The first batch of pears are all dried. They’re like candy. The recipe I found for oven drying them called for sugar, and for the life of me, I cannot imagine why anyone would perpetrate such a crime on dried pears, because they are more than sweet enough on their own. These were just sliced, dipped in diluted lime juice, and stuck in the food dehydrator. Easy and damnfinetasty.
Harriet thinks they are just about the best treat in the whole, wide world.
I meant to get the top of the pear in this shot, but I chopped off its head. Not by much, because Asian pears are apple-shaped, but enough to miss the interesting shadows in the area around where the stem had been seated. (I tried to find an Asian pear with its stem intact, but they had all been de-stemmed.)
Overexposed
Medium
Underexposed
I’m still playing with pears, and with the Polaroid Land Camera Ms. Lea gave me. I don’t know if the film is bad, or maybe it’s not the correct film for the camera, or maybe the camera’s light meter is wonky (it does seem to understand that the shutter needs to stay open longer in low light, so that’s a start), or maybe the camera is just possessed by evil spirits. I’m not getting anything like decent–and my criteria for decent is low!–photos from it. They’re fun, though, because you never know what the camera is going to spit out.
I thought I’d take a couple of photos of them, while they were all lined up so nicely.
My plan, at least at this point, is to fill this whole journal with pears. For one thing, they are fun to draw, because their shapes are so irregular. Even if you have just one pear, all you have to do is turn it a few degrees and it’s a whole new piece of fruit. Second, I’m rusty and simply need the practice.
Third, the little encaustic I was working on awhile back, that I’d been planning on attaching 3D elements to, may be repurposed. I’m going to leave the background as is, but I’m seriously thinking of painting a row of pears on it, instead of bones and whatnot. I’ve had the board propped up on top of a bookcase for weeks now, and after living with it, I think pears are the answer.
We are nothing if not flexible, right? Also, a bit obsessive.
I ran to the grocery store this morning, to buy more pears. They had a fairly decent selection, so I got four different kinds, two of each. As I was unbagging them and setting them on my drafting table, I suddenly realized that I had a dog plastered to my side.
She’s been sitting like that for about 15 minutes now. It’ll be interesting to see how long she holds out.
I think it’s safe to say that she really likes pears.
This is what happens when you leave your still life sitting on the coffee table, where the dog can reach it. I think it may be time for a trip to the grocery store.
I never got a chance to draw the stupid thing from this angle. Hrmf!
Do the Sunsweet folks really think that tarting up prunes in little cellophane wrappers and calling them dried plums is going to fool people into thinking they aren’t prunes? And who in their right mind thinks that wrapping pieces of fruit in plastic is a good idea? It’s second in bozocity only to individually wrapped tea bags. What a waste!
In other news, it’s laundry day, and The Shadow only knows whether or not one or both or neither washing machine will actually work. And, if they work, will they continue to do so for the entire wash and rinse cycles?
It’s a another beautiful day, though, so I shouldn’t be wasting time complaining. The sun is out, the sky is impossibly blue and cloudless, it’s not too warm (but warm enough for a lone hornet to be dive-bombing my studio window), and DST is finally over for the year.
Yay.
(Photo: a composite of four photos I took yesterday while out in Owen County. This was the view from the fire pit, looking across to the state forest. The fire pit itself being the source of the nifty burned copper leaf in one of yesterday’s photos.)
Banana Bread
It was it was grey and sprinkley this morning when I walked the dog. Not cold, but windy, with a definite feeling of fall in the air. I came home and decided it would be a good day to bake, so I made banana bread.
My recipe doesn’t call for vanilla, but that seems very wrong, so I added it anyway. I also used half whole wheat flour and sucanat instead of sugar. The result is darker and richer than normal banana bread. Dark brown sugar or adding a touch of molasses will yield a similar result. Mmmm.
Of course, not long after I turned on the oven, the sun decided to come out. It looks like it’s going to be a gorgeous day after all.
I just put a batch of lentils in the crockpot. They cook quickly on the stove, but I didn’t want to babysit them, so I opted for the slow cooker.
Before cooking, lentils should be cleaned of any stray stones. The easiest way to do this is to pour a few at a time onto a plate.
I have way more to do this weekend than I would like. And, in between everything else, I’m trying to get laundry done. I thought I’d take a minute to photograph some more beautiful peppers from my coworker, though. Next week, she’s bringing me green tomatoes. I can’t wait!
I also had to run some errands this morning, which means I finally found Hobby Lobby. This is not good, folks. It’s right around the corner from me. But, they had the black paper photo corners I wanted, as well as ink, fat glue sticks, and a few other odds and ends. Boy, is there ever a lot of junk there, though! It’s not quite as bad as Big [and] Lots, but it also is lacking in Big [and] Lots’ festive garage sale atmosphere.
Oh, and the UberKroger is next to Hobby Lobby, as well as Showplace East, which is where the new Harry Potter movie is playing. I was way better off not knowing where anything was.
red paper boat 