Dreams, Moments, Travels
Macro shot of the Mexican Bird of Paradise. This perennial is found throughout the Phoenix area as it flowers most of the year and does great with hot and dry conditions. The botanical name is Caesalpinia Mexicana. Bees like the flowers, and the seeds are poisonous. Not very interesting stuff to say about this plant; besides that, it is nice to look at.
I visited my mother, grandfather, and great-aunt this afternoon. The backyard has a pond where a half dozen fish share the green, murky water with these lilies. This summer, a couple of dozen bees, some wasps, and dragonflies are also calling the pond home.
Tonight, we had an extraordinary dinner courtesy of Shyam and Shakuntala Bhat. Shakuntala made favorites idli (steamed rice cakes), coconut chutney, and sambar (a vegetable soup-like concoction), along with some new dishes. She prepared cholle (garbanzo beans in tomato sauce), yogurt rice, chapatis (a thin flatbread), a version of patra (a ground rice dish using taro leaves), a plantain and cardamom puree, and for dessert, we had a mixed fruit salad with ice cream, which was heavy on fresh mango – YUM!
Our dinner was truly wonderful, not a dish was unagreeable. Shakuntala must have spent the entire day preparing this meal as only the cholle is a quick dish; the others require lots of patience. She explained the de-veining of the taro leaves and the preparation of the rice for the patra dish, and it was obvious this dish alone took a few hours to prepare. Not a minute of her time was wasted as her cooking is, in our view – FANTASTIC.
The photo above was taken shortly before dinner and shows Caroline with Leena and Sumar. We were joined by our friends, Rinku, Raenu, and Gautham, while Shyam brought Shylesh, Leena, and Sumar. Shashi, son of Shyam and Shakuntala, did not join us again as this traditional South Indian cooking just doesn’t do it for him.
Under a decorative cover sits this light, which illuminates our stairwell. It is a finicky light; a slight brush left, and it stops working; jam it to the right and wiggle hard while pushing up, and you might get it working again.
This photo was taken with the macro function of the Canon EF-S 17-85mm lens, which, although a nice all-around lens, is bereft of true macro skill. It is becoming time to invest in a good macro lens, such as the Canon EF-S 60mm Macro USM lens for a cool $449.
I think I will visit FotoForum this week and test the lens; it wasn’t yet available when we purchased the new camera. Look for some real macro images here in the next few days.
I shot a sunset photo for today’s photo of the day, but it isn’t worthy of posting here, so I’m cheating and posting an old photo taken with our 3-megapixel Sony camera three years ago.
Taking a moment today after working too hard, I look up through the leaves of a mesquite tree to see that the pods are opening and dumping their fruit. The mesquite is one of the coolest trees in Arizona. With roots that go as deep as 60 feet, there is often more wood below ground than above. Used for cooking, mesquite can lend great flavor to any cookout; just check out Cattle Exchange Restaurant in Canadian, Texas, for proof of that. The fruit from the pod is used by the Apache and is ground into flour or fermented to make an intoxicating drink. The gum from the tree can be eaten as candy or used as cement to repair pottery. Who knew?