Ad Hoc's Banana Bread Pudding

Just quickly: if you want to learn the basics of adjustment layers (which is how I created the selective coloring effect in the image below), just head on over to Special Effects for my lesson on adjustment layers. It's applicable in both Photoshop and Elements.
Well, so much for rushing to post as many pending recipes I have in my cache before I start my first day as a resident. For a brief period after a brief holiday, my internet pretty much exploded (again). But I'm glad to be back and can't wait to read what everyone's been up to (asking that question on Twitter doesn't seem to generate any response!). Today I'm going to be talking about a major turning point in the entire 3-year history of my learning how to bake: the day I decided to buy a digital scale.

I've always thought it was silly that anyone would suggest that some people are not open to using scales because it involves "math". Granted I've never been afraid of maths (in fact I aced it), but dealing with the fractions of cups and spoons involves more math, especially if you have to scale a recipe up or down. The only part that would be prohibitive would be the price, but these are going down all the time even for good models and the time it saves and the joy of reproducing a recipe faithfully is more than worth it.

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Tartine's Almond-Lemon Tea Cake

I've written a new Photoshop/Elements tutorial: using Levels to make highlights brighter, shadows darker, play with the contrast, and remove color casts.
I don't have foodnetworkhumor.com on my feed reader, but during an idle moment when I might need a food-related chuckle, I head on over and get my fill. It's not super-interesting to me because we get a much-condensed version of The Food Network here: no Sandra Lee, no Anne Burrell, no Guy Fieri. Anyway, one of the running gags they have there is, of course, Ina Garten and her insistence on only using "good vanilla," which, to be fair to Garten, is pretty valid (even though I still use the not-good kind for some applications).

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Autumn in New York (New York Part 3)

Before anything else, if you're learning or want to brush up on Photoshop or Elements, I've put up my next "lesson" on Histograms, an important foundation to adjusting brightness and contrast.
When I went to New York last November, I only had a few days before I had to go to San Francisco (but very happily, I might add), so I soaked up every little bit of it I could. Thankfully, when I returned for the second wave of interviews last January, I was able to see a little bit more and now that I've clinched a residency position there, going over my pics makes me super-excited about returning! Above is, of course, Central Park. Nothing like an Asian man in a business suit snapping away at ducks in the early afternoon that screams, "TOURIST!!!"

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Bean Curd Cheesecake

My friends and I have talked about the two kinds of people to whom you share secrets: ones you tell because you know they'll keep them, and others you tell because you know they'll tell everyone and their hairstylists. I fall firmly on the first category. However, I've come to the realization that not a lot of people tell me secrets in the first place. It must be because I'm generally not a good repository of facts about people, and often I take away from the juiciness of the moment by being a total, er, guy about it. You can tell me something and I can completely forget about it until the next time you bring it up (or on command). I just don't like a cloud of judgment hanging over people and coloring my perceptions of them. I want my interactions to be spontaneous and genuine.

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Big Sur Bakery's Doughnuts

When I was in college, I recall that a friend had told me once that I was just like Ally McBeal (apparently this was before the show went into the dumpster): I liked being sad. I also recall being a little offended by it and I would have been more indignant had I not been so shocked. No one wants to be sad, though you'd think so, given the way I behaved as a silly little teen (er, I was 16 when I entered college), which in my defense isn't so different from how most other silly little teens behave when they're all angsty and emotion-y. I mean, it's no accident that I've loved the song Rainy Days and Mondays since I first heard it. (Someday when I'm a little more confident in my voice, we may see a video of me performing it on the piano..)

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