The Lake Effect Diner

This blog is named eat write create, but you'd be correct in assuming the focus on "eat" has been somewhat missing. Let's correct that now. The captain and I ate at a wonderful diner yesterday, one definitely worth a shout-out.

Do you ever watch Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on the Food Network? The captain and I are regular viewers and have been to a few of the places featured in the show. And now we can add another one to the list.

When I saw the episode featuring The Lake Effect Diner in Buffalo, NY, I recognized it immediately -- we had driven by it before and I'd always wanted to give it a try. Yesterday morning, while we were driving down the highway headed for a day trip in Buffalo, we discussed where we would go for a late breakfast and the Lake Effect came up in the conversation. So, after crossing over into the U.S., we headed straight there.

Unfortunately, I took no pictures of the food, but I did capture some iPhone photos both inside and outside. It's a very cool old diner car that is extremely photogenic.

As for the food, it was wonderful. The captain ordered a seemingly standard breakfast item, bacon and eggs. But -- oh! -- that bacon. The captain generously shared some with me and I can report it was thick and meaty, with a slight hint of maple. Delicious. As for me, I ordered the eggs benedict. Homemade hollandaise, perfect peameal. Yum!

The menu covers breakfast, lunch and dinner and the desserts sound wickedly good. Apparently, they make a banana split with deep-fried bananas. We will have to return soon to try that!

December, early

December's calendar page comes to you a bit early. And no, it's not festive or jolly or even red and green. Instead, I offer you a page created with an exquisite photograph of wild mustangs, courtesy of Ree Drummond. Yes, The Pioneer Woman. She is running an "Edit This!" contest over on her blog -- she provided the photograph of the wild mustangs and wants her blog readers to edit it in any way, shape or form, then post to her Flickr group. She chooses her faves and features them on her site.

I had already created three different edits -- it's a very inspiring photograph! -- when it dawned on me that this would make a wonderful calendar page. PW is sharing the photograph and I like to share my calendar page creations. What a match!

So, as always, you can click on the above image to be taken to its page on Flickr, where you can click on the Actions tab above the image and download the size of your choice. And if you are feeling creative, why don't you have a go at the original photograph yourself? The details are HERE. I hope you decide to participate and best of luck to everyone who does!

And...HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all my American friends. I hope that tomorrow you enjoy the football games, the pleasure of having friends and family near and, of course, the food!

(Photograph © Ree Drummond; editing and sharing done with her permission)

For the Christmas she will remember

Sometimes, I find something online that just stops me in my tracks.

I set aside some time this morning to look through the photographs and images recently uploaded to Flickr by my "contacts" -- friends, family, and others whose images I always admire. One of my contacts is What Makes the Pie Shops Tick? who always has wonderful vintage finds.

I was delighted to discover that he was sharing pages from a 1964 Frederick's of Hollywood holiday catalogue, the image above being one of them. How cool is that? You can see these pages, including the cover, in his Frederick's set and I urge you to have a peek; I just know it'll make you smile. And perhaps be a little envious of the waistlines. Did women really look like this in the 1960s?

The captain's big day

It's the captain's birthday! So here's a sweet little blast from the past, the captain as a wee lad.

Isn't he a cutie?

Happy Birthday to the love of my life!

Photo ops

My neighbour has bought himself a wonderful old Mercury truck.Costco has the most gorgeous roses.What could I do but capture it all with my iPhone?





(As always, click on each photo to see a larger version.)

Red Velvet

How appropriate that this is my 400th blog post (!) as it's about something near and dear. Red Velvet! No, not the fabric....the cake. It's one of my most favourite things.

And it certainly seems to be red velvet time right now. Last week the captain and I had dinner at Massey's in Pickering, where we learned they have cupcakes for dessert, including red velvet. Of course that's what I ordered; I took an iPhone snap (above, using the Hipstamatic app) of the yummy treat before I devoured it. If you have a peek at Leslie's blog, she makes mention of Red Velvet cupcakes in today's post, Ina does it again. Finally, a wonderful discovery at Loblaws today: red velvet cheesecake. Guess what we had for dessert tonight?

Animated excellence

Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

I found this online as I was blog-surfing around and wanted to share.
WARNING: Have a box of tissue handy!

Sepia or black-and-white?

Last week, I had the good fortune to attend a slideshow presentation and lecture from local photographer Pamela Williams. This talented woman specializes in cemetery sculpture, a favourite of mine. The evening was entertaining and informative and, for me, particularly inspiring. Viewing her photographs of stone angels and marble women from cemeteries across Europe (and even Cuba) left me eager to review my own photographs as well as hit the road in search of new cemeteries to explore.

The exploration will have to wait for now, but over the past few days I have been browsing through all the photographs I have taken in cemeteries over the past few years. As I watched Ms. Williams' slideshow and listened to her describe these images that she so obviously loves, two things caught my attention. Firstly, I was totally charmed as she explained that when she is shooting, she has no hesitation to crop away an angel's head if she is at all dissatisfied with the hair, the eyes or the face. When she said that, one angel I photographed earlier this year in Richmond, Virginia's Hollywood Cemetery immediately popped into my mind. I decided to try a similar approach and came up with this:

I am very pleased with the results. I find I focus now on her hands, instead of her eyes, which just didn't appeal to me at all. I also tried this approach on a shot I took in Toronto's Mount Hope Cemetery; you can see that image HERE.

Another area of inspiration for me was Ms. Williams' decision not to shoot in colour. The walls in the small, intimate room in which the lecture took place were completely filled with Ms. Williams' photographs, entirely in black-and-white. She still shoots with film and, she told us, always shoots black-and-white in cemeteries. Her slides for the presentation, however, are produced using colour film and therefore will have a colour tint to them, so rather than have an odd colour to the slides that would be offputting, she has them all processed in a sepia tone. At times she even apologized for the brown tones in some of the images that had a great deal of contrast. For me, the apology was not necessary since I quite enjoyed seeing the images in sepia. As I was viewing my own photographs over the past few days, I couldn't help but ponder the sepia vs. black-and-white idea. Photographs of stone and marble statuary lend themselves to a colourless application, but which works best? Sepia? Or the classic black-and-white?

I don't know the answer and perhaps it is very dependent on each particular image, but here is the above photograph presented in both formats. Any thoughts?

As always, click on the photos to see them in a slightly larger size.

I have been experimenting with both sepia and black-and-white with some of my other photographs of cemetery sculpture. Sepia HERE, black-and-white HERE. My thanks to Pamela Williams for both an enjoyable evening and a mountain of inspiration.

November already?

I don't know what happened to October, but it went by with superhero speed. I've spent most of the month nursing a pulled muscle on my left side, something I didn't at first take too seriously. A mistake on my part, for sure. Days and days of ignoring it, I believe, only made it worse and significantly lengthened its time to heal. I hope this teaches me there isn't much virtue in the "grin and bear it" philosophy.

So now it is November and once more I offer you a downloadable calendar page. This industrious squirrel captured my attention as I walked down a picturesque country lane just outside of Ganonoque last autumn. My travelling companions all elected to enjoy a one-hour Thousand Islands boat tour but I chose instead to stroll around the boat-launch area, camera at the ready. I've done the boat tour before, more than once, and I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to absorb the beauty that was all around me.

As always, just click on the above image to be whisked away to its page on Flickr, where you can download your preferred size by clicking on Actions and then on View all sizes.