Deep down inside I should have known, Reader, that my next post would be one of wordy soliloquy, meandering slowly down the page, heavy and heady and yet monotonous. You’ll have noticed by now that I have not redone the colors of my blog. The font size, also, still needs to be fixed. However, through no effort of my own, I do have one visual improvement to share with you.

It always strikes me as funny when someone one says “Excuse me for the phone photo.” I think most phones these days take better pictures than the last three cameras I had. And since it means I can let my idea of sketching photos and scanning them in slip silently away, stillborn, I find no need to apologize. This camera is enough for my needs – I’m looking forward to learning how to use it better. First thing to get used to will be the annoying lack of fiddly buttons. Is it a by product of being a rather wordy person that makes me think one stingy little button is not enough? Or is it just because I like the feeling of a manual zoom?

These bentos illustrate one of my on-going battles with photography, one I’ve had with every camera I’ve ever used. Proper color -– why is it so hard to achieve? And what’s up with these filter options? Three options for black and white, and three dedicated to different “vintage” “feels.” That leaves normal, saturated (called chrome), and faded. These choices confuse me a little, especially since the phone is obviously capable of, say, inverting the color (you can do it through the accessibility menu, but it applies the filter to the whole phone. Bummer). For these I’ve used iPhoto to add a little blue, which seems to bring the color closer to reality.

Oh, but the bento. These were for lunch and dinner on Tuesday. The top, lunch one, contains rice with red pepper and carrot confetti, all-season pickles, tamagoyaki, and sausage. And a lone umeboshi from the container I bought ages ago. Do these things ever go bad? I hope not, ’cause I’m not sure I’ll be able to tell the difference. The shredded veggies are really good refrigerator pickles, except I inevitably bought lettuce instead of cabbage. It doesn’t matter how old I am, for some reason my brain refuses to distinguish between these two, and I’m forever  buying one when I mean to buy the other. Can we chalk it up to poor facial recognition?

As for the dinner bento, it is a study in subtlety, a sophisticated sort of bland. Rice, layered with polenta on one side and black olives on the other. I tried spicing things up, visually and otherwise, by adding more of the confetti as a heart. And, surprisingly, the mild flavors were pretty good warmed up. I’m starting to accept this polenta, though initially I thought it tasted vile. The recipe called for a cup of parmesan, and in my white bread world parmesan is the dry flakes you get from a plastic shaker.

Nothing is supposed to taste like a cup of spaghetti topping.

However, I do like the idea of polenta as a bento staple. Next time I’ll just leave the parmesan out. I’d also like to try it with grittier corn meal. All the recipes I looked at (all two of them) called for “medium grade” cornmeal, but my grocery store only had fine and not-fine. Nothing labeled medium. I think this fine is fine, but I’m betting the not-fine is what everyone else is recommending. Color me curious, I’m definitely planning on trying it out.

So that’s it. What?  You want to know how I’m taking photos on my phone? Sorry button-users, I’ve beens schooled. I know, I said with much tech came much sorrow, but my grandfather upgraded and I’m the oldest grandchild without a smart phone, so . . . . Well, who can say no to a camera with an incredible Japanese dictionary practically built right in? If it makes you feel better I’ve had it since Friday and still cannot receive texts or calls outside of Apple’s messaging App (so if you’ve tried to text me in the last few days, sorry!).

 

Sometimes it’s better to just work.