cook: what you have

I had to throw away some El Pastor taco meat I made weeks ago, and it gutted me to waste food. And so to use up some of the tortilla chips still in my cupboard, refried beans I recently cooked, guacamole tomatillo salsa, white onion, and sour cream had to do.

I decided to co-host a holiday mixer prior to the new year:

A party merited more of a refrigerator cleanout. Into a baking dish went feta cheese and Kalamata olives and sundried tomatoes plus herbs and olive oil. 

There was still some of this feta dip after the party, and so I'll be making shakshuka with it.

More counter and refrigerator clean out of a pineapple, kiwi fruit, Christmas ham, gruyere cheese and half an avocado leftover from a crab salad sandwich leftover from crab cocktail on Christmas Eve.

The last of a jalapeno and a bagel from a neighbor meant jalapenos onto breakfasts of herbed creamed cheese bagel and an omelet with the last English muffin.

Yesterday after a mammogram, I stopped in one of my favorite grocery stores, but was pretty reined in by only buying what could fit in a canvas bag and being mindful of how much room was in the freezer, refrigerator, and pantry: two one-pound packages of ground pork, a bag of jalapenos, a bunch of cilantro, two bunches of green onions, a can of chipotle sauce, and family size frozen dinner of Stouffer's meatloaf. Patrick also harvested these eggplants, which I've since put into the refrigerator too.

I just watched a YouTube of a Eurasian Australian chef cook an eggplant dish where she steamed the eggplant for 25 minutes after slicing them into batons, made a sauce with Szechuan peppercorns, ginger and garlic, and then stir fried it in a chili oil (my friend, Feliz just gifted me her homemade chili oil though I may have to add star anise and cardamon if it's not already in there) and doubanjiang (which I happen to have in my Asian bin of ingredients) plus soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and sugar. And so I'll have a mise en place at the ready when I cook the sauce before removing the eggplant into a bowl and then adding the hot sauce to mix and then garnish with chopped scallions. But I may just brown and then integrate crispy ground pork into the sauce. And I may instead just remove the eggplant into a colander and the move the vegetable into the wok.

clay: christmas ufos (un-finished objects) for 2026

First, let's hear it for these trees which are finished because I finally photographed after their final firing.

 

And really these trees were test tiles to see which glaze combination would look the greenest...and so I'm loving this one.

 

 And I've had these wooden houses a few years now. I painted one a few weeks ago and disliked it. I know now I'll only paint the Xmas wreath or lights and let the ornament remain unfinished wood. 

 

And here's to ceramic houses I saw in Temecula on Black Friday, which I now want to create. Perhaps on this winter solstice, I will construct templates. Should I re-create them in the Frost Porcelain I have left or perhaps buy a bag of BMix Smooth?

And I'm thinking no to the little ceramic houses to the right below that are not as spare looking--so no dormers, no porticos, no roofs with eaves, nor chimneys that are not just a hole or slit in a peaked roof.

This seashell form I made is bisque, but really I want to make a clay bisque mold of the seashell so that the ridges of are outside, not inside and then play with pink and coral glazes to mimic the interior of a seashell.

I saw this teapot finally on the bisque shelf, and so yesterday I adhered black underglaze into the leaf textures.

I then poured  True Celadon into its interior. I put it back on the bisque shelf to let all the water evaporate. The pot fits into the 5-gallon bucket, and so today I'll dip it into that fresh batch of True Celadon. I know I want to brush Floating Green on the spout and lid. I'll likely thin some Juicy Fruit and Peppermint Creme to splatter with a brush all over the interior.

Remember these trees which I finished just after the thanksgiving holiday? Before the Xmas holiday, I adhered all the green underglazes in the studio...

 

...and then dipped in True Celadon with splatters of other overglazes. Maybe they'll get fired in February because of their height.

While looking for templates for houses, I saw this candleholder online. Oh! Again I'm thinking of modern house profiles (one house, a tree, and then a multi-dwelling residence) to make this brass candleholder but in porcelain or white stoneware clay.

Holiday Suburb Candle Holder will be my concept.

cook: clams and squid ink linguine

In my quest to eat what we have, I cooked clams left from the feast of seven fishes a couple days ago still at back or the coldest part of the fridge (clams and quahogs can last 7 days in cold enough temperatures outside the ocean) and squid ink pasta in the pantry drawer. I knew from Christmas Eve that I had to soak the clams in very cold salty water. Just look at all the sand that they spit out. In a hot cast iron in which there was butter, garlic, olive oil and wine, I placed the clams until their shells opened.

 

With the lid over the steaming clams, it was only minutes before they opened and released their ocean liquor into the hot cast iron. And then I placed the clams separately into a bowl, so I could cook the linguine sauce.

  

The linguine sauce was just a matter of cooking down all that clam broth and adding some heavy whipping cream to thicken. In the meantime, the squid ink pasta boiled for 7 minutes.

Lastly, toss the pasta in the sauce and top with clams.

T'was a supper of shucking and slurping and waxing nostalgia for a childhood of foraging for clams and quahogs on the Connecticut coast, and that's that for clams and black pasta for 2025.

cook: hotpot breakfast and cook what you have

It’s winter break, and I've time to cook breakfast as well as clean out my refrigerator and freezer. Enter soup for one. It starts with homemade bone broth and Lee Kum Kee hotpot soup base which is very mala (tingly spicy). In my freezer, I had the chicken cilantro won tons, sweet Chinese sausage, and spicy tofu. In the fridge, a hard boiled egg, some scallions and lots of bok choy.                     

 

From the couple times I visited the Seapot restaurant, I learned I had to have extra flavor from fresh crushed garlic, some kind of addition like my Japanese Mentsuyu (which has kombu though I wouldn't be averse to miso paste) and sticking with the Japanese theme, shoyu. And oh yeah, mustn't forget toasted sesame oil and having chili crunch at the ready.

 

Alas I didn't have mushrooms, neither enoki or oyster. But once I got the soup base boiling, in went the sausage and tofu. And then the bok choy and won tons and hard boiled egg which only need at the most 3 minutes to get the vegetables tender and the egg warmed through. 

A lashing of chili crunch on the egg and a scattering of scallions, and it's a very warming and filling breakfast.

cook (not): conserva

I’ve been doing my own private happy hour this holiday season of tinned fish. My first conserva snack was fishwife’s albacore tuna in spicy olive oil, and it was meh. But recently, I saw an Instagram post of a chef eating a tin of smoked oysters with chopped mix-ins of red onion, tomatoes, serranos, and cilantro and crackers. I aim to try that. Here’s what I ate a couple nights ago.                   

Like I said, the Fishwife tuna was just meh. Last night’s tin was Patagonia’s mussels. Wished I’d done the taco topping thing, but next time. Not my thing to eat cheese with conserva, but yes to drops of sherry vinegar to the oil in the fish, giardinera and artichokes and olives. Crackers, of course. Though I wouldn’t say no to a petite baguette.

clay: covet + celebrate

Zan made this candle dish, which I absolutely love for its surface:

She said she applied 3 layers of blue glaze and then on top layers of white gloss which she carved through to expose the blue. In the meantime, I made lots of Xmas ornaments to sell (none sold at last Saturday's pop-up) and gift. These came out of the high school kiln recently:

 

One of the gingerbread was already chosen by Nicole, and I'll string the other gingerbread man to add to the basket of ornaments for family members to choose and give the dreidel ornament to Helen. The winter solstice starts this Sunday, and as soon as outrigger canoe practice is over, I'll do more mad cleaning and decluttering and get started on my slow sewing self-gift from a Verb for Keeping Warm.

clay: xmas trees

I've heard two people now say that my modern Xmas trees look like wizard hats. Sigh. And so I saw these trees from a home furnishings retailer (West Elm? Pottery Barn? Crate & Barrel? Not sure) and decided I like it better than the stacked cones ceramic trees I've been seeing from other ceramicists, both handmade and mass manufactured.                                 

This morning after canoe paddling, I picked up a fallen branch long pine needles and tiny cones, which was my inspiration for the morning in the ceramics studio. I cut petals from the slab that somewhat resembled those of the photo reference, but I used the pine needles branch I found to impress the clay.           

And so sometime this week, I want to make my way into the studio and loop tool off crumbs and edges that could possibly be too sharp. Maybe I should have flared up the petals, but that's okay. I'll totally make these trees again, one at a time, because it was very tedious to cut, impress and score and slip the petals on to a narrow cone.