Assignment for:

How to Photograph Smoke

I wanted to capture the essence of her giving energy to the tree. It seemed full of life. The challenge for me was I couldn't keep her shadow out of the frame and keep the tree balanced in the picture. So I had to leave the shadow.

I was really excited to make the thin mints recipe by honeysuckle catering since it didn't contain partially hydrogenated oils like the real ones. However, I didn't end up liking the recipe. Here were my main 2 issues: 1. Bittersweet chocolate was not nearly sweet enough to coat these cookies. This is the main reason why I didn't like them 2. 1/4 inch is too thick to slice them. I started out slicing them 1/4 inch thick, but realized that is about double the thickness of regular Girl Scout cookies, so I started doing the rest 1/8 inch. They were better & crisp all the way through. Overall I think it's worth it to pay $4 for the box of thin mints from the Girl Scouts. These are just not the same :(

The potatoes were a huge hit at Thanksgiving! I followed the Rouxbe recipe pretty closely except I didn't use fresh ground nutmeg. I used Yukon potatoes and whole milk with a few dashes of half and half.