Saturday, December 7, 2013

Something to warm the cockles of your heart

15 Bean Soup

Well, maybe to just warm your tummy

– some delicious 15 bean soup

yummy, just the ticket for a cold, blustery winter evening!

Until 3D printing gets a little more advanced, you just have to fix it yourself and here is how we do it.

15 Bean Soup

Start with about a pound of beans. We used a bag that contained 15 varieties. Actually not all were true beans, the bag included split peas, lentils, garbanzo beans. No matter, all are great for making soup. If you just have one variety that will work too.

Cooking beans takes time. The traditional way is to soak them overnight, but it is faster to boil the rinsed beans in 8 cups of water for an hour.

What makes this soup really delicious are the additional ingredients. A pound or so of chicken, we use boneless, skinless chicken breasts, maybe another pound of sausage, this time genuine Cajun sausage. And the “seasonings”, as my Southern cooking mentor would call them, onion, garlic, carrots and celery. My formula is “1234”, one onion, two cloves of garlic, three carrots, and four celery stalks, all cut up bite-size.

15 Bean Soup

While the beans are boiling, I chop the other items. The onions are sautéed in a couple spoonful butter or olive oil. When the onions start to turn translucent, I add the chicken and cook until the chicken meat is all white. Then the rest of the ingredients are added and cooked a little bit longer. This gets everything nice and hot and won’t stop the beans from cooking.

15 Bean Soup

Everything is added together. Another two cups of water are also added at this point and some chicken bouillon, or you can use chicken broth in place of the water. We like our soup quite thick – closer to stew than traditional soup. You may wish to add a little more water. Now allow everything to simmer another hour or so.

15 Bean Soup

This makes plenty soup. But remember, left-over soup is even more delicious the second day.

Mmmm … I can smell it already.

Bon appétit!

So what’s with the food articles, you ask? Café Ludwig is supposed to be about photography! Well, the five photos here should qualify. They were taken with great care. Lighting was on-camera flash, just to illustrate that this can work beautifully. Photos were diligently post-processed in Photo Gallery and Picasa.

The food post idea was inspired by my friends Beatrice and Grenville over at The Frog and PequINN who have provided delightful stories, mouth-watering food photos, and neighborly shares of recipes. So this post is dedicated to them with a tip of the hat and a nod of appreciation and admiration. Do pay them a visit, you too will be enchanted!

.:.

© 2013 Ludwig Keck

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Pie for Thanksgiving

We love pumpkin pie and we love pecan pie. This year there would be just a small group around our table, so two pies was too much. Too much pie and too much work. My solution:

Pumpkin-Pecan Pie

Two delectable layers of bliss:

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A crust recipe from Garden & Gun magazine, our old standby for pumpkin pie – just read the instructions on the can – and my recently perfected version of pecan pie, all combined into one. Yummy!!

It even looked good fresh out of the oven:

Pumpkin-Pecan Pie,

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day!

All the best for the holidays!

.:.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Happy Holidays!

Some sixty years ago I created my first photo Christmas card. Kodak was offering a lightweight photo paper that could be folded twice into a greeting card format, this was black and white paper, but it allowed a fully personalized holiday greeting. In the following years the pressures on time prevented me more often than not from producing my own cards. But many years I spent some time on a photo, a sketch or a painting, and almost all featured a candle.

More recently, I have the time and the modern tools to engage in this pleasurable activity. For several years I have used a photo that recreated the Christmas tree from my childhood. This year again I have used that image as the basis for my holiday card.

When a friend expressed interest in sharing my work, I decided to add several versions to my catalog at Fine Art America. Here are these images.

Weihnachtskerze - Christmas Candle 

Memories of Christmas

Weihnachtskerze - Christmas Candle

These photo-paintings use just a few tones to simplify the the image and to reduce it to the essential message. I hope that these images remind you of the joy and hope of the season.

Happy Holidays!

Ludwig

.:.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Composition Rules for Photographers

 

Over at Photography Notes and Tips I have a detailed review of Composition Rules. You might find something of interest there. Please take a look.

Composition Rules

.:.

© 2013 Ludwig Keck

Friday, September 20, 2013

Festival

Fun at the Gateway International Food & Music Festival

Norcross, Georgia

.:.

© 2013 Ludwig Keck

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

New Blog

Meet the newest member of the family

The “Café Ludwig” family consists of a number of sites. Something that is confusing or amusing to friends and readers. Now another blog joins the clan: Photography Notes and Tips. This is another Blogger blog.

Why? you might ask. The “Café Ludwig” collection of sites arose from the desire to test many of the offerings of blog services, hosting services, and various tools to provide knowledge and demonstrations to students and readers. With the addition of Google+ to the Google family some new features became available. This new blog will offer, just as the name proclaims, notes and tips about photography, much of it oriented to black and white photography. It is in a wide layout so photos can be shown large without needing to click and go to another site to view them. Comments and other features are oriented toward Google+.

If you are a Google+ user you will find that this new blog nicely integrates into the Google+ services. You comments are invited.

Photography Notes and Tips

Fear not, dear reader, here at Café Ludwig you will continue to see photos, stories, and more. You will find a new link to the PN&T blog in the sidebar on the left, just scroll down a bit to find it.

Come visit!

Photography Notes and Tips

.:.

© 2013 Ludwig Keck

Saturday, August 10, 2013

This Aint Your Grandmother's Quilt

The Norcross Art Center opened the exhibit “Contemporary African American Quilts by the Brown Sugar Stitchers Quilt Guild” with an artists reception and a concert by “Main Street Strings”.

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Indeed, these are not what you might expect from the word “quilt”, these are glorious, colorful, imaginative works of art. Here some examples. Sorry, but taking photos in the midst of a party just can’t do justice to these works.

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The artists graciously explained there work.

Cranberry Galaxy - Cleme Cosby

Out of Africa III - Charmed I'm Sure - Jeanette Walton

On the left: Cleme Cosby with her quilt “Cranberry Galaxy”. On the right: Jeanette Walton in front of her “Out of Africa III – Charmed I’m Sure”.

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Desert Queen - Anita Crosby

Even a photo-realistic quilt, “Desert Queen” by Anita Crosby, here with the actual “model”.

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You really must see these delightful quilts for yourself. The exhibit will continue throughout the month of August. To see it call the Norcross Welcome Center & Museum to arrange a visit.

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.:.

© 2013 Ludwig Keck