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Back in November, Oksana and I spent some time in Puerto Rico. While visiting one of the “Spanish Virgin Islands,” Culebra, we managed to fit in a two-tank dive with Aquatic Adventures. They took us out to Lana’s Cove and Carlos Rosario’s “The Wall.”

Oksana and I used the dives to experiment with a new underwater housing for her Panasonic Lumix TZ5. While not the best underwater gear, the whole setup is small, light, and travel-friendly. While the lack of a decent flash unit blurred practically every photo, it seemed to record decent video when we kept our movements smooth.

Because of a late start, our second outing unexpectedly turned into a night dive. I didn’t anticipate that the camera would be much use, but I brought it anyway. Glad I did.

On the boat, we met a couple, Michael and Kimberly, from Kansas who were enjoying their first few open water dives after getting certified. We had dinner with them afterwards at Mamacita’s. I mentioned that I’d pointed the camera in their direction a few times during the dives and I promised to send them a video clip or two once we got home. Well, I barely had two weeks back in Alaska before I left on a month-long Ecuador trip. Last week I finally got around to digging up those video clips…

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After an 8-hour work day, I have little energy left over for creative endeavors.  Awhile back, when I first renegotiated a 10-month contract with the university, I had all sorts of ideas for the two months I’d have off.  Whenever I wasn’t traveling, I wanted to be working on some sort of creative project.

In December of 2007, I watched a short, clever cooking video online.  I thought that I might want to create something like that during my upcoming time off.  I approached Oksana about making a “how to” cooking video centered around her borsch recipe.  She liked the idea; we went shopping for the ingredients.

We learned very quickly that cooking videos are not easy to make.  The cooking process itself doesn’t lend itself to multiple takes, pesky steam keeps fogging your lens, and cooking food doesn’t take time out for you to switch to a different angle.  We had grand plans for an explanatory voiceover, but gave it up when we realized it would add hours to the process.  Oksana cooked, I shot, we tried not to argue.  That was the best we could do.

Fast forward a month and I’ve got all the video on my hard drive.  I’m starting in on editing and realizing that making a cooking video engaging isn’t easy, either.  I played around with it for awhile, but bogged down on the timing.  I wanted to make a short video (who’s going to watch a ½ hour recipe on Youtube?) set to some sort of music.  Ozma did a great cover of the suitably Russian Korobeiniki, but their version was even shorter than I needed.  After individually adjusting the speed of maybe a sixth of the clips I wanted to use, I gave up.  Too tedious.

Still, it was a project I always hoped to return to and I passed it from backup hard drive to backup hard drive for two years.  Last week, I dug it up and went back to speed-adjusting clips.  As I was nearing the end of the first rough edit, I decided on a subtitle style.  One sixth of the way through those, I reflected on my penchant for tedium.

I stuck with it, though, and finished the video up this week.  I played the rough cut for Oksana and she approves.  I think there’s enough visual information in the video that an enterprising and ambitious cook could recreate her family’s recipe, but if not, I’m including the actual recipe after the jump.

If you make a batch, let us know how it turns out.  (Also, pro tip from Oksana: It’s actually better after sitting in the fridge overnight!)

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