Just baking for my wife and I this year, but couldn't let π Day pass without making one. Homemade all-butter crust, with a filling of peaches and mango dosed with ginger and a few other spices.

I had bought the box underneath at a local antique store a while back; it's an old pie display case from the Table Talk company of Worcester, MA. Given my penchant for pie baking I couldn't let such a thing go unpurchased.

Tags:   pi day pi day 2025 Massachusetts United States dessert baking

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Well, eventually.

Further experiments with scanography. What I learned this time around (and should have been obvious) is that something wet against the scanner platen significantly increases the odds of Newton's Rings artifacts, which became another thing to clean up in post.

Tags:   East Freetown Massachusetts United States scanography

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I recently participated in a gallery show, and was quite struck by the work of one of the other artists, who works in "scanography". This involves using a flatbed scanner as your camera, typically (although not exclusively) to capture detailed still life images. The look is quite distinct—flatbed scanners are very, very sharp at the surface of the platen, but the depth of field is very shallow, and the light falls off with the depth. Operating in a dark room with the scanner lid open gives a background with a very strong contrast. I thought the look had an almost-three-dimensional look to them as a result, and couldn't wait to give it a try.

Obviously, the tricksy part here isn't in using a scanner, it's in creating an interesting composition, which you have to do "from behind" and within the limitations of the way the image is taken.

For the first round of my experiments, I cut some flowers from the pollinator garden my wife has been cultivating in the front of the house, and fiddled around a bit. This was my favorite of the bunch. It's a slow, deliberate process, and the post-processing is time-consuming despite being pretty simple (expanding the dynamic range a bit, and dust removal since scanners are fantastic at showing any speck of dust. Lots of dust removal. No, really. Lots.) I have a few more ideas in mind, none of which will make things less complicated, because that's how I roll.

I have actually (unintentionally) done a bit of this before in my volunteer work with my camp's alumni group. There are some artifacts (relatively flat items with just a bit of relief depth, like a rubber stamp or an embroidered patch) that look quite a bit better scanned than simply photographed, and i've certainly leveraged that for some of the images in the alumni group's archives.

Tags:   scanography East Freetown Massachusetts United States

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A friend asked me to recommend a 4th of July drink, which set my mind working. Mixed myself one of these tonight post-fireworks, working with a base of things that could have made it into a drink in the Revolutionary era in New England: rum and applejack.

I'll call it a "Yankee Cobbler".

1.5oz spiced rum (I used Twenty Boat spiced rum from Truro Vineyards on Cape Cod), 1.5oz applejack (I used the actual freeze-distilled applejack from Freedom Run Vineyards in NY), .5oz cranberry liqueur (I used Craneberry Massachusetts Cranberry Liqueur from GrandTen Distilling in Boston), .5oz dark amber Vermont maple syrup, a few dashes of black walnut bitters, all stirred over ice then strained into a rocks glass with a lemon twist and a cinnamon stick, just because.

This is very tasty.

Tags:   East Freetown Massachusetts United States cocktail recipe tastybeverage

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…well, at least my take on it, anyway.

My wife and I had a version of this soup that we loved when visiting the Tapada de Coelheiros vineyard in Alantejo on our recent trip to Portugal, so this is my attempt to recreate it from memory (should have asked for the recipe, but, c'est la vie.) The taste is very close to what we remember, but I blended a bit more of the soup than I should have when finishing things off (the instructions below scale it back.)

Ingredients

1/4 lb. Portuguese Chouriço (you can sub Chorizo; I had access to some local Chouriço Mouro so that's what I used here), sliced into 1/4" pieces
olive oil (preferably from Portugal)
3 large onions, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
8 large, ripe tomatoes, chopped (I had 4 nice heirloom tomatoes, and added another 4 tomatoes on the vine to fill things out)
3-4 bay leaves
water
1/4 c chopped cilantro (or parsley if you dislike cilantro)
2-3 slices of crusty bread, stale and/or toasted
1/4 c toasted almonds
2 tbl lemon juice
4 eggs
slices of crusty bread (for serving)

Directions

In a large pot or Dutch oven over medium-low heat, lay the chouriço slices out in a single layer and cook to render out some fat flipping to crisp up both sides. Leave the rendered fat in the pan, add a few tablespoons of olive oil, the onions, and a healthy pinch of salt, and cook until the onions have softened and become translucent. You're not trying to brown them, so take your time.

Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, then add the tomatoes, another fat pinch of salt, some black pepper, the bay leaves, and just enough water to cover all but the topmost bits of tomato.

Bring to a boil, then turn back to a simmer and let simmer covered for 30-40 minutes, then remove the cover and simmer to let it reduce a bit, another 20-30 minutes.

Remove the bay leaves.

In a blender, put 2 ladlefuls of the soup, the almonds, and the stale/toasted bread, and blend until smooth. Add in a bit more good olive oil while blending. Return the blended portion to the pot and stir to combine. Add the lemon juice, and return to a simmer. Add more salt and pepper to taste.

Crack the four eggs directly into the simmering soup one at a time, and paoch them without stirring until the yolks are just starting to set.

Each serving should get a poached egg, soup, and some of the reserved crisped-up chouriço on the side. I served this with crusty bread brushed with olive oil and toasted on both sides under a broiler, with a pinch of sea salt.

Why almonds and lemon? Well, I'm not sure they'd really be included, but they are both products of the region, and make sense in that context. Plus, with nice ripe sweet tomatoes, a little acid as a finishing touch is nice. This isn't too far removed from a gazpacho (other than, y'know, being served hot), and that would have some sherry vinegar in it, so why not?

Shot with a Nikon D750 and my Nikkor 28-300mm lens @ 100mm, ƒ/16, 1/250s, ISO250. I had a single SB-700 shooting into a softbox above and behind the scene, shooting with TTL metering with no offset. Cropped and color finished in Adobe Lightroom Classic.

Tags:   East Freetown Massachusetts United States tomato soup recipe strobist cooking portuguese

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