Pretty Soon Now You're Gonna Get Older

I've entered a new phase of life, and it is terrifying. I am among the lucky to make it to this point, and I am grateful for all that has gotten me here. But I am at that point where I have realized I am most definitely in the second half of life, and what lays ahead of me is decidedly shorter than what is behind. This frightens me. It also is awakening in me a sense of urgency, a nudge to stop and consider how I am spending my time, how I want to spend my time, who I want to stay around with me.

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Composition

Gareth has brought up the Acorn website to listen to BBC TV while he paints. He started painting again about a month ago, which means I have started taking photos again.

We are talking about composition, about seeing the shot in my mind and then creating it, about moving from opportunistic photography into something deliberate, intentional. Taking my time to see the shot, to let it come to me rather than me rushing to it.

We are looking at the masters. He has me listening to the Modern Art Notes podcast and the interview with Edward Burtynsky. I am on InstrGram following the New York Times Food Section, Food52, and a host of food bloggers, looking at how they are composing their shots, lighting their shots, plating their food. I am taking pictures of my meals with my phone.

I am wandering the neighborhood with my camera, shooting landscapes right now but I am getting ready for the garden, getting ready for spring. I am getting ready to write again.

Here is what I've been eating at home and not writing about. More to come soon.....

Ichiban in Columbia Crossing

I found Ichiban by accident. I was running errands over lunch and got all turned around in Columbia Crossing. Getting lost in Columbia is a not uncommon occurrence for those who don't live there. The brain child of Edward Notron's grandfather (yes, that Edward Norton), Columbia is Maryland's planned community, and popular opinion is that it was most certainly planned as only a committee could have created it. A sprawling mass of shopping centers, corporate parks, and cul de sacs cross-cut by numerous state highways and thoroughfares, it all looks blandly the same and would work much better if it were based on a nice straightforward grid.

I've been working down there since November when my company transferred my department out of our nice digs in Harbor East, and yesterday I was driving without GPS. After circling Dobbin Road, Old Dobbin Road, Columbia Crossing, and Columbia Crosing II for some 30 minutes looking for the road back to the office, I spotted Ichiban and decided it was time to at least pick up some lunch.

Ichiban offers a fairly generic selection of Chinese and Japanese take out. I got a bento box of chicken tempura, shomai, and a California roll. It came with a side of rice and miso soup. The lady behind the counter promised a 10-minute wait and that was accurate. I was in and out in good time.

My bento box was well-packaged but that's where the goodness ends. The chicken tempura was greasy, and the meat was dry and flavorless. The California roll was also lacking in flavor, plus it came without chopsticks so I had no real way to mix the small dab of wasabi into my soy sauce. And, really, am I supposed to eat sushi with a knife and fork? The shomai was good but luke warm and a little dry on one side as if it had finished cooking first and had to wait for everything else to catch up. The miso was a fairly sad affair that I didn't even bother with. The best part was the rice - nice sticky flavorful sushi rice.

I also on impulse got a strawberry bubble tea. The menu offers additional bubble and flavor at additional cost, which is a good racket for them. My tea had a good ammount of large tapioca bubbles but was thin and watery.

Overall Ichiban only gets points for speed as the food itself fell flat for me. Which is just as well as I doubt I will ever be able to find them again. At $15 total for a mediocre lunch, I doubt I will go looking, either.

Located somewhere in Columbia Crossing (I thought I saw a Rack Room Shoes nearby?), Ichiban is open for lunch and dinner, dine-in or take-out.

Havre de Grace Ritz Gourmet Cafe

A fixture in downtown Havre de Grace for the last 20 or so years, The Ritz is primarily known for providing a decent lunch to proper ladies who are not in much of a hurry.  Now that Color Images is located on the same block, I had the opportunity to try out The Ritz for the first time, getting a take out order to eat while my color processed.

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Aberdeen's Korean Restaurant

The sign outside is just a large yellow banner that says Korean Restaurant in bold black letters. The first thing you hear when you walk in is an aggressively irritated Korean woman announcing how long you will have to wait for your food. It's noon and she is out of kimbap and nothing more will get done until there is more. On the right of the entrance is a hostess station that looks long out of use. You need to walk the length of the restaurant past a dozen or so unadorned tables to the counter in the back. There is a polite young woman behind the counter taking orders and payments as the older woman barks prices at her. The older woman is made up like a bad Hollywood stereotype - powdered white face, bright red lips, heavy black eyes. She looks at me and says like it's a challenge, "30-minute wait. You wait 30 minutes?"

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Easy Scones

Today the sun is out in full force. The air is warm. The snow that fell last weekend is melting at a rapid pace. Stepping outside you can believe that spring is near.

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Harbor East Sweet Green

Over the last few years, Harbor East has gone through a remarkable redevelopment. And even though I can still remember when it was just vancant lots littered with broken bottles and used syringes, it has now become a neighborhood known for its ever increasing dining options. When The Hyatt Place moved in last year, it brought with it several fairly decent chain restaurants, including Jimmy Johns, Cava, Nado's Peri Peri, and most recently Sweet Green, an upscale salad joint that specializes in locally sourced vegetables.

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Welcome 2016

The holidays are over and life is settling back into its normal everyday rhythm. I'm taking down the tree this weekend and organizing my holiday gear a little more effectively, a trend that I intend to carry over to the rest of the house. 2015 was another quiet year for this blog, mostly because I was busy, Gareth was busy, there wasn't much interesting going on in the kitchen - just good workaday meals that come together easy at the end of the day.

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Outside the Tourist Zone in Amsterdam

So I haven't been blogging much while in Amsterdam because there really hasn't been much to blog about food-wise. I encountered a nice French bakery up near Centraal Station in the heart of the city and got a decent crepe from a local chain restaurant. But I personally haven't had much opportunity to get out there and try the local cuisine.

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What to Do with $10 of Tomatoes

This is truly the best time of the year in my little corner of the world. If you live out in farm country like I do, everything is in season right now, so everything is fresh and readily available at the local farm stand. This includes ginormous boxes of stewing tomatoes for next to nothing. We scored a beer-case of them from Hopkins Produce for about $10. So this long Labor Day weekend was stewing tomatoes weekend.

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Chicken Booyah

I grew up with chicken booyah. While my family didn't make it, just about everyone else's did. Of unconfirmed Belgian origin, you'll find it in the peninsula of Wisconsin that juts into Lake Michigan and the surrounding area where a concentration of Belgians settled. The easiest way to explain booyah is like this: quarter a couple of stewing chickens and simmer them in a large pot until the meat falls off the bones and the bones break open releasing the marrow and you have at least a gallon of stock.

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Everything I Know About Biscuits is Wrong

So when you neglect your hobby for an extended period of time, you may find when you return to it that things are not quite as you left them. Which is how today's blog post started when none of the cameras I own had a charged battery. I had to go with my little Nikon CoolPix because I could quickly replace its disposable batteries and get things up and running. Which means all of the innovation is in the baking and not in the photography. 

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