Roasted Potatoes and Brussels Sprouts

Well I am certainly a week behind, at least in posting my non-profit shoots and the recipes. As mentioned before, this quarter has been pretty crazy, the most amount of shooting we have ever had. I shot this past Friday, two shoots on Saturday, my final non-profit shoot, and went location scouting in Port Townsend today. 

 Every year the 2nd year photography students go spend a week photographing in and around Port Townsend.  The good news, the place I am staying at, and  a few place that I am shooting are locked down! Woohoo. I will be going up again to do some more scouting in a month or so, and see if there are other places I may want to shoot at.  It is only 4 days of shooting. I'm super excited  though because the place that I am renting is ridiculously cute and will provide tons of shooting options there!!!! yes.

On to the recipe, for my 3rd Non Profit shoot, I shot Brussels sprouts and roasted potatoes with Rosemary.  It was really easy to make, delicious and also keeping things on a budget, really pretty inexpensive, which is part of my whole advertising campaign for the Neighborhood Farmer's Market Alliance.

Yield: Serves 4-5 as a side
Ingredients:

• (0.80kg/1.75lb) fingerling potatoes
• (0.34kg/0.75lb) brussels sprouts
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tbsp fresh minced rosemary
• 1 tbsp + 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
• 3/4 tsp fine grain sea salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 400F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Rinse and scrub potatoes. Pat dry. Slice in half lengthwise and place into large mixing bowl.
3. Cut off stem of brussels sprouts and remove loose outer leaves. Rinse and pat dry. Place in bowl.
4. Add the minced garlic, minced rosemary, oil, salt, pepper, and optional red pepper flakes into the bowl along with the potatoes and sprouts. Toss with your hands to combine and place on baking sheet.
5. Roast for 35-38 minutes at 400F, stirring once half way through baking. Potatoes will be golden and brussels will be lightly charred when ready. Season with Herbamare (or salt) and pepper to taste and serve immediately.

Enjoy! 

Chicken & Leeks

I am 3/4 of the way done with my quarter long advertising campaign, with my final two shots to be done this Saturday.  Yippee!!   Here is what I shot for last week, which is going with the continued theme of creating meals on a budget from the University District Farmer's Market, a part of the Neighborhood Farmer's Market Alliance.  All of my images will be created for the NFMA, in conjunction with my class.  I will have a 8 total images at the end, with 4 being ingredient shots, and 4 being the prepared meals.

I used this recipe from Real Simple which I had made in the past and was really delicious, roasted apples and leeks with drumsticks.  Very easy, and also pretty budget conscious, a nice wintery meal.  Scroll below for the recipe.

 

Ingredients

• 4  small  crisp apples (such as Empire or Braeburn), quartered
• 2  leeks (white and light green parts), halved crosswise and lengthwise
• 6  small  sprigs fresh rosemary
• 2  tablespoons  olive oil
• Kosher salt and black pepper
• 8  small chicken thighs and drumsticks (4 of each, about 2 1/2 pounds total)

Directions

1. Heat oven to 400° F. In a large roasting pan, toss the apples, leeks, rosemary, oil, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper.
2. Season the chicken with ½ teaspoon each salt and pepper and nestle, skin-side up, among the vegetables.
3. Roast until the chicken is cooked through and the apples and leeks are tender, 40 to 45 minutes.

White!

It's been forever or so it seems since I have posted.  Life is moving at the speed of light it feels this quarter, and every day I am either working, editing, shooting, shot planning, cooking for a shoot, researching images,  you get the picture.  I do always give myself at least Friday and Saturday nights free, since I have to have a few free evenings.

So a few days ago, I was thinking it really is time to write a blog post, and it was going to be on a beet & squash salad I did a week or so back for the non-profit ad campaign I am working on this quarter.  I went over to my bag and opened up my hard drive carrying case, and my hard drive toppled out and hit the concrete floor.  I plugged in the hard drive, and sadly it just beeped over and over again, sounding like a skipping record.  So, I'm sure you can understand no blog post. I thought it was probably a good sign to just go to bed. 

I had last backed up a week earlier, so I just lost 4 shoots from the previous week.  Two were good ones I wanted the files for, and two were so so, but lesson learned.  Backup after every shoot! This was a good lesson to learn now, and thank god I had everything up until the past week.  I was very sad to have lost the rainbow trout shot from below.  I really liked that shoot, and was looking forward to viewing the photos, but it gives me an opportunity to re-shoot, later for hopefully even better results. 

Ok, on to white.  The pictures I am posting were from our colors assignments, for the color white.  I always try to experiment with lighting, so it varies from a large & small octabank, and day light below.

Til next time!

Amy