Seitan is a vegan “meat” that basically consists of vital wheat gluten, nutritional yeast, soy sauce, garlic and vegetable broth. This forms a kind of dough that you then cut up into a few smaller chunks, which you then cook in a pot of simmering broth and soy sauce for 45 minutes.

It’s sort of a meaty, sort of spongy texture. Once I cooked it, Rob sliced it up and threw it on the skillet, and made a sandwich of it and loved it. I got the recipe off The PPK.

The chickpea burger was really good, but I don’t remember how I found the recipe but I finally decided to try it. This burger uses spices like cumin and coriander and is meant to be served with tahini sauce in a pita pocket. This recipe was found on The 30-Day Vegan Challenge.

I made a complete mess of the kitchen, but I’m enjoying cooking lately. Especially if it’s from scratch and if it’s vegan. Rob seems to think I’m finding my cooking groove.

Here’s a sneak peek of a few pics I took.

Aficionado

Make Do And Mend

Screaming Females

mewithoutyou

Thursday

Check out the full gallery on Verbicide.

The premise is I troll around Flickr’s Creative Common License pics of concert photos, and I pick inspiring photos to post. It keeps me on my toes and reminds me why I love concert photography.

Here’s a recent image I posted (of my own, I’m not above self-promotion) of the first concert I ever shot at the Webster Theater. This is Bayside, opening for New Found Glory. It was such an incredible experience that I continue to shoot concerts.

Check out my Projects page or my Concert Photography page for example work of concerts I’ve covered over the years.

Artist Sean Scully later told me that he posed this picture for me, in hopes that I’d capture it. He was a bit of a character to work with, but in a good way. He was a great story teller, but he would often ramble on and on, but since the audience would eat up all of his words, he fed into it. I certainly didn’t mind because he told his stories with an awesome Irish accent.

It was a big deal when Patti Smith came to visit the Wadsworth, because not only was she displaying photographs in the museum, but she was also playing an exclusive show in the theater. She was a quiet, unassuming artist who at times, felt uncomfortable when asked questions, but she answered them thoughtfully. Here she is, giving a talk about her exhibition, Camera Solo.

And here is a somewhat noise-riddled picture of Patti Smith during her live show. It’s definitely interesting taking photos of such a quiet person, but it just meant that I had to be more patient and wait for those moments.

Second Saturdays at the Wadsworth are family days and admission is free from 10-2. It’s actually a really great program that allows parents to bring their kids in for a fun activity, usually followed up with a talk with a guest artist. On this day, there was music, face-painting and drawing.

Most recently, The Wadsworth had an exhibition called Festival of Trees where the museum was decked out in elaborately decorated Christmas trees and wreaths. It was quite an event and it was very packed. I struggle with low-light photo situations for a few reasons: 1. I’ve seen flash photos go wrong quickly 2. I sort of like the challenge of getting a good photo with ambient light, and 3. My strength does not lie in using a flash proficiently. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I should just learn how to use it. But for now, I sort of like the style of pictures I produce without the flash.

But then THEY lost power. And then my parents lost power. And then Rob’s parents lost power. And pretty soon it started to get dark outside. I could hear tree limbs cracking under the weight of the light, fluffy snow. And it continued through the night. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for folks who had tree branches fall on their house, that must have been scary.

The first night without power or heat was interesting. A little cold, but Rob and I camped out before so we figured we could handle this for a night. We had candles, LED lights, and a portable Coleman burner for heating up food. And I spent the night reading my library books by candle light. When we woke up the next morning, we were not prepared for what we would encounter.

Our yard was a mess of twisted tree branches.

Majestic maples sagged under the weight of the snow, branches snapped and hung on powerlines.

Powerlines hung dangerously low, making it difficult to even try to drive under them.

Here, just a few houses down, a tree split in half and took an entire electric pole with it.

The weirdest part was the top of our street was blocked by powerlines that were strained, leaning, and hanging low in an odd criss-cross pattern.

Thankfully, the next couple of days the sun came out to melt some of the snow, because our portion of the road was blocked on both sides because of downed wires. Plows didn’t dare tread beyond this point. My house is the white house, next to the sign.

Meanwhile, the temps dropped into the 40′s, and the house got really cold. Waking up to cold, sleeping in cold, and washing up in cold is not easy. Rob and I spent 3 lousy nights in this coldness, going to bed at 8, because the coldness makes you so tired. Tuesday night, I managed to talk him into tagging along on my business trip to Boston for 3 nights, so thankfully we had heat, hot water, and a warm bed for the remainder of the week. When we returned on Friday night, we were disappointed to find out our neighborhood was still dark. Neighbors had purchased generators, so the hum greeted us when we pulled into our driveway. We fed the cat, grabbed a few blankets and pillows and drove to my sister’s house, one town over, where she had power. There we stayed for 3 nights.

Last night (day 10 of no power) we checked on the cat after work, and miraculously the power went on by 5. We were ecstatic! I thanked several utility workers who drove by like nights in shining armor in their trucks, with our house exterior lights beaming as the beacon of electricity in our neighborhood. Rob and I were so thankful to spend the night in our house. It was wonderful.

The next morning, I decided to access the damage (especially since I had just found my lost memory card for my camera). We did spend some time this weekend cutting up, and dragging fallen branches to the side of the road, so at least the yard looks a little cleaner. But my poor maples will never be the same.

This is only a fraction of the brush we gathered. The refuses covers ground going all the way around our property – and we live on a corner lot, so you know we have a ton of branches.

I hope this is not an indication of the winter we will have. It’s already been the year of the roof rake, coil heaters, generators and chainsaws (none of which we have purchased, by the way). What else does the winter of 2011 have in store for us?

What you all wanted to see: the one iPhone wedding photo we took.

Relief washes over me after the ceremony (the entire day was just too stressful for me) and Rob adds levity to the day by goofing off as we have lunch across the street from The Chapel of the Bells.

San Francisco, as seen from the passenger seat.

Drive-through tree in California. So big, an SUV can drive through it.

Seattle. Looks pretty… but it wasn’t one of our favorite cities.

Not quite sure where this was taken. One state starts to blur into the other.

Yellowstone. I love this picture. The sun seemed to always cast a golden hue on the mountains.

Love this picture. It wasn’t COMPLETELY posed. He was standing like this, and I made him re-pose so that I could take this picture. Love it.

I tell Rob to pose and this is what he does.

When we stayed in Yellowstone, we had tent neighbors who were pretty cool and had stories to tell. Here they are lighting their camp fire. With flares. And gasoline. But they interesting and we had a great time camping next to them.

Red rock mountains in Wyoming outside of Yellowstone. They were so beautiful that I stopped talking to take pictures. Here are some of the better ones.

Lunch at Ed Debevic’s with the Weilemanns.

I got REALLY lazy taking pictures after we left Yellowstone. I think my homesickness got the better of me. I had no pictures from Minnesota, very few from Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio… then we just drove straight through Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts on our way home to Connecticut, so obviously no pictures of that.

Things that surprised me:
1. The Rokinon is amazing. The saturation of color was so unexpected. Also, the color of the sun seems… golden from the west coast all the way through to about Yellowstone in Wyoming.
2. I finally got to see the Milk Way in Yellowstone. It was pretty incredible.