Camera Randomness

This morning I took a few pictures for posting here.  When I dumped the images from the camera onto my computer, I realized I had a few different posts worth of photos.  Instead of doing several different posts, I'm going to post a bit of randomness from the last week or so.

We took the kids to the park so they could play and I could practice controlling the depth of field in my photographs.  Bryant's very good with the technical stuff, so he's been teaching me how to get the photos I want.  Fun!

I made these Skillet Smashed Potatoes for breakfast one day - they were amazing!  I parboiled them the night before and stuck them in the fridge overnight.  When I was ready to cook them, I melted some butter and heated a bit of olive oil in a large skillet, then put in a few potatoes (these were small red skins, but I think fingerling or yellow potatoes would work, too) and smashed them with the bottom of my large glass measuring cup.  They cooked until the bottoms were golden and crisp, then I flipped them, cooked them until they were heated through and the other side was crisp.  I served them alongside eggs (over-easy pictured) and we all enjoyed them very much (except Midge - but he doesn't eat potatoes except fast food fries).

I made a banana cake (my first "from scratch" banana cake) for Bryant's birthday and Pookie helped decorate it.  He spread the icing on (although I helped with the sides) and we used a Pampered Chef cake stencil and cocoa powder to "write" on the cake.  It was really fun to watch him slide the frosting around and being so careful with the stencil!  He's such a cutie and he wants to help so very much lately - it's wonderful!  Although I will admit that instead of letting him help make the cake, I gave him a few extra minutes of video game time so I could cook in peace.  Such is life...

And finally, caramels! I received a candy thermometer for my birthday this year and I've been a little scared to try it out.  Really, I'm terrified of boiling sugar!  But I've been wanting to make caramels and Bryant agreed to supervise and tell me if I was going to do something stupid, so last night we cracked out the thermometer and made magic.  Er, made caramels.  They're really so close to the same thing...

We used this recipe.  As my first time making caramels, I though it went really well.  It took longer than I would have thought to bring the caramel up to the proper temperature - we both kept second guessing the amount of heat under the pan.  But in the end, it came up to temp easily enough and we poured the super hot liquid sugar into an 8 x 8 Pyrex to set overnight.

This morning I struggled with them a little.  The foil I used to line the pan didn't want to release the caramel and was just pulling and stretching it at the edges.  I ended up having to use a sharp knife to slice the foil off the caramel after I'd cut it into sticks.  Then it was just a matter of cutting them into good size pieces and wrapping them in a bit of waxed paper.  We ended up with 65 caramels (instead of the 80 the recipe claimed we'd get), but I suspect the lower number has as much to do with cutting the foil off as it does with variations in size. 

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out.  And since I'd been wanting to make them for a long time, I'm glad I finally got up the gumption to just do it.  So often I make up my mind that I can't do something or that it'll be too hard and then I just don't try.  I've recognized this as a flaw in my character and am working hard on not letting it get me down.  If I want to try something, I'm getting better at just trying it, instead of stewing about it and allowing my insecurities to convince me I will fail. 

So far, so good.