A 10-year old photo from Padua, Italy on my way to Venice. I don’t think I visited or saw any piazzas I didn’t like – always something to admire or photograph.
Author Archives: onefloridacoder
Dancing Through Another Door
This year my youngest daughter is getting married. She asked me to pick the song for our Father-Daughter Dance at the reception. I’m the music snob of the family, so I’m thinking, I-have-so-got-this! Right?!
Not so much. It took about a month of listening to the rest of the world’s suggestions, combing through my own library on every device I own that holds music. Finally, I narrowed it down to 9 songs for her to choose from. I realized I couldn’t pick a favorite, so we’ll work together to narrow it down further.
Below is the playlist running off Spotify.
Weekly Photo Challenge : Relic
This photo taken in Randolph, NY about 6 years ago. It was the family’s chicken coop with a coop full of chickens inside. The background behind this coop has two baseball diamonds today, so I’m glad I grabbed this shot when I did.
Weekly Photo Challenge : On The Move
I took this photo a few years ago while visiting NYC – Grand Central is a very photogenic place. I thought this might fit into the topic of on the move as well, although very late to the party on this post.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Contrast
Took this picture out on a ride a few weeks ago…
Cookie Dough Anyone?
I decided to crack open the chocolate chip cookie recipe today. I used some of my advice on how to smooth out the flow of getting things into the mixing bowl, onto the cookie sheet, out of the oven and onto the cooling rack.
Today, the camera’s flash wanted to keep firing. I ended up letting it fire and just covered it with my hand rather than stopping to figure it out. Maybe later. If you have a Kitchen Aid mixer, you have this recipe, it’s pretty straightforward. My QC crew definitely liked the raw cookie dough so this might be the one to use for a while until I find another one or change this one after I get more experience. Oh, we have two or three tablespoons of chocolate cookie dough left over for a snack later on tonight, or maybe for breakfast tomorrow, the QC team hasn’t decided yet.
Here are the pictures from today’s adventure… right now I’m waiting on the oven to finish cooking a roast so I can start on a wheat bread recipe this evening. We’re hoping to use it in our own version of Carrabba’s herb-olive dip recipe
j@s
Weekly Photo Challenge: Extra, Extra
Extra, extra large blooms this week…
Clear, with a chance of meatballs
Yesterday evening I tried to make the meatball hors d’oeuvres I mentioned in a previous post, and did. It took much longer than I thought, but that’s fine. I stilled learned more about the Kitchen Aid and using a camera while I’m cooking. It’s hard and something to get used to.
The ideas I came up with were to stage the ingredients and use a tripod and reposition the camera around the kitchen as things “get done” or prepared. The tripod comes in to the picture (pun intended) for the next recipe.
The Metro Beater Blade works awesome on this stuff as well, didn’t need a spatula and clean-up was a breeze. The meat grinding attachment doesn’t do well with fat, so trim off as much as you can before you grind it into ground beef. Your mixer will have a much easier time and you won’t waste 15 minutes trying to clean out the die before you can even wash it. The mixer still did an outstanding job.
My phone ended up taking the photos below and the face of the phone is quite gross as well, but it did do the trick
j@s
What’s playing now?
I’ve got a few different channels I listen to when it comes to music. I once was a huge Pandora fan, but now I’m just a fan. I still like the randomness of Pandora, you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get. A little serendipity in music is always nice for sure. Lately it’s been some links provided by some of the folks I follow and that follow me on WordPress, and Spotify. One interesting share from someone was the “Mug and Brush Sessions“. A barbershop opens up to record audio and video of a band, and provides post-production support as well, then hosts them on YouTube. Pretty cool, huh? I watched a few of the videos and there’s this one with a guy laying it down with a harmonica in one of the R&B videos. Just killer!
Then there’s my girlfriend whose a huge soccer fan, so we have a lot of FIFA chatter in the house. The only thing close to soccer for me was kickball in grade school – soccer wasn’t ever part of my life but it’s amazing how the world is wrapped around this sport. And with it comes the music attached to FIFA. A few of the players have playlists up on Spotify for what their listening to as this event progresses. There’s so much awesome music in these lists – and yes, it would be worth getting a freemium subscription if you’re curious so you can hear it for yourself. Oh, and the best part of Spotify (IMHO) is I can keep copies of anything I listen to on my iPhone, Windows Phone, iPad, MacBooks, or PCs for those times when Wi-Fi isn’t available. And most of the roads I ride have more water towers instead of cell towers – so this helps out in a pinch.
I’ve always been a fan of Brazilian music, but more in the vein of Stan Getz, Juan Carlos Jobim – these guys were Brazilian Jazz giants back in their day, and probably one of the reasons we have so much fused music today. The FIFA music is much more contemporary but the beats and rhythms beneath the music still share the same stuff the Jazz giants gave us. Very cool, and awesome for my ears anyway.
Then, there’s the music I listen to when I’m not coding, or drawing shapes and lines on paper and grease boards – this is the music that’s pumping into my ears while I’m on my motorcycle. And of course it has to be loud enough to drowned out the pipes. Recently I found another playlist in the blues channel on Spotify called “Funky Heavy Bluesy” – this playlist actually makes my bike go faster I think. It’s interesting enough to listen to and not distract from the task at hand, handling the bike in traffic and turns on the back roads. I had a lot of blues exposed during high school and played so much of it with friends, and managed to mix it in with my own playing style, subtle but still noticeable.
This is what’s playing now for me, at least for now.
j@s
PB&J
PB&J == Peanut Butter and John – I love peanut butter so how could I go wrong with something like baked peanut butter!
I thought I start with something simple and see what I could learn. So I started with a peanut butter cookie recipe from the Kitchen Aid recipe book that came with my mixer. And after reading some reading some reviews about this new whiz-bang mixing beater blade, I tried that out as well.
The recipe was straight forward but I realized quickly that organizing the ingredients before production was something I needed to figure out rather than just stacking the ingredients on the counter and adding them as I go. So that was the first lesson.
After that, things started to flow. Here are a few images from my adventure last night. I did get one “hidden-mickey” out of this batch, so that was kind of cool as well but it was thanks to my large hands. The recipe calls for 1″ balls of batter – not so simple for me so some of the cookies turned out kind of large. I only managed to eat about 8 of these treats so the rest of them are going to work today for meetings and breaks.
The next project is some homemade meatball hors d’oeuvres and chocolate chip cookies at the same time to see how switching between two different types of recipes works out.
j@s
john@scale 
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