clay: votive candle holders

I used a template from Sunshine Cobb’s book on hand building, and I like them. In the bisque, I noticed hairline cracks and decided to let glaze ooze into those defects.           

I dithered for a long while on which glazes, and uncharacteristically went with black on one and caramel on the other. And thought it interesting that a blue green glaze just made each dominant glaze just mottled.                 

I like the masculinity of the Black Pearl and the Teal Appeal is more subtle than I had hoped for.              

And I love the warmth of the Goldrush and could not be happier about the toffee color rendered by the Teal Appeal. I may put it on the Friendsgiving table.

cook: chicken al pastor & chicken karaage

I instructed my husband to buy chicken at Costco, and instead of the chicken thighs I was expecting, he brought home chicken breasts. Sigh. I always end up cooking breasts too long and too hot, so that they end up dry. But at least I made my loaded (onions, garlic, jalapeno, tomato, oregano, cilantro)frijoles de la olla to counteract dry, boring chicken. I remember adding those same alliums and herbs and a little cumin and chipotle chilies in adobo sauce as well as orange and lemon and lime juices to the marinating chicken.

 

I also tried to make Mexican rice with leftover rice. No bueno to my palate on this meal, and the only component I enjoyed were the beans.

 

After my underwhelming Mexican dinner, we managed to finish the chicken in burritos. I surveyed next what I wanted to cook to redeem myself of such a lackluster meal. I guess my cooking during a busy workweek has become a lot more streamlined like my skin care: just soap and sunscreen along with my other grocery items. Patrick did remind me that I have 5 kabocha squash that he harvested.

 

I also baked a failed dessert from another online recipe: peach (extra) crisp. I coated the peaches in sugar and let them soak and toasted the oats and brown sugar and corn starch with ground cinnamon and grated ginger.

 

I liked eating the peaches, but not the dry, almost sawdust-like crumb topping. Sigh. At least my lunches have been nutritious and tasty. I've been packing my rogue Niçoise salad. Instead of the authentic salted tomatoes and anchovies and olive oil, I bring a tomato, basil, salt, Kalamata olives, a hard boiled egg, tuna salad, and boiled green beans. Optimally nutritious. I've red potatoes that Patrick recently harvested too, and I should boil them and make an aioli to dip them in for my no lettuce salad.

Once again I brought out chicken breasts from the freezer to thaw, but this time, I'm gonna cook it Japanese style. I've a recipe for the chicken breast. I've a recipe for the tempura-battered vegetables, which will be kabocha, sweet potato, and zucchini.

clay: candy bowl

I had just enough B3 Brown to make a small bowl, a clay body that mid fires to black rather than brown, and so used a glaze that I hoped would make the bowl brown rather than black and occasionally break into a sandy light brown.

And it did.                              

Oof, the bowl is more oblong than round….but I love this glaze on the dark clay body. So much so that it became my new candy dish.            

I’m not a truffle fan, but I do like chocolate now and then with fruit, especially citrus. And so I couldn’t resist these Lindt blood orange chocolates, whose wrappers contrast so beautifully with brown.
             

clay: air plant planters

When I go into a ceramic studio with a plan, albeit one that’s in my head rather than already sketched out in my clay journal, I get shit done like these windowsill and wall pocket air plant pots.

I glazed the little pots in Majolica and Floating Blue, or maybe it was Ghost Blue? However, I did remember to record what glazes I adhered to the two bigger pots.                                    

And this weekend, the kiln gods delivered. I love the splotches of turquoise on the toffee brown.                          

And there is no hint of pink at all on this wall pot, which instead makes the Celadon glaze a more splotchy creamy turquoise.

Someone in the studio made a candelabra like the one below.

I'd like to make it too, but want to glaze it in any of the number of combinations of the test tiles in the studio or in Ghost Blue or Floating Blue on a porcelain clay--a bag of which I have at the parks and rec studio. I think I can finally use all the bags of clay I have from the high school studio, but work on the pots at Clay Life and then fire the greenware at both school and the parks and rec. I'll make a damp box some time this fall in which to contain sgraffito pots. And oh! I've been learning to throw bowls for the past two Sunday nights, and last night I got to trim the 6 bowls. Super fun! I was mesmerized by the spinning wheel and the subtractions of clay ribbons flying off underneath the loop tool. I now can make coordinating bowls for my coupe plates after I throw a 100 bowls or so--luckily I'll have bowls to give to the Empty Bowls event this winter.

cook: labor day summer supper

I can't trust a lot of directions on recipes for a slow roasted salmon. Most call for a 250 degree oven for 50 to 60 minutes. Too hot and too long in my opinion for the oven I have.

The supermarket not only had salmon on sale for the Labor Day holiday, but also fresh corn. And so I bought two ears and decided how I was going to cook them while admiring a pink dahlia that Patrick stuck into a vase of basil.

 

I slathered the ears with butter and sprinkled salt, onion powder, garlic powder, and hot smoked paprika--my go-to for flavoring vegetables.

Of course, there was zucchini from the harvest, and so I sliced it into planks and seasoned it the same. The fish was already 20 minutes into roasting, and so I put the corn in the oven with it.

After 50 minutes, the fish looked more than done, and there was not enough browning to my liking of my vegetables--back into the oven they went.

  

While the fish was resting, I made a lemon sauce. I drizzled the salmon with a sauce of lemon zest, lemon juice, olive oil, chives and salt.

The vegetables finally looked done.

And to make our last supper of the summer complete, I sliced a Chianti tomato and sprinkled with salt and chopped basil.

My favorite summer meal.

Hurrah to summer. But the next time, I slow cook salmon, I'm going to set the oven to 225 degrees and maybe just roast for 40 minutes because I usually sear salmon skin side for 7 minutes to crisp and then 3 minutes on the other side to finish to keep the fish supple and moist.

coziness: the paris novel

I just finished for my vacation reading, The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl. It was charming if a bit fanciful for plausibility, but I liked it enough to procrastinate from speed reading the YA novels I have to book talk after the Labor Day holiday. 

And Reichl's novel not only got me to listen to her interview with NPR linked above, but also curious enough to want to view the self-portrait painted by Victorine Meurent displayed at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as well as read a some biographical sketches about her. 

Of course, I adored Reichl's sensual descriptions of oysters and even ortolan, which frankly horrified and even kind of disgusted me. The novel is set in 1983 and made me recall my own unpleasant travel experiences in Paris--the rude Parisians who despise American tourists that speak no French and overcrowded tours of the Louvre and Versailles. However, I do also remember the baguettes being the best bread I'd ever tasted, not even needing butter, and a most wonderful meal (I remember a cold salmon appetizer and lovely salad greens dressed in a wonderful vinaigrette) at an outdoor table atop some steps in Montremart overlooking the lights of Paris and the Eiffel Tower. I related also to the repressed Stella St. Vincent and totally understand her bewilderment at being one of Whitman's "tumbleweed" expatriates who sleep and work at the Shakespeare and Company. I myself bought a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being at that bookstore in order to read something in English other than my Frommer's guide. But I digress. The Paris Novel is about Stella, a 32-year-old woman who has suffered a sexually traumatizing childhood and is afraid of men and intimacy and thereby ruled by fear and a need for safety. She leaves her secure, narrow and ascetic existence as a copy editor at a small publishing house in New York City and travels to Paris at her estranged and deceased mother's behest. On impulse, Stella steps into a vintage clothing boutique where a dressmaker fits her into a 1950s Yves St. Laurent/Dior dress and is ordered to go eat oysters and drink Chablis at a restaurant. And typical of an American fairy tale, she then discovers fulfilling and interesting work, a love for French cuisine and cooking, her French father, and as an afterthought, a handsome French boyfriend. More importantly, Stella inherits the beautiful French dress and comes into her own as she discovers her passions.