Borscht to Be

Explore for November 11, 2007: #100 - Thanks, everyone! If you've been following My Live Earth Blog, you know that I joined an organic vegetable co-op. They deliver a box full of local, farm-fresh, organic vegetables every Thursday afternoon. Then I get to plan my week's cooking around whatever veggies I receive. It's loads of fun to approach your menu planning this way, even this time of year, when the veggies are mostly roots and hardy green leaves.

I decided to try making borscht out of this week's beets. I've never made borscht before, so I searched the Internet for a recipe. I chose a recipe that involves roasting the veggies before you puree them. When I laid out the veggies on the aluminum foil, they looked so pretty I couldn't help snapping their photo before I folded up the foil and put them in the oven.

Shooting indoors under fluorescent lights at night, I found it hard to get the right light. Flash produced disastrous results, bouncing off the foil and the wet veggies and totally robbing them of any feeling of life or warmth. So I cranked the ISO up to 1600 and shot with natural light. The result was incredibly noisy (a big problem with the Canon S-series cameras). So I turned up the power on my noise filter and tried to find the best compromise between removing noise and removing detail. The onions are noticibly lacking in detail, but at least the noise is gone. (You should see the original--it looks like it snowed on the veggies!)

Please excuse the long explanation, but I usually don't do food photos. This is a new experience for me. The borscht was delicious, by the way, although light in color and flavor. The beets are gold instead of red, which probably explains the lightness. (I think beef stock instead of chicken broth might also make a difference.)

Published at www.mydollarplan.com/ideas-for-frugal-and-easy-cooking/.