The Gherkin

Posted Nov 15, 2024

The Gherkin, London
Nov. 13, 2024

Kyoto, Early Fall

Posted Dec 26, 2023

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These are some favorite pho­tos from a recent trip to Kyoto. We arrived at the tail end of Octo­ber and stayed until mid-Novem­ber. View this gallery on Flickr to see more from the trip, includ­ing Tokyo, Nara, and Miyajima.

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Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion)

Posted Nov 02, 2023

The Kinkaku-ji, a Zen Bud­dhist tem­ple com­mon­ly called the Gold­en Pavil­ion, stands serene­ly against Kyoto’s lush land­scape. The top two floors are cov­ered in bril­liant gold leaf that glowed warm­ly in the after­noon sun on my vis­it. In spite of the crowds, it’s a place of tran­scen­dent beau­ty, and it’s easy to see why it’s one of Japan’s most icon­ic and his­toric sites.

Kyoto bell tower

Posted Oct 31, 2023

Small tower at the entrance to Otani Sobyo
October 31, 2023
Royal Palace of Madrid
January, 2023

This view of the Palace of Madrid at sun­set was a beau­ti­ful moment in a quick, three-day stopover in Madrid before head­ing on to Seville, Mala­ga and Grana­da. Seen from about a mile to the north at the tem­ple of Debod, an ancient Egypt­ian tem­ple gift­ed to Spain in the 1960s. The weath­er was win­try and the spot was crowd­ed – although Madrid has a lot to offer, we were glad to be on our way some­where warmer.

Cook­ing is an invest­ment of your time, effort and ingre­di­ents. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, if you’re work­ing off a bad recipe, you may be doomed from the start. It only takes one or two tru­ly bad expe­ri­ences to real­ize that unless you know and trust the source, all bets are off. Tried and true recipes from trust­wor­thy sources are key.

But find­ing good recipes online can be sur­pris­ing­ly hard. One of the main prob­lems is the sheer vol­ume of infor­ma­tion avail­able. With so many web­sites, blogs, and recipe data­bas­es to choose from, it can be overwhelming.

And then there’s qual­i­ty con­trol. Any­one can post a recipe online, regard­less of their cook­ing expe­ri­ence or knowl­edge. You may — scratch that — you will come across recipes that are poor­ly writ­ten, inac­cu­rate, or just don’t work.

I want­ed to cut out the garbage and the noise, so I got a lit­tle bit nerdy and built a recipe find­er using a Google cus­tom search engine. It search­es only the trust­ed sources list­ed below. (Although I may add to it as I find new sources I like.)

  • Amer­i­ca’s Test Kitchen
  • Bön Appetit
  • Cooks Illus­trat­ed
  • David Lebovitz
  • Epi­cu­ri­ous
  • Food52
  • New York Times Cooking
  • Seat­tle Times
  • Seri­ous Eats
  • The Spruce Eats

Note that I have no finan­cial inter­est in any­one using this tool — it’s sim­ply some­thing I made that I found use­ful, and I’m shar­ing it in case it’s help­ful to any­one else.

Tip: On most of these sites, an author is list­ed for each recipe. If you make a recipe and you like how it turns out, take note of who the author is! That same per­son could have recipes list­ed across sev­er­al oth­er web­sites, or they may have pub­lished a cook­book or have a YouTube chan­nel, Patre­on page or Sub­stack newslet­ter that you can sub­scribe to.

Good luck on the hunt!

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Sauk Mountain

Posted Oct 08, 2022

Pho­tos from a sum­mer hike on the Sauk Moun­tain trail, in the Wash­ing­ton state Cascades.

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Paris in November

Posted Mar 14, 2022

iPhone pho­tos from a trip to Paris, France in Novem­ber 2021, with side trips to the Cham­pagne region and Mont-Saint-Michel.

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Puerto Vallarta

Posted Sep 02, 2021

iPhone pho­tos from a trip to Puer­to Val­lar­ta, Mexico.

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Pike Place Market at night

Posted Jun 10, 2021

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was just tak­ing hold and Seat­tle was shut­ting down. I wan­dered out on a rainy night to snap a few pho­tos of the large­ly aban­doned Pike Place Mar­ket and try out a new lens fil­ter (Tiff­en 52mm Black Pro-Mist 14). It gives the pho­tos a moody glow, although I dis­cov­ered in some cas­es incom­ing light bounced off the lens, back to the inside sur­face of the fil­ter and then back again toward the lens, result­ing in an invert­ed dou­ble image (some­what vis­i­ble in the first pho­to). Worth the trou­ble though; I love the effect.