Recipe of the Week

It pays to have friends.

This is a lesson I can certainly learn from. I like to keep all my ideas to myself until I've tried them. Then, if it didn't work, no one will ever have to know. But if it did, I can show everybody and they'll say, "Oh my! That is brilliant!" But sometimes life just works a lot better when you ask for help.

Exhibit A: recipe of the week ideas. I am just not brilliant enough to come up with all the ideas on my own, but hey, there is a whole school full of people out there who are eating several times a day in Baldwin. That's a lot of experience to glean from.

Since I have friends who work in Baldwin, they see a lot. It's like having eyes on the inside. I've got a man on the inside! Or in this case, a woman. My friend Charlee (who is a woman) was presented with a strange request when she was making omelets the other day: someone asked her to mix cottage cheese in with the omelet. Whhaat? Cottage cheese in the omelet, huh? Well hey, it doesn't hurt to try. Even if you are skeptical of cottage cheese, as I am.

So here's what you do: pick out your toppings. Anything you want. I chose ham, broccoli, and tomatoes. Because I was being healthy. Somewhat. So cook them in the frying pan, just as you would when preparing your normal, everyday omelet. And THEN you add the cottage cheese. Because this is not a normal, everyday omelet. It just melts into the mix like it was supposed to be there in the first place.

Once all your toppings are good and covered in melted cottage cheese, add your eggs. Mine started out looking like an omelet, but the cheese does make it harder to hold that shape, so it ended up as scrambled eggs. No shame in that. It's pretty simple, just cook it all up together. And if you're feeling adventurous, throw in some rosemary or whatever spices happen to be around. I am not well versed in my spices, so whatever you believe will augment the taste of this concoction, I'll trust your opinion. You'll be the one eating it, after all, so mix in whatever you like. Just make sure you mix in some cottage cheese too because, hey, I just made eggs that literally had cheese cooked into them! I honestly can't say that there was a strong taste to them, but there certainly wasn't a bad taste. Next time I shall try to add more cheese because everyone knows that more melted cheese makes everything better.

Looks yummy, doesn't it? Not bad Charlee, not bad.

Why So Unserious?

It occurred to me that amidst my dining hall dishes and the newspaper pictures that I post, I may lose the serious nature of my original blog posts. My intention is not to create an academic site with incredibly intellectual readings, nor is it create a shallow, sunny site with no hint at all of real life. My goal is to show real life, my life, including all my moments of raw honesty and serious thought, and those of shallow, simple fun. Perhaps that is all too random to be on the same blog, but life is like that you know, needing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but not an overload of any one thing.

That being said, it has been ever so long since I did share anything honest or worth talking about. And I hope that if I can share my struggles and ways of coping, then other people with similar struggles can take heart and learn from my experiences.

So let's get back to God. How am I doing with him? If you've read my earlier entries you'll know that I am serious about becoming a follower rather than a fan of Jesus Christ. That I felt compelled by God to quit my job at the dining hall and take up a job in the photo lab. And that I expect everything from then on to be happy, sunny, and perhaps a shallow life filled with microwave waffle batter concoctions. But again, life needs a little misery thrown in to keep it worth while.

About a week after I had stopped working in the dining hall, I was incredibly depressed. Still being the beginning of the year, there was not a lot of activity in the photo lab, and I spent many hours sitting there doing nothing. I felt so useless and my body was sick of being stationary. My previous job required constant running around, which meant adrenaline and excitement. This meant entertaining yourself. There was certainly the opportunity to get a lot of things done, such as writing in my blog, but clearly I am too lazy for such self motivation.

Life sucked. I told myself it did at least. And told God. This is what you want me to do? Sit here and be useless? And basically I felt God say to me, "Get over yourself."

Get over yourself. Just stop complaining and start living the life you have. Don't focus on you, focus on me. It is incredible how much the prospect of facing your daily life can change when you are not focused on how much you don't want to do any of it, but rather on the fact that you are here to worship God. This occurrence being nearly a month ago now, I cannot tell you my exact thoughts, but I do know that by realizing every day is mine to live for God, I am learning to be content whatever the circumstances. Because the circumstances no longer matter.

Recipe of the Week

My mother will surely appreciate this one ;)

I promised that I had something grand planned! Here it is:

I call it...well I don't know what I call it...Here's what it is:

First, (and this is very important), spray a large cereal bowl with waffle iron spray, or what might work better is to grease it with butter. This is because we are going to commit an unforgivable crime in Baldwin--we are going to cook waffle batter in the microwave! It does tend to stick to the bowl, so I tried to keep it clean for my dish room friends.

I took two bowls and filled one with cream cheese, strawberry jam and sugar, just to make sure there was enough sugar in it, although I'm sure it tastes fine without the extra sugar. But what the heck, it's always fun to add extra sugar! And then I was planning on chocolate chips, but there weren't any today!! However, since they just melt anyways, chocolate sprinkles worked just as well. Mix it all up really well.

Then take your other bowl and cover the bottom with waffle batter, but not too full because remember we have the sugary filling to add. So add a good scoop of cream cheese whatever it has become on top of that waffle batter, and then finish it off by covering it with more waffle batter. Do remember that your waffle batter will rise in the microwave, so don't fill it to the top.

Then microwave for about two minutes and it should come out wonderfully fluffy and delightful. And steamy, sooo you should probably let it cool off before biting into it. The filling flooded out of the top a little bit, so it did not look as cool, but pretty much I've just created a waffle lava cake! And of course you must drizzle syrup on top, and although there were not chocolate chips today, there was strawberry topping which is a rare treat.

This pretty breakfast is rather sugary, but so worth it. I really like how the creamy chocolate-strawberry filling turned out.

Life Takes Over

Week number two of the recipe of the week, and I've fallen behind. I do have some ideas, but I have not had time to actually try them. This past week has been especially busy for me. Here are some highlights:
Through a strange series of events, I ended up shooting many of the program photos for FNL, IWU's version of Saturday Night Live. While we were waiting for one of the performers to show up, I just played around in the studio with the other cast member who was there. I got out the gels and put together a rather creepy concoction of light.

I also got to shoot the 9th President of IWU's Inauguration for The Sojourn. I sat next to the Director of Communications for the Wesleyan Church, who used to be a missionary and now is an editor for their denomination's magazine. We had a rather enjoyable conversation. You can read The Sojourn's coverage of the event (and see my photo!) here:
http://www.iwusojourn.com/2013/10/04/dr-david-wright-inaugurated-as-iwus-ninth-president/
Here are a couple of my other photos from the event.

 Earlier last week I also had the opportunity to travel to Muncie to take some interior photographs. I explored the Emens Auditorium at Ball State and a neat community theater of which I do not remember the name. But it definitely looked like a good place to perform The Phantom of the Opera.

 Is that enough photos to make up for no recipe this week? I was just presented with a fabulous idea at brunch today so look forward to some good stuff soon. I hope.

Recipe of the Week

When The Sojourn came out on Thursday, I proudly handed out a copy to all of my friends who work in Baldwin, so they could see my pictures of Baldwin's food. Due to this, one of the managers gave me a sensational idea: a girl at the school where she used to work would take the available food and come up with a new recipe every week!

Challenge accepted.

Of course, I am by no means an expert cook, especially since my experience falls mostly on the baking side of the spectrum, but I will try to come up with new fun (and hopefully yummy) mixtures of food in Baldwin; some desserts and some not desserts. Probably mostly desserts. And probably some of what I come up with has been done before, but the difference is that I am going to take pictures and publish it! Woohoo! Aren't you excited??

At the very least, it is something fun to do in the midst of classes and papers and tests. So...here we go!

 This first concoction was a collaboration between my roomie and me. Grilled pita bread with marshmallows, chocolate chips, and cookie crumbs inside and honey drizzled on top. It tastes kind of like a s'more Poptart, but better because well, it didn't come in a box.

Where's the Beef?

Where's the beef? Or really I just want to know, where's the food? Because the title of the blog is food, faith and photography, sooo where is it? Well here's the thing. I LOVE food. Perhaps a bit too much. But I love the fact that I can bake things and then photograph them and therefore use my different skills for one purpose (and also to give myself an excuse to bake). However, I do not bake much while I'm at college because, well, I don't have my mommy to buy me baking supplies.

However...(get excited)...I did do an assignment for The Sojourn where the writer and I went into the dining hall (my former place of work!) and tried a bunch of different combinations of foods. The idea was to come up with ways that students could keep their palates interested and not get bored with the same foods all day, every day.

We discovered some pretty exciting combinations-especially with cereal. We learned how to make rice crispy treats at the self cook station with some marshmallows from the ice cream bar and rice crispies.

Another favorite with cereal is to mix cornflakes and honey and cover some vanilla ice cream with the concoction. The idea is to make something like fried ice cream, but what the heck, just take any kind of cereal (I used Lucky Charms) and any kind of ice cream (although vanilla or chocolate would probably work best) and mix it all up! When we did this for the paper, the writer still had his mind set on rice crispy treats, so he grabbed rice crispies, but when he tried it, his face lit up and he got so excited with how good it was! So if you are bored or looking for something fun to eat, grab some cereal, ice cream and honey and mix it up!

If you're around IWU, you should grab a Sojourn and find more recipes, or find it online:
http://www.iwusojourn.com/2013/09/26/the-baldwin-recipe-book/

Here are some of my other favorite photos, just in case you're hungry:

Rootbeer Float

Peanutbutter and Jelly Pita Bread

Turkey Wrap

Just for Fun

As a photographer for The Sojourn (IWU student newspaper), I shoot a lot of photos that never get published. And since the other weekend was Res Life week, I have a lot of fun photos of the boat race and the pudding tug of war. For the world who wouldn't otherwise see them (or probably care), here are a few highlights from that weekend.