baby jane

our NEW camera arrived on monday! i have not yet decided on a name for it, although everyone's favorite so far appears to be nell carter (yea, thanks carrie! ;)

so far, i *LOVE* the camera. it handles low light amazingly. i have yet to read the manual (ugh - not looking forward to that), so i'm anxious to figure out some of the features. i need to play with the mode/isos in order to find the optimum shutter speed - the auto/basic settings need your subject to be sitting rather still. oliver, it turns out, does not comply. he's a bouncy little boy, ever on the move.

i'm still rather happy with the quality - MUCH better than our old camera! you can check out all the pics i've been taking here (including a few videos of oliver being a dancing fool to the beastie boys) and here, but here's a small sample. these were all taken indoors, in the evening, sans flash.



















and as long as i'm here...

sunday, march 22nd: cognac shrimp bisque, salad with homemade caesar dressing and croutons. this was very good. light and subtly complex. we added a little hot sauce to the soup at the table. i expected the bisque to be more shellfish-y, as it was made with shrimp stock, but was pleasantly surprised when it was not.


tuesday, march 24th: 16 bean soup and corndog muffins (that's right, we white trashed it up!). the soup was a crockpot recipe, and was intended for monday's dinner, but the beans weren't fully cooked by dinnertime. the recipe does not have you soaking the beans the night before, normally a prerequisite for cooking with dried beans. we figured it would be ok since they were in the crockpot all day. i think the problem, though, was that the chicken stock we added was frozen, so it probably took an hour or two to defrost, thereby giving the beans less time to cook. we finished cooking it and reheated it on the stove for dinner last night. the recipe suggests serving them with the corndog muffins, and i had some hot dogs to use up, so i figured why not? well, other than the obvious reason, of course. i made my favorite cornbread recipe, mixed in chopped hot dog, and baked as muffins. they weren't bad, and oliver certainly loved them. i did rename them white trash muffins, though, because hey - why lie?

i've become rather addicted to craigslist this week. we've used to before, both to buy and sell things. i decided i really wanted to have a bunch of outdoor toys so oliver and i can spend as much time outdoors in the nice weather as possible, and instead of buying new, that we would buy used. it made so much more sense, especially since those toys can get so expensive! now, however, i am afraid i am addicted (not that i much care, though bryan may have something else to say about it). there's just so many great deals - so far, i've gotten a ride on "bike" style toy (like a tricycle without wheels - in the pictures above) for $5, the sit and spin zebra also pictured above for $20 (which are $55 new), and one of those climbing cubes with a slide (similar to this one) for $55 (which run about $120 new). i keep combing the site for more deals every day, too. not that oliver is spoiled, or anything.

WFD: moroccan vegetable stew with couscous. includes leeks, tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, potatoes, celery, and chickpeas. bryan will also serve with chicken legs, since the man needs his meat, and i kind of cheated him on that last night. yum.