The mailman made me happy today.

F.R.E.A.M.

Food rules everything around me, F.R.E.A.M., be a fatty, eatin' eatin' good y'all!

Okay, so maybe I am not meant to be a rapper and that opening line would make Wu-Tang cry. I apologize. Moving on.

All of you that know me know that I have a deep love for food (right after you, Franco!). Lately my love affair has been stressed. Our 30 day challenge has kept me away from all things fatty, sweet, and salty, which has led me to do some crazy things in the kitchen. (Did you miss the avocado brownies?) My latest creation was a challenge friendly milk and cookie snack.

For the cookies I made biscotti based on The Foodie Physician's Dark Chocolate Almond Biscotti. (Awesome food blog for those who are interested in healthy cooking; she's also on Instagram.) I substituted ground almonds for the white flour, chia seeds for the eggs, date sugar and honey for the white sugar and brown sugar, respectively, and dried cranberries for the chopped chocolate. The result: almost vegan, minimally processed, yummie, challenge friendly cookies!

For the milk, Franco and I attempted nut milk for our first time. It was surprisingly easy. I soaked 2 cups of almonds in water for four hours first. Then we blended them with 2 cups of water on low until it made a thick, creamy paste. Next we added four more cups of water and blended on high. The last step was to pour this liquid through a fabric bag (I got a special nut milk bag at Rainbow Grocery, but you can also use cheesecloth). Ta-daa! Almond milk!! Then we added a little maple syrup, vanilla, nutmeg, and cinnamon for some gluttonous flavor. Making almond milk was pretty messy and more expensive than just buying it, but we had fun and we had a product without any gellan gum or zinc glucanate in it.

I also made a couple great food-related book purchases recently: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and The American Woman's Cookbook (1948 version).

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle has really inspired me to continue eating healthy foods and even step it up a little, a.k.a. make my own almond milk. Franco and I recently ordered some apartment-friendly gardening books and one on urban homesteading (read: make our own cheese and grow mushrooms) and are super excited to get more involved in our food chain.

The second book, The American Woman's Cookbook has been a long-time favorite of mine. It is a vintage cookbook with the recipe for every American classic you can think of and lots of tutorials for how to prep certain foods and even entertaining. My mom has a copy that was my great-grandma's and we daughters all hold it near and dear to our hearts. Instead of borrowing it again and again, I decided it was time to finally find a copy of my own. God bless the Amazon Marketplace. I found a copy from the Salvation Army for only $18.99. Score!

That's my foodie/fatty update for now. As always, thank you for reading. Now go pick up a food-related book or go cook something delicious! Enjoy the flavors of the weekend. :D

All Things Shining

Franco:

Check out my final project for my basic cinema production class. I wanted it to have a Terrance Malick vibe since going a little experimental was an available option to us this time around. I shot the whole thing on Super 8MM as opposed to using a digital camera. It was pretty nerve-wracking since I had no idea what my shots looked like until over a week after shooting since I had to wait for the film to be processed at a lab in southern California. What made it even more precarious was the fact that I chose to shoot the whole thing at the golden hour with an unreliable amount of dwindling light source. The film could've turned out to be very underexposed (too dark) or overexposed (due to opening up the aperture, or iris, of the lens in an effort to overcompensate for lack of light). It turns our most shots were okay and some were too underexposed which I didn't use. A couple were overexposed and you can easily tell which are which but given that the film exists mostly in a non-narrative dreamscape it doesn't seem too out of place. Unfortunately, the film came out grainy as all hell. This was due to the 100 ISO film speed which is, apparently, the only available speed on the market for Super 8MM nowadays. Crash photography course: ISO (aka ASA, EI, or film speed) measures the sensitivity to light of the film. The higher the ISO the more sensitive it is to light. For shooting at sunset I should've used at least 200 ISO but couldn't get my hands on any. Oh well, again, the grain could seem alright since the film could've taken place at a different time in the past.

Thanks to everyone who helped along the way and to CoCo for putting up with my expensive time-consuming hobby. A special thanks to Willow and Ray for letting me shoot your sweet baby.

     

Hello, is it nachos you're looking for?

Franco:

Below you will find a short film I made for a cinema production class I'm currently taking for funskees. The assignment was to show a character moving from one location to another using the editing/shooting methods of visual continuity we learned in class. In other words, don't disorient your audience. Have the character walk into frame and then walk out. If he/she is walking from left to right in one shot don't have him/her walking from right to left in the next shot. Cutting on action was stressed as well. If a character goes to pick up, say, a plate of nachos make the cut as he/she is moving then have the next shot (of a different angle and/or zoom) begin where the action left off, in this case picking up the nachos. It all sounds pretty obvious but it can be a big headache if you don't plan for it before a shoot. For my film I not only had a lack of preconceived shot selection but I had no idea what it would be about. I am not the most creative person and staring at a blank canvas paralyzes me. For weeks I was racking my brain as to what my film would be about. I knew I had the help of my film nerd, Niraj, and once my brother-in-law Tal and his girlfriend Sarira, volunteered to help I thought I could use some sort of a love triangle dynamic. Beautiful Dolores Park was a great location to shoot with its hills and greens and people. I was racking my brain as to what the film should be about when Sarira stated she was starving and bought some nachos at the Mexican food truck. Once I saw the mammoth plate of nachos I knew what my film would be about. That sort of serendipitous luck was the genesis to what you are about to view. I like the little film but would've shot it differently had I time to think out the shots. Being prepared in filmmaking is a must. I wasn't. As a result, some shots don't particularly work that well but oh well. The whole point of this is to learn and to learn cinema you must practice. Enjoy.      

Lovin' SF

We came across a city block with random swings hanging from the trees.

Amazing idea.