I cooked a Habanero Brined Turkey a day early. The recipe was adapted from one I found online. My modifications include using ten air-dried Habanero chilies and six ounces of peeled garlic. Both were ground up using an immersion blender in the brine solution. The ten pound turkey was brined for 48 hours in the refrigerator. The turkey was removed from the brine solution and allowed to dry overnight in the refrigerator. The cavity of the turkey was stuffed with two stalks celery, two onions, six ounces of peeled garlic, and five dried habanero chilies (all chopped in a food processor). A basting solution was prepared from eight ounces of duck fat and four dried habanero chilies (ground up in the duck fat using an immersion blender). Part of the habanero infused duck fat was used to coat the turkey, part injected into the turkey, and the remainder saved to baste the turkey while it was cooking. The turkey was covered with aluminum foil and placed in a pre-heated 400°F oven. After 45 minutes the aluminum foil was removed, and the turkey basted with the habanero infused duck fat every 30 minutes. The turkey was removed from the oven when the internal temperature was 165°F and allowed to rest covered for one hour.
Habanero Brined Turkey. Image taken with a Leica SL2 camera and 50 mm f/1.4 lens lens. (David J Mathre)
Daily Electric Energy Used (54.7 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (20.1 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Cloudy. Geothermal HVAC system on. A deficit of 34.6 kWh.
Gone to See Portugal. TAP Air Portugal Return Flight from Lisbon, Portugal.
Remembering pre-pandemic airline food.
TAP Air Portugal. Airline meal on the return flight from Lisbon, Portugal. Image taken with a Fuji X-T3 camera and 35 mm f/1.4 lens Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.
Daily Electric Energy Used (45.6 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (13.3 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Cloudy. Geothermal HVAC system turned on to heat the house. Forced air dehydrator on to dry end of season hot peppers. A deficit of 28.3 kWh.
Small Owl caught on Infrared Video hunting for mice in the yard.
Daily Electric Energy Used (37.3 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (37.4 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sunny with clouds in the afternoon. A surplus of 0.1 kWh.
Weekly Electric Energy Used (273 kWh) from Sense. Weekly Solar Electric Energy Produced (228 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. A deficit of 45 kWh.
I noticed several articles on the net about scientists testing the 3,200 megapixel camera for the Vera Rubin Observatory’s telescope by taking an image of a Romanesco broccoli. It didn’t look like the Broccoli that I am familiar with but was fascinated by the Fractal pattern. Romanesco broccoli was available online at Whole Foods so I ordered one for my weekly grocery delivery. It looks more like a Cauliflower, but green with Fractal like towers. I used it to create my version of a high-resolution focus-stacked image. I set up a Leica SL2 camera with a 50 mm f/1.4 lens on a tripod with a 10 cm focusing rail. The SL2 camera has the capability to take 187 megapixel images using pixel shifting technology via a Multishot mode (available after a Firmware 2.0 update). I took 87 high-resolution images (ISO 50, 50 mm, f/1.4, 1/10 sec) moving the camera forward in ~1 mm intervals. This resulted in 16,269 megapixels of data. The images were processed with Capture One Pro and then Helicon Focus to afford the following focus-stacked (12510 x 10008 pixel, 717 MB) images. The images is in focus for the full depth of the Romanesco broccoli. I love the natural Fractal patterns. You can see that there are some sections where black mold has started growing. Now to clean it up and figure out how to cook it for dinner.
Romanesco broccoli. Composite of 87 focus-stacked images taken with a Leica SL2 camera and 50 mm f/1.4 lens (ISO 50, 50 mm, f/1.4, 1/10 sec, multi-shot mode). Images processed with Capture One Pro and Helicon Focus (Method A (contrast), Radius 8, Smoothing 4). (David J Mathre)Romanesco broccoli. Composite of 87 focus-stacked images taken with a Leica SL2 camera and 50 mm f/1.4 lens (ISO 50, 50 mm, f/1.4, 1/10 sec, multi-shot mode). Images processed with Capture One Pro and Helicon Focus (Method B (Depth Map), Radius 8, Smoothing 4). (David J Mathre)Romanesco broccoli. Composite of 87 focus-stacked images taken with a Leica SL2 camera and 50 mm f/1.4 lens (ISO 50, 50 mm, f/1.4, 1/10 sec, multi-shot mode). Images processed with Capture One Pro and Helicon Focus (Method C (Pyramid), Smoothing 4). (David J Mathre)
High-Resolution Focus Stacked image of Romanesco Broccoli cropped 1x, 2x, 4x, 16x, 32x. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.
Morning at the Birdfeeders: Mourning Dove, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Blue Jay, American Crow, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Gray Catbird, House Finch, American Goldfinch, Song Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, and Rose-breasted Grosbeak.
Afternoon at the Birdfeeders. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.
Contact me if you are interested in a Time-lapse Video of this session at the Birdfeeders. My setup for the birdfeeder images is a Nikon D850 camera and 200 mm f/2 VR lens set to take one image every 5 seconds over a 5 hour period (~3600 images). The new time-lapse video format is 720p (1080 x 720 pixels) and 1 frame/second. The length of the video is about 1 hour in a 1 GB MP4 file. The previous time-lapse videos of the birdfeeders were at 12 frames/second, and to be honest were too fast to identify the birds.
Daily Electric Energy Used (34.9 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (35.0 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sun and clouds. A surplus of 0.1 kWh.
Out working on the patio, I harvested the Broccoli Rabe and Radishes in the Grow Towers. This opened up light for the Basil and Pepper plants. I also distributed worms in to the composting tubes in each Grow Tower. I used the Ricoh Theta Z1 360 degree camera to make time-lapse Little Planet videos of the work on the patio. Same workflow as yesterday: Theta Z1 Camera set to record images using program auto mode (shutter, aperture, white-balance, JPG + RAW (DNG) every 10 seconds. Camera mounted on a tripod just above head level. The camera collected ~ 360 images (~ 1 hour) before running out of internal storage space. The DNG dual fisheye images were processed with Capture One Pro, saved in TIF format. Then converted to 360 degree equirectangular pano images with PTGUI (batch process). The Little Planet time-lapse video was created using PhotoShop CC (image converted to 1:1 format (7430 x 7430), rotated 180 degrees, converted to polar coordinates, then exported as a MP4 video (1920 x 1920, 10p). Rotation to the video was added using Premiere Pro.
Daily Electric Energy Used (39.7 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (52.1 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. More sun. A surplus of 12.4 kWh.
