kylewith

Aug 10 2011

KyleWith in Real Life

Excuse me for a second while I stroke my own ego.

I still find it amazing when I run into people who I don’t directly know who read my blog or follow me online. I seem to be running into more and more as the days go on.

Being a web celeb is not something I set out to be. Okay that might be a lie, I would like to be one, but that is beside the point. I certainly don’t write with the intentions of becoming a house-hold internet name.

Meeting those who read my stuff, however few it maybe, is still a grand feeling for me. I am forever thankful to those people.

To then get a compliment about my writing really puts me over the top. I’m mean lets be honest here, we all know my spelling and grammar skills can be compared to that of a 10th grader. Then again, maybe the sarcasm in my writing is finally coming though.

KyleWith in Real Life

Aug 06 2011

View of Fort St John from up top

I had the chance this past Friday to go up top of one of the hotels in Fort St John and take some pictures. I’m use to Yellowknife, where there are large 14 story building and getting to see the sky scape. I think seeing a city from a high up angle can give you a better appreciation of it, unfortunately Fort St John doesn’t have many of those building. The hotel I got to up actually only had 6 stories, which is not much at all

There is no real reason why I took these photos. I’m sure they will be used frequently in the future for various projects though. My view feature Fort St John busiest road in town, 100 Ave, which runs through the heart of town. The reason I went and took the photos on Friday because clouds were presented perfectly. Having nothing but blue sky is beautiful as well, but the clouds add a whole new dimension to the photos, which is what I wanted. I was shooting in RAW and for the most part in Aperture Priority mode with an f/stop of 11 and ISO of 100-325. Once on the computer I did Tone Map them to bring out shadows and colour.

Enjoy and leave your feedback.

Aug 05 2011

How to make homemade pesto, my way

Don’t have a food processor, well that is alright by me, because I didn’t need one. After finding a recipe online for an Italian Grilled Cheese, which consisted of making your own pesto, I was determined to do just that. Over the week I slowly gathered the ingredients the blog post told me to get.

This is what I got:

3/4 Cup Basil Leaves
1/4 Cup Oregano Leaves
2-3 tablespoons Olive Oil
1/4 Cup Walnuts
1 clove of Garlic
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper

Finally I decided I am going to make this pesto and it is going to be good, then I hit the speed bump. Recipe calls for putting all this stuff in the food processor and blending it. That was it, only problem being, I didn’t have a food processor and I didn’t want to go by one. Come to think of it though, there are other things i could use one for, but I digress. I wasn’t going to give up though, I Googled around to see if anyone had written about making pesto without a processor, sure enough I found someone who had. It isn’t overly complicated to figure out how to do, but I wanted to confirm.

What I had to do was chop everything, finely. As finely as I possible could and as I did that mix it as much as I could in a bowl. I rotated through ingredients to make sure the pesto was being mixed properly, or it gave me the reinsurance it was. While mixing in the ingredients I was also adding in parts of the olive oil to moisten up the mix. Finally once all the ingredients were in the small bowl I once again beat the living crap out of it to make sure it was mixed and also crushed up enough.

At this point I proceeded to taste test it. It actually turned out pretty good. I did find though that it was rather garlicy, as well as salty. I would cut back on both of those next time.

I wasn’t done yet though. I smeared the pesto on a slice of bread with thick sliced of mozzarella cheese and baby tomatoes and threw it all in a frying pan to grill. By the way, if you also happen to have a Jamie Oliver fry pan like I do, be warned when you heat them up, they retain heat very well. I nearly burnt one side of my sandwich.

Of course then the only other thing to do is enjoy it… or clean up the mess you made.

Aug 03 2011

When I sit alone in my apartment

I’m a relatively mellow person, I only rarely get hyper and want to run around like a mad person. Most of the time I’m just steadily going along my life without too much excitement. I don’t mind this, I actually prefer this. I’ll take a quiet coffee shop (late in the evening, hint hint), over any loud bar.

That being said I sometimes spend too much time by myself, which I’m getting tired of. Like this evening for example, I really wanted a nice mellow evening, again I’m much more of a morning person, so I wanted to keep it quiet. Oh, was it ever quiet, I ended up sitting in the middle of the living room with no electronics on, no music and no food cooking for just over an hour. I just sat there, with my thoughts. This is place I try to avoid, my thoughts get deeper, I start to wonder about my life, I start to get lonely and long for home again. *This is the part the dramatic music plays.

People ask me why I’m so public all the time, true is I’m not. There are many things I don’t talk about online, but I do share a lot online. Mainly because… it is an outlet to share life and meet interesting people along the way.

*Wow, this is a rather depressing post, I’m sure I can dig up another one exactly like this from a few months back, you’d think this was scheduled. Anyways, tomorrow morning I will wake refreshed and happy and probably not even remember this.