ruokakuva – Ritva Sillanmäki Photography

Easter Sunday

Captures from Finland, Photography, Still life

Let the photos show our Easter 🐣 activities. It was sunny but rather cool, but we had coffee

at Löyly outdoor deck enjoying the ✨ sea.

We enjoyed Late lunch at Sea Horse , a restaurant serving traditional food since 1932

Sweets for my honey

Photography, Still life

Oh, the utter lack of willpower to resist the temptation. I felt like a kid in a candy store.

In my FB photography group the topic was garlic, but I added some onions as well. Boy, did I take too many shots of garlic, then I played with them in Lightroom. So, sorry I am going to overload you with photos of garlic.

I took them, might as well share them. Enjoy them, or not. Totally your choice, but if you have a favorite let me know. I will number them 🙂 I might take this as a learning opportunity as well 🙂

“You can never have enough garlic. With enough garlic, you can eat The New York Times.” ~ Morley Safer

“Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime…Please, treat your garlic with respect…Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screwtop jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don’t deserve to eat garlic.” ~ Anthony Bourdain

Did you make it this far, just curious 😀 ?

Veggie time

Cities, Nature

Delicious

Photography, Still life

Yesterday I enjoyed a delicious meal and as I took photos of them because they were so beautifully prepared and presented. Yammy… nettle soup with poached egg, perched pike with potatoes and finally a brûlée with rhubarb and raspberry sorbet.

Peaches

Still life

This month’s theme is peach, in my FB photography group. I struggled with it for a while since peaches where not available in the stores until recently – it was not their season 🙂 Well, anyways I found some peaches in the end and took photos of them. Feel free to comment, I am still on a constant learning curve.

I tried to create different moods, time periods (nostalgic) and obviously variations in compositions. I was not all that creative this time in that sense, but you cannot always succeed 🙂

Taking it easy

Flowers, Still life

I have tried my best to stay away from the computer these past days. I think I have done pretty well, but just to keep the momentum going here I am again.

I did not take any photos of the food I made. But this is a chicken dish from a previous meal 🙂

Easter came and went, mainly at home. We saw our sons and grandkids. I tried couple new recipes. I am getting rather good at picking them and always slightly altering them. As all the restaurants are only doing take-away food, me trying new things gives our menus some variation. Teriyaki salmon and chicken lasagne tasted so good. I am rather proud of myself as I am not into cooking all that much – I mainly make good tasty homemade food, I have not been a recipe reader, I’ve stuck what I know. That is not to say my food isn’t tasty. It is 😀 LOL. Desperate times has made me an explorer. Making it easy for myself I am posting an old photo of a chicken meal we had.

I also have been working on an art project. I have been asked to do a Triptych to be placed in a master bedroom – not a church as first comes to mind when you hear that term. A trio of contemporary art, that I do. So all three pieces are different but go well together. It is always harder to do something specific to someone’s taste and colors. Even if the origin is one of my original art.

Lemon Slice #3

Photography, Still life

I promise this is my last post on lemons for now, other fruits need to be noticed too for they bright and uplifting colors. As you can see I can go slightly overboard when I try to capture just the right shot. Serious business these challenges 😀 LOL ( not! )

Lemon, yellow…I bought lemon, lime, sparkling water and set up my project.I took so, so many shots, way too many. Once again I faced a dilemma what to post. So I took macro or close ups mainly of slices of lemon , but you can see lime there too. This first one is my favorite.

Lemon Slice

Photography, Still life

If nothing else these are a splash of spring, summer in these photos; Nothing says ‘sunshine’ in the kitchen or on a menu like lemon. One of the quotes i saw about lemon was this, I did not aim for that: One of the negative side, some artists use the image of a cut lemon to insinuate that something is sour, faulty or otherwise amiss.

One of those days

Still life

yep, it’s one of those days when you just want to do nothing, nothing interests you, you, life everything is boring.

I am contemplating what to do for lunch, nothing grabs me. Yesterday was the same , so we ordered pizza. Today I have to fix something…oh, no! I don’t want to. I assume we all have these days. Here are the some of the ingredients for tuna salad (red pepper, celery, eggs). Add tuna, dill and mayonnaise and you are ready and well the pasta should be included too :-).

Coffee moment

Photography, Still life

I asked my husband to get something tasty to go with coffee. This is what I got, laskiaispulla. A bun with whipped cream and strawberry jam. Aah , so tasty 😋

Countdown to 2021-23

Photography, Still life

Tomorrow is Christmas eve. Yesterday we baked s Scandinavian ginger nuts, piparkakut in Finnish, they are tasty as they are but, apparently go very well with cheeses that we have for Christmas. We also wrapped some gifts with Christmas songs playing in the background.

I slept so well last night, after two really bad ones, so I am happy. Feel like a sane person, with clear thoughts. Two previous day were as I was in a blur… Well anyway, this morning I woke up to happy sound of our grandkids in out backyard making a snowman. They came to ask behind the window of my husbands work from home office for a carrot for it, which we did not have. As you can guess, we got a little bit of snow last night. I don’t know if it will last until tomorrow, so we could say we had a white Christmas, but the boys were so happy that they had something to do outside

I will be posting new and old photos somehow related to winter, Christmas and eventually anticipation of new year. My aim is to take one new photo a day, but not going to stress over it, if I don’t come up with anything.

Would you like to join us? Join in with this title and link it to my page.

Countdown to 2021-22

Photography, Still life

Two days until Christmas eve. Yesterday we decorated the tree. Traditionally using the same decorations we have had for years, some that I have inherited from my childhood home.

The lunch was delicious. Always a pleasure to have food prepared by someone else.

Fried salmon and
horseradish yogurt sauce

Mudcake with granberries and icecream

Cappuccino

Would you like to join us? Join in with this title and link it to my page.

Countdown to 2021-17

Photography, Still life

Today: Sunrise at 9:23- Sunset 15:14- Length of day 5:51 hours – time of dusk 0:58 minutes . A minute less of daylight than yesterday. Only 5 more days until winter solstice.

Old Friends they shine like diamonds
Old Friends you can always call
Old Friends Lord you can’t buy ’em
You know it’s Old Friends after all

We met over dinner with old friends, we usually have had a tradition, that my girl friend for 40 years has hosted a pre Christmas party to a certain group of friends – four couples in December at her house. This year that tradition has broken due to this odd year. This year is we decided to have celebrate friendship and Christmas with a dinner with them in a nice restaurant just the four of us. No hugging, greeting smiles from distance and sitting across the dinner table. All good and safe. Delicious meal. For a starter I had flambeed snails (anise liqueur), Duck leg Confit for entree and for dessert Chocolate cake and beetroot sorbet.

Would you like to join us? Join in with this title and link it to my page.

Countdown to 2021-15

Photography, Still life

Today: Sunrise at 9:21- Sunset 15:14- Length of day 5:53 hours – time of dusk 0:58 minutes . A minute less of daylight than yesterday. Only 6 more days until winter solstice.

Times are odd, I’ve started to read and even execute recipes I find. Most of the time I read them and slightly change them. Like with this fish recipe I found for pike-perch, it was meant to be done in the oven.

I sliced an onion, three garlic cloves, and thump sized ginger that I had grated, I first fried them in an oil and butter mix, then I placed the salted pike-perch fillets on it to fry. for a side I used the potatoes left over from the previous day and fried them also with onions. Our Sunday meal was ready. It was so tasty 🙂

it didn’t look all that great, but the taste was delicious.

I also decorated this glass vase for our kitchen table with Christmas balls.

Would you like to join us? Join in with this title and link it to my page.

How to survive November 2020-24

Black and White photos

Time goes by so fast even if there is nothing happening, one week left of November. It has been so much better weather wise than I thought. So only 28 days until we are back to gaining light again. Something to look forward to.

I will try to continue my experiments in cooking, I have tried several new recipes lately. Healthy ones at that. That is something 🙂 using lots of olive oil, onions and garlic tp spice it up. I do like butter and cream in my cooking, but my Italian recipes are giving me nice options. Taking black and white food photography does not appeal to me, but this will do, a cook book.

My Veikka cat has a beautiful tail and he is gorgeous big white cat-

If you wish to participate in this survival of the darkest month challenge, use this link to add your post to it. PARALLEL LINES

tomato is a fruit

Still life

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Miles Kington

The difference between a bland tomato and great one is immense, much like the difference between a standard, sliced white bread and a crusty, aromatic sourdough.

I think they named …

Still life

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.
Paul Cezanne

I think they named the orange before the carrot
– Demetri Martin

Garlic is divine

Still life

“Too lazy to peel fresh? You don’t deserve to eat garlic.”

“Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime. Old garlic, burnt garlic, garlic cut too long ago, garlic that has been tragically smashed through one of those abominations, the garlic press, are all disgusting. Please, treat your garlic with respect.”
Anthony Bourdain

“I could smell garlic, butter, and wine – the world’s most delicious flavor combination. It made me feel warm, like the first few sips of wine always do.”
Sarah Jio, The Violets of March

Kollaasi 217 (5/2020)

Photo Collage, Photography

At this week shades of colours are found from sardonyx. Those who know me know that I certainly have hard choice of choosing. So, once again I made two collages, same pics, but different layout and could not choose which one to post. What can you do, you can either like them or not 🙂 that is your choice!