Spring has sprung and about bloody time. There is frost on the dock this morning but daytime temps are mild enough. The crocuses have all but died back, but the daffs are going mad–the anemonies are holding their own. But enough of all of that muck. I promised before to list the menu from St. Pat’s Day so here it is–thanks Big Ed for reminding me.
Menu
Spring Cabbage Soup with "Crispy Seaweed"
Salad of Spring Greens with Croquettes of Cahill’s Porter Cheese
Carrot, Leek, Walnut and Cashel Irish Blue Tart
Irish Coffee Meringues with Irish Whiskey Cream
Big Ed also asked what Camera I use for the photos. Last year, about this time, I dropped my old, reliable Olympus camera and had a hell of a time selecting a new one and actually getting it. That’s why the Gastrocast Cookbook starts with Episode #6. . . .The new Camera, a Fujifilm s5100 is a great, easy to use camera but it does have it’s faults. For one, many people have noticed that some of the photos are slightly out of focus. The trouble with the lens built in to this camera is that it has trouble with the sorts of Macro shots I like to take. Also, the steam from the hot food messes up the auto-focus a bit. I like the self-timer feature because that allows me to take the photos mostly by myself–but this also leads to some good, but slightly out of focus shots. Nevertheless this is a good, solid camera with a lot of "Pro" features in a userfriendly package. It is not, however, a DSLR, and does not match the quality of many of my older, non-digital cameras mainly due to lens selection.
I shoot most of my pictures in RAW format now, and use manual settings 80% of the time. I really like this camera, but would love to move up to a FujiFilm S3 as soon as I win the Lottery.
