The Blueberries might Have Been on Sale Yesterday

I knew if I did one more pictureless post, I'd start losing readers...seeing as I'm down to 4 regulars, that would be tragic, as 25% is a HUGE figure. So I made the grand sacrifice and tried to figure out iPhoto, just for you.

Blueberry Scones!

But if anyone is interested in the recipe...it needs a bit of tweaking.

(More on this after my iPhoto rant.)

The last time I veered away from Photoshop, was to learn enough iPhoto to walk a friend through so he could find where the original files were kept...as that was back when I still used my G3, I'm guessing 5 years have passed since then.

A lot has changed in iPhoto since then, and I think the only aspect about it that I find highly useful, as I still can't figure out how to upload pictures to Facebook, is that it has a "post to facebook" button. Aside from that? I am not pleased.

iPhoto does not trust you. It happily lets you import your photos like it always has, but if you happen to want to use, say, blogger to upload your picture from your computer? GOOD LUCK finding where it has scurried away your picture. That folder where you copied the original files to? Empty. Going to your hardrive and clicking along to the iPhoto folder to find the docs like I did five years ago? No dice. Using the obscure (but highly useful when you only have a trackpad) double-finger tap to get to the right-click mouse features and FORCE it to show you the original file? And THEN having to figure out how to make a copy and stick it back on your desktop? Not the most intuitive thing.

Were I just a mac-nubie? I'd have never known where to go or what to do, yes, there is both an "email" button as well as a "post to flikr" button, so there are alternatives, and I even know why they made this change...too many of those aforementioned newbies who might move or change the names of the original photo files and then wonder why iPhoto can't see them. But even knowing this still has me a bit pissy about the whole thing.

I need to apologize to a friend of mine who shared the awesomeness of AppleCare and their ability to walk him through how to move his photo files onto an external drive so that he could still have access to them on a different drive. I was all, "Really? You needed their help for that?!?" Now I know better. The way they have protected us from ourselves? If my life, job, access to the pictures of their baby from birth, depended on it? I would be useless in trying to help them, and that bothers me to no end.

Big fail, Apple. I'm glad I own a copy of Photoshop, no matter how ancient it is, I'd rather have complete access to my original files and suffer the consequences of my own stupidity, thanks.

Okay, rant over... That was more long-winded than I thought it would be.

BUTTERMILK SCONES, with Fruit:

These are pretty easy to make, but as I said, I need to tweak the recipe a little as the original calls for 3/4 cup of buttermilk, but it's not real buttermilk...or maybe it is...it's the liquid that you gather after doing something fancy with cream and other ingredients to make a glaze or something.

See, as the friend who gave me the recipe did not use the glaze? And she is a super awesome cook who doesn't really rely on measurements but on look and feel? And owns a food processor? She only passed on the actual scone recipe, wherein if you use the 3/4 C of buttermilk? You don't have enough liquid for the 2 cups of flour, 3 Ts of sugar, 1 T of baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda 3/4 tsp kosher salt 3/4 stick of butter that you pastry knife into the above until it looks like coarse meal, to become the "batter" that you can "spoon" from the bowl onto the baking sheet, especially not after adding 1 1/2 cups of washed AND dried blueberries. (The recipe said to "fold them" in after adding the liquid, but um, yeah, I dont' follow directions and I hate breaking blueberries as I try to get them to "fold" into batter. Much easier to add the liquid last. )

I further tweaked the recipe by adding a teaspoon or three of poppy seeds (let them soak in the butter milk as you mash away at the butter).

So I grabbed handfuls of the stuff and kinda patted them together and stuck them on the baking sheet. Then, instead of buttermilk, I used my regular 2% to "coat" the tops (I wet the tips of my fingers and more like massaged the milk into the crumbly dry things to try to keep them from falling to pieces on the baking sheet) and sprinkled brown sugar on top instead of more white sugar.

Bake for 17-ish minutes at 400 degrees, cool on a wire rack if you own one.