365 Photo Project - Day 11

Taken: January 11, 2010, approx 11:30 p.m.
Location: My kitchen.

Okay, this photo-a-day thing is getting hard. Especially when the days are so damned short and I get up so damned late. Less than an hour to go and the only idea I had was 'food'. Why food? 'Cause up here in wine country, food is a serious business. As serious as anything really. All that stuff you hear about on the news these days, the eating healthy, the eating local ... thank places like Sonoma where loving and using the land has been in vogue since well before the first vineyards were planted. Everything is local and fresh and believe me, there's nothing better.

My husband is a real-deal cook -- not the kind that went to Le Cordon Beu mind you, but a mostly self-taught chef who studies food and cooking like he runs a five-star restaurant. He has many fans up here, including local chefs and winemakers. I admit I take him for granted, alas. But that's for a different discussion.

Over the next few months, I'm sure to include pictures of the food he prepares. I tried to do that today but let me tell you: there's an art to taking photos of food and S.O.L. has yet to grasp it. I will try again. In the meantime, gaze into my fridge. As way of a roadmap, most of the leftovers are up there on the top shelf (left) next to the dog food which tells you where the dogs rank in this house not our leftovers. (And child please, the dogs do not eat people food.)

The brown paper bag is full of fresh local mushrooms and the white bowl on the middle shelf, that was tonight's dinner: my husband's awesomely creamy black beans, a nod to his Cuban heritage. There's Armandino's cured meats in the drawer to the left and in the darkness on the bottom shelf, some cans of Guinness and a fat bottle of local bubbly, you know for when my ship comes in again. Oh, and the plastic bag on the second shelf is fresh herbs -- my husband keeps them in a glass of water and covered by the plastic to help them last longer. He's got all kinds of tricks like that.

Taken with my Pentax K100D in ridiculously low light. Edited in Photoshop to make it remotely presentable. I did my best. Ack, tomorrow's a new day.