hard to do it while you’re driving through looping mountain roads at 90 km/h) is the fact that the trees are already starting to change colour in many places. Can you believe that? It must be the drought this year. I’ve been surprised to see shoots of red in the forest on Labour Day weekend, but I can’t think of a year when I’ve seen fall colour creeping in as early as my birthday. What a crazy year.

I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday than exploring a beautiful new place with my favourite people, and I can’t believe we’ve never gotten around to visiting Wakefield before. It certainly won’t be long before we go back.

Celebrate Ottawa’s history with free family fun at the Rideau Canal Festival this weekend

All summer long, I have been meaning to write a series of posts about the history of the Rideau Canal and how it is tied up with the history of Manotick. Each day I work I drive 20 km back and forth beside our gorgeous Canal, and I often think about how integral it is to everything that Ottawa is today. And what better reason to get out and celebrate the Canal than the Rideau Canal Festival, coming up this weekend? Did I mention it was free? From the press release:

From August 3rd to 6th , the Rideau Canal Festival, will be taking place at two different sites, the Bytown Museum/ Ottawa Locks and the Dow’s Lake Site. This festival, which was voted one of Ontario’s TOP 100 Festivals in 2011, is entertaining, educational and best of all free.

For its 5th anniversary and the 180th birthday of the Rideau Canal, the festival has even more activities for you and your family than ever before! Over 100 000 visitors will partake in the Festival’s free programming, live entertainment, tons of culture, heritage, and contemporary activities that appeal to all ages.

FREE Festival Activities include:

· Outdoor shows on stage; live bands & DJs, Celtic music, and Céili on the Canal

· Buskers, jugglers, stilt walkers, fire weavers & face painters etc.

· Connecting Children with World Heritage; children’s crafts and activities

· Stone carvers & canoe carver exhibition

· The UNESCO World Heritage photo exhibit

· Rideau Canal heritage walking tours

· Kayak tours, canoe and paddle boat rentals, hula-hoop workshops

· Pirate adventures

· Parade of lights, Dows Lake Pavillion Fireworks, and Rideau Canal Festival Flotilla

· Acrobatic dance shows

· Colonel By Day celebrations,

· And More!

Parliamentary post card

For more information and details on the events, you can check out the Rideau Canal Festival website. Sounds like a great way to learn a little bit of history and have some fun on a perfect summer long week end!

This week in pictures: Catching up

I took so many pictures while on our road trip last week that they spilled over in to this week as well. And with the transition to the new computer and other technical foibles, there hasn’t been as much time for pictures as there ordinarily would be on a vacation week.

I started the week on a wonderful photographic high note. Christa and I used to work together just after Tristan was born, but it’s been a long time since we lost touch. I was delighted when she got in touch earlier this summer to book a portrait session with her kids and her visiting sister’s four month old baby. (July is certainly developing a bit of a cousin theme, isn’t it?) It was one of those photo sessions that was easy and playful and fun. How adorable are these cousins?

Porch portraits - cousins!

Speaking of cousins, here’s the last day of our visit in London last week, which looks a lot like most of the days we were in London. Sean, be prepared to have us spending a LOT more time at your new place in future summers!

fun in the pool-5

And finally, the last (I think) of the road trip/wide angle series. When I’d rented the wide-angle lens, I had two specific types of shot in mind. One was beach, and the other was the rolling farm land north of London. (If I wasn’t a fisherman’s wife in a former life, I was certainly a farmer’s wife, because I am torn as to which landscape I love more. My ideal patch of land is a rolling farm abutting the ocean!)

These, I found out, are oats.

Farm country, wide angle

Sneaking this one in, too, because I waffled endlessly over which of these two would make it as shot of day. I love the iconic hay bale and tractor. I swear, I see these hay bales in the countryside and want to stop and photograph them every single time!

Farm country, wide angle

Speaking of things that make me happy: sunflowers!

Sunflower season = happy!

There’s a guy who hangs around the Market sometimes with a half a dozen parrots. He makes a couple of bucks by sitting the parrots on people’s shoulder and then selling them the picture. He happened to be out front of the Chateau the other day when I was walking by and I liked the contrast of these wild birds sitting on a feeder in an urban environment.

A pair of parrots

My friend Valerie came for a visit this week and we walked with the kids to Watson’s Mill and the used bookstore. These antique scales in the mill caught my eye, and I like this quote from Henri Matisse to go with it: “What I dream of is an art of balance.”

"What I dream of is an art of balance." ~ Henri Matisse

And speaking of art – it’s hard NOT to take this picture because this is what Lucas does for literally hours each day. I’ll post some of his drawings one of these days, they’re really quite astonishing for a four year old who hasn’t even started school yet. Lately he’s been copying video game boxes, complete with the words. He doesn’t know what the letters are yet, but he copies them legibly and even decoratively. It’s truly amazing – I can’t wait to see what his teachers think of him!

Drawing

Today I have a porch session with a little guy I first met last summer when I did family portraits with him, his parents and his grandparents in the park. What a great honour to have people come back for new and updated pictures after a year!

A lament for comments

Sigh. I just tried to post a comment on a large and popular blog-gone-commercial. I had a long and thoughtful comment typed out, and then I tried to post it. The site wanted me to sign in with a user-ID and password I probably acquired back in 2006 or so, the last time I was motivated to comment on this particular site. Um, long gone from my scabby little memory.

My other options were signing in through a myriad of social networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, etc. But in order to do that, I’ll need to authorize an app to access my other social media accounts. I’ve always been kind of leery about this. Or I have to sign up for an account through the proprietary commenting service. Another set of user-IDs and passwords, and another source for spam. Ugh, seriously?

I hunted in vain for the simple, old-fashioned “name, e-mail address and your web site” options but alas, they are no longer available. So unless I want to allow an unknown and potentially unreliable site to have permission to access my social media accounts, my opinion doesn’t count and nobody wants to hear from me. I simply paged away without being able to post my comment.

It makes me sad.

I’ve been blogging a l-o-n-g time, I know. I’m a dinosaur. But I kinda really miss the old days, when you bent over backwards to get comments and when comments were the lifeblood of your blog. I remember how I agonized over capchas and hated that there was that last hoop to jump through. I’ve thought about installing some of the new fangled comment systems that allow you to “like” specific comments, or reply in threads to individual comments. But I always fear they’d make commenting more difficult, and I never want to do that.

The commercialization of blogs doesn’t bother me. The fact that everyone who has a keyboard now has a blog doesn’t bother me. But this one bothers me. Comments are gold and should be treasured; you shouldn’t have to work so hard to post one.

What do you think? Should I stop whinging and just post through my FB or Twitter accounts?

School’s out but family play can still be learning time

Today I’m blogging at my home away from home on the Fisher-Price Canada blog. I’m talking about learning through play and learning outside of school. Come on over and join the conversation!

Disclosure: I am part of the Fisher-Price Play Panel and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog (and anywhere else I write, for that matter!) are my own.

In which she realizes she may be having a mid-life crisis

It started innocuously enough. The radio dial started spending more time on the pop music station KISS-FM and less time on BOB-FM with its hits of the 80s and 90s. I’d find myself humming Call Me Maybe and Wide Awake all hours of the day and night. I blame (or credit) the boys for that one – I haven’t been this familiar with current pop music since before the millennium.

Then I switched coffee teams. I used to be able to order a coffee with milk, but now I have to concentrate to get the foreign words out in the proper order: I’ll have a grande blonde roast in a venti cup, thank you barista.

Finally, perhaps most dramatically, I switched computer teams. This week, after months – nay, years! – of considering it, we sailed forth on the great ship Macintosh. My MacBookPro arrived yesterday, and it was only by an impressive act of self-restraint that we did not also purchase a desktop iMac computer to go with it. That in fact may be another blog post entirely.

It hit me yesterday, as I sat on the porch wondering where my ‘back’ key went, that there’s an underlying pattern linking all these strange new lifestyles together. If I were a male, I’d be driving a red convertible and combing over my tonsure. On the eve of my 43rd (!!) birthday next week, I’m having a geeky midlife crisis!

Don’t be surprised if you see me in Starbucks, Mac propped open on my lap, wearing skinny jeans, a hoodie and Buddy Holly glasses with a piercing in my lip. It won’t be pretty, but at least I will be cool at last.

This week in pictures: Road Trip!!!

Oh my goodness, I have taken SO MANY pictures this week. It kind of amazes me that I am still so passionate about photography, and that even after turning it into a viable business, it still remains something I love to do. Not only do I love chasing a good photo, but I am so delighted to be able to capture moments like family visits. Both my brother and Beloved’s sister live out of town, and it’s great to be able to preserve memories of our all-too-rare times together.

This was a mobile shot of the first day of our road trip. We left Ottawa just after 7 am and arrived in Windsor in time for dinner. It was crazy stinking hot, but the kids were terrific and the drive was surprisingly easy. Next time we’re leaving at 5 am!!

Road trip!

It was only in seeing my nephew’s stepson and Lucas together that I realize Lucas is no longer a chubby toddler himself. When exactly did that happen?

road trip-7

After a (too) quick visit with family in Windsor, we traveled with them to spend a day at Greenview Aviaries just outside of Chatham, which is conveniently about half way between Windsor and London. My brother and his family came down from London and met us there as well. This is the first time since Beloved and I got married that we were able to spend time with both sides of the family like this, and I am so happy it worked out. Even a rather spectacular thunder storm and nearly losing Lucas (my heart still races when I remember those terrifying 3 minutes when I couldn’t find him) didn’t dampen the fun. This is my niece and Lucas.

greenview aviaries 7

(Not an official photo of the day, but I couldn’t not include a photo of my brother making out with a camel. I’m sure you understand.)

Greenview Aviaries visit

That night we stayed with my brother’s family in London. God forbid we not spend more hours in the car, for the next day we headed off to Lake Huron for a few hours. One of the things I miss most about my childhood in London is the easy access to the beaches on Lake Huron. I think I was a fisherman in a previous life, because just being near the water makes my soul sing.

Sunset on Lake Huron-6

Sunset on Lake Huron - #fromwhereistand

Sunset on Lake Huron-5

With the exception of the mobile shot of Lucas above, all of these photos were taken with the 10-20mm wide angle lens I rented for the week. OMG how much do I love it? Not exactly for portraiture, but great for sweeping vistas and landscape shots. I specifically chose to rent it for this trip, knowing that a beach visit was likely, and also thinking about the farm land that surrounds London. One morning at dawn when I was up before everyone else, I crept out and drove around the concession roads north of town, which have not changed a bit since I was a child. This is the kind of shot I had in mind when I rented the lens.

farm tree

All good things must come to an end. This is four of five cousins and one very pesky puppy enjoying our last morning together, before the six-hour drive back home to Ottawa.

cousins

Willie? Did not really miss us while we were gone.

Wide Willie-2

And then, sadly, the wide angle lens also had to go home. We made a day trip out of our trek to return it, stopping by Sugar Mountain on the way.

Kids in a candy store

What a week!! And that was just the FIRST week of our summer vacation – there’s still several more to come!