My Summer Vacation: road trip

The current theme over at Shutterday is "What I Did On My Summer Vacation". Our vacation this summer took place right at the beginning of the season, our family road trip down to Florida during the last two weeks of June. I did blog along the way, but I took so many photographs on the journey that this challenge is the perfect impetus for me to do a recap and share some more road-trip pictures.

To begin, we crossed into the U.S. at the Windsor/Detroit border the morning of June 13th, but a huge construction detour necessitated a drive through Detroit for several miles before being able to get onto the interstate. After a mile or two I realized we were in a fairly gritty area of the city and I was missing several great urban photographic opportunities, so I grabbed the camera out of my purse and took my first pictures of the vacation. I'm so glad the captain is considerate of my photograpic obsession and keeps the windshield as clean as possible. (Thanks, dear!) Above, one of the sights we observed on the drive. I must say, the detour certainly doesn't show Detroit at its best.

After a few hours on the highway, south of Dayton, Ohio, we drove by "Touchdown Jesus". Okay, that isn't what this religious statue is really called, but according to our I-75 guidebook, that's what the locals call it. It's huge.
We spent the night in Corbin, Kentucky, and in the morning drove through the town before getting back on the highway. I just can't resist photographing signs and buildings, especially bars and restaurants. Old Gerry's was just one of the many establishments I captured.
Shortly after getting back on the highway, we left Kentucky behind and entered Tennessee. Fog and low clouds were abundant that morning.We took an "on-purpose" detour off the highway at Jellico, Tennessee. Instead of a high climb, we enjoyed a scenic valley drive. We've taken this alternate route before and always enjoy it. The church pictured in THIS POST was in that valley; you'll see another Detroit photo in that post as well.

While heading south through Tennessee, we pulled off the highway just north of Sweetwater to get gas and a cold drink. A poster in the store window informed us we were a day late for the rodeo. Damn! I would have loved to check out a small-town Southern rodeo; that's just not something to be found here in Toronto.
We spied the "just married" car as we crossed from Tennessee into Georgia. And, a few hours later, we were totally off the highway and quite comfortable in Savannah for the night. Well, except for the early morning wake-up, that is.

Day three (my birthday!) and we soon hit our final destination: Florida! We stopped at the welcome centre, then made a stop for lunch and, finally, reached our condo. A great road trip that was the beginning of a great vacation!

A Donna Domestic day

Irene, I dedicate this blog post to you. You asked about the peach pie I planned to make, so you got it, complete with a photo of the finished pie shortly after it came out of the oven. Just don't go calling me Suzy Homemaker. If you could see this cluttered home, you'd know that's not the term for me.

I did have a Donna Domestic day, but only in a culinary sense. I didn't clean a damn thing, unless you count cleaning off the counter as I cooked. I did manage to put away a couple of things; purely unintentional, I assure you. It wasn't the day for an organizational or cleaning binge, it was a day spent in the kitchen. Meatloaf to make, potatoes to peel and, yes, peach pie to prepare.

So after all that work, was it worth it? In a word, yes. A thoroughly yummy dinner with a wonderful dessert. A whole pie for just the two of us is a bit much but it's fruit, so that makes it okay...right?

I know it would be a tease to post the photograph and not the recipes, so here's how to make the crust and the filling. With peaches in season right now, I hope someone gives it a try!

Heather's Martha's Pie Crust

I got this recipe from my sister-in-law, Heather, who got it online, from someone who got it from Martha Stewart. Not personally, I'm guessing. Heather uses it for chicken pot pies. The pie crust I usually make has both shortening and butter but I had no Crisco and didn't want to go out just for that. So, an all-butter crust fit the bill. I'll use this crust again; it was easy to work with and so tasty.

You'll need:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and very cold
1/4 cup to 1/2 cup very cold water

I only had salted butter in the house so I used that and just cut back on the salt a bit; worked out great. I also stashed my butter and the water in the freezer until I needed them, ensuring they were quite cold.

Put the flour, salt and sugar into your food processor and pulse a couple of times, then drop in the ice cold butter.
Turn the machine on and let it run until the mixture looks grainy; it won't take very long.
Now, through the feed tube, with the machine running, slowly pour in 1/4 cup of the cold water. You want to be able to squeeze a bit of the dough together and have it stay together, so stop the machine and check. If it's still too dry, turn it back on and add a bit more water. Today, I used almost 1/2 cup water; I was concerned I'd added too much but as it turned out, it rolled out perfectly and wasn't too sticky whatsoever.
Have ready a large piece of plastic wrap and dump the dough out onto it. Using the wrap to help you, push the dough together until it forms a large disc or square, then cut it in half and wrap each piece well in plastic wrap and store in the fridge to rest. The recipe says to let it rest for 4 hours before you roll it out, but I didn't wait that long; while a long resting time is, um, a good thing, it's not necessary (sorry, couldn't resist the Martha-ism). A couple of hours is, in my opinion, sufficient time for the pie dough to get a good rest.
And there you have it: pie dough for a double-crust pie.

As for the filling, I found the Simple Peach Pie recipe online. I used the full amount of flour in the recipe plus extra cinnamon. The recipe calls for sugar to be sprinkled on top, which I did, but I do it my way: after I had put the pie together and crimped the edges, I brushed the top with heavy cream and then evenly sprinkled the two tablespoons of sugar over the top crust. This gives the pie a delicious sugar crackle on top and I recommend you do that too.

The beauty of the ballet

If you're on North American time, you'll see that I'm definitely early for Art Creations Friday. It's only Thursday night. But I realized (only today) that because this challenge site is European, I would likely find the challenge image posted on Thursday evening, my time, and wouldn't have to wait until Friday morning to check it out. And I was right!

I loved this week's ballet duo image. So versatile! My creation, "grace", came together quite easily; as always, please click on the collage for a larger view.

I haven't been to the ballet often, but I am so fortunate to have seen Sleeping Beauty, starring the amazing Rudolf Nureyev, at Toronto's O'Keefe Centre back in the early '70s. His performance was absolutely stunning. I'll never forget it.

A dog named Cujo

Stephen King is one of my favourite mainstream authors. Now, that is. The first time I tried to read a King novel, I was not impressed at all. The book was The Shining and I just could not get into it. I dismissed King as not my cup of tea. And then along came a novel called Cujo. Everyone was talking about it, raving about it. I liked dogs so I thought I would give King another chance. (Looking back, "liking dogs" as a reason to read Cujo -- a horror novel about a rabid St. Bernard -- is almost hilarious.)

Cujo was out in paperback and so I bought it. It was 1983 and I was pregnant.

The book hooked me in from the beginning. The terror ripens slowly in Cujo and reaches the point where it becomes unbearable. Is it a good book to read while pregnant? Um, no. Absolutely not the ending a pregnant woman wants to read. (I'm sure you've read it but I'll refrain from giving the ending away in case you haven't.)

I devoured the book, reading it as quickly as I could, and went on to become quite the Stephen King fan. But I still have never read The Shining. Great movie, though.

Cujo is my "C" choice for this week's A-Z Wednesday. If you have never read it, you should be able to find the paperback in any good second-hand bookstore for a small outlay of cash; your local library will have a copy as well. I highly recommend it.

The EYES have it

The mailman brought me a wonderful treat just a few days ago: the latest Photo Arts journal. The theme was Eyes and, as always seems to be the case for me, I had trouble deciding what to submit. I had so many choices, but during the process of trying to narrow it down to one appropriate image, I found myself where I often find myself, looking through the photographs I've taken in Savannah, Georgia. I am always drawn to the pictures I've taken there.

For the Eyes journal, I decided to focus on little Gracie Watson's eyes (no pun intended, really). Above is a larger view of the statue at her gravesite, while below are the front and back of my Eyes contribution. Please make sure you read what I wrote on the back (clicking on it to make it larger will help).

At the risk of repeating myself (I'm sure I've said this before here on my blog): if you ever go to Savannah, do not miss Bonaventure Cemetery. Even if you typically don't visit graveyards when on vacation, this one is a must.

FRONT

BACK

Art Creations Friday on Saturday

Yesterday I checked this week's offering over at Art Creations Friday and was delighted to spy a gorgeous background instead of the expected vintage photograph. I was brimming with ideas on how to use it, eventually settling on what you see above -- started late last night but finished just now. Please click on it to see it much larger.

Somehow the theme of the piece became reading; it features a page of text from an old school book as well as a stone statue of a mother reading to her daughter (which I photographed in a Buffalo cemetery). Also in the mix, one of my new textures that I just put up in my Flickr galleries plus, in the top right corner, a photoshop brush I created using one of the Paris photographs Leslie so generously shared with me. Not too many elements but I think the collage came together nicely.

Something just for you

It's time to give back. For more than a year I've enjoyed the fruits of many other people's labour: all the free textures available online, particularly at Flickr. But here's the thing. I take a lot of photographs with the sole purpose of using those particular images as my own textures. But with hundreds of downloaded goodies on my hard drive, it's always just so easy to ignore the task of creating my own texture files. Last night, though, I was perusing some photographs and came across a folder with several images that practically screamed at me to be used as textures. "Use me, use me," they cried. "Use me now!" And so, I thought, why not create them and share them?

So I did. Last night I got off my duff -- well, I actually stayed on my duff -- and created some of my own textures that I can share with all the other digital artists out in blogland. For now, there are five (pictured above) but there will be more in the future. Please, use these as you wish. I would love to see what you do with them, of course. You can click on the image above to take you to my texture set on Flickr, where you can download all five files, or just click HERE or look on the sidebar on your right for the "Lennie's free textures" button that will link you up.

Thanks for having a look, thanks for telling all your friends to have a look, and thanks also to the hundreds of artists out there already sharing their creative efforts!

B is for Barefoot Contessa

The Barefoot Contessa and I did not get off to a great start. It was many years ago, shortly after Ina Garten launched Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network. My girlfriend Lori was raving about her, her show and her new cookbook (pictured above). I had never seen the show or the book; it's odd, given that I'm such a foodie, but I really had never heard of her. Lori explained a bit about who she was and that she was a friend of Martha Stewart. Somehow that equated in my brain to a show I had watched a few times that aired in the morning before Martha came on. I really disliked that show, thought the woman hosting was pretentious and phony-casual. And I thought she was Ina Garten. I couldn't understand why my friend liked her so much.

Fast forward a few weeks and I discovered I'd made a big error. The woman in question, the one I disliked, was not Ina Garten. I hunted down the proper show, watched one episode of it, and was hooked. The next time I was at Lori's, I had a look at The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, which Lori had and loved. Hooked again.

Fast forward to now. I have all six of Ina Garten's cookbooks, I believe I have seen every episode of her show, I have her web site bookmarked, and I count many of her recipes as personal favourites, including Rum Raisin Rice Pudding and Broccoli & Bow Ties.

So for this week's A-Z Wednesday Challenge over at Reading at the Beach, how could I not say that B is for Barefoot?

A new dawn, a new day

One of the Photo Arts journals I participated in last year had the theme of "sacred". I was reminded of that book today when I saw this week's theme over at Unique Exposure's Photo Challenge: New Dawn. You see, my contribution to the Sacred book involved the dawning of a new day and what that means to me. You can see my photograph for Sacred above; click on the image to make it much bigger. I won't add anything more as reading the inscription I wrote for the back of the image really does say it all for me. No more words required.

She looks so sad

After a brief summer hiatus, Art Creations Friday is back online. I always look forward to this challenge, as it gives me the opportunity to play around in photoshop with images other than my own. This week, the provided image is a vintage photograph of a young woman. She looks incredibly sad to me. I'd love to know her story.

Earlier today I was looking through the many marvelous textures so generously shared by one of my favourite Flickr contributors, Playingwithbrushes. I downloaded a few more to add to my growing collection and then chose one to work with today. Choosing wasn't easy; most of her textures work so well with vintage photos.

This piece of art came together surprisingly fast; I'm quite pleased. I kept it simple on purpose; I didn't want to take away from the sad, wistful woman. I wish I could tell you where I found the nifty brush I use to provide all the scratches, but I haven't a clue. I do know it's rapidly become a personal favourite.

Memories of Savannah

Whenever I leave the house, I have a camera with me. So it goes without saying that I take many, many photographs. I am always pulling my little Sony camera out of my purse when something catches my eye. On vacation, the photography is never-ending; I just about always have my "good" camera within reach as well as the one in my purse. I have thousands of photographs taken while travelling. Last night, I was browsing through some of the vacation folders on my computer and spent a good deal of time looking at my Savannah images. So I opened up photoshop and had a little creative fun with a few of them; they're now up in my photo galleries on Flickr if you'd like to have a look.

The billboard, above, is one of those photographs. And its message is completely true. The best shrimp I have ever eaten, hands down, are the local shrimp in Savannah. Don't miss them if you ever visit this beautiful Georgia gem.

Brought to you by the letter A

My home is full of books, all kinds. Cookbooks, travel books, gardening books, art books, craft technique books, true crime books, and oodles and oodles of novels. I love books. And I love reading about books. Like this morning. I read Irene's blog post about a new book-related challenge:



Definitely up my alley. I knew right away I had to participate.

Art challenges require you to create a piece of art related to a theme; this challenge requires you to blog about a book starting with a particular letter. And since this challenge just started, we begin with A.

I have not chosen a novel as my contribution but, instead, a travel guide book the captain and I find essential when heading to Florida. Along Interstate 75, written by Dave Hunter, is an exit-by-exit map book, now in its 15th edition, covering all of I-75 from Detroit down to the Florida state line. But it's so much more than just an interstate map. Much more. With this book at your fingertips, not only will you know which particular hotels, restaurants and gas stations are at each and every exit, and on which side of the highway too, you can also discover what is historically or geographically significant about each area you drive through. You'll even find tips about interesting places to check out that are a few miles off the highway -- like the birthplace of Kentucky Fried Chicken in Corbin, KY, for example. The book gives a bit of the KFC history and also directs you off the highway so you can have a look where Colonel Sanders got his start so many decades ago.

Here's a picture at this historic site I took back in June:
We use this book as a reference whenever we head north or south on I-75. Want to know which hotel chains are at the next exit? The book knows. Looking for a particular restaurant chain or gas stations that offer diesel? The book has the info. We also appreciate Hunter's personal restaurant recommendations; we have discovered many great places to eat by trying his suggestions.

An updated edition comes out every two years; we buy ours at Chapters but you can also buy it from several other locations. Information on purchasing the book can be found at the book's web site, Interstate-75.

Loose ends finally getting tied up

Procrastination. It could be my middle name. For ages now, I have been meaning to tackle some blog housework; specifically, adding labels to my posts. It would have been an easy task -- if I hadn't waited until I had 200+ freakin' posts! Even before I hit the 200 mark, I was putting this task off simply because I knew it would be a mind-numbing, time-consuming job.

Be proud of me, though. I finally started last night and, this afternoon, I had applied appropriate labels to each and every blog post here. At times it was very frustrating but I muddled through.

In the long run, I don't even know if this will prove useful. But it's done now and I will keep it up. I was even inspired to have a look through my "2009 Projects" folder to see if there were any photoshop projects I had started this year and then abandoned. And yes, there were a couple. One in particular caught my eye: a duo-tone experiment.

This is so stinkin' easy. Here's how to create your own duo-toned image. First, open up a photo in photoshop; you can mess with it if you want -- bumping up contrast and increasing saturation, perhaps, or maybe you want to completely desaturate it -- but for the purposes of this quickie experiment, let's not. You can always go back and do that later.

Next, create a new layer. Then go to the Edit menu and choose Fill, choosing Color and then picking a colour of your choice. Above, you'll see that I did two different duo-tones using the same image; on the first I chose an orange tone, on the second, a light green. After you choose your colour, click Okay and then Okay again; you'll now be looking at a solid colour layer. Just one more step. Go to the layer blending modes and scroll almost all the way down the list of choices to the bottom, and choose Color. That's it! You've now created a duo-tone image. (Let me know if any of the steps confuse you and I'll do my best to clear it all up.)

Experiment with different colours; you'll get very dramatic effects with certain shades, depending on the photograph. I especially like the results using ochre tones. Give it a try, and if you post your results on your blog, leave me a comment here so I can go have a look at your art!

Choosing colours

Over at Shutterday, the challenge theme this week is "color". Heavens. While I do like to create both black-and-white and sepia-toned art, colour is really where it's at for me. Searching for an appropriate submission, I looked at several photographs that all exploded with many different colours, then finally decided to create an array of single-colour photographs instead. Clockwise from top-right: sign on a machine shop in Pittsburgh, purple door on Yonge St., abandoned green lawn chair I found; warning sign by the Kennedy Space Center parking lot, pumpkins for sale at a flower market on Kingston Road, and one of the stools in the Bus Terminal Restaurant on the Danforth.

The Leisure Seeker, by Michael Zadoorian

My 200th post! Heavens, a lot of words and a lot of images. I am going to mark the milestone with a book recommendation, something not typically found on my blog.

Not because I don't have opinions, mind you. Lord knows I am full of opinions. I'm used to expressing them as well; over the years I've written a ridiculous amount of reviews. This comes with the territory of a magazine writer and editor, especially when you are on staff at a small publication with a limited freelance budget; whether you relish the role or not, if that's your job then you are automatically a critic when needed. There were always products and books that needed evaluating for our readers.

But enough about all that. I want to tell you about The Leisure Seeker. Michael Zadoorian has created a novel that resonated with me and will stay in my thoughts for quite some time.

I discovered this book's existence while browsing through the travel section at the Toronto Public Library's web site. Quickly scanning the description, I surmised it was a novel about an older couple on a road trip. Thinking that would make for a good summer read, I requested it. I was not prepared for the book to be so much more.

This is the story of Ella and John. They are in their eighties, happily married for decades and now both seriously ill. Ella is a plump, spunky woman who needs her cane to walk any distance. She has incurable cancer. John, while still fairly robust, has developed Alzheimer's. Despite these drawbacks, Ella makes the decision that they need a vacation, an adventure, and so off they go, a road trip along historic Route 66 in their beloved 1978 Leisure Seeker camper van. Starting point: their Detroit home. Ella's desired destination: Disneyland.

Is the trip a foolish idea? Likely, but that is one of the beauties of aging that Ella wonderfully demonstrates in this novel: you can do what you want and damn the consequences. Ella is determined to take this journey and so they steal away, telling neither their doctors nor their children they are leaving. It is to be the experience of a lifetime, the ultimate road trip. Narrated by Ella, the novel chronicles both the vacation -- the oddities they encounter along the historic roadway, the health problems both face -- as well as her recollections of their life together. The book is at times amusing, romantic, poignant.

I shall not give away any more. Do they complete their journey and make it across the country to California, to Disneyland? You'll have to read the book to find out. I thought I had an idea of how it would turn out, but the ending unfolded differently than I anticipated. I softly closed the book when I finished, staring off into space for a bit. The novel stirs up a lot of emotions, is definitely thought-provoking. You will likely want to see Route 66 for yourself after reading this book, and you will also look lovingly at your spouse and be thankful for your years together, I am sure.

This book is a keeper. I think you'll like it too.

Excerpt from The Leisure Seeker:
We sit for a while in the van and sip juice, eat grapes, along with some Chicken in a Biskit crackers. It's an odd combination, one that I'm not sure I approve of, but I didn't feel like rooting around in the back for anything more substantial. Anyway, I'm just happy to have an appetite. The grapes are luscious, dark and juicy, so I tuck a napkin under my collar as I eat. Neither of us says anything. John occasionally makes a small approving grunt, but that's it. It's good this way, good that we're not speaking. Speaking would only ruin it. For a moment, I am so happy I could cry. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes traveling wonderful for me, the reason I defied everyone. The two of us together like we have always been, not saying anything, not doing anything special, just on vacation. I know nothing lasts, but even when you know that things are just about over, sometimes you can run back and take a little bit more and no one will notice.

Speaking with conviction

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

I don't often do blog posts like this -- presenting you with a little video to watch -- but today I make an exception. The typographical layout/animation is amazing; the message needs to be heard. Speaking with authority ... you HAVE to watch this.

I have never been to Paris

Do you remember that old Three Dog Night song, Never Been To Spain? Well, I've never been to Spain ... or Paris. And while I would like to go to Spain, I would love to go to Paris. Someday. But thanks to a wonderful artistic collaboration with Leslie, I have been stretching my creativity with some terrific Parisian photographs. It's not the same as visiting in person, of course, but working with these images has been very inspiring.

Above, the first of what I hope are many works of art created with Leslie's photographs and my photoshop shenanigans.

We're having a pity party

The life of a puppy is not all fun and games. Tippi was spayed last week -- the operation was a success but she does not understand why life didn't return to normal after she came home. She does not think her elizabethan collar is a daring fashion statement, she just thinks it's annoying and has already started the process of trying to chew it to bits. The edge that she can reach, that is.

She is also supposed to take it easy. Easy? Just try telling a six month old puppy not to play, I dare you. If she was a little girl instead of a little girl pup, we could rent lots of movies and do our best to chill out for a few days. Puppies do not want to chill out. They do not want to watch television. They want to run around and be a goof.

Sigh. Poor Tippi. Heck, poor us. It's going to be a long week.