camp: mountain cabin getaway

Past the age of 55, I no longer wish to back country or even car camp. A tent is just too darn untenable when you're a senior citizen, and I just don't need a hair dryer or cosmetics at my age. I now need appliances like CPAP, and sunblock is the only thing I apply on my face. Whereas on a honeymoon car camping trip in the Pacific Northwest at the age of 20, I brought tent and stove and a cooler full of hamburger patties and hot dogs and ate godawful unhealthy meals, I'm driving only a few hours or less from home here in God's country of California and shopping my membership warehouse and local markets for foodie fixes of gourmet seafood and farm-to-table produce. 

No car camping or pitching a tent, but driving to the deep East Bay of tech towns like Livermore, San Ramon and Tracy and then a stretch of Highway 5 through Stockton and east on Highway 4 through Copperopolis, the entry point into Calaveras County and then Angels Camp and Murphys and upward. On this past weekend, I went away with a couple neighbors and their dogs, one of whom has a family cabin in Arnold, a town in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, where Dawn assured us there's a grill on the deck.

The ladies were amenable to weekend meals of Korean bbq, Vietnamese street, and an American diner lunch. As ever, I made lists...and brought bulgogi and japchae from Costco, homemade kimchi, white kimchi, and many types of banchan: cucumber, bean sprouts, Japanese eggplant that I made the morning before the trip.        

I also remembered to pack the gochuchang for said Korean feast as well as hoisin sauce, Kewpie mayo, French pate in a can, my new copper grilling grate, a Ziploc bag of marinated lemongrass pork shoulder, a jar of do chua or pickled daikon and carrots, a cucumber, jalapenos, green onions because I was also making banh mi sandwiches for supper on our first night. For the road, I used the rest of the Pickle butter, ham, and Trader Joe's baguette to make sandwiches. And I also packed ground beef, cheddar cheese, a pack of brioche buns, a jar of my Pickled Jalapenos, red onion, and spring greens for a lunch before we left.

Here was the view from the cabin's deck.

Our first meal was to utilize the French baguettes that Cecilia had baked into Vietnamese sandwiches, and I was excited to use my brand new copper grill grate that I had bought from Jagalchi. I sipped a beer as I readied the charcoal grill and watched the sunset through the trees.                               

My new grill worked great. No turning over little pieces of meat and making my hands sore from squeezing tongs. I gifted a large vase, a bud vase, and cocktail/coffee cups to Dawn and Cecilia, which she filled with flowering deer brush.

The next morning, Cecilia and Dawn got up early and walked the dogs up the mountain. I tried to sleep in but instead read before a breakfast of hash browns, English muffins, country sausage, bacon and eggs before heading into town for Dawn to buy handmade soap from a local at the post office while Cecilia and I were excited to window shop at the Ace Hardware--that store is the best for buying souvenirs. I found cool t-shirts for me and Patrick, admired the Lodge cast iron cookware and this cute mug.                      

It's made in China, but still cute enough that I wanna copy it. 

I was excited that the cabin is so close to giant sequoias. Dawn drove us to do some forest bathing in the North Grove of the Calaveras Big Trees State Park. Cecilia had brought her dog, Olivia, who unfortunately couldn't go on to the main trail and so she took in the forest from the fire lane and walked the campgrounds.            

 

For scale, I took a long shot of a fallen tree and stump.

And took the stairs myself to stand atop the tree stump and just look up.

 

Others obviously did the same.

And this fallen tree while stunningly pretty was so sad to me.

I told Dawn that I like to imagine much of this old growth forest just covering the state of California, pumping all of its oxygen into the world. 

cook: kimchi

I picked up a large head of napa cabbage along with a lot of bok choi, which took up a lot of space in the fridge. I decided to make kimchi, but first a trip to Jagalchi for more Korean food research. I decided on bulgogi, two kinds--one sweet and the other spicy and japchae. Even though I was making a spicy kimchi, I decided to buy also a package of white kimchi. Grocery bag stuffed with my intended purchases, I decided to sit and eat a half dozen tray of steamed oysters with gochuchang cocktail sauce.

And because the trays of sashimi and sushi in the deli case were twice the size that I wanted to consume, I also ordered hamachi sashimi (delicious like butter!) and the special of hotate (scallop) sushi. I had also longed to eat the Korean pancakes, but am saving that for the next time I shop this Korean emporium, which is so much closer than the HMart in San Francisco. I think I may even try to cook a shrimp jeon on a mountain cabin getaway.

 

Mother's Day was also days away when I shopped at Jagalchi, and there was a photo booth set up by a florist, whose bouquets I was loving. The color palettes were my favorite.

And this visual merchandising is definitely giving me ideas.

Maybe I'll bring the giant white Cone 10 vase I rescued from Clay People and bring a bunch of different bouquets from Trader Joe's. Definitely, I'm going back to the pottery wheel to improve my vase-making.

 

Afterward on a Friday afternoon, I cleaned and cut the napa cabbage and made a salt water solution. Into a bowl all the ingredients went and then set a plate atop to keep the vegetable submerged. The salt water bath needed to soak for 5 hours, but I only soaked it for 4.

  

I mixed the salted cabbage with the Korean chili flakes and fish sauce and chopped garlic and ginger. Into 2 quart jars went the cabbage mixture to be stored in a kitchen drawer to ferment.

But I forgot to add the green onion and had no more gochucharu flakes. However, I did have gochuchang paste, and so the next morning I cleaned and trimmed the green onion and cut them into 2" lengths and poured out the seasoned and spiced cabbage from the jars into the large bowl to combine with the scallions I had rubbed with the gochuchang paste.

I thought the kimchi looked okay. A couple days ago on an afternoon, I could see bubbles floating to the top and opened the lids to let the carbon dioxide escape and not create a messy explosion in my kitchen. The next day, I turned them upside down in the drawer, so the top of the vegetables could get all that delicious fermented juice. This morning, I decanted the kimchi into two other jars and then put them in the fridge.                 

I also tasted, and my concoction tastes like kimchi! This homemade kimchi is ready for its 3 hour drive to the cabin and then Friday night dinner tomorrow.             

clay: mini cake plate with cloche

Clay Body: Laguna Speckled Buff

Glaze: Majolica (what the community studio calls its white gloss)

Method/Firing: Hand built from slab/Cone 6; glass mini cake dome from Daiso.  

I bought the mini cake dome, thinking that one of the speckled buff plates I'd made and finally glazed in the past year would fit under perfectly.

The plate is not perfectly round, but that's the nature (and the beauty)of handmade.                       

I love it.

Either a small cake (and yes, I've that small a size cake pan) or cookies. If I do participate in the Head West popup sale with Meral, then for sure this serving dish set will be on the table of other wares. Butter dish next.

clay: banchan blate

Clay Body: Reclaimed (probably Speckled Buff and Bmix)

Glaze: Clay Life's Floating Blue + Dave's Tenmoku

Method/Firing: Thrown/Cone 6

 

I am not seeing much difference between this pot and another pot that had just Floating Blue. Again it's mostly clear glaze with streaks of blue, and I only brushed swatches of the tenmoku on the exterior. I should have dipped in the tenmoku and then fan brushed the floating blue. Next time.

clay: gravy pourer or kimchi bowl

Clay Body: reclaimed (most likely Speckled Buff and Bmix)

Glazes: Floating Blue

Method/firing: thrown/Cone 6 

 

I think I remember adhering a tiny bit of the studio's Floating Blue glaze on the rims of a candelabra atop Majolica (the studio's white gloss glaze) and loving the look of it. And so on the reclaimed clay, it's mostly a clear glaze with lots more blue pigment that yes, "floats" all over the pot. I think I wish I had dipped the bowl into Majolica and then used a fan brush to add a coat of the Floating Blue. Next time.

clay: teal appeal & black pearl bowl

When I went to retrieve this bowl last night, t'was not to be found. Either someone took it (and it's not the first time that has happened to me), or it's unrecognizably on some other shelf. I told David, the kiln loader and owner, I was just curious to see its glaze outcome. Patrick said it must've come out nice for it to disappear. 

Oh well. Do it again.

field trip: ruth asawa@sfmoma, part 2

Ruth Asawa had woven so many hanging wire sculptures that I didn't want to get exhaustive in the blogs with cataloging them, but it is interesting to note each listing or placard the provenance of certain pieces and to know when in the 50s or 60s after her stints at Black Mountain College and at San Francisco State University and during marriage and motherhood, of what materials Asawa availed herself to keep creating.

 Asawa was for sure prolific with her weaving art.

And the wood paneling in the gallery evokes the mid century interior of an SF home in which Asawa displayed her handiwork. I especially loved the few ceramics that were in the exhibit.

 

There were pictures of Asawa's various public art of the larger installations of bronze sculptures and bas reliefs. But I was not going to take a picture of a picture.

I wonder if at SF State is where she would have started to conceive and then execute her much larger installations.

I was enthralled by Asawa's paintings with ink and watercolors.

I love too that they were still life paintings of food. 

 And I too have been wanting to render eggplants, but on to sgraffito.

Just when I'd thought I'd seen all her work, you walk into rooms of more. 

 

 

I suppose these smaller wire sculptures may have been her maquettes. 

There was also a large wooden door to a home that Asawa carved as well as plaster and clay masks that she had cast, which I didn't photograph. As I mentioned before, the rooms filled with her work kept continuing.    

 

Her wire sculptures mounted onto a wall rather than suspended from a ceiling were evocative of trees and branches.

Well there's the answer to my question on maquettes.

 

Asawa had such forte too with 2-D.

I left the exhibit feeling inspired and energized about my own markings on paper and shapes formed by my own hands.