A mirror picture

It's been a while since I have put anything up on here, but today school starts late and I got up early. I was playing around with some pictures and will put one here. I took this a while ago.

That's it for now I guess. I'll try to post more often, but no guarantees.

Fall plants

Here's some plants I took pictures of.

 That's all I have to say this time. Only 3017 words.

Dog+wood=?

Here's a random assortment of pictures. I took out the camera as it was a beautiful day, and I didn't have tons of homework to do.
I haven't posted any (I think) of my dog, because usually I don't like how they turn out. This time I think they were decent, but maybe a bit dark. Please comment if you have a suggestion of how to make it better.

I thought the texture was kinda neat...

 I do have some more pictures that I edited and uploaded, so there should be another post soon.

A few more camping pictures

Here are a few more camping pictures, probably the last ones I'll put up from there, as I didn't take too many.

Sitting around the campfire

Little cousin

 She liked getting her picture taken (at least for a while) so she actually sat relatively still. Usually my pictures of kids turn out blurry because they're so squirreley! Maybe if I had a lens that focused faster...
Maybe I should have cropped that gree-white-red thing out in the last picture.

Camping!

This was from Labor Day, so a bit late, but better late than never. These are mostly food pictures. Next I'll probably post some people pictures.
I didn't actually take all that many pictures camping, but I got at least a few that I liked.
I haven't posted anything in a while, I guess I got a bit lazy when school started, but I hope I can average at least a couple a week now.

What yesterday's project was about...

Here's pictures of the completed project.

Sights go out to 2000m (2 kilometers!)

 I had bought this rifle thee day before, and since it was a used military surplus rifle, it was covered in a Vaseline type stuff called cosmoline. It keeps it from rusting when it is stored for a long time. I had to boil water and put the parts in there and scrub them a bit to get it off. I used some sort of turpentine or mineral spirits for the magazine, and now it kinda reeks. I thought it would be complicated to take apart, but it was easier than a lot of my toy guns.

The pictures, a day late

I ended up not putting the pictures on yesterday, but here they are today. Can you guess what these are? tomorrow I'll put pictures up of the completed project. I don't feel like writing much more right now, so today you're stuck with a little over 4,000 words (get it? 4 pictures ... a picture is worth a thousand words?).

More pictures coming today

I have more pictures coming today, but not right in this post. I guess if something comes up and I really can't put pictures up, you will be left with none. I'll try my bestest though. I'm stuck with my 50mm lens now, as my zoom lens decided it doesn't want to work too well anymore, but for most things the 50mm works fine. Sometimes it would be nice to have the 18-35ish range too. Well I need to go for now.

Pies part two

I ended up throwing the pie idea to the wayside, as we didn't have any shortening, and that was a good enough excuse to not make pie crust. I ended up making apple sauce and some apple cobblers in my cast iron pans (what a mess! I won't use them again for that). Here's some pictures.
I collected some apples first.

 Then me and my sister peeled them and I cut them into fourths and cut out the cores.

 Here they are peeled:

 I threw them into a pot with (approximately) 2 cups water, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup brown sugar, a squirt of lemon juice, and some ground cinnamon. I think it is kind of neat how the stove looks purple in the picture.

 After a while... it gets mushy. This batch took about an hour. There were still a few lumps and chunks, but they were soft. I made over a gallon I think.

Hot apple sauce with vanilla ice cream... :-)

Here's one of the cobblers

 If you have any more recipes for apples, please share! Also any tips on taking pictures of food would be appreciated.

Making apple juice!

Yesterday I made some apple juice. I didn't use one of those apple squishers, because I don't have one. Instead, I used our Mehu Liisa that we got from a garage sale for $10 I think, almost new. They are about $200 from the store. Anyways, I went and collected good looking apples from the back yard, and cut them into fourths, just to make sure there weren't ant bad spots inside.

Next, I got out the Mehu Liisa. It uses steam to juice things.

The steamer has 3 main parts. The bottom holds the water, which is boiled. The next one has a funnel that directs the steam to the fruit basket, which is the top layer. The juice then drips back into the middle through little holes in the basket. It is then poured out through the hose. Here's a link to a diagram.
http://www.juiceland.co.uk/media/images/product_detail/steamjuicer_diagram.gif

The next step was to put the apples into the basket. I added some sugar.

 Then once the water is boiling, the fruit is put on and it steams for around an hour. The steamer can also make other things, like berries, vegetables, corn. Of course, the vegetables are not in as long, and just get soft instead of juiced.

 Here is what is left after an hour of steaming:

 Here is the result: apple juice!

About 3 pints.

 The apple juice was slightly syrupy, and I think next time I'll peel the apples and make apple sauce by steaming them just long enough to get soft. The juice isn't bad, though. I want to try some sort of berries next, maybe currants or something tart.

Another experiment I want to try is making peanut butter.
Well that's all for today.

New Griswold No. 5!

A few days ago I went to an antique store and picked up a new cast iron pan. It was $12, and they didn't want to negotiate on the price. Still, I bought it. I think it is my new favorite pan.
These were made until 1957, and I think this pan dates somewhere between 1937 and 1957. 

A recipe!

I have a recipe for you! I think I'm turning into quite the cook now. Here it is.

1 can of tuna
1 egg
some crackers

Crush the crackers and mix everything in a bowl, then fry it in little patties (I got two from this). The I put it between two halves of an English muffin and added some mayonnaise.
I didn't photograph the event, however.

Since this blog thing is called "Zak's Pictures" I might as well throw some in. They're unrelated to the tuna thing.

I don't invert the colors too much, so I decided to throw one in.

Handy tool

Safety and security on the World Wide Web

With internet safety and information security in mind, I made a Facebook account. I decided I would need a profile picture, but I did not want to put a easily identifiable picture of myself on the internet. I took some self portraits (harder than it might seem). I guess I'll share a few of the results here, so you aren't left with no pictures.

By the way, do you see any eyes in those holes? No siree, carefully painted black to make it unrecognizable (plus the eyeholes had more noise than an amusement park in them).