Marcus Blog

Food, Music, Film, Gaming, Web, Technology, Life & Love.

Turkey Through a Holga 120N

Holga

Hello there!

As many of you may know I recently went on holiday to Turkey with some really good friends.  Just before the holiday however I recieved a Holga 120N and thought this would be an excellent opportunity to test it out.

I had several types of film with me:

  • B&W Shanghai GP3
  • Ilford XP2 Super 400 B&W
  • FujiFilm Colour Pro ISO400
  • FujiFilm Colour Pro ISO160

Each one brought about its own set of characteristics and you may be able to tell from the quality difference of the photos.  I think my favourite was the Ilford XP2 Super 400 B&W - it seemed to have excellent contrast and brightness, really distinguished.  The Shanghai film wasn't bad at all especially at the super cheap eBay price.  The Fuji ISO400 also came out well and probably produced my favourite photo of the set, unfortunately however the ISO160 film did not work out so well.

I've uploaded a few of my favourites from the photoset to the bottom of the page.

The rest of the photos are here:

You can also find some photos of me paragliding here:

The holiday itself was fantastic and I hope they shine through in the photos, very much looking forward to next year!

Thanks.

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KFC Have Confused Chicken As Bread

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via gizmodo.com

haha!

I think I remember seeing something very similar to this ages ago on the internet as a joke but, it turns out it's actually coming to a KFC near you soon - presuming you're American.

I think I'm glad I shall never have the chance to try this heart attack inducing 'sandwich'.

If you are American and have the good grace of trying this on April 12th please comment and let me know of your experience to the hospital.

Cheers ^^

Recipe: Wholesome Acorn Squash and Wild Rice

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A few days ago my girlfriend and I were walking around the grocers and came across a beautiful looking squash.  It had to be ours.  If you've been following my twitter you would have probably seen a picture of it come up.  It's here if not:

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To be honest we didn't really know what to do with it, we had several ideas like stuffing it with couscous, making a curry and just roasting the segments and having a bit of fish with it.  We didn't fancy any of this though, especially the couscous as we'd had baked couscous and roasted veg the night before - recipe to come.  In the end we had a browse through some books and websites and came across loads of different variations of squash (butternut included) with wild rice.

We borrowed ideas from various recipes and came up with this, I hope you give it a go and hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as we did!

Ingredients
  • 1 Acorn or Butternut Squash cut in to 1-2cm segments - Skin left on if it looks nice and thin
  • 125g Black Rice - Washed & Dried
  • 125g Red Rice - Washed & Dried
  • 250g Basmati Rice - Washed & Dried
  • 2 Red Onions - sliced finely
  • 8 Cloves of Garlic - Crushed
  • 2 Red Chillies - Deseeded & Finely Sliced
  • Bunch of Dill - Chopped
  • Bunch of Parsley - Chopped
  • 1 Lemon - Zest & Juice
  • 1L Vegetable or Chicken Stock
  • 100g Dried Cranberries
  • 100g Mixed Nuts - Chopped
  • Small Handful Mixed Seeds
  • 1tsp Ground Cinnamon
  • 1tsp Sugar
  • Sea Salt and Black Pepper

Method
  1. Get the oven on - around 200°C/392°F/Gas Mark 5.
  2. Put the squash in an oven dish - toss it with a glug of olive oil, cinnamon, half the dill, the chillies and a pinch of salt & pepper.
  3. Put in the oven for 15 minutes.  This will half cook it.... roughly.
  4. Get a pan that can go in the oven if possible (we couldn't).  Put it on a medium-high heat.
  5. A glug of olive oil in the pan with the onions, garlic, red and black rice.  Fry for roughly 10 minutes or till the onions are soft and the rice fragrant.
  6. Add the other half of the dill and the stock - Bring to the boil and simmer gently with lid on for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  7. 5 minutes in to simmering the squash can be removed from the oven and allowed to cool - toss in the small teaspoon of sugar.
  8. Remove the lid and stir in the basmati rice, lemon juice, lemon zest, cranberries, mixed nuts and seeds - reserving a little of each for garnish.
  9. Poke the squash segments half in and out in to the rice.
  10. Put in the oven covered for around 30-40 minutes - basically till it's cooked and golden coloured.
  11. Remove the lid and bake for another 5-10 minutes if you want some crispiness (who doesn't?)
  12. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the remaining seeds, nuts, cranberries and chopped parsley.
  13. EAT!

This was a seriously tasty dinner - even my meat obsessed house mate enjoyed it.  I was thinking after the meal that maybe some apple wedges could be poked into the rice as well - the tangy but sweet cranberries were amazing in it so I figured apples would add a nice juicy element to the dish - as well as being sweet and tangy.

I'm sure this could be served as an accompaniment to some grilled or pan seared fish or meats but, as I've already said, it made an excellent meal in itself.

I feel I should mention this amount will probably feed around 8 people, maybe more.  You only see one oven dish in the photo - that was the leftovers, we ended up having to use two.

nom nom nom.

My Latest CV

Click here to download:
CV - Marcus Lee.pdf (41 KB)
(download)

Hello everyone,
I hope all is well.  To kick start myself back into blogging I'm going to upload something serious and maybe you lovely folks will give me some feedback.

I've just completed my latest CV (well, I hope so anyway...) and I was wondering what you all think of it.

Any feedback would be great - as would job offers ;) heh.

Anyway,
Have a good day and see you all soon ^^

PS - My next two posts will be recipes of things I've cooked recently: Roasted Veg Baked Couscous and Chicken Tikka Drumsticks with Spiced Sweet Potato and Minty Cucumber, Onion and Celery Leaf Salad.

The Talking Piano (via. @SynthGear : SynthGear Synth Blog)

via synthgear.com

Yeah, it's been a long time since I've posted anything.

This was too good to not post.

Basically, the guy analysed the frequency spectrum of a kid reciting the Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court. He then used that information to recreate the frequencies as well as he could on a piano, thus a talking piano is born.

It's pretty genius.