I bought Rick a molecular gastronomy kit for Christmas. What man (or woman) who loves to cook wouldn’t like a food science kit? If you watch the Food Network at all you are already familiar with some of the molecular food preparations that are becoming increasingly popular in restaurants, such as foams.

He was thrilled with his gift and tried it out yesterday, starting with the recipe for a molecular “fried” egg. The base was vanilla yogurt and milk and the “yolk” was a papaya puree. (Those are chocolate shavings on top.)

The “yolk” was firm on the outside but “cooked” perfectly when broken into.

I would say his first experiment was a success! And very tasty too!

Alex waiting patiently Christmas morning to open packages.

We had a good Christmas. How about you?

It snowed about an inch on Christmas Eve. It was so pretty coming down. We turned on the outside light around 8:00 p.m. and just sat in the sun room with a cup of homemade egg nog (yes, I used raw eggs) and watched it snow. Perfection! When we got up Christmas morning and opened the curtains to that covering of white it was picture perfect. The snow mostly melted during the day when it warmed up to the high 30’s.

We had a small Christmas (meaning not many gifts) but the gifts we did get and receive were not as small. I thought it was pretty funny that both Rick and I gave each other a kind of camera! I gave him a time-lapse camera because he spends his days around cameras that do the opposite (high-speed slow motion) and I thought he needed to slow down a bit.

He gave me a Lytro camera, which I had never heard of before. It’s just a tiny little thing that can be easily popped into a pocket and taken along. It takes “living” pictures. I’ll be featuring them in my blog from now on in combination with normal photos. For the Lytro pics you can click on various spots of the photo and it will come in to focus as other parts go out of focus. I have added a perspective feature to most of them which makes the photo look 3D (depending on how deep my depth of field was in that particular photo) and you can click and drag to explore the photo a bit more. Try it with this photo I took of Hailey in the foreground and Bella in the distance.

See how her head pops out of the photo? Cool, eh?

So, how does the magic happen? I’m not too up on the technical bits but here is a brief explanation from Rick.
“Called a “light field” camera or “plenoptic camera”. A digital camera that acquires images in a whole new way, then uses complex computations to render the photos. Each pixel you see in the photo is actually imaged by many different pixels with different focal distances. All this data is later used to computationally render the photo.” Hmm … clear as mud, right? All you really need to focus on (Hah, pun, get it?) it that it takes cool photos.

Here are a couple more.

We spent the day playing with our new toys, taking the dogs for a walk and cooking our Christmas meal of Duck in orange sauce, two-potato gratin and roasted brussels sprouts with homemade profiteroles for dessert.

Yesterday we ventured out of the house and into town for a few things, then took the dogs down the road to Green Turtle Pond for an off-leash run. Brrr it was cold—below freezing! Just like littlel kids, the dogs had to step on every frozen puddle and break the ice. It was a game to them.

Then yesterday afternoon it snowed again, as predicted, while we watched the movie “Inception.” I may never think the same way about my dreams again! We got about four to four and a half inches of nice snow before it turned to freezing rain, then rain. I took these two shots just as it was turning to freezing rain. The trees were coated in what looked like white cotton candy and looked very strange. I hope you appreciate these photos because I went out in my slippers and bathrobe to take them! You can see my footprints in the snow on the steps for depth.

They say we are getting more snow on Saturday. I guess winter has arrived in New Jersey!

New camera toy! It’s a Lytro! Click on the back leaves to change focus to the back then click on the front leaf to change the focus there! Give it a try!

And the pretty much sums up the weekend, folks!

We went to see the Sound of Music on Saturday at the Paper Mill Playhouse. That stanza of the song “My Favorite Things” keeps running through my mind ..

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes …

That and “How do you solve a problem like Maria?”

The performance was wonderful, the staging so well done! What lucky raffle winners we were!

And, speaking of snowflakes on my nose and eyelashes, I guess our expected snow amount has dwindled to “a coating to an inch” which is not ideal but certainly better than no snow at all. We shall see. Of course, places like Oklahoma are due to have a blizzard. Can you please tell me why it’s cold enough to snow in Oklahoma but not in New Jersey? Weather mystifies me. It truly does.

Yesterday found us up bright and early doing our Christmas grocery shopping. We needed to go to Franklin Lakes (stomping grounds of the Real Housewives of New Jersey) to the Market Basket to get our duck breasts and a few good cheeses. We had breakfast at the Oakland Diner, better known to its patrons as just the O.D. (I know Bigsis, I know!)

After groceries it was off to neighbor Kim’s annual Christmas open house across the street for a few hours of holiday cheer and chatter.

We hadn’t been home for very long when Rick yelled “SANTA, Lynne, get your camera!!” I had already changed into my around-the-house-sweats and slippers but I grabbed the camera and headed out the door. I didn’t have time to change lenses and had my biggest zoom lens on because the last time I used the camera I was aiming it at a woodpecker at the feeder. It worked out okay though. It was a little challenging since our normally empty street was lined with cars at the open house.

A slipped a twenty dollar bill in Santa’s helper’s hands and got a candy cane thumbs up from Santa!

I love living here. I just wish the expected snow counts were reversed and we were getting the blizzard and Oklahoma would get the coating-to-an-inch.