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Called Out

If you've been following any of my posts lately, there's a good chance you've heard me talk about cooking more often lately. Not surprisingly, my real-life conversations involve the same topic (I'm nothing if not consistent). The part that I especially like to point out is that I like plating the food, usually with the joke that "I get to play with the food."

In some ways, this is a bit of a departure for me. I haven't traditionally spent tons of time in the kitchen, so it's not like I've had tons of opportunity to realize that I enjoy this. So, in some ways, it amuses people because it is new and different for me. Hell, I'm amused by all of this for the same basic reason.

Now, by itself, that would all be just an amusing factoid. However, apparently I've mentioned that I like plating the food enough times that my siblings and their spouses all decided that my birthday gift should revolve around this. They got me precision tools in order to do this properly, as well as a book that has recipes/ideas. I didn't even realize that there were precision tools for this sort of thing, but I have a set now (if you're curious, Amazon carries a set similar to mine).

When I opened it, my sister-in-law also joked that she now expected to see pretty pictures of all of the food I was going to prepare. Well, hell. I just got called out (I'm reminded of the Russell Peters bit about having your parents call your bluff).

So, I figured I had to step up my game. Not only did I have to keep plating the food in interesting ways, I now had to provide proof of said interesting plating. I had to start taking pictures of my creations. Game on.

I basically started with a couple of salads and shared those with the folks who got me the presents:

I actually added some oranges to this, but forgot to take the final picture

My brother said this looked like an alien
  There was quite a bit of laughter when I sent those pictures, as everyone was amused that I put my gifts to use.

  My favorite, though, actually came from a few days prior. Since the Mild Girlfriend has been putting all manner of vegetables into the food and making me inadvertently lose weight, I decided that I would do the exact opposite. I present to you, the pure protein counter to "vegetable forward:"
That's chicken surrounded by ham. Protein forward, thank you very much
  This food picture thing is kind of fun, I tell you.

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