Reflections at Whitesbog Village, Browns Mills, New Jersey

Whitesbog Village was a commercial cranberry farm/company town, built in the early 1900s by Elizabeth Coleman White. There are many older buildings that are being restored and many others that are decaying.

I visited for the first time with a Meetup group of photographers from Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

We walked among a few square miles of cranberry bogs, some of which are still functional.

That afternoon the water was a mirror for the sky. There was a gentle breeze, not strong enough to cause any ripples. I set up my tripod and my Nikon with a Hoya 10 stop ND filter. I was able to capture 2-30 second exposures which I combined in Photomatix Pro. This image is a long exposure HDR.

In Adobe Lightroom I pushed the saturation, highlights, vibrance and clarity settings, then applied a Fuji Velvia 50 preset and reduced the grain.

Whitesbog Village—Nikon D5100 + 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6
Whitesbog Village—Nikon D5100 + 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6

Breakfast Sandwich from the Farmers' Market

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My kids and I enjoy eating bacon. We don't eat bacon very often but when we do, we delight in each strip. We've learned what we like and don't like in our bacon. We tried turkey bacon for a while but ultimately decided it was a #FAIL. It didn't satisfy in the way real bacon does. We normally cook our bacon in the microwave in one of those special microwave bacon trays. It works well for making crispy bacon, but leaves the microwave polluted for a few hours which annoys my vegetarian wife.

During my 30th college re-union this summer, a friend told me about making bacon in the oven. After trying this a few times I don't want to make bacon any other way. Oven bacon is a hit with my kids and cleanup is easy. We cook the bacon in baking pan lined with aluminium foil. Once the bacon is done it's easy to remove and discard the oil and foil. Oil and foil?

Last summer I started buying cheeses from Brick Farm Market, purchased each Saturday at the Montgomery Farmers' Market. The Brick Farm Market creamy cheeses are brought in from the Hopewell area and nearby North Eastern producers. I often eat the cheeses straight while sipping an IPA. I also experimented with melting the cheese to make sandwiches using baguette's I bought at the Terra Momo Bread Company stand. The baguette's are made from a hard-wheat bread flour baked to a characteristically golden color. Its crusty on the outside and airy on the inside. Delicious!

This Saturday, while buying cheese I noticed that ... he also had bacon. We chatted about how much love cooking bacon in the oven and he mentioned he likes to use a bit of the bacon grease in an iron skillet to cook his eggs.

This past Sunday night I suddenly had the idea to combine all these things into a lunch sandwich. I had the bread, the cheese, the bacon and eggs. I cooked everything up but soon realized the egg would not travel well. I decided this would work better as a breakfast sandwich. I originally used organic eggs from ShopRite but wanted to source as much as possible from local businesses. So I added eggs from the Griggstown Farm to my Saturday morning market shopping list.

  • Baguette from Terra Momo
  • Cheese from Brick Farm Market
  • Sliced bacon from Brick Farm Market
  • Eggs from Griggstown Farm

Pre-heat oven to 400ºC and remove the cheese from the fridge. Let it sit out while you cook so it can warm up. This helps bring out the flavour of the cheese.

Line the baking pan with aluminium foil and layout the bacon strips on the foil. Don't crowd the strips. We don't want them to stick together while they cook. Be careful when lining the pan that you don't create a hole in the foil. When the oven has reached the proper temperature, put the baking pan in the center rack of the oven and cook for 18 minutes. I use the oven time so I don't forget and burn my bacon.

Remove the baking pan from the oven when the bacon is cooked. Do not discard the bacon grease. Drain some of the bacon grease into a skillet before discarding the foil. In the skillet, cook one egg over medium heat, on both sides until the yolk is cooked through but soft and the egg white is thoroughly cooked.1

Slice some of the cheese and place on one side of the bread. Toast in toaster oven until the cheese just starts to melt. Remove toasted bread from toaster oven and place bacon on top of the cheese. Then place the cooked egg on top of the bacon. Cover with the remaining slice. Enjoy with a fresh cup of coffee brewed with beans you Benfatto Coffee.


  1. There are many ways to cook an egg. I like my eggs sunny side up (also called runny side up), but most people prefer a fully cooked egg. 

Honey Brook Organic Farm

My family and I have been members of the farm for several years. I love walking around looking for interesting things to photograph. I've got a number of barn photos, flower photos and lots of butterflies and other insects but very few landscape photos. The weather has been especially hot and humid so we’ve not had much of an opportunity to pick produce or flowers. This photo was taken last Sunday. It's a three exposure HDR (Adobe Lightroom, NIK HDR Efx Pro).