craft: christmas clearance sales

I do love holiday shopping AFTER the holiday. And this year I remembered to give advent presents as I found them in my Christmas bin which I opened promptly right after the thanksgiving holiday. There’s a turkey table topper that I didn’t put out this year, but I did mail or send Christmas cards that first week of December in 2022. Next year I’ll be greeting friends and family with these ephemera.   

Usually I find my holiday cards at Paper Source, but this year World Market was my one stop holiday supplier. I love these ornaments—the mid century modern house will go on my tree while the snowman will be on offer for next year’s Dirty Santa ornament exchange.  And the cookie cutter can be both a tree ornament in and of itself or the template for ceramic ornaments.                      

And next year I’ll apply acrylic paint and glitter to these laser cut wood ornaments to give to the niece’s and nephew’s families.         

So millennial. I love ‘em and will be delighted all over again when I open my holiday bin next November. And these mini stockings for an advent hanging, which I’ve had for a few years will finally be ready to complete.                               

I’m rather sick of sweets, but February which means Valentine’s Day is coming. And so these peppermint candies are coming with me to work for my January sugar rushes.      

Okay got my dopamine fix this afternoon, and tomorrow I’ll need to pack these holiday purchases away for next year so my home is decluttered as much as possible for housecleaners coming this week.

And I relented and did shop some more. Paper Source provided me another box of Xmas cards as well as two Advent charm bracelet and necklace kits for my grandnieces, Mica and Isla as well as Elf on the Shelf for all of the grandnephews and grandnieces. Target was the source for dog ornaments, gift wrap, gift tags. And Christmas 2022 is a wrap and looking forward already to Christmas 2023.

comfort and joy: family

As exhausting as cooking and crafting for the holidays are, it all came together gratifyingly on Christmas. I finally held this little monkey and am resolved to work on the modern crosses quilt I was going to gift him LAST year.

 

And fell more in love with these two little munchkins...their dad was my favorite nephew back back in the day.

 

My neighbor and friend, Cecilia promised to send me pics of the gifts she commissioned me to make for her nephew and niece. And I'm reminded what I need to make when I return to the clay studio.

And I said to the nieces, hey do you wanna go out outside?

Of course, we spent a sunny Christmas afternoon outdoors.

Children are what the holidays are all about!

cook: breakfast for dinner

When I’m baking, I don’t have the patience or imagination I usually love about cooking. And it’s been a week of baking rugelach and orange pistachio chocolate shortbread and maybe even Meyer Lemon Blueberry loaves. I loathe going to the supermarket during the holidays. Yesterday I turned my car around twice from two stores and their packed parking lots and shuddered at the lines inside. I came home and cooked breakfast for dinner instead of the Dan Dan Noodles recipe I’ve been wanting to test out. I had finally boiled the little Yukon gold potatoes Patrick had harvested. Those golden nuggets were so delicious. I kept slathering a smashed potato with Irish butter and popping them into my mouth before cooking dinner. I chopped scallions and chives, half a red bell pepper, and took out English muffins and cheeses and sliced ham for Denver Potatoes for dinner. Then I sautéed the red bell pepper, ham, whites of the scallions and before removing from the pan.

 

Next I fried the potatoes and tried to get them as crispy as my patience allowed. I then topped the potatoes with the ham and scallion greens and bell pepper.

 

I had some provolone I wanted to use up and tore that into pieces atop the hash. I also remembered to put chopped tomato into this dish. Once that cheese melted, I added the shredded cheddar.

 

I stuck my potatoes under a low broiler to melt the cheddar and poached eggs while they broiled. Ai yi yi. My poached eggs were disastrous. Never mind. Some chopped chives will cover it up and dinner was done.

Breakfast potatoes for dinner were delicious even if my eggs weren't beautifully runny, and we so love a toasted English muffin with butter. On another night for dinner, hubby cooked himself a dinner of fried eggs for dinner along with both halves of an English muffin rather than splitting it with me--one with butter to eat with his eggs and the other with butter and strawberry jam for his sweet tooth afterward.

craft: diy holiday

My make your gift giving season has been a bit of a whirlwind. I was invited to a neighbor's home for eggnog and nosh on the first night of Hannukah, and so I decided to bake holiday gifts for the neighbors. The mandarin pistachio and chocolate shortbread dough I made last week, stored in the fridge, turned into bars for baking that Sunday afternoon.

And after a Target run for Greenies (for the dog, not the rugelach)and cream cheese, I started rugelach dough for my Jewish neighbors.

  

I rather love the ease of baking shortbread. Next time I will put the dough into one of my quarter sheet pans to make more uniform bars. And I used up most of the raspberry jam I had left for the rugelach.

I finally wrapped these bracelets for my niece by sewing them in a pouch and finished the Lola; Rhys, Dani, Bex; and Mica, Isla, Dani bracelets for my sister-in-law.

For Sunday supper, all I wanted after all the holiday potlucks and happy hours was a pan of homemade nachos with lots of jalapeno hot sauce.

Onward and onward. More bracelets to make and gifts to wrap.

cook: baked fish with sesame and ginger

Here's one of the easiest no-recipe recipes. Take expensive black cod or Chilean sea bass (my favorite) or on this evening, halibut and grate garlic and ginger and massage both aromatics with sesame oil into the filet. Soy sauce and scallions and cilantro at the bottom of a baking dish. I fried the fish skin side down first to get it crispy for 5 minutes and then laid the halibut atop the soy sauce and greens to finish in a 450 degree oven for 2 to 3 minutes to finish cooking.

I blanched bok choy for 2 minutes and then sautéed it with garlic and ginger and a bit of oyster sauce and chicken bone broth.             

Ate fish and vegetable with steamed jasmine rice. Easy Chinese, not traditional but Asian in spirit, dinner.

clay: commissioned projects and saturday clay

I loaded the kiln on Thursday and unloaded Friday afternoon. 

I’ve more succulent propagation pots. My butter cover is now too short for the bottom dish. And since I just bought a shrink ruler, I'm gonna make another bottom as well as another top for the bottom, meaning two more butter dishes. Laguna's Speckled Buff has a 12% shrinkage rate. I need to remember when brushing on glaze, to add 3 coats.          

I think Cecilia's niece's pots look awesome, but again with the drainage tray, I should have brushed 3 coats of that gloss white.

The spoons were fun to make and a fun way to test how glaze will look on a clay body. I'm going to start to make them shorter with deeper bowls, so they can be flour and sugar and salt spoons.

I'll probably rotate basil in these pots because I'm not giving them to Cecilia's sisters.

 

And I've another salt crock to give away at Christmas as a kit along with my zine of how to make sea salted chocolate chip cookies, Maldon salt, semisweet chocolate chips, and milk powder.

Cecilia says one of her sisters likes the ocean and would like a pot with that texture. I'm super pleased with the pots for Cecilia's nephews although the drainage dish is a fail--not deep enough or wide enough for all 3 of the pots plus it was coming apart at one of the seams. I need to remake it 10.5" x 5" x 1" in its finished dimensions. Hopefully the shrink ruler will figure it out for me. Laguna's Electric Brown has a 12.5% shrinkage.

And I'm glad I stashed my clay tool bag in the car because I did use my tools yesterday in the Central Park ceramics studio to make a bunch of catch plates. And I found this fired whiskey cup and cocktail cup in the kiln room. I like them even though the underglaze is more subdued than I expected.  

And so I brushed on underglazes of fire engine red, yellow, pumpkin, soft petal pink and pink with a heavier hand, hoping for even more of a painterly effect on these 4 cups.

And I kept pausing in my painting to admire Meral's vase.

And so I want to make a coil pot from that recycled clay and use some of that Waterfall Brown and Bloopsie and perhaps some of my Downpour celadon because it's so fucking beautiful.

cook: bouillabaisse

For my first holiday dinner, I decided to cook bouillabaisse. My guest Roseanne said she would go to Whole Foods and buy the fish and a baguette. I wanted to make a seafood stock with a fish head, fins, and bones, but I had to work this week and had no time really to make it. I resorted to a hearty base of chopped onions, garlic, fennel, celery, and a leek. I did have a little baggie of shrimp shells and box of seafood stock as well as good olive oil and Chardonnay. After work, I had gone to a seafood shop and bought an expensive piece of halibut, but Roseanne had brought me Atlantic cod. And there was no other seafood except salmon and halibut at that shop! I thought I had recognized the fishmonger from the farmers market and bought the fish even if he had no shellfish. I did go back to the supermarket after buying frozen scallops and shrimp and bought mussels and clams from the fresh seafood counter. That'll do. Once home, I chopped all the aromatics and vegetables, sautéed the shrimp shells in butter and olive oil and added water to make more seafood stock.

To play up the licorice flavor from the fresh fennel, I also added coarsely chopped fennel seed. I also added to that orange peel, fresh thyme, and generous pinches of saffron from the crocuses that Patrick grew. And I've been watching La Pitchoune: Cooking in France, where home cooks are taught to cook and play with lots of spice. I zoomed in on the hot smoked paprika in spice cupboard. I wonder what other spices I could have added to a-not-traditional-but-authentic bouillabaisse. Aleppo pepper might have been good too.

I drained the shrimp shells and reserved the broth. I put everything I had chopped into shimmering olive oil in my dutch oven. Tomatoes! I had forgotten that element. Luckily, I had tomato paste and diced tomatoes in my pantry. Tomato paste first into the vegetables.

  

And then half a bottle of the white wine followed by the can of tomatoes, which I boiled furiously and then decided was too chunky. I wanted my stew/soup a bit more refined and pureed most of the chunks before adding the fish.

 

This was no leisurely Saturday morning and afternoon cooking to dine afterward for a couple hours in the evening. I decided to cook haricots vert with butter and herbs. I boiled the green beans and then blanched them in cold water. I needed to have sautéed the chopped shallot (because I didn't have a red onion)first in the butter, but had oopsie chopped them with the fresh thyme, tarragon, and parsley. 

The green beans turned out fine.

I had also shopped for Belgian endive, which I chopped and tossed in dressing of olive oil, sherry vinegar, anchovy and garlic. Omg that salad was delicious. If I don’t eat that leftover salad in the raw, I might add it to leftover bouillabaisse. And I think I added the rest of a tube of anchovy paste from making that endive salad into the bouillabaisse.

And I never got to cutting rounds of baguette to toast and then rub with garlic and spread on a rouille. I just reheated the whole baguette in a 350 degree oven, which we then tore off hunks and slathered with Irish butter.

For lunch today, I sprinkled salt and then pan fried a small filet of halibut in olive oil and butter and then laid it atop leftover bouillabaisse reheated with some of the leftover haricot vert. 

 

The soup/stew tasted even better than when we ate it the first time for dinner.

The taste of the orange zest and the fennel was even more pronounced after the flavors had melded and added even more citrus with a generous squeeze of Meyer lemon. I aim to eat it again tomorrow for lunch. And just maybe there will be halibut for dinner to share with Patrick. I do wish he was a bit more fond of seafood.