Went to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden with my mom this past weekend and it was so beautiful. We couldn’t have chosen a better day for it. The weather was nice and the sun was shining brightly. My mom hasn’t been to the Garden since I was born so I wanted to take her there to see some of her favorite things (flowers).

Too bad the Cherry blossom trees were past bloom though, they were a lot nicer two years ago when I came.

At least the Tulips were pretty!

So today on a whim, my mom and I decided to make some Chinese Tea leaf eggs. We had a rough idea on how to make them so our recipe isn’t 100% exactly like all the others out there on the internet. We already had some of the ingredients at home since we use them for other things we cook so we mainly just needed the eggs and tea leaves from the supermarket.

First off here are the ingredients to make the eggs:

• Eggs
• Boiling water
• 6 tablespoons low-sodium dark soy sauce
• 2 tbsp black tea
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 star anise
• 2 small pieces of dried tangerine/orange peel
• 2 small pieces of dang gui, Chinese Angelica Root

Directions :
1. Boil the eggs in plain water till about 80% cooked and take them out of the water and leave them on the side to cool down a bit.

2. Use a spoon to tap the eggs so that the shells crack just a tiny bit so that the flavor from the ingredients can seep into the egg as well as create the cracked egg look.

3. Put enough water in another pot to cover the eggs and add the ingredients and bring to a boil. Add the eggs and let simmer 2-3hrs.

Final thoughts:

I wish we had put more tea leaves into the mixture so we had a stronger tea taste. But after eating 2 eggs, I can’t really complain

So this past weekend I had the privilege to take some photos intended for promotional items for an auto shop that is opening up this month. It was a lot of fun and even though I’m not a car fanatic I started to think about them differently. I am still learning though on what angles best works for cars as well as post processing techniques that will make the car pop.

We had a total of 10 cars that showed up, all of whom were owned by previous customers of Tach Motor Works. The entire shoot took about 3hrs because it was a lot of driving around and maneuvering the cars for the pictures. I’m very excited about how the flyer came out and very happy that my photos fit the job.

Even with being scared of heights, I still climbed on top of the office area to grab some photos of the overall shop area :

There are tons more photos that I did not post on flickr but here are the flyers that were designed by Daniel Pacificador all photos taken by me.