clay cloth cook & craft: a non buy black fri

My popup banner is done because I appliquéd the red heart before making a Waldorf-type salad of celery, Granny Smith apple, walnuts and blue cheese in a apple cider, Dijon mustard vinaigrette before thanksgiving with Patrick’s family EXCEPT for the grommets, which Joann’s was out of the kind I bought before and I bought some without the tool to hammer them in. DOH! I so didn’t want to go to any stores on Black Friday. I thought I would McGyver it.            

But I didn’t. My first priority yesterday morning was to pick up makrut limes and leaves from someone's door of my Buy Nothing Facebook group. Helen had given me Meyer lemons from her sister's tree, I had bought a bag of oranges, and now my citrus bowl runneth over which makes me super happy. 

 

And the morning became sunny and warm.

Maybe the temperatures here in Northern California aren’t as balmy as in the South, but I’m even more tanned from all my swimming than even my week in Kauai. And I ended up going to Joann's after the pool to buy some large grommets to finish my banner. I'm that much more ready for the popup sale of my ceramics. YAY. Once home from the gym, I prepped my porchetta. I snipped enough for a quarter cup rosemary from Cecilia's pot and two tablespoons sage from my garden. I threw the herbs, coarsely chopped into my mortar and pestle with six cloves of garlic, a teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, 1/8 teaspoon black pepper, 1 teaspoon fennel seeds, and ground. I almost forgot the zest of one lemon. I added olive oil to the grind to make a paste.       

I then used my boning knife which is super sharp to score the fat cap on the pork. And then herb paste. 

The recipe called for rubbing the paste all over the pork . Voila.

The porchetta roast is in my mother's pyrex bowl, covered in plastic to soak up the flavors overnight. However, when I and the husband were watching America's Test Kitchen's how-to of the same pork roast, the cooks added thyme to the herb mixture and THEN rubbed a tablespoon of salt AND baking soda over the roast. They also left it uncovered in the refrigerator for the pork to dry out and get even crispier for the roasting. And so this morning, I'll remove the plastic before I go to the gym and ponder whether to do high oven and then low for my roasting or go low and slow and then a blast of high for a crispy, crackly fat crust. My next priority yesterday after prepping the pork was porcelain.                  

There were some marks on the plates I needed to smooth out with a damp sponge and refine the edges with the green scrunge. I'm worried that I left them too long in their palm plate molds, which were pretty soggy from all the moisture in the clay. I hope they fire fairly flat in the kiln. And so the slabs are now flipped atop the palm plate forms under plastic. Zan's suggestion from looking at the texture of lines in the palm leaf plates was to use the tree texture on the underside. I used to love that texture and had made plates and vases with it years ago on porcelain, and of course that was a brilliant idea. I love a visually arresting underside.

I wished I'd align the plate in the form with the vertical lines of the palm leaf with the vertical lines of the tree texture. Oh well. Next set of slab plates. I also needed to make the hummus of the presoaked chick peas that I was too busy to boil during the work week. And wash the labels off the china plates I bought for Friendsgiving.                         

And then my wreath. Instead of using my glue gun like I had while constructing the flowers, I used the very sticky foam squares to adhere them to the round form along with the leaves and the ribbon. Paper Source does have some lovely creative kits.

This wreath had lain in my craft box now for a few years. I'm happy it's finally crafted and ready to adorn for the Friendsgiving decor tonight.