My pal Jess and I were chatting about banana bread the other day, and I happened to mention that I was actually looking for a good banana bread recipe. And Jess quite helpfully offered to share her former nanny’s grandma’s recipe for banana bread. Naturally, I happily accepted, and I made the recipe a few weeks late—and it was scrumptious. So big props to Jess’s former nanny’s grandma, Carrie Francis.

Carrie’s Banana Bread

You can optionally mix in 1 cup of goodies—such as chocolate chips, chopped nuts, or even blueberries. I happen to prefer a combination of ½ cup of chocolate chips and ½ cup of chopped pecans, but feel free to go with whichever combination you’d like.

Ingredients:

• 1 ¾ cups (249 grams) all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking soda (yeah, the big measuring spoon)
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal kosher salt) or 1 teaspoon table salt (bonus tastiness points if it’s noniodized salt)
• 1 stick (½ cup or 113 grams) butter, softened or at room temperature (Or for a vegan version, I’ve had success with Miyoko’s Vegan Butter, which I found at Target.)
• ½ cup (99 grams) dark brown sugar
• ½ cup (99 grams) white sugar
• 2 eggs that have come to room temperature (Or for a vegan version, I’ve had success with Bob’s Red Mill Egg Replacer, which I found at Target.)
• 3 mashed bananas
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ½ cup chocolate chips + ½ cup chopped pecans (or whichever mixins strike your fancy)

Directions:

1. If you’re looking to include nuts among your mixins, such as pecans or walnuts, I’d recommend toasting them to bring out their flavor:

   • Heat your oven to 350°F (177°C).

   • Spread the nuts evenly on a rimmed baking sheet.

   • Set the baking sheet in the oven for 5 to 6 minutes.

   • Take out the baking sheet and set it aside to cool while you prepare the other ingredients. (If you add the nuts to the batter while they’re still hot, they could start to cook the eggs.)

2. Set the oven to 325°F (163°C).

3. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set this bowl aside.

4. In a large mixing bowl, add and mix the remaining ingredients in order.

5. Slowly mix in the dry ingredients from the bowl that you set aside earlier.

6. For banana bread: Pour the mixture into a buttered loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour or until a knife or toothpick comes out clean.

   For muffins: Butter a muffin tin and cook for 30–40 minutes until a knife or toothpick comes out clean.

Spiced Pecans with Rum Glaze

You might already have some of these spices in your pantry, but keep in mind that ground spices start to lose their flavor after about 8 months. If your spices are older than that—or if you’re not sure how old they are—you may be best off buying new ones.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups raw pecan halves (8 ounces)

Warm Spice Mix

• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
• ⅛ teaspoon ground allspice

Rum Glaze

• 1 tablespoon dark rum
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon light brown sugar or dark brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Directions:

1. Adjust the oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 350°F (177°C).

2. Line a rimmed cookie sheet with parchment paper and spread the pecans in even layer.

3. Toast the pecans for 4 minutes, then rotate pan, and then continue to toast them until they’re fragrant and their color deepens slightly, about 4 minutes longer.

4. Transfer the cookie sheet with the nuts to a wire rack.

5. For the spice mix: Stir together sugar, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice in medium bowl, and set the bowl aside.

6. For the glaze: Bring the rum, vanilla, brown sugar, and butter to boil in medium saucepan over medium-high heat, whisking constantly.

7. Pour the pecans into the saucepan. Pro tip: Grab the pecans’ parchment paper by the long edges, and then let the parchment paper form a U shape along the short edges. That gives you a funnel that makes it easy to pour the pecans into the saucepan.

8. Stir in the toasted pecans and cook them, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon or a heat-safe spatula until the nuts are shiny and almost all of the liquid has evaporated (about 1 ½ minutes).

9. Transfer the glazed pecans to the bowl with the spice mix; toss them well to coat them. Note: You may find yourself tempted to use your fingers to help toss the nuts, but keep in mind that they’ve just come off the stove and they’re wicked hot.

10. Return the pecans to the parchment-lined cookie sheet to cool. (They can be stored in an airtight container for up to 5 days.)

Yummy Olive Tapenade

For best results, make the tapenade one to two days before you plan on serving it. That’ll allow the flavors to mingle, and it’ll be even yummier.

Ingredients:

• 3 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1 cup pitted kalamata olives
  [When you go to the store, make sure you buy pitted kalamata olives.]
• 2 tablespoons capers
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  [There’s a chance that you might be able to get the two tablespoons from a single lemon. But plan on having two lemons around just in case.]
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Peel the garlic cloves and mince them. Then put the minced garlic in your blender or food processor and pulse to further mince.

2. Use a fork to transfer the olives from the jar to your measuring cup. After you’ve filled the measuring cup, place your fingers over the top of the measuring cup to form a makeshift strainer, and turn the measuring sideways over your sink to drain the gist of any brine. Then empty the measuring cup into your food processor.

3. Measure the capers and use the same finger trick to drain their brine before adding them to the food processor.

4. Rinse the parsley, and gently pat it dry with a paper towel. Then chop the parsley and add it.

5. Add the lemon juice and the olive oil.

6. Blend until everything is finely chopped. Transfer the tapenade to a small bowl or serving dish, and then season it to taste with salt and fresh cracked pepper.

   Optional: If you like your tapenade the way I make it, be generous with the pepper. Typically, I’ll go for three twist of the pepper mill, and then I’ll stir the tapenade with a spoon; then I’ll add three more twists of the pepper mill and stir the tapenade once more.

7. If you don’t plan on serving the tapenade right away, put a lid or plastic wrap over the container and keep the tapenade in your refrigerator; take it out about an hour before you plan on serving it.

Our Family’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

For best results, set out the butter and eggs on your counter for a few hours beforehand so that they can come to room temperature by the time you have to mix them in with everything else. As a rule of thumb: The butter is soft enough when you can easily squish the stick between your thumb and index finger.

Ingredients:

• ¾ cup (148 grams) white sugar
• ¾ cup (148 grams) brown sugar, packed
• 2 sticks (226 grams) unsalted butter (Or for a vegan version, I’ve had success with Miyoko’s Vegan Butter, which I found at Target.)
• 2 eggs (Or for a vegan version, I’ve had success with Bob’s Red Mill Egg Replacer, which I found at Target.)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 ¼ cup (320 grams) flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon table salt
• 12–12.5 oz (340–355 g) dark chocolate from 70%+ bars (alternately: one 12 oz / 340 g bag of chocolate chips)
• optional: sea salt to sprinkle on top, to taste
  (I prefer Maldon sea-salt flakes for sprinkling on top, but other types of sea salt can work too.)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C).

2. Mix together the white sugar and brown sugar. Then cream with the butter.

3. Add the eggs and beat well. Then add the vanilla.

4. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, and table salt. Then slowly add them to the wet ingredients.

5. Roughly chop the dark chocolate bars. It’s fine (and even preferable) if not all the chopped pieces are the same size—aim to have most of the pieces around ½ to ¾ inch (1 to 2 cm) on any given side. Then add the chopped chocolate pieces and gently fold them in with a spatula.

6. Line your baking sheet(s) with parchment paper, and portion about 6 dollops of dough onto each sheet. (If you have a digital scale, aim for around 38 to 40 grams per cookie.)

7. Place the cookies in the oven for 5 minutes—then swap the baking sheets and continue baking for another 5 minutes. When they’re done, their tops and edges should have just started to brown.

   (If the tops of the cookies are still batter-colored when your timer beeps—that is, the tops haven’t the slightest browning—put the sheets back in the oven for another 30 seconds.)

8. Optional: Immediately after taking the cookie sheets out of the oven, sprinkle the tops of the cookies with sea salt.

9. Allow the cookies to cool for 5–10 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.

My brother, Adrian, and his awesome wife, Margaret, got married in Boston over the summer (in Cambridge, specifically). They got married near the end of August, and the whole thing just couldn’t have been better— the highs were around the mid-70s, and everything went off without a hitch. It was just wonderful.

I would have normally brought my DSLR with me with me to Boston, but in the weeks leading up to the wedding, I realized that pairing a DSLR with a wearing-to-a-wedding dress would have all the grace of a boat anchor around my neck. So I decided to rent a Fuji X100S—it worked a treat, and it couldn’t have been half the size of my DSLR.

The wedding was on the Saturday afternoon at St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge. The church was only a little over a mile from the hotel where we were staying, but with the heels I was wearing, I wasn’t about to walk there. So we just took a bunch of taxis, and that worked out fine.

Margaret and Adrian wrote their own vows and, well, let’s just say that I was glad that I was wearing waterproof mascara. I cried a good bit, especially toward the end of the ceremony, but they were all joyous tears. And their high five at the end of the ceremony was the icing on the cake.

I couldn’t be happier for Margaret and Adrian. Those two are the bees knees, and I wish my brother and my new sister the very best.

I went down to Lafayette, Louisiana, last weekend for my friends Josh and Leah’s wedding celebration. Leah and Josh live in Boston these days, but Josh grew up in Raine (which isn’t too far from Lafayette), and they wanted to have the wedding celebration there.

One of the main events, other than the reception itself, was a crawfish boil the afternoon of the reception. This was my first time going to a crawfish boil (and I hadn't actually eaten unshelled crawfish before either). I love shrimp, so I figured it’d be fine—my only small moment of pause was the mental image of eating food that still had its face on it. But in the end, I followed along with the more seasoned crawfish eaters, and things went just fine.

Lafayette isn't a big town, but it’s pretty charming. For the most part, I just parked my car at the hotel and walked almost everywhere—I walked to restaurants, I walked to the reception, and I ambled around for general photo-walking. A goof on my part was that my feet were frowning a bit from all that walking, but I probably should have know better than to jaunt around Lafayette in those strappy wedge sandals.

I’m so glad I had a chance to join Leah and Josh for their wedding celebration. They’re a fantastic couple, and Lafayette is a delightful little town.

Yeah, I know it’s April. But better late than never, right? Between killer projects at work and a freelance gig that was in crunch mode too, I’ve had a pretty full plate. But things have started to get back to normal, and I thought I’d do some catching up on some photo bits.

I visited my family in Charlotte for Winterfamilytime back in December and I had a jolly time seeing everyone. Gosh, that seems like ages ago. Well, I guess it kinda was.

I visited my parents over Charlotte over Thanksgiving. My brother and his girlfriend, Margaret, came to visit as well. They’ve been together for a bit, but I hadn’t a chance to meet Margaret until this visit—not that I had any doubts, but she was super nice and a fun person to have around.

I tried to take a few shots on Thanksgiving day, but I sort of ended up painting myself into a corner with a lighting setup that was a little too complicated for my own britches. (I had two flashes, one with a LumiQuest Softbox LTp, and one with a regular LumiQuest Softbox. I was using a line-of-sight flash trigger—Canon’s ST-E2—which usually works great, but my flashes were on opposite ends of the kitchen and that didn’t play so well with the line-of-sight part.)

In the following days, though, I pared down my setup to solely a LumiQuest Quik Bounce mounted to an on-camera 580EX II and that worked out much better—I was able to open the baffles on the Quik Bounce and that allowed me to bounce a some of the light off the ceiling, which helped soften the light quite a bit. When next Thankgiving comes around, I’ll probably try to stick with a more simplified setup (like I had on the latter days) rather than overthinking things quite so much.

My friends Bryan and Lyn moved to San Diego and they asked if I could help take some shots for the listing for their house. I thought it would be a fun thing to try and I jumped at the chance. As I don’t as often take shots of homes and interiors, I did a little reading up on the subject over the few days before the shoot. Among other pages I looked through, I found that Photo Centric has a pretty comprehensive set of pages on photographing interiors.

I won’t go over all the tips they mention, but among those that stick out in my mind, they recommend using a tripod (no surprise, there) and they also stress the importance of keeping one’s camera level, especially when taking shots with a wide-angle lens. Keeping one’s camera level left-to-right is probably old hat, but they point out that keeping one’s camera level front-to-back particularly helps lessen wide-angle distortion. (This is one of those times where a hot-shoe bubble level can come in handy.)

Given the challenges of lighting an empty house—and that I didn’t want to take up their Realtor’s whole afternoon with intricate strobe setups—I turned to HDR for my shots. As I don’t often shoot HDR, I figured I should brush up on some of the details, so I picked up my well-worn copy of Scott Kelby’s “Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers” to jog my memory. (The book is mostly about processing photos with Photoshop CS5—and it’s excellent for that—but it also has a couple chapters on topics like HDR workflow.)

If you’re just getting into HDR, there’re a couple things to keep in mind on the picture-taking side. Among them, you need to shoot in RAW mode and you also need to set your camera to use exposure bracketing with a span of at least 2 stops on either side of your normal-exposure shot (that is to say, a shot 2 stops underexposed, a normal exposure, and a shot 2 stops overexposed). It’s OK if you’re able to exceed 2 stops on either end—such as a sequence of -4, -2, 0, +2, +4 if you happen to have 5-shot bracketing—but the important part is that it’s at least 2 stops.

Canon DSLRs allow for a 2-stop bracketing interval, so you can get by with just 3-shot bracketing. On the other hand—and for reasons that aren’t quite clear to me—many modern Nikon DSLRs allow for at most a 1-stop bracketing interval. Fortunately, many of those same Nikon DSLRs offer up to 9-shot bracketing sequences, so even if your shots are 1 stop apart, you can still go for a sequence such as -2, -1, 0, +1, +2 and you’ll have the range that you need.

Another trick that Scott mentions in his book is that if you enable both bracketing and high-speed continuous shooting, you can capture a full HDR sequence with a single shutter press. (On my Canon 40D, I have to hold down the shutter—click, click, click—before I let go, but other camera models might allow you to tap and let go of the shutter and have it take the entire sequence.)

It’s rather handy to be able to hold down the shutter and have the camera sweep through your bracketing sequence, but even so, one’s overexposed end of the bracketing sequence may end up with exposures as long as 3–4 seconds. You may feel that’s the least of your concerns if you’re using a tripod anyway, but sometimes even the action of depressing the shutter can introduce a tiny amount of blur when you’re dealing with exposures that long.

To help counteract that potential for camera shake, one easy solution is to use a remote shutter release. It doesn’t necessarily have to be one of those fancy wireless shutter releases—although those are fine too— but even a simple wired shutter release with a 2–3' cord is perfectly fine. The main thing is just having a shutter that’s physically separate from your camera body.

There’s a perception that HDR shots necessarily have that overprocessed “HDR look”, but that doesn’t have to be the case. If one practices restraint and resists the temptation to turn all the knobs to eleven, one can end up with shots that make use of HDR without being a garish mess. As well, although one can use fancy 3rd-party software for processing HDR shots, Photoshop from version CS5 forward is actually pretty decent, so if you already have that, you’re all set—and that’s what I used for these shots. (HDR processing in Photoshop CS4 and earlier, on the other hand, is fairly rubbish and if that’s the version you happen to have, you’re probably better off with 3rd-party software such as Photomatix.)

If you had wanted to see how one of my exposures came together, I’ve included the pre-HDR-processing bracketing sequence I used for the shot of Bryan and Lyn’s kitchen. At first glance, the 2-stops-overexposed shot (the bottom shot among the three) may look similar to the final HDR shot (which you can also see at the top of this post), but if you take a closer look, you can see that both the fridge and the window ended up blown-out in that shot. As well, if you look at the kitchen ceiling in each of the three shots, you can see how no single exposure was able to capture the ceiling without either overexposing or underexposing swaths of it. Fortunately, that’s an area in which HDR can help and in the final shot I was able to get a more even exposure across the ceiling.

If you know what to look for, you may see a few signs of HDR in a couple shots, but I was really just looking for lifelike exposures without turning the shots into photographic versions of Toontown. After processing the shots, I passed them along to Bryan and Lyn’s Realtor and he added them to their listing. I’m really happy to have be able to help out my friends a bit and I’m pleased with how they turned out.

Later I asked my brother for the recipe and he happily passed it along, mentioning that he originally got the recipe from his friend Kristin. (They’re yummy, Kristin!)

Note: The full recipe makes about 40 cookies, while the halved recipe makes about 20. I’m including both versions since you might not always need forty cookies ;).

Ginger Molasses Cookies—Full Recipe

You might already have some of these spices in your pantry, but keep in mind that ground spices start to lose their flavor after about 8 months. If your spices are older than that—or if you’re not sure how old they are—you may be best off buying new ones.

Ingredients:

• 4 ½ cups (639 grams) all purpose flour
• 4 teaspoons ground ginger (ground ginger from the spice aisle is fine)
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 teaspoons salt (bonus tastiness points if it’s noniodized salt)
• 3 sticks (339 grams) butter, softened or at room temperature (Or for a vegan version, I’ve had success with Miyoko’s Vegan Butter, which I found at Target.)
• 2 cups (396 grams) sugar
• 2 eggs that have come to room temperature (Or for a vegan version, I’ve had success with Bob’s Red Mill Egg Replacer, which I found at Target.)
• ½ cup (170 grams) molasses
• Set aside in a cereal bowl: ¾ cup (150 grams) turbinado sugar (“sugar in the raw”) or granulated sugar with 1 teaspoon kosher salt that you’ve mixed in with a fork

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C).

2. In a medium bowl, stir together flour, ground ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, ground cloves and salt—set aide.

3. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds to soften. Add 2 cups (396 grams) of sugar, beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in eggs and molasses until combined.

4. Beat in as much of the flour mixture as you can with the mixer. If need be, use a wooden spoon to stir in any remaining flour mixture.

5. Shape dough into 1 ½ to 2-inch balls (4 to 5 cm). (If you have a digital scale, aim for around 28 to 30 grams per ball.) Roll the balls in the sugar & kosher salt that you had set aside. Place the dough about 2 ½ inches (6 ½ cm) apart on baking sheets.

6. Bake for 12–14 minutes. If you’re baking multiple sheets at a time, swap the sheets halfway through. Bake the cookies until they’re light brown and puffed. After you take them out of the oven, let them cool on the baking sheet for 2 minutes, and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool.

Ginger Molasses Cookies’Halved Recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 ¼ cups (320 grams) all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger (ground ginger from the spice aisle is fine)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 ½ sticks (170 grams) butter, softened or at room temperature (Or for a vegan version, I’ve had success with Miyoko’s Vegan Butter, which I found at Target.)
• 1 cup (198 grams) sugar
• 1 egg that has come to room temperature (Or for a vegan version, I’ve had success with Bob’s Red Mill Egg Replacer, which I found at Target.)
• ¼ cup (85 grams) molasses
• Set aside in a cereal bowl: 6 tablespoons (75 grams) turbinado sugar (“sugar in the raw”) or granulated sugar with ½ teaspoon kosher salt that you’ve mixed in with a fork

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C).

2. In a medium bowl, stir together flour, ground ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, ground cloves and salt—set aide.

3. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds to soften. Add 1 cup (198 grams) of sugar, beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in the egg and molasses until combined.

4. Beat in as much of the flour mixture as you can with the mixer. If need be, use a wooden spoon to stir in any remaining flour mixture.

5. Shape dough into 1 ½ to 2-inch balls (4 to 5 cm). (If you have a digital scale, aim for around 28 to 30 grams per ball.) Roll the balls in the sugar & kosher salt that you had set aside. Place the dough about 2 ½ inches (6 ½ cm) apart on baking sheets.

6. Bake for 12–14 minutes. If you’re baking multiple sheets at a time, swap the sheets halfway through. Bake the cookies until they’re light brown and puffed. After you take them out of the oven, let them cool on the baking sheet for 2 minutes, and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool.