Tacos ver. 1.4

My friend was asking me the other day about my camera lenses, specifically the one I use to shoot most of the pictures you see.  It's a 50mm f/1.4, but I seldom shoot it at that aperture. I've usually got it parked at f/2.8 to get a little more depth of field in the photos.  But this week I figured hey, let's open it wide up; everything you see is shot at f/1.4.  So dial that aperture ring all the way down, and make the jump for tacos ver. 1.4!

Tricked ya! These are tofu tacos.  But if you've already clicked the link, clearly they looked pretty good.  Would you believe me if I told you they tasted good too?  Get the extra firm tofu.  We're part time vegetarians, not masochists.

Starting off with some guacamole.  Just because avocados were a good price and they had served their time sitting on the table waiting to get used.  Shooting a relatively flat subject parallel to the shutter plane is one way to keep everything nice and crisp.

But at f/1.4, you see what happens when you're in tight.  There is probably half a centimetre of those skins that is in focus.  Artistic? Sure. Useful? Debatable.

Tomatoes, onions, salt, pepper, and the magic ingredient, lime juice.  If you don't have lime juice, you might as well throw the whole bowl at the wall, your dog, your neighbour, your postman, your fridge or the garbage, cause it just won't be right.

Here we are about to throw it at some chips.

Another friend sent me to a blog that clearly doesn't need me linking to it, but featured Grilled Ribeye steak with Onion-Blue cheese sauce.  The photography was nothing short of beautiful but the content was a little silly.  The first 8 shots are all onion preparation, and the bulk of the rest of it are shots of onions cooking.  That's too many.   Look, one picture of onions cooking.  Another picture where we've crumbled some of the tofu into the pan.  That wasn't hard.

This picture isn't about the onions, it's about the pan.  See all that stuff stuck to the bottom of the pan? Scrape that off, and mix it in.  That's where all your flavour is.  And if you don't scrape it off now, have fun doing it once your pan is cool.  Okay, throw some vegetable stock into this mess, followed by your seasoning.  That's an alton brown link. I recommend clicking it.

Here are some spots where the wide aperture really helps you out.  I've got one thing in those pictures that I want to highlight, and I don't want anything visible in the background.  I mean, who even knows where those photos were taken.  If we were holding that Paprika and Salsa for ransom, and we mailed those photos to the families, the cops would have no idea where to start looking.  They would ask the salsa's mother if he was friends with a bowl of tomatoes though.  So back to reality, that smoked paprika went into the seasoning, and here is new salsa we're trying out.

Tacos ver. 1.4: Tofu Tacos.  I bet we could fool a significant part of the population with that one.  With the vegetable stock and the seasoning it just tastes like every other taco you've eaten.  The salsa was good if not unremarkable. But that's what this whole experiment was supposed to be about: quick, easy and tasty meals on a Friday night.  If you've gotta open the box of old el paso taco shells to get the party started, than go ahead.  As long as everything that goes into those shells doesn't come out of a packet or a tube or a sleeve or a jar or a can, you're probably doing ok.