I am a total slave to the light right now. Everything I do these days is planned around the weather forecast. Sunny days are spent at home shooting book photos, and if it’s dreary or rainy out I go run errands. It’s not fun to spend the pretty days indoors doing work and the gloomy ones out slogging around in the elements.

One perk of writing a cookbook though…you get to eat your props!

I shot some biscuits with miso shiitake gravy yesterday morning and had them for lunch as soon as I was sure I got the shot I needed, along with some green tea that was also in the photo. This isn’t the shot I’ve chosen for the book, but you can see how delicious all this hard work can be!

Yeah, it can’t all be bad when there’s biscuits and gravy afterwards.

It is hard to get any work done when there are nosy cats around though. Liam loves to sniff at my recipes, like this green tea and pistachio frozen yogurt before I put it in the freezer to set up.

He likes to swarm me while I’m setting up shots too, knocking things over with his tail and just generally being in the way.

Almost all of the book shots are being taken at this little table next to a window, with my light box being used as a light bounce and various props used to change the look of the table surface and with different colored backdrops taped up behind it all. I am so proud of the photos I’ve been taking and I can’t wait for you all to see them. You’d never know they were taken on a tiny Ikea table propped up with some old mail on an uneven floor.

Today is a gloomy-ish day so I’m out of the house shopping for ingredients for more book photos to take as soon as the sun comes out. It seems like a never ending cycle, I seriously won’t know what to do with myself when this book is done. In fact, I’m already planning another one!

It will be nice when I can spend a sunny day outdoors again though, so that’s what I’m working towards. Gotta get it done in time for spring!

February 21, 2012 Alayna Discussion 16 comments

Nope, no Valentine’s Day post. Jeff and I just sat on the couch and watched How I Met Your Mother over a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Neither of us really care about Valentine’s Day. And after having worked in restaurants for nearly a decade, I always feel a terrible anxiety in restaurants on holidays because I get this constant terrible feeling that I need to quit goofing off and get back to work. Makes it difficult to enjoy myself.

We did do fun stuff over the weekend though. Sunday was our second ever brew day, and this time Jeff invited a bunch of folks over to have beer and chit chat with us while we all stood around and watched water boil. I can now say with certainty that a watched pot will indeed boil.

He prepped all the equipment while I cleaned up the house.

And he wrote out all of our brew plans on a white board so everyone could follow along with what we were doing.

I made some snacks, a roasted garlic and chickpea dip with veggies and a persimmon yogurt dip with cinnamon chips.

Our friends, Kelly and Marshall, brought some homemade vegan samoa bars too that were so yummy! The snacks disappeared fast!

This brew was much shorter than last time, about 3-ish hours rather than 8, because we were doing a mini mash. Basically we were brewing a smaller quantity of liquid, but super concentrating it with flavor and then diluting with water later.

I really liked having friends over for brew day. It was fun to stand around and talk over the bready smell of infusing grain, and having a few extra sets of hands helped too.

And not to mention the beer drinking!

Really, any excuse to get friends together to drink beer is a good one. I think we’ll be doing this brew day party again, and maybe expanding it next time. I know it’ll be more fun in the spring when we get a propane burner and can take this party outside to brew (and drink) in the sunshine.

And wouldn’t you know, the beer from our first batch is finally ready for consumption and we should be popping the first bottle open sometime this weekend! I see myself having a lot of dinner parties in the upcoming months for the sole purpose of having people over to help us drink all this beer. I’ll be sure do do a full review of our first brew when we crack it open!

February 15, 2012 Alayna Discussion 15 comments

I mentioned in passing that this past weekend Jeff and I finally got to bottle the beer we made several weeks ago. You know I documented the whole thing!

We started by siphoning the beer into another bucket to separate it from any crud such as dead yeast film or hop sludge. Sounds delicious, right?

Jeff read online that it can be helpful to fill the bottles over the dishwasher to catch any drips or spills. We immediately saw the wisdom in this when we proceded to spray it all over the place.

We had been collecting used beer bottles for the past 6 weeks to use for bottling and I think we were able to acquire around 75. Don’t worry, we didn’t drink all of that ourselves, many were donated from friends who knew we would need them.

They got soaked in OxyClean to remove the labels, were sanitized, and then covered with some foil to keep the dust out.

After each bottle is filled, you clamp on a cap with this scary capping device. I let Jeff do this since it requires some muscle.

Our first 6 pack!

We ended up with 47 bottles total. Way more than we will be able to drink by ourselves, especially because we’re starting another batch this Saturday! Not only that, but we’re brewing another batch in a month. Jeff is definitely addicted and I think this is going to turn into a monthly thing for us.

There is no way we’ll ever be able to drink as much beer as we want to make, so I’m sure we’ll be pawning it off on anyone that enters our home.

The beer we’re making this weekend is a replica of one of my very favorite beers ever, the Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar. I tried it for the first time in Seattle when I was still getting over some stomach poisoning. I was feeling terrible at dinner and couldn’t finish my food, but I could not let myself stop drinking that beer because it was the most delicious beer I had ever tasted. I won’t be sad to have a huge stash of it at home!

What is your favorite beer? Or, what is your favorite “special” beverage that you just can’t get enough of?

February 9, 2012 Alayna Discussion 16 comments