celebrate: lunar new year planning and decor

Some years ago, I threw a girls' night of dumpling making, a hybrid celebration of Galentine's Day because we were all women and the Chinese New Year because we were filling the dumplings with pork and scallions and water chestnuts seasoned with soy sauce. That party activity was so much fun that I’d like to host something similar again. But this time, I’m going to host the feast in the condo clubhouse instead of my small dining table and expand the guest list. I still want to have the event centered around the making of a meal, but keep the party simple too. And instead of making dumplings, we'll be making or rather pulling noodles AND then a potluck of toppings for what we've made into a noodle bar. I've already made a guest list and texted invitations.                  

I even found an image that I could blow-up and paint with acrylic to simulate sumi ink for a party banner.    

I found Chinese calligraphy for the Year of the Snake and used the copier to print out the larger text and broke out the tempera and acrylic paint.      

I'm pleased with the outcome, and the banner is rolled and ready to hang for the day of the party. I've also ordered red napkins embossed in gold and scratch-off fortune telling cards from Oriental Trading Company. I plan on getting almond cookies and white rabbit candy from World Market and collecting disposable chopsticks during the month. I'll stop at the Diddams Party store and see what other red decorations or Chinese new year goods can be had.

cook: shrimp and scallops grits

It's a new year, and so I'm trying to use up what's in my pantry and freezer as well as purge outdated foods. I felt a bit guilty anbout packages dated from 2 years ango. While  assessing what’s on shelves and in drawers, I found grits or polenta in my pulses and grain drawer and a bag of shrimp and package of bacon in the freezer. Shrimp 'n grits, which is probably why I bought the grits in the first place. I grated some Kerrygold cheddar cheese and started frying the bacon. The last time I remember cooking this dish, I used a whole pound of bacon and all the grease too for the dish. It was so very rich, but we devoured all in one pass.

 

I peeled the shrimp and used the shells to make a broth in which to cook the grits. Since I didn't have enough shrimp, I added some scallops to the seafood mix.

 

I wanted to add as much vegetable and citrus as possible to the dish, and so I chopped a lot of scallions and parsley and halved a lemon and then decided to also serve Swiss chard alongside the seafood and grits. I didn't anticipate the 20 to 25 minutes to cook the grits and was late at serving dinner, but added cheese and cream for some extra richness and to make up for not using all the bacon fat.

I sautéed the chard in a bit of bacon fat and garlic and decided to add red wine vinegar for a little tang and finally added the scallions and parsley to the grits rather than serve and scatter the herbs on top.

I then sautéed the shrimp and scallops in a little more bacon fat and squeezed half a lemon on to the seafood and let Patrick and myself spoon the grits in to our bowls and scoop seafood au jus and bacon bits on top.

I think I enjoyed the sautéed Swiss chard the most. There's about a cup of corn grits left in my pantry, but I don't know if I would ever want to cook this dish again. I might just toss and compost the grits, which is so awfully wasteful. Golly I wish I had hogs that I could feed the corn to. But wait. I just watched an episode of Ina Garten serving meatballs atop polenta, and so that's the plan of what to do with the last of the corn grits.

clay: speckled buff clay

I've been obsessive over clay these past two weeks of my winter break with a 25-pound+ bag of speckled buff. Besides a few candelabras and a couple of small planter pots, I also made this container for my sister-in-law's snake plant, which I noticed was in the original black plastic pot from the nursery. She said she likes neutrals, and so this clay body will suit her tastes. I wish I had made the planter a half inch taller as greenware.

I also made the drainage dish, which had to be larger in diameter. I searched the studio for a larger circumference and found it in a banding wheel. 

  

These two pots emerged as bisque yesterday, and I glazed them right away in Majolica.

I noticed a crack at the edge of the bottom where the circle bottom joins the walls, which will be okay since I did also make a drainage dish. This snake plant pot was a fast build because I had also been working on a large candelabra that I'm trading for a large salad bowl with a fellow potter, Cyrus. I'll be handing off another 25-pound bag of speckled buff to him, which I have at the parks and rec studio. Yesterday, I also meticulously constructed these two slab mugs, which joined the set of 3 candleholders from Friday on the greenware shelf along with a bunch of discs for a windchime.

 

I also decided to get rid of these clay balls, which will be going into a pomegranate rattle: I pinch potted a small hunk of more speckled buff clay and will punch a hole at the top in the middle of a 5-spiked calyx crown (I need to remember to exaggerate its length or look at pictures on my phone as reference) and punch a small hole at the bottom.

And that was my last Saturday of this winter break.

And today of my last Sunday of winter break, I wanted to make air plant holders with the last of my speckled buff. I was thinking a square box fronted with a frame of a 4-windowed pane, but I didn't even get to that bag of speckled buff this afternoon. Maybe I'll execute the framed air plant box on my next visit to the studio now that I've had some time to think about its design. I ended up making today's air plant containers from marbleized clay a claymate gave me: a very small cylinder and 2 circle wall vases like I've made in the past, which are just two discs banded by a strip that is short enough to leave an opening for a plant with a hole at the back of one of the discs to hang on a nail.                         

I finished my pomegranate too.               

I even inscribed text on it and then left it next to an incomplete sgraffito dish because its walls are thick to get bone dry. I'm going to have to be careful with adhering the pink and violet underglazes on it and may use a tiny brush instead of my usual finger painting on the greenware pot. I was thinking too of the possibility that the fired snake plant pot might not be tall enough; in which case, I'm going to snag some speckled buff clay from the bag I was going to give to Cyrus to throw my salad bowl.

clay: contemporary candelabra

I had thought I was going to dip this canedelabra into the new studio glaze, Chocola-tea, but Amy, the studio tech suggested other glazes. I taped resist the bottom. And then left it after brushing on 3 layers of glaze on it.

 

The candelabra is not wobbly though not all four corners touch bottom. The tapers stand straight enough though in this picture it doesn't look completely upright. What also doesn't appear in the photo are the pools of light blue (Ghost Blue, get it?) at the bottom of the curves.

The 1/4" glaze of Floating Blue at the top rim of the taper holders, which I fan brushed on, is just gosh darn beautiful.

And you can see too in the pics that one corner of the wave doesn't touch bottom, but it's still stable.

I obviously love this candelabra, but I can't keep everything I make. I'm going to have to figure out how to display it artfully to buyers. I know that both ceramics community studios will be holding popups in January or February, and so I plan to just sell my air plant pots. I also need to remember next time to use that tape resist at the opposite ends of these candelabras because some of the glaze stuck to the kiln shelf, which I'll need to grind off.

clay: sgraffito #7

 

clay: menopausal af cup

I had hoped for different outcomes for this cup. I had asked David if there was any translucence to the Blushing Pink glaze, and he said there was but that perhaps I should sponge off a bit to let the text show through. I sponged off too much.

Oh well. I'm still drinking my Airborne and peppermint tea from it. I do however love this glaze combination of Blushing Pink and Muddy Waters and will do it again but just press the text harder into the clay and then maybe use a tiny brush to paint resist into the text and then glaze as usual.
 

cook: filipino new year’s eve dinner

Have I said how much I love winter decorations?

I had yet to invite my neighbors, Nancy and Helen over to a Filipino dinner, and it was New Year's Eve last night. I went to the ceramics studio in the morning and came home in the afternoon to cook. I knew I was going to cook lumpia, adobo, a cucumber salad, and a vegetable dish of some sort with kabocha squash from our garden and found a simple recipe. Filipino food encompasses a lot of vegetables, not just pork and chicken. I started my mise en place with the peeled and chopped kabocha squash, a bag of green beans and salted cucumber, draining. Next I put the chicken thighs into a medium heated pot to start rendering its fat and browning the skin.

 

While I was browning the chicken, I smashed garlic and cracked whole black peppercorns and then added bay leaves and coconut vinegar, filling half of the mortar. I then filled it to the top with soy sauce.

 

The chicken was seared, to which I then added the soy vinegar mixture. I had three bone-in pork chops and trimmed the fat and marinated it in 4 tablespoons of fish sauce. I started browning the pork fat in a Dutch oven.

 

Aargh, I was cooking too many things at once, albeit over low or medium low heat. I forgot to add the onions and garlic to the frying pork, to which I'd already added water and coconut milk. Oh well. Never too late and the aromatics still added a lot of flavor to the sauce along with more ground black pepper.

Helen and Nancy arrived, and I had already been frying the lumpia and putting them in the oven to keep warm. I had reserved some of the crushed garlic and black pepper to add vinegar and dip the lumpia into. While I ate and played hostess a bit, I was still simmering the chicken and adding the vegetables to the stir fried pork. 20 minutes later, dinner was ready. Chicken and pork adobo to the table.

Green beans were tender though the squash was a bit overdone. Next time, I'm making more sauce for the vegetables with more broth and coconut milk. I had divided the can of coconut milk between the adobo and the simmered vegetables, but no matter, I was setting the dish on the table.

My low sodium Filipino dishes, complete with brown jasmine rice on the table.

12 Hours later, I'm back at it. I'm cooking garbanzo beans for hummus and roasting eggplant for baba ghanoush and then pan baking pita bread for meals the rest of the week.