Minimally Invasive

Despite the prevalence of Advent posts here, Hanukkah Harry’s a generous soul and has been known to visit me on occasion. In addition to a great cookbook from the Official MI Mother-in-Law (more on which later), he brought me something completely unexpected last week — a Gary Fong Flash Diffuser from Claudia at the always-terrific cook eat FRET! I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here, but I did some design work on her banner a few weeks ago and got to know her a little in the process. Long story short, she’s just as awesome as you’d believe reading her posts. I mean, c’mon — supporting my photography habit and we haven’t even met yet? That’s generosity of spirit right there.

And so, onto some test photos! I know almost nothing about using my new speedlight flash, but I think these shots illustrate just how nicely the diffuser will play with the flash once I get up to speed with the technical stuff. Photo below is of our library downstairs, sans flash:

And here, with full direct flash:

And here, with diffuser:

Much nicer, yes? And I haven’t retouched any of them in any way. I think this’ll help my evening pictures quite a bit, since the light situation in our house isn’t, um, good. It’s cozy, but not the best for documenting our dinners.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Claudia! And Hanukkah Harry, for the delivery!

As we are a dual-faith household, I thought it’d be nice to give Gil, if not equal play, at least a nod in the midst of my Advent posts. So after my stunning and unexpected victory over my nemesis the oven fry recently, I grew bold and decided to tackle the latke this weekend, even keeping it as traditional as possible! That’s right — no bacon grease, no smoked paprika or roasted garlic to liven things up. Nope, just potatoes, onions, egg, a little whole wheat flour (no matzo meal at our local grocery, sorry), salt and pepper, and olive oil for frying.

Bow down to the latke queen! These were completely delicious — crispy on the outside, still soft on the inside, oniony, and not oily at all. It probably helps that I didn’t fry them in nearly as much oil as most recipes call for, but most of them seemed a lot like suggestions, anyway, so I tweaked. We ate them with the usual suspects — sour cream and applesauce — and then took a nap. I hear that part’s traditional, too.

I think I still prefer the fries, but these will definitely get play at least yearly at Hanukkah.