"I Can't Believe It's Not Fattening!"

Ok, people. This should be every woman's bible. I'm NOT KIDDING (Hence the capital letters).

I have never read an intro to a cookbook (and I'm a little embarrassed to say I have read quite a few intros to cookbooks- WHY? Oh WHY am I becoming more and more like my mother every day?! They say these things are going to happen to you as you get older, but really, I was just unprepared.)

Anyway, like I was saying- I have never read an intro to a cookbook that I AGREE WITH MORE. This lady knows her stuff. This cookbook's forward should be every woman's second Bible (second to the actual Bible, naturally.) I wish I could post the entire forward on this blog post, but I just spent the last 15 minutes trying to find a way to CPY-PASTE from several online readers and they have that sh*t on lock-down. Not gunna happen. So I will only be able to post snippets. Sad, I know. I know anyone reading must be tearing up right now...

So a few of the pieces that SPOKE to me were:

"Twenty minutes in your kitchen can save you three hours on a treadmill."

"I was on the yo-yo diet fast track, gaining ten to fifteen pounds per year from the time I was eight until I was fifteen. At that point, I tipped the scales at close to 190 pounds and was wondering why I could succeed at everything I put my mind to except losing weight. Then I heard that if you just cut 100 calories from your diet everyday, on average, you'll lose ten pounds in a year. That really clicked. I immediately called upon the cooking skills my Italian grandmother bestowed on me. The next thing I knew, I was actually losing weight- and, more importantly, keeping it off! All I did at that time was make minor tweaks to the foods I as already eating."

"Though I've lost over fifty-five pounds, I really don't struggle with my weight any more"

LADIES THESE ARE EVERY WOMAN'S WORD'S OF GOLD, I MEAN WHO DOESN'T WANT TO NOT EVER WORRY ABOUT THEIR WEIGHT ANYMORE? UM ME! ME! ME!

" well, unless you count that nagging five to ten pounds all women fluctuate"

Wow, she's a normal human being. Imagine.

" wishing they would conquer forever. But even with that, my weight is no longer the obsession it was for the first twenty-six years of my life. That's because I can eat all of the foods I love."

Now I don't know what image you have in your head of this woman (heck, maybe I'm the only person that sometimes pictures the author when reading) but I certainly was picturing someone a little on the larger side. What? I'm going to be honest here. Someone who "likes to eat" and "has cravings", has "struggled with weight in the past?" I mean, what pops into your head? I wasn't thinking overweight, but I was thinking she probably had some "cushin-for-the-pushin," if you know what I mean....






















That what you pictured? Um, yea didn't think so. Can you imagine that she was ever 190? I can't. I mean this lady is gorgeous and she eats WHATEVER she wants on a daily basis. If that isn't motivation enough to read this intro, then I don't know what is. But let me continue....

Now there is some really GREAT material I'm going to skip over- because obviously I'm not going to type the whole intro on here. I mean really, that is a lot of typing and probably not legal... And plus, I am hoping you will investigate on your own!

Now here is the exert that the author MUST HAVE TAKEN FROM MY HEAD. I swear it's like she read my mind (also, just FYI I have this EXACT same thoughts about working out. You are just making excuses if you say you don't have time to workout. Period. End of story- but guess that's for another blog-post :-))

"I often hear people say they don't have time to cook. But as I see it, we don't have time NOT to cook. Assuming the above is true- that twenty minutes in your kitchen can save you three hours at the gym- you're actually adding time to your life by cooking. Not only will you need to spend less time at the gym, you'll be shedding those unwanted pounds that are the direct cause of your spending way too much time in the doctor's office, or waiting in line at the pharmacy to pick up your blood pressure or cholesterol medicine or even in spending tons of time monitoring your sugar levels because of your type 2 diabetes."

Oh if only my grandfather had this information and would have followed it YEARS AGO- he might be a different man today. As it is, he was a man that could work on a farm all day, played sports his whole life- MS State football, too. Now he can't even get up from his chair to get the paper some mornings.

"And all of that costs money, which means you have to spend more time at work making the money to pay for it all."

She then goes into the spill about how everyone has time to do this. And she is right. Everyone is busy. And I do mean everyone. I hate people that seem to think they are busier than other people. Yes, you may be. And doing this may mean that you have to cut out things like that extra television show, or that extra nap. If it's not worth it to you, than you have no right to complain about it. And just for the record, if you want to know what will give you more energy- it's working out and eating healthier. Hands-down it is the best energy booster you could ever give your body, and I speak from experience.

Then she gives you tips on how you can do it. Real tips, ones you can use. Buy this book people, if you are looking for some help here it is. I know I intend to take her advice, because lord knows I struggle sometimes- with overeating and it all! Hopefully, her words of wisdom may be just the little bits of help I need to get through those tougher days.

:-)

Photography

So, I recently purchased a point and shoot camera, a FILM camera. Yes, those still exist. I know most people wouldn't understand the appeal of a film camera, but I really have to admit, they can be a lot of fun. I think society today becomes so sensitized to the digital "world,"- they forget anything existed before digital! I think it's nice once in a while to kick it "old school" if you will, haha!

Plus, in my opinion, while you can get the same effects using software to alter digital pictures, a lot of film cameras produce truly original results without that extra step. Of course there is the added disadvantage that your pictures won't turn out at all. It's all a trade-off.

This is the camera I purchased:

It's official title is the "SuperHeadz: White Slim Angel (Wide Angle Lens) Camera"

Found here: http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/wide-angle-slim/ (and also Amazon of course)









It has a ultra wide lens (the picture can span a wide lateral area),
and I love the vivid colors of the pictures after the film was developed:



'














And let me just say right now, Photojojo the site I purchased the camera from is excellent, for the non-photography saavy like myself :-) Not only do they sell excellent products, they send out a newsletter you can subscribe to via email, chopped full of fun tips and projects. For example, this one: Doing double exposures with your friends- which for those that don't know, double exposure means taking two pictures on the same roll of film, overlayed. It creates a really cool effect of two pictures meshed together...

http://content.photojojo.com/diy/friendly-double-exposures/

One of my fondest memories was when I and my Dad went out one day and he taught me how to use his Manual Nikon.

It looks a lot like this:













Now, as I said before, I'm not camera saavy AT ALL. But it was A BLAST. He taught me the basics of how to use a manual camera, and it's really not as hard as one might think.(Like I always say, if I can do it, ANYONE can lol.) To me, there are just two basic facts you should know to get you started.

1. Setting the shutter speed.
This determines how much your film is exposed to light (on some digital cameras you can actually alter this setting, the auto feature usually just sets it for you.) In photography, shutter speed is a common term used to discuss exposure time, the effective length of time a camera's shutter is open. The total exposure is proportional to this exposure time, or duration of light reaching the film or image sensor.

In addition to its effect on exposure, the shutter speed changes the way movement appears in the picture. Very short shutter speeds can be used to freeze fast-moving subjects, for example at sporting events. Very long shutter speeds are used to intentionally blur a moving subject for artistic effect.

Hopefully, this little picture I found on Wikipedia will help explain :)








The first picture of the pinwheel was taken with a short exposure, and captured the the pinwheel very quickly. It appears that pinwheel wasn't even spinning at all, because it just captured that one moment in time. It looks frozen in time.

The second was taken with a longer exposure time, and the effect is more visible, you can see the pinwheel was actually spinning through the blurs of the colors.

And... in the third you can see how all the colors were captured during the longest light exposure and the effect it creates. Pretty cool, huh?

2. Adjusting the aperture.
This is a little more difficult to explain, but I will try my best... (Most of this was gathered from Wikipedia :-) )
In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture of an optical system is the opening that determines the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. This is just fancy language to say that the aperture controls the depth of field, or the distance range over which objects are acceptably sharp. If an aperture is narrow, then highly collimated rays are admitted, resulting in a sharp focus at the image plane. If an aperture is wide, then uncollimated rays are admitted, resulting in a sharp focus only for rays with a certain focal length. This means that a wide aperture results in an image that is sharp around what the lens is focusing on and blurred otherwise. The aperture also determines how many of the incoming rays are actually admitted and thus how much light reaches the image plane (the narrower the aperture, the darker the image for a given exposure time).

So you blur the background, and bring the object you are looking at into focus, or vice versa.

Here's a pic that hopefully provides a visual:






This picture was taken with a narrow aperture, and a slow shutter speed.






This picture was taken with a wide aperture, and a fast shutter speed.

Well, those are the basics, if you're interested (and if you're not hopefully you're not still reading by this point!)

Just want to wrap up by concluding the story I started earlier- about the day I and my Dad went out with his manual Nikon. I remember very few pictures actually came out (don't be disappointed if your first trail run results this way, you have to learn to do these adjustments and every camera is different), but we took one roll of color film and one black and white. We went to our church, to the graveyard- for those of you who are wondering why we went there, you should take a walk in a graveyard sometime, they are really beautiful, peaceful places with all kinds of interesting features to photograph on the graves and flowers- and then we went up to the University. My two favorite photographs of my father, I took that day! All by myself! They were some of the only black and white photos that came out that day. I L-O-V-E them, and never could have achieved the custom look they have with a digital camera. The framed photos sit atop my bookcase, and will forever capture my father and that day. Those two freeze frame moments bring a smile to my face. Every time I look at them, I go right back to that day. To me, they capture what photography is all about, capturing memories with loved ones. :)