Monthly Archives: June 2010

Jamaican Latte

Jamaican Latte: I'll take 3.

My friend Carrie and I met for coffee last week at a cafe here in Chicago called “The Bourgeois Pig”. I departed from my default order (a mocha) and decided to try their Jamaican Latte, which according to the menu had allspice and honey. It was delicious! During the week I drink office coffee, which as we all know can be slightly lacking (ehem, ehem–gross understatement alert)–so over the weekend, I like to spruce things up by adding any combination of the following: Baileys, Kahlua, hot chocolate mix, vanilla, cinnamon, almond extract, flavored creamers, and gratuitous amounts of heavy whipping cream. This past weekend, I recreated the Jamaican Latte at home. It’s so simple it doesn’t really count as a recipe, but I never would have thought to use the allspice/honey combo, and I must pass on the simple brilliance.

Ingredients

(1 serving)

2/3 cup good quality espresso (makes all the difference!)

1/3 cup half and half + foam

1/8 tsp allspice

2-3 tsp honey

1 TBS bourbon (optional)

Make your espresso. Buy some of the good stuff! Yes, it’s more pricey, but for a treat over the weekend it’s definitely worth it. Be forewarned–I tried using some cheaper stuff, and it was so far from cutting it that I decided to give it to an unsuspecting friend and make a new pot for myself (yes, this is how I treat my friends). But he liked it, OK? OK? (defensive panic setting in quickly)

Ye ole coffee maker

Ye ole coffee maker a-brewin’

Heat and froth half and half. I use my awesome hand-frother, but my sister Heidi has a cool little electric one that looks like a miniature immersion blender. You should buy one. And then you should send it to me, since my husband doesn’t think I need any more kitchen gadgets. I’ll do the right thing and listen to him . . . but if one shows up in the mail, we can’t exactly turn it down, eh? (nudge nudge wink wink)

Combine espresso and half and half in a cup of your choice, and stir in the honey and allspice. Taste it and adjust to your desired sweetness level. Add the foam and sprinkle a little allspice on top. After drinking it plain, I tried adding 1 TBS of bourbon–it added a fun bite, but I like it best whiskey-less.

Make it on a rainy day! Or on a hot sunny day with your AC turned up full blast to simulate the coziness of winter. And grab a good book while you’re at it–I’d be a fool if I didn’t use this opportunity as another plug for the fabulous Terry Pratchett.

Have a great weekened everyone!

Click here for printer-friendly version: Jamaican Latte

Playing with Photoshop

Enterprise, Alabama

Photoshop is a recent acquisition of mine. And due to certain family members being enrolled in certain graduate schools, I get to have it for CHEAP. And that was the only way I was going to have it, man.

I am terribly excited about learning how to navigate it. And terribly frightened that I will get sucked into the obsessive vortex that can be image editing (do you like it–“image editing” as opposed to my old activity of “messing around with pictures on the computer”?).

I’d like to state for the record that my goal is still to take great pictures SOOC (straight out of camera) so that I don’t feel compelled to mess with them. It’s all about having options and not obligations.

As I learn, I plan on posting some step-by-steps . . . but right now I feel like a small child lost in the woods. And if this small child just knows what roots to dig and eat, what berries won’t poison her to death, how to create a blanket out of leaves, and how to befriend the local fauna, she could have a blast playing in this woodland realm with no adults to tell her what to do! Have I lost you? Layman’s terms: Photoshop is going to give me amazing freedoms to edit, beautify, and get all artistic up in the crizza, but first I need to learn about the roots and berries and leaves. And I need to befriend the local fauna.

In the meantime, here are a few pictures that I have played with. There is so much potential to be unpacked, and I am not only on the tip of the iceberg, but I’m only touching the tip of the iceberg with the smallest part of my tiniest finger, straining my arm from the deck of a huge boat that’s about to take me far, far away from the iceberg. My mission is clear: jump off the boat, embrace the whole iceberg, and avidly kick my legs to avoid hypothermia.

Thank you for allowing me to get lost in metaphors. It gives my brain a workout.

All these pictures were taken with my Nikon D5000 (love that thang) on our March sisters reunion in Enterprise, Alabama. Maybe one day I will understand what I did to these pictures, but all I remember is–layers? Layer masks? Something with a filter?

Photoshopping my lovely sister Erica

 

Photoshopping my lovely and pregnant sister Heidi

Photo courtesy of Erica; Photoshopping courtesy of me =)

Ditto on previous photos–thanks Erica.

 

A halo of light

The picture above was fun to play with, and I used a cool eye-enhancing technique which involves sharpening the blue part of her eye and whitening the white part … and something with dodging and burning maybe? (Note to self: must enhance long-term memory via a diet of nuts and berries.)

Heidi and Mike! Photo courtesy of Erica.

Eye-whitening/enhancing tutorial coming up! In the very distant future. Unless the nuts and berries work.