Day 282/365

     Yesterday/day 282 the local meteorologists actually got the weather right for once, and northern Ohio got hit with a snow storm bad enough to put off my going back to Michigan for a day. The hot chocolate was flowing all day long though, so I guess I can't complain too much. 

Day 280/365

     Last night/Christmas Eve/day 280 my mom gave me one of my Christmas presents early since we had our annual Christmas movie night. The cheddar popcorn from Pittsburgh Popcorn is addicting, and I've missed it so much ever since I moved away from the Burgh over a year ago. My mom ordered some off of their website, and I'm pretty sure the tub's not going to be a goner by the time I head back to Michigan tomorrow. 

Day 265/365

     Sunday/day 265 was spent paying homage to my dad. My dad would've turned 60 December 12 of this year/yesterday, so when my family was together this Sunday we celebrated it together. We had his favorites for dinner: my mom's lasagna, boston cream pie for dessert, and beer throughout the entire day. Halloween through Christmas have been hard and a bit surreal without him, and he's missed by us and so many of his friends and family every day. So Sunday was for him. 

Day 253/365

     Yesterday was a day of extremes. In the morning, I went with a Bay City crime reporter to interview a likely serial killer from a string of cold cases from thirty years ago that the police could never get enough hard evidence to charge the man with anything. The man was extremely unsettling, as one would expect, but the experience was absolutely amazing. It reminded me of why I love what I do for a living. Unfortunately for me, the man didn't want his picture taken, so I only came away with a picture of an old photograph of his deceased mother, (her murder is also a cold case). To read about the ongoing cold case series, you can find it on MLive here.

     After dealing with the cold case series in the morning, I had a restaurant feature to shoot out in Frankenmuth. That was all fine and dandy, until I was leaving the restaurant to go process my images when the driver of a minivan decided to not check her blind spot and clipped my car. My car, luckily, is still drivable, and I'm taking it in tomorrow for an estimate on repairs. Here's hoping things go much more smoothly this time around than they did in August. Oy....

Day 247/365

     Today I got to cover a really nice Thanksgiving assignment. The two co-owners of a local bar/grill in Saginaw held their sixth annual Thanksgiving dinner today, where they provide an entire dinner for free to anyone who comes in the door. Last year they had around 450 people, and they expected at least that many to come in this year. They prepared 26 turkeys and made 60 pumpkin pies, and any leftovers will be donated to a local church for their Thanksgiving day dinner tomorrow. It was such a great event to see, let alone photograph. People from all walks of life were sitting at tables together, from homeless people to newscasters that work one block away from the bar. Everyone was happy, whether they were sitting down eating or they were back in the kitchen making food. It certainly was a nice refreshing reminder that there are still people who realize what tomorrow's holiday is supposed to be about.

Day 237/365

      Yesterday/Sunday/day 237 was a bit of a doozie. It started off fine; I got some things done around the apartment and all that. The traumatic part of the day was having a bit of run-in at the dog park by my apartment. Some guy brought what I'm positive was a wolf hybrid to the park, and I didn't eel comfortable staying after he let it loose, seeing as Kip likes everyone and every dog and was bound to go up to it at some point. I don't know if it sensed I was a bit uneasy or what, but as soon as it made eye contact with me as I was closing the first gate to the park, it ran for Kip and me, and ended up pushing the gate back against us, trapping us behind the gate and in between the fencing of the little gateway enclosure. I literally don't think I've ever been more terrified or more furious in my life. Luckily there were enough people there that they all ran over yelling at the animal to distract it long enough for the owner to put it back on a leash, and I was able to get out of the park and get Kip straight into my car. 

     Needless to say, we were both freaked out after getting back to the apartment so I decided to bake to get my mind off of the incident for a while and gave Kip plenty of treats hoping that he'd eventually calm down too. I'm a sucker for chocolate and peppermint together, and I'd seen an oreo and candy cane cupcake recipe awhile ago that I'd been wanting to try, so voila. 

Day 236/365

     Saturday/day 236 I took a much-needed lazy day, where all I did was grocery shopping, and I cooked dinner. Steak and potatoes that fogged up my camera... yum.

Day 213/365

     Thursday I hit the ground running in order to make up for missing work on Wednesday. My first assignment was a food giveaway first thing in the morning in the Bay City area. It was the first food giveaway/food drive that I've covered where everything that was donated and being given away was fresh produce; it was nice to see nutritious and wholesome foods being given to those in need for a change. It was also raining pretty steadily, and I thought the weather had a nice aesthetically-pleasing effect on this flat of tomatoes. 

Day 189/365

     It was a pretty quiet day in Bay City today; I only had a few assignments. One of them was a senior center kitchen that's in serious need of updating, but won't be unless an upcoming millage is passed. Almost all of the equipment was seriously outdated, and the kitchen isn't big enough for how many people it feeds on a daily basis, (the director I talked to said they produce about 600 meals a day). Hopefully this November they'll get some help!

Day 129/365

     Today my work shift started a few hours earlier than planned; we had severe thunderstorms in the area that caused a lot of damage that another photo. intern and I had to go out early this morning and cover before crews started cleaning everything up. Saginaw's also had shootings in the double digits just since this past Sunday, which has city officials considering an emergency citywide curfew since most shootings have been happening at night. With all of that going on, I was more than happy to cover a food feature this afternoon. It's much easier to take pictures of pretty and vibrantly presented fish than trying to take photos in a horrible neighborhood of yet another violent crime while it's pouring rain. Tomorrow's Friday, which means Saturday comes afterward, which is my first day off in the past week and-a-half of mostly twelve-hour work days. Bring it on.

Day 114/365

     I ended up having the day off today; there are about one million and one events going on in the Saginaw and Bay City areas up here in Michigan this weekend so my schedule got rearranged a bit so I could cover those. I'll be getting a bit of overtime out of it, so I'm definitely not complaining! 

     Anyways, I probably have the cutest little old lady for a neighbor. Her name's Betty and she lives on the floor below me across the hall. Whenever she hears me coming in the building she always comes out to say hi, and a few times she's baked me cookies "just because." Whenever she's watching TV you can always hear it in the main entryway downstairs, and nine times out of ten I can guarantee she's watching the movie The Help. I felt like making something for her in return, so I looked up the recipe for the character Minnie's chocolate pie out of the movie, ("terrible-awful" NOT included). It was super easy, plus there was no oven involved so I didn't have to heat up my apartment. Win-win!

Day 110/365

     One of my assignments today was a food feature on a local Greek diner in Bay City, Michigan named Vinny's Stock Pot Diner. The owner/cook was really nice and seems to have a lot of fun with what he does. This is a photo of their 'Greek spinach and feta chowder.' It smelled absolutely delicious, and tasted even better.

Day 81/365

     Today completely consisted of yard work and packing for my road trip out west that I leave for in a few days. In between that, I made macaroni and cheese, and took a picture of the bubbles when the water started to boil. Voila. 

Day 75/365

Read after the jump for an oatmeal cookie recipe; or, just watch the video!

Day 35/365

     I'm a sucker for fruit; it's almost always so pretty and vibrant. After I came home from work this afternoon my mom decided to make some of her own lemonade from scratch, (I think we were both trying to pretend like it was still nice and sunny outside, instead of looking at the cold and rainy weather we've been having between yesterday and today). Anyways, I couldn't resist taking a picture of one of the lemon slices. Enjoy!

Day 34/365

     For today's post I decided to brush up on my food styling. I never did any actual food photography shoots when I was in school, but I was an assistant and stylist on a few. I worked a long day at the studio today, so when I came home to my mom telling me that she had baked some brownies from scratch my day at work didn't seem so long all of a sudden. I played around with some lighting and then in my editing software to give it a kind of hazy sunny feel - pretty much the opposite of today's cold and drizzly weather!