Clay: Bud Vases

                            

Clay body: Venus

Glaze: Cone 6 Jim Bob Blue and Stormy

AAAARRRGH neither of these vases is water tight, and so I dropped them into a waste bin to shatter them. Oh well. Make better.

Balance: Cardiovascular + Craft

I finally found MY gym. At the community college up the hill from where I live. And it’s glorious. During the pandemic I so missed swimming and spinning and group exercise classes. A friend has invited me to his birthday celebration in Bacalar, south of Tulum toward Belize. Unfortunately, my spring break happens after his couple of weeks in Mexico. But I would like to go on another surfing vacation again. And maybe this time to Costa Rica instead of Mexico. Hence I’ve been swimming laps to build up my endurance for all that paddling.                 

And I love spinning because of the music, either rock or rap or techno and an instructor to tell you to increase the resistance and get up out of the seat for a “hill climb” or sprint and pedal faster for some interval training. Ditto for the music of Zumba and Bollywood and UJam and exercising my brain by learning different dance moves. Oh and kickboxing too with jabs, cross punches, upper cuts, hooks and roundhouse kicks. Variety is what keeps me moving. Not that I didn’t enjoy walking, hiking and running during this pandemic but it was all so one note.

And on the advice of my doctor for the hot flashes and insomnia and because I’ve been eating a more plant-based diet anyway, I’m upping the tofu and tempeh. For lunch today, I enjoyed the vegan chikn salad with my green salad. I like it even more than chicken salad, and now I’m remembering too how much I liked vegenaise when I used to be vegetarian. Weird to come full circle to the teetotalism and intense athleticism of my youth and early adulthood. And that’s not balanced either. So tomorrow I’m taking a break off from the gym and going out to an early dinner with friends. And you betcha I’m gonna maybe eat steak instead of my usual garden salad and margherita pizza and yeah hefty pours of wine with dinner. And I took today off too from the gym to do clay club with my colleague, Zan. Finally I glazed most of my speckled buff bisque pieces: two mugs and two succulent planters.                          

And I also went back to this bottle and decided it needed to be bisque fired again to burn out the wax resist followed by a glazing that revealed sloppy wax resisting.

I’m trying to take my time on glazing and enjoy it as much as the hand building.

Cook: Huevo Ranchero

I’d been wanting to make sausage gravy again but didn’t want to trek to a grocery store this morning for the sausage and instead made do with what was in the fridge and from the garden, and so of course, I had to eat a huevo ranchero--in the singular rather than the plural. I chopped and sliced two small tomatoes, white onion, jalapeno which I threw into my searing hot cast iron with a bay leaf and oregano and cooked down into a salsa ranchero and topped it with chopped cilantro.                           

With the ranchero sauce done, I reheated a can of leftover refried beans but this time, I melted pork lard and refried again the refried beans and added bone broth to thin it to a more saucy consistency. And once the beans were done, I fried a corn tortilla into a tostada shell.

Once the tortilla shell was crisp, I cracked an egg into the oil left from frying the tortilla and spooned the fat atop the white to firm it.

And remembered to shred some Monterey Jack. I slathered the beans onto the crisp tortilla shell. Then spooned some of the ranchero salsa and sprinkled the cheese on top and then the fried egg. And sprinkled fresh cilantro on top of the egg.

Usually when I order huevos ranchero at Alanna's in Burlingame or Redwood City, there's a flour tortilla to sop up the eggs and beans and salsa. But with this huevo ranchero, you could pick it up and bite the crunchy breakfast tostada.

  

And like Jacques Pepin, I will cook again with leftovers.

We just ate carne asado tacos last night, and I'll integrate these leftover ingredients for this week's chile rellenos.

Poke Bowls to the Rescue

I get into these moods where I don’t cook, not at all, for the week. And it’s enough for me to muster the time and inclination to construct a meal from ingredients already prepared. I miss Hawaii for the reason that even in the supermarket you have at least 6 types of poke to choose from, but at the warehouse store here in the Bay Area there’s two: Spicy Ahi Poke(Sriracha Mayo yum) and Ahi Wasabi Poke(my favorite).                    

And we’re in for another hot spell of weather, and so I’ll be steaming jasmine rice, whipping together a miso dressing and chopping lettuces and jalapenos and hitting up the supermarket for additional ingredients like edamame, seaweed salad, avocado, cilantro and kimchi to make bowls.    

Fast food you don't have to cook.

Sew: Christmas Table Runner

I bought a packet of charm squares years ago from Craftsy and finally sewed some together into a tree skirt, using instructions and a video from Missouri Star. And still had some squares left which I put together into a matching table runner but then put away and forgot where I put it away. A couple years later I finally found it, hanging in the closet with other unfinished projects or WIPs. And then I decided that the bobbles I had edged the tree skirt would be too big for a table runner. Last month I found the perfect Pom Pom trim for it. And yesterday before open ceramics studio, I finished it.    

I rather love it—the not too kitschy novelty fabric pattens (more secular winter wonderland than Christmas), the raw appliqués of snowflakes from stencils that I had googled and then traced onto fusible web, the mid century motifs of my childhood in a color palette I find more cheerful than the usual somber reds and greens in Christmas fabrics.

Cook: Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

My earlier attempt at making sausage gravy for biscuits was an utter fail. I used a jar of Heinz sausage gravy and cooked more sausage to go with it over biscuits. Awful because it came from a jar and I tried to amp up flavor with sage. This time I started from scratch.      

I browned breakfast sausage and then had a mise en place: a couple tablespoons of flour, Old Bay seasoning, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and milk.                

I watched a Food Network video, and Ree Drummond added the flour to the sausage after it browned and let it soak into the meat. I might have used too much flour because my gravy formed right away and got too thick. I didn’t want to add more milk as a liquid or it would be too rich. Instead I used water to thin, and that worked! Then I tasted. Oh man was it tasty, and I almost forgot to get the biscuits into oven to mop up that deliciousness.                               

And so I kept stirring and adding more water as it got too thick again and then the seasoning and spices as I kept tasting.                                          

Oh my was it yummy, and finally my biscuits were golden brown.                 

And I just wanted to keep spooning gravy into my mouth.                                

Hence my breakfast was gravy and biscuit. And I’ve three more of these breakfasts to go with my morning coffee this week:)

Cook: Fattoush Salad

I skipped working out this week and undertook a Middle Eastern feast instead. I grilled two eggplants while grilling hamburgers for dinner one night and then turned the grilled eggplants into baba ghanoush with tahini, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, salt and chives. And soaked garbanzo beans which I turned into hummus with the same ingredients as the eggplant dip but with the addition of cumin, smoked paprika and Aleppo pepper. And instead of red wine vinegar, I used lemon juice and pomegranate molasses to dress the bell peppers, red onion, tomatoes and fried pita triangles in olive oil. Oh my! Game changer.                                

And I also finally fried up the Moroccan tofu cubes. Another taste revelation. All leftover will make for a delicious pita sandwich this weekend. While at Costco, I saw this cookbook and now want to expand my Mediterranean cooking repertoire.