Yet more kitchen capers

Occasionally, when either necessity dictates or the mood takes me, I set to in the kitchen, and concoct something that I hope will be edible. I dislike using recipes, so tend to either stick with standards (meat, veg and multi-ingredient mash; fish and whatever; bolognese, con carne, or just stuff mixed and cooked in whatever time-honoured fashion is appropriate... you get the picture) or invent something as I go. The latter can be a risky venture, leading to unpalatable or just disappointing results, but thankfully I can usually pull off something worthwhile.

Tonight, I fancied something inspired by a simple rice-and-lentils meal we enjoyed with friends years ago, when we dropped in with little warning. It was tasty and simple, and despite their disclaimer that it was nothing special, I liked it very much. Why I should wait 22 years to attempt something similar is beyond explanation.

Here's the gist of it:

Lentils with rice and vegetables

• 1/4 cup green lentils
• 1/4 cup brown lentils
• 1 cup rice and ancient grains (or just brown rice)
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 carrot, grated
• 2 cloves of garlic, mashed
• a dozen or so round beans, chopped
• 1/2 small red capsicum, chopped
• handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• small amount of chopped salami, cabanossi, etc, if desired (I desired)
• sprinkle of basil and oregano

Simmer lentils for about 10 minutes, then top up with cold water, add rice and simmer for another 20-30 minutes or until cooked.

Saute onion until soft, then add garlic for a minute or so. Add carrot, beans, capsicum, chopped tomatoes and herbs (and meats if used), and simmer while rice & lentils are cooking. When all is nearly done, add cherry tomatoes and simmer for another 5 minutes or so.

Drain rice & lentils when ready, rinse with hot water, and add vegie mixture with salt & pepper to taste.

If daughter is not eating with you, add mushrooms to the vegie mix, or anything else that she would otherwise object to.

It was scoffed satisfactorily, and Young Man of item-with-daughter status ate his before leaving the kitchen, then obliged with preventing a leftovers situation from arising.

It's what's called a result, I believe.

There was no photograph, so here's something completely different.

Lunar occultation of Saturn, 14 May 2014

Waxing

A bright, clear crescent Moon did shine down last night, and with a young man interested in seeing through the big scope, I stirred myself to grant his wish. While looking at the ancient surface, I noticed that the seeing was pretty good, so got the camera mounted for a few snaps.

There's nothing groundbreaking about a pic of the crescent Moon, of course, but it's always pleasing and never looks the same twice—unless you wait a long time and look at every possible opportunity. On this occasion though, there was a pinprick of light inside a large crater, evidence of day breaking upon a central mountain peak ... and who doesn't like a mountain sunrise?

The telescope is effectively acting as a 1200mm f8 long lens, which is pretty big on a crop sensor camera (Canon 40D). At ISO-400, the exposure would be reasonably short, except that I wanted to make the most of that little sunlit mountaintop, so took exposures of 1/13, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100 and 1/200 second, to get detail in both highlights and dark areas near the terminator (the day/night boundary). I then combined all 5 exposure levels to make an HDR image.

The southern highlands, at top, appear more heavily cratered as they haven't been overlaid with lava,which process produced the dark 'seas' in the northern hemisphere.

 

Maurolycus, with central peak lit

The crater trio Catharina, Cyrillus and Theophilus, beside the Sea of Nectar

 

Sea of Tranquility; Apollo 11 site circled

 

3 Phases of The Moon

I've been taking photographs and stargazing for a long time; inevitably, those two pursuits cross paths now and then. It might be a startrails pic, a guided exposure of a comet, or something a bit more whimsical.

Delving into the archives, I took a moon photo from circa 1984, and played with it a bit to create this image. I'm not divulging the recipe, but you won't find it as a simple Photoshop tool! Actually, I'd probably find it difficult to reproduce myself; sometimes I 'explore' an image, making derivative copies, modifying and combining them in different ways until I create something that looks a bit interesting. Usually, I leap rapidly from one transformation to the next, without recording exactly what I've done, so the end result is usually unreproducable. One such exploration, that I didn't save in the end, produced some images that looked like an aged Daguerreotype, and to some extent I was trying to recreate that here.

Click the image to buy from Redbubble
(Available as a card, laminated print, matted print, and more)