The Art of Cooking

I am often entranced by gfrancie's photographs of her cooking processes over at au_gout. On Sunday, I baked a Framboise Torte from Fran Bigelow's book Pure Chocolate, and though I don't quite want to describe every step of the process, I took photos of the most beautiful parts, which involve some deliciously vibrant raspberries getting transformed into essence-of-raspberry-in-torte. The most ridiculous part was that I failed to photograph the end product. Of course, it didn't look too fancy anyway, so just imagine a slice of delicious chocolate torte infused with raspberries.

( photographs below the cut )

Light rail bridge

One of my favorite parts about the new light rail running through the heart of Suburbia is that the trains travel across a bridge over Tempe Town Lake. We rowers have been watching the construction crews assemble this bridge for the past couple of years, and finally on December 27 the powers-that-be transformed the nice new bridge into a nocturnal colored-light project.

The great thing is, since we get up so early in the morning to go rowing while it's still dark, we get to observe the colors of the bridge as we row. It's probably the fanciest bridge I've ever had the privilege of rowing underneath.

I'm somewhat reminded of the James Turrell skyspace that's at the Henry Art Gallery, for the lights on the bridge change color periodically (supposedly after trains pass overhead, but that pattern doesn't seem too consistent). Regardless, it's a delight to watch, and here are some photographs so you can get a taste of things as well:

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