I made my first Lasagna in this house with chicken and spinach.I honestly don't know why it took me so long to make one! Maybe because I am actively try to not eat heavy carb food or that I didn't have the right size of Pyrex so I finally remember to get one ha!
I had one week before starting the new job so I focused to edit backed up photo sets as much as possible. Sadly I had been forced to neglect so many photo sets the past two years with the crazy work schedule I had with my previous job that I have pushed my own photos to the back burner as I desperately tried really hard to get clients and then collaboration images out first and never got a chance to edit my own travel or personal images edited out.
I shot these while we were waiting for a model to meet up at this rooftop for a photoshoot, I used Fujifilm XT2 with 50mm 1.4 lens. I am still trying to figure out a better way for the self portrait set up for this camera, the remote assist through the app is not giving me enough control, so I need to play around with it more I think.
We woke up to a beautiful rainy day, we had the leftover chilies for dinner and grilled cheese sandwiches. Then we headed out to San Antonio to drop off the dog for her dental appointment. Unfortunately, the doctors were not able to save her teeth so they had to be finally removed.
I really enjoyed today's photowalk, it was definitely my favorite as of yet. We had gone to a few that we didn't really care about, so finally Josh set up his own invited couple of his friends who were into film photography . . It was funny how many cameras we all ended up bringing with us, we counted it was 14 cameras between 6 people. I hope we get to continue with it and make beautiful photographs :)
Lately I have started to drink warm lemon juice in the morning, I've heard so many good health benefits. Since I didn't have any plans in the morning I got to make a warm breakfast and later went to a makeup job. I am starting to also be more prepared and intentional with my food choices, so I packed some chillies toped with avocado and cheese for lunch before I went to get some shopping done. For dinner we went to a Beer Garden for some food and drinks and they had retro night disco style party, it was really fun to watch and I had Bratwurst and Mexican corn. We headed home early because we had a 7:00am Photowalk session with some photographers the next morning.
If you love Baklava as much as we do in our family you would know how expensive this treat is to buy all the time and how incredibly difficult and time consuming to make! My dad has found a way to make this delicious treat at home - the trick of course is using the pastry sheet instead of making it yourself. It can’t be any pastry sheet but it has to be Fillo Dough size 4! In our city he found it in a Syrian supermarket that carried middle eastern items. The following images are from one weekend he demonstrated the process with two different styles to us and I took all the pictures in the world to capture everything I could to try it later myself
The first style is the square shape, all you need is a rectangle baking pan or Pyrex some crushed walnuts (my mom has allergy to walnut so we use almonds) and crushed pistachios and melted unsalted butter. Brush some butter at the bottom of the pan and then oh the first layer of the dough then brush a layer of butter over and then lay over another layer of dough. Repeat for 5 layers then cover the later with crushed walnut or nuts if your choice and then cover up another 5 layer till you finish. Brush the top layer with melted butter and cut into squares and then bake till it’s golden. When it’s done pour over the sugar syrup (boil 2 cups of sugar in 1 cup of water + 2 teaspoon of rose water) and decorate with pistachios. The second style is the rolled out dough in two different shapes. He used a tiny round stick and rolled in the dough when down he made a circle and lay on the pan. For the second long roll style he rolled the edge of the dough and then stopped and. Added a line of crushed pistachios and rolled the dough over it and lay it on the pan, cut them and cover them all in melted butter. When they are baked and hot pour over the syrup and let it cool. Towards the end of December I quit my day job to look for a one that wouldn't require it to be the front and center of my life, working nightshifts, weekends and holidays ~ In fact my job has been so demanding for the past two years that I was not able to look for a new job, until I finally quit and removed myself from it completeley and mentally and physically came to peace and in a healthy space to be able to search for other opportunities. Today almost a month and a half into the job hunting I was offered a new position with an agency that I was desiring, although my income is lower than my last job and I will have a longer distance to commute, I am able to trade it off for a normal work hours and stability. Looking back through the job search experience, the interview processes were draining like always and on top of that for every single job I had leveled up I had to take some sort of a test. For example for this position, aside from the interview I took a 45 minutes long writing test, not to mention three writing samples that I brought with me to the interview. However, through this experience I learned a little bit more to trust myself, was challenged to let go more of control, any expectations and move more with the flow that life brought my way. My new motto is a quote by a Japanese author: Let those who want to leave to leave, those who want to come to come and those who want to stay to stay. Photo Credit: jyangphoto.com
This is the new set up for Josh's camera, he recently moved to 85mm lens and asked me to be his test subject. I absolutely love the bokeh this lens provides, how it separates the subject from the background. We shot these images in back a coffeeshop building at sunset time, surprisingly for a winter the weather has been so nice that I could be in a skirt and without a heavy jacket. |