Below are a few pictures that I scanned from slides to photos and transferred to my Mac computer from my mother-in-law’s old slides. You’ll notice that they aren’t “perfect” because there are small bits of dots throughout. The dots are dust particles. The slides had a lot more of them and even though iPhoto has a “retouch” option that allowed me to block them out, it would have taken me a lot of time to get all of the dust “dots” off.
St Basil, Circa 1970St Basil, Russia Circa 1970Moscow Hotel, Russia, Circa 1970GUM (Department Store) – Moscow, Circa 1970English Club – Moscow, Russia, Circa 1970Yuri Statue – Moscow, Russia, Circa 1970
But — overall they came out pretty good, no?
I’m hoping to create a Youtube video with the almost 76 slides of Russia from the 1970’s. I’ll let you know when that happens. I have other countries that I’ll be posting pictures of also like Iran, Afghanistan, Greece, etc. from the same timeframe.
Between cooking, yard work, regular “work” and hoping to learn how to sew on my new Brothers sewing machine, well, I’ve got my hands full. But they’ll be coming so stay tuned.
Well, I recently found a chicken salad recipe to tweak to make it paleo friendly. It’s easy to make and quite tasty. Really. Quite tasty. Perhaps it’s the hint of red pepper flakes and the olives. Yum!
We start with our cast of ingredients …
Mediterranean Chicken Salad Ingredients (chicken breasts not shown)
Next, we’ll be dicing up the red onion and adding it to the vinegar.
Mix onion and vinegar
That’s the hardest part … (laughing) Â Ready to try it?
Ingredients
1/2Â cup minced red onion
2Â Tablespoons red wine vinegar
1Â pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Salt
2Â Tablespoons olive oil
1Â Tablespoon capers
3/4Â cup green/black olives, sliced
1Â pinch of red chile flakes
1Â Tablespoon chopped fresh oregano
1 Tablespoon basil
1 Tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
Black pepper to taste
Directions
Mix the minced onion with the vinegar in a bowl and set it aside.
Bring 1 1/2 quarts of water to a boil and add about 2 tablespoons of salt.
Cut the chicken breasts in half crosswise and place them in the water.
Reduce the heat to low and let the chicken cook very gently, at barely a simmer, for 10-15 minutes, until it’s just cooked through.
While the chicken is cooking, mix the olive oil, capers, olives, chile flakes, and oregano in a large bowl.
When the chicken is done, place it on a cutting board to cool.
Add the onions to the olive bowl mixture.
Once the chicken has cooled enough to handle, cut it into small pieces or shred it.
Gently mix the chicken and parsley in with the olive mixture.
Greek Salad, anyone? This one went perfectly with the Greek Lamb Chops that I made. And so easy! I did use feta cheese although we haven’t introduced too much cheese into our paleo diet yet.
The ingredients are simple enough …
Greek Salad Ingredients (olives not shown)
And for the dressing …
Greek Salad Ingredients for Dressing
It all looks so healthy, doesn’t it?
Then you’ll just follow the directions (which are few), toss everything together and … whala! A wonderful Greek Salad.
Greek Salad
And here’s the recipe for you to try …
Ingredients (for the dressing)
Red wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon
Olive oil, 2 tablespoons
Salt, 1/2 teaspoon
Oregano, 1 teaspoon
Garlic, 1 clove, chopped
Ingredients (for the salad)
1 cup of Spinach
2 medium Tomatoes
1 Green pepper
1 Cucumber
1/4 cup chopped Red Onion
Olives, 10
Feta cheese, 1 oz
Directions
Whisk all the ingredients for the dressing together.
Peel and remove the seeds from the cucumber.
Chop all the vegetables coarsely.
Toss the vegetables, cheese and dressing in a large bowl. (Side note: I usually serve my dressing on the side so people can add as little or as much as they want.)
That’s pretty much it! Positively, absolutely delicious!
I really enjoy having lamb — it’s a favorite of mine for dinners.
This Greek Lamb Chop recipe is a marinade that I really liked because of it’s simplicity and tastiness. There are a few ingredients you’ll need …
Greek Lamb Chops Marinade Ingredients (lamb chops not shown)
Although I don’t normally like spicy food, the amount of red pepper flakes that are used, 1/2 teaspoon, wasn’t enough to make it too spicy.
The lamb chops will marinate for 8-24 hours in a plastic bag in the refrigerator so the juices can blend into the meat.
Then you’ll be pan-frying them … Don’t they look delicious?
Greek Lamb Chops
Here’s the recipe for you to try …
Ingredients
1Â package lamb chops, 4-5 (I only used two since there were only two of us)
1/4Â cup organic olive oil + 1-2 tbs for cooking
zest and juice of one lemon (about 1/4 cup juice)
1Â tsp oregano
1Â tsp basil
1Â tsp garlic powder
1/2Â tsp rosemary
1/2Â tsp red pepper flakes
1/2Â tsp sea salt
Directions
Rinse the lamb chops then pat them dry.
Trim the fat from the sides of the chops then place the lamb in a large ziplock bag.
Add the lemon juice, zest, and organic olive oil to a large bowl.
To the lemon juice mixture, Â add the oregano, garlic powder, rosemary, red pepper flakes and the sea salt.
Whisk the marinade then pour it into the bag with the lamb chops.
Remove the excess air from the plastic bag, seal it well then massage the bag with your hands to distribute the marinade on the lamb chops.
Put the plastic bag that has the marinade and lamb chops in the refrigerator for 8-24 hours.
Remove the plastic bag with the lamb in it from the refrigerator and set it on the counter for at least one hour before cooking to bring the lamb closer to room temperature.
Heat the olive oil in a large nonstick pan on medium-high heat.
When the oil begins to bubble, add the lamb chops with some of the marinade.
As soon as all the lamb chops are in the pan, start a timer for 4 minutes.
After 3 minutes, put a lid on the pan for the last minute.
When the timer sounds, flip each lamb chop with tongs, then restart the timer for 4 minutes.
After 2 minutes, put a lid on the pan again.
When the timer sounds, remove the pan from the heat.
With tongs, remove the lamb chops from the pan and place them on a large dish to rest for 10-15 minutes.
Then enjoy this wonderful meal. I served my lamb chops with a Greek Salad. I guess I was just in a Greek mood.   (hehe)
I am so excited about a new product that will be coming out soon called the Kite Mosquito Patch. And I hope to be on the ground level of seeing if it works. If you’ve been following my blog for at least the last month, you’ll know that I have a keen interest in mosquito aversion.
I’ve written two posts already about my trials with different products to see if they would help me avoid these irritating insects. The first post was called Of Mosquitoes and Traps and told of a “natural” trap using yeast and brown sugar. Unfortunately, it did not work.
The second post called How To Mask Your Mosquito Smell told of a product that is currently available that uses butane to mask our smell. This product does work for me.
The Kite Mosquito Patch is a non-toxic square you stick on your clothing or bag that purports to make you practically invisible to mosquitoes for approximately 48 hours by disrupting their ability to “smell” you. ABC News recently wrote an article regarding it. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation along with the National Institutes of Health have paired up with the company to create this new technology.
Kite Patch hopes to prevent the spread of malaria and West Nile Virus with this patch. That would truly be spectacular, don’t you think?
There is a campaign, called Indiegogo, associated with Kite Patch that is collecting funds to collect as many patches as they can to send to Uganda where the malaria rate is over 60 percent.
The Kite Patch is awaiting regulatory approval but is expected to be distributed worldwide around 14 months from now. Once they have U.S. EPA approval, patches will be distributed to contributors to try out.
I became a contributor yesterday by joining the Kite Pioneer Program which will send 30 patches to Uganda and 30 patches to myself along with a t-shirt, sticker, etc.
I’m really looking forward to see if this really works as it will have a huge impact, not just on how much I work outside in the summer but for everyone who has ever been biten by a mosquito and suffered the consequences.
About a year and a half ago (yes, a long long time ago) I asked my sister-in-law to bring me my mother-in-law’s old slides so that I could convert them into a DVD as a surprise for her.
Well, needless to say, time went by and by and by until one day I decided to tackle the project. I bought myself a negative/slide scanner that is made by Ion. Here is what came in the box (with the exception of the CRC Duster that I purchased separately).
Ion Scanner
The scanner scans both 35mm negative film and slides. Although you can put a few slides in the “holder” they sometimes stick when you try to push them through with the lever depending on the size of the slide and how perfect (or imperfect) the edges are. The small screen on the scanner allows you to view the slide, i.e. is it backwards, upside down, etc. However, the screen is small and if you decide to look at each slide picture, it can really slow you down. I would just glance to make sure the setting was on “slide” and not “negatives.” My plan was to use iPhoto on my MacBook Pro to edit them.
One problem I had with the scanner was that it would switch into “negative” mode without my knowing why so I would have to re-scan the slide(s) if I didn’t catch it right away or turn the scanner off and on in order to correct the setting since I wasn’t scanning 35mm negatives.
Overall, I scanned a little over 3200 slides starting from the year 1966. It took 2-3 months for me to scan these because I didn’t work on it for hours every day. A little here, a little there.
A second, but major problem I had while scanning was the dust on the slides which is why I bought the CRC duster that allows you to spray air into the side of the scanner or on the slides themselves to remove the dust (but it would be very expensive to spray each individual slide on both sides not to mention time-consuming).
CRC Duster
Because I had different groups of slides to scan that had different travel dates and countries, I scanned each grouping then transfered the slide pictures from the 2GB disk  to iPhoto with the adapter that comes with the scanner. It was quite easy to do — even for an amateur like me.
I then made an Album in iPhoto for each grouping. Afterwards, I went into each Album and edited each photo for lighting, cropping, etc.
iPhoto also allowed me to “retouch” each photo by removing the small spots of dust that showed up although there were some slides that simply had too many (one could spend many hours editing one slide). Other sides were so over/under exposed that I did not include them in the DVD’s that I made from the albums I created.
After the above was completed, I made DVD’s on iPhoto. Since my mother-in-law likes classical music I downloaded some songs from iTunes from various artists. I was then able to use that as background music for the slideshow I created.
One irritating feature that the scanner does is that it adds a “sequence number” to each slide. That number is transferred to iPhoto which is then transferred to the DVD and it will show up in the slideshow so I had to manually remove each number from the picture. I was not able to figure out how to remove them in mass. Bleh!
I’ll be posting some before and after pictures of slides every now and again with my mother-in-law’s permission. The slides are from countries like Iran, Russia, Uzbekistan, and Greece — to name a few.
The title of this recipe, Spicy Drumsticks, is a misnomer, at least the way the ingredient amounts are listed. There is chili powder used but I think you’d have to use more than the 2 teaspoons in order for it to be really spicy.
But, don’t get me wrong — they tasted great! I’d make them again and again because, quite frankly, I continue to enjoy easy to make recipes since I like to work outside in the yard. In winter when I’m more indoors, I like the more “complicated” recipes.
My favorite kind of birthday cake is coconut. Yum! I love coconut.
Quite a few years back, friends of mine brought me a coconut cake from Hawaii. Oh man! It was simply delicious as every bite melted in my mouth. Unfortunately, the company doesn’t deliver. Drats!
So, this year I decided NOT to make a paleo coconut cake but instead buy one at Whole Foods since I’ve had theirs before and they weren’t too bad. I reasoned (well, we’ll call it reasoning) that making a paleo cake for myself from scratch was counterintuitive to my birthday, i.e. who makes their own birthday cake?
I had sent a recipe to my husband to see if he would be interested in making a paleo cake for me but he did not lean in that direction. Actually, he didn’t lean at all. Â hahaha
Anyway, I ordered a 5 inch coconut cake. It was small enough so we wouldn’t gorge ourselves but would be plenty to last a few days.
Coconut Cake, Whole Foods
I had my last piece today.
Since we don’t eat sugar on the paleo diet (with the exception of honey or pure maple syrup) my body revolted. The first day I had a nice small piece and it tasted too sweet. Afterwards I felt like I had acid reflex.
The second day I had my piece and it didn’t taste too sweet but I prepared myself with a mug of hot tea to “down” it with. I had a bit of a small headache when I finished this piece.
The third day I finished the last small piece — seriously, these were small pieces — and again my head started to feel out of sorts and my chest felt like I was getting acid reflex.
The old non paleo body that could “handle” such sweet things has changed and the new paleo body let’s me know that these sweets really aren’t that good for me.
So — it was a beautiful birthday cake but (a new take on an old phrase) “it doesn’t do a body good.”
Next year, I think I’ll make my own birthday cake.
It’s breakfast time! Well, you could make this for a light dinner also but I served it for breakfast. This Asparagus, Dill, Onion and Egg Casserole recipe is light and healthy. Yes, it does take a lot of eggs (one dozen) but we had this for leftovers the following day and the day after. It reheats beautifully.
And not too many ingredients which is my kind of recipe …
Ingredients
You could add more “spice” to this dish like sausage or bits of turkey bacon — let your imagination go wild. I decided to make the original recipe then play with it later.
Ready to try it? Here it is …
Ingredients
1 tablespoon butter or olive oil
2 medium yellow onions (I used one large)
1 pound asparagus
1 dozen eggs
¼ cup loosely packed dill leaves, roughly chopped
¼ teaspoon ground pepper
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit and lightly spray a casserole dish with olive oil.
Slice the onions thinly.
Wash the asparagus, cut the bottoms off then slice into 1 inch pieces.
Roughly chop the dill leaves.
Put the cracked eggs in a bowl, add the dill, pepper and salt then beat this all together.
In a large frying pan, add butter or olive oil and once hot add the onions.
Cook the onions until they are translucent. (side comment: I love the word translucent!)
Add the chopped asparagus to the frying pan with the onions in it and cook through until the asparagus is tender (just a few minutes).
Put the onion and asparagus mixture into the greased casserole dish.
Pour the beaten egg batter over the onion and asparagus and stir it around.
Bake 35 to 40 minutes until the eggs are set and just starting to brown on top.
Allow this to cool for 5 to 10 minutes before cutting.
And that would be it!
Asparagus, Dill, Onion and Egg CasseroleAsparagus, Dill, Onion and Egg Casserole
