A Little Fun With a Light Box

So today I built a home made light box. This is something I have wanted to do for a while but just got around to it. I still need a bit of practice and may need a whiter light but I still had fun with it. These pictures have been contrast adjusted in Photoshop.  Next time I think I will set up the tripod and try to expose them a little differently. Any way, I guess I should just show the pictures.

Enjoy!

The Magical Soup!

While visiting Salisbury to photograph a dying tree my father sent me home with another ham bone. So I had little choice but to make more soup. This time though I did not make a chowder.

This time I decided to go Bean Soup. The trickiest part of Bean Soup is to get the beans properly hydrated. To do this I took the pound of white navy beans and soaked them even before preparing my ham stock.

Then of course the ham bone and three or four onions go into the crock pot, one of the greatest inventions ever by the way.

Again a few hours on high and another 20 hours later you will produce the following:

And what about the beans? Well over night they should have lost their wrinkles and after straining they should look something like this:

Now, I am pretty sure that one day I will make a soup without bacon in it. This is not that soup. However, I only went with half a pound of bacon in this one.

Probably the most difficult ingredient to get a hold of however is the two hand sized slices of country ham.

Please note, country ham is completely uncooked ham if you have never cooked with it before it must be thoroughly cooked. Unlike most hams that you buy you cannot eat this before it is cooked completely.

The only other addition was some pearl onions that I sliced in half.

The cooking instructions for this soup are incredibly easy. Take these ingredients:

 Put them into a pot

Stir together

Because the ham is uncooked and the beans are still a bit hard you will need to cover and cook this soup at or just below a boil for around two and a half hours. At that point most of the liquid should be absorbed by the beans and resemble this:

When served you will be presently surprised. I did not add any additional seasonings but it may make sense to add pepper if you want to balance the saltiness of the ham.

As always enjoy yourselves and thank you for taking the time to read my blog and check out my pictures.