The Author – Bart Busschots
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Feb
27
Leek & Potato Soup
Filed Under Cooking & Food on February 27, 2011 | 1 Comment
with all this being sick of late, I’ve gotten very fond of always having a pot of fresh soup in the fridge. This is a lovely soup which takes about 30 to 40 minutes to make, and will keep for three days.
The list of ingredients is nice and simple and cheap:
- 3 medium sized Onions
- 3 medium sized potatoes
- 3 average sized Leeks
- 2 litres of water
- ground salt & black pepper
- fresh or dried Parsley & Chives
- a little vegetable oil
Feb
21
Photo of the Week 158 – Back-lit Green-veined White
Filed Under Photography on February 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment
This week I thought I’d share another one of my butterfly shots form last summer. This guy was nice enough to sit still for quite some time, and allow me to get low and close behind him so that I was able to be eye-level with him while he was back-lit by the soft evening sun. I think this species, the Green-veined White (Pieris napi), is particularly suited to being back-lit because it emphasises the green veins in the wings.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/640 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5.6
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
Feb
15
Pan-fried Salmon With Rosemary & Dill
Filed Under Cooking & Food on February 15, 2011 | Leave a Comment
Just a very simple recipe today – not sure it even counts as a recipe, more of a quick tip really. One of my favourite ways to cook salmon fillets, or indeed salmon steaks is to simply pan-fry them with the appropriate seasoning.
Feb
14
Photo of the Week 157 – Ennis Friary
Filed Under Photography on February 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment
This is another one of the shots I took in the ruins of Ennis Friary when I visited Ennis for a friend’s wedding the summer before last. This is not the first shot from that visit to make my Photo of the Week series, see also Photo of the Week 77, Photo of the Week 87 & Photo of the Week 153. I chose to process this shot as a monochrome HDR to really bring out the fantastic textures in this tomb and the doorway next to it.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/125 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Processing: created by tonemapping a single RAW image with Photomatix Pro, then converting it to monochrome with the Channel Mixer brick in Aperture, and bringing out the texture even more using the Curves brick.
Feb
7
Red Lentil & Tomato Soup
Filed Under Cooking & Food on February 7, 2011 | 8 Comments
This is a recipe I got from my mother, and what I love about it is how quick it is. All-in-all it doesn’t take much more than 30 minutes to go from a craving for soup, to tucking in, and most of that time is just to let it boil! You can easily make this soup while you are cooking the rest of the meal or doing some house work.
Below are the list of ingredients, you’ll get four good portions out of these amounts:
- 3 Cloves of Garlic (Mum only uses two, but I much prefer three)
- 1 Onion
- 170g of dried Red Lentils
- a 400g tin of chopped Tomatoes (I like to use organic)
- 850ml of Vegetable Stock (I use a gluten-free Vegetable Bouillon instead)
- Parsley (ideally fresh, but dried will do in a pinch)
- Salt & Black Pepper
Feb
6
Photo of the Week 156 – Four-Spotted Chaser
Filed Under Photography on February 6, 2011 | Leave a Comment
It’s been a while since I shared a Dragonfly shot in this series, so here’s one from last summer. The reason this shot of a Four-spotted Chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata) stands out for me is that I was able to get a lovely smooth blue background by lining things up so that the entire background was filled with the reflection of a clear blue sky in the Canal I was shooting along (the Royal Canal).
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/500 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -1.0ev