clay + cook: reunited and it feels almost good

The countdown is already on for the ending of school, after this week, only 6 weeks until summer break. Yesterday I finally made it back to the clay classroom after a couple weeks of being away from it. I glazed 4 red clay plates and made 1 speckled buff plate. And I finally cooked! Sort of. I still had the oyster mushrooms and choy sum and fresh ramen I had bought at HMart a couple weeks before and a bit of the tonkotsu and pork belly from HiroNori the week before.   

And I painted at work today. I really liked treating the black gouache as a watercolor and making the background of my textures of fire, air, earth and water shades of gray.

But as you can see above, I ended up tinging the gray with the color of the textures. And I'm sticking with it. I like this simpler mandala without the square borders better than the previous composition. If I had better drawing skills, I would have sketched a hand above the mandala with a compass atop the orb, and the circle surrounded by a halo of light. But maybe there's still time to sketch that.

easter sunday

I had the strangest Easter in that I totally forgot that Sunday was the Resurrection holiday because no family invited me or the hubs to a celebration meal. Also I had prom to chaperone which I kind of forgot as I was doing my weekend things. I skipped swimming too (mistake) and started off my Saturday with a Filipino breakfast of Spamsilog.                          

 

There was no Saturday clay because of an Easter egg hunt at Central Park, and so I accompanied Patrick to the garden and foraged for flowers to embellish a dish. It started with this borage I saw in Ebbie's plot and picked a dozen of these fuzzy little blooms, and then I saw the oxalis and remember seeing chefs tweezer its leaves onto their plating and so thought I'd add yellow flowers to the mix.

And I knew nasturtiums could add a lovely peppery note to a plating and plucked a few along a fence. And of course, I've seen chefs add pansies to salads.

I also spied these lavender blooms and plucked those along with more Johnny Jump-ups with little orange faces.

Lastly I saw chive blossoms and added to my ceramic dish. Patrick asked what was I gonna do with all these little blooms, and I said maybe add them to a salad. 

And so the weekend harvest included flowers along with all the spring onions.

But I was too rushed and lazy to make a salad and instead cooked ravioli to eat with the vodka Italian sausage marinara I made the previous Friday evening.                                

And prior to dinner I drove to one of my favorite bakeries to pick up Easter desserts.                               

At Copenhagen, I was asked which cake was I picking up. They laughed when I answered what text was supposed to be on it. And I kept glancing at this chocolate concoction in the pastry case and finally asked what is it? I was told it was a chocolate coffee cake.

And omg, I realized it's my favorite of Kringle because of the almond paste inside. I've been eating it with my coffee for the past few mornings.

Of course, I was not up to swimming because of prom the previous night. And so I let Sadie slept in and got up in time to make the mushroom crostini I brought to Kat's house for lunch. I sautéed cremini mushrooms in butter, chopped leeks (gotta remember to cook creamed kale and leeks and top with salmon for dinner this week), green onion, garlic and wine. I had bought an artisanal rustic baguette too after the bakery, which I buttered and toasted in the oven until golden brown. And brought out the truffle goat cheese and truffle oil

 

I had some leftover bread, cheese and mushroom mixture for appetizer this week. At Kat's house I topped the crostini with the fresh flowers and parsley.

My appetizer was lovely, and Kat cooked a Portuguese version of paella. Her neighbor, Martha made margaritas, but really I liked the Portuguese bottles of vinho bianco and vinho roja that Meral brought.

Too much food and too much booze that I am so glad to get back into the routine of work and exercise and salads. Here's my Easter humor for the season.

I'm trying to use more respectful language and behave more appropriately in public and am posting here on my personal blog. And here's my almost done mandala. 

I don't like the design, and of course am re-doing it. It's all learning. I can make mistakes and therefore can make it all over again.

gouache: mandala

Here's how far I got on my mandala yesterday. The primary black and yellow are so stark around the mandala, and so I may just do blues and grays and black and white in the central medallion. Yesterday I was loving the sap green and yellow green or leaf green and yellow and deep yellow in the floral motif. I went with the deep yellow and sap green on the geometric half spheres and negative spaces in between. Black and white on the triangular symbols for earth, air, water, fire. And then back to yellow green on the triangles next to that black void punctuated by yellow stars. I painted the border to the left and right with cyan mixed with white to create the same tint as the sky above the flowers, but umm, yeah too much water that I'm gonna have to paint another layer though I do like the splotchy look of it. And I painted a tint of Prussian blue above and below the orb.                 

 

And I had thought I had submitted all my thumbnail sketches over the break although they're not due until tomorrow, but no. And so I just did. OOoof, I kinda hate the stars inside the black space. I wish I had just painted tiny crosses. It would be easy enough to paint over the yellow with black. I wonder...what if...let's try to quote Sesame Street.

Before my swim, I cooked an Italian sausage, vodka marinara sauce with pecorino and romano cheeses and taken out ravioli for the boys' (Patrick and Charlie) dinner. However, Charlie's mom, Kate stopped by and told me to it'll taste better tomorrow and to refrigerate the sauce and come over instead for pizza. 

We did. And so I want to make a penne and mozzarella casserole with that sauce to share with them. And I forgot that this Sunday is Easter, but have heard nary a word from mine or Patrick's family. I also forgot that I accepted an invitation for me and Meral for Sunday lunch at Kat's in Tracy. And no ceramics today. The plan is to cook fixings for mushroom crostini to bring as an appetizer, and maybe I'll bake a Meyer lemon blueberry loaf in addition to the chocolate cake I'm picking up from Copenhagen. I've swimming in an hour or so and need to change my swim appointment for tomorrow to 8 in the morning in order to make it to Kat's for lunch in time. I really ought to quilt this weekend in addition to the painting. And oh shit, I just remembered that I have to chaperone prom tonight too. Am I even gonna have the energy to swim tomorrow morning?

cook & creation: chicken pie & painting

I skipped swimming and instead plunged into painting. Here’s how far I got over the past 4 hours.                  

I love it and want to take my time with it in order to limit the color palette. I want to incorporate more black and white and gray and yellow to tone down the busyness of color--because I'm already wanting to ROYBGIV the rings. 

But no maybe just yellow and gray and black like the Ancient of Days by William Blake. And then I think of the beauty of the blues in Blake's Pity. I've slept on it. I want to paint around the stars surrounding the orb of elements as a black ring and then paint the square area around the ring a dark dark blue (Holbein navy or my student grade Prussian blue?)to suggest firmament and then use some of that dark dark blue within the elements for water and sky along with yellow for the flames, black for the void, and gray for crystals or earth and then mix a bit of the same blue with white for a tint to make the sky above the flowers. And yeah use my tiniest brush to fine line all the images in the center. Then more yellow and gray rather than rainbow colors in the rings to suggest a sun.

I'm also wanting to suggest gradations of yellow in my sun rings. More white in the center? And then get more yellow pigment in my brush as I move to the outside rings? Yellow ochre over the flowers instead of light, light blue? And then a sky of blue over the ochre with a dark dark blue around the sun rings to suggest a cosmos with a void that starts with an explosion of sun?

And in between painting, I cooked dinner. I had lots of carrots, celery and turnips still from shepherd’s pie from the Saint Patrick holiday and had sautéed the vegetables in lots of butter and sprinkled flour to then make a roux to then add chicken bone broth and chunks of rotisserie chicken for a gravy and had refrigerated since the weekend--into casserole dishes it went. I also had Cecilia's leftover potatoes which I boiled.                    

While the potatoes boiled, I chopped our garden's bounty of leeks, scallions and Savoy cabbage. Into a cube of butter went the alliums and then the cabbage.

And then heavy whipping cream and milk to get hot and bubbly into which I then riced and added the boiled potatoes to mix into a Colcannon. I topped the potato and cabbage and onion mixture on to the chicken gravy and baked in a 375 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Cecilia loved it and asked for the recipe, but it's my usual no recipe-recipe.

And then back into the kitchen after dinner to make tomorrow's lunch. More savoy cabbage into my seafood salad (I've also got tiny salad shrimp thawing in the fridge to add in the morning atop).

And normally I make a homemade Thousand Island dressing, but broke down and bought a bottle at the supermarket over the weekend. Like I said, art has been consuming me that I'll resort to convenience foods.

clay: cone 10 pondering

Yesterday I worked at Capuchino and finally studied the pots I made that were fired before spring break, which Zan wanted me to take from the studio. I made 8 Black Mountain plates, and only 3 are useable. AAAaargh. So disappointing. Oh well. I do remember the first cone 10 plate I made, a Coleman porcelain plate that was warped to hell and promptly dropped into the trash bin which is where these 5 plates must go. I am getting a little better. Anyway I brought home two of the plates and traded one for a bowl with Zan.

 

There was a small saucer of this rutile glaze on this cup, but I labored at the grinder with it for a good hour. I love it and want to now use it.

And I was hoping to see more of a blue bloom on my Coleman Red glaze on Coleman porcelain cups, but of course it's in the interior of the cups. And my rutile bowls....what the heck?!? I thought I used rutile, but it doesn't look like it. I guess because they don't have any texture?

 

However, I am satisfied with my cone 10 cups. I like 'em. They look rustic and durable and handmade but not homemade.

I'm flustered by my mandala art assignment and have been suffering artist's block. I found these photo images on my phone.

I've got to let go of trying to integrate something floral into my mandala. Baby steps because I'm still a fledgling artist. I'm probably going to re-draw my mandala that I penciled on to Bristol paper on the backside. There are too many erasures to try to paint over. And that's okay.

cook: vacay meals at home

I was so wrapped up in trying to conceptualize my mandala that I didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on conceptualizing meals. I did manage to step out for lunch on a rainy and hail-filled hour with Helen at a ramen restaurant she wanted to try. En route to the restaurant I took pics of Victorian tiles from a building that was probably constructed during the Depression as it's not far from the WPA-constructed post office.           

And I ordered my usual tonkotsu at the restaurant. It was Helen's first time eating ramen. The soup was good, but I still prefer my favorite ramen parlor that’s just down the street from where I live.

And I did buy and cook longaniza for a Filipino breakfast I shared with Cecilia. She brought over garlic oil and steamed rice and eggs to fry while I had been frying the breakfast meat.                                  

I had bought and cooked two packages to split.

Still my favorite breakfast.

And that was the food kickoff to my spring break though I had also stepped out the Sunday before spring break for a beer with Cybil at a brewery in San Carlos that had cool art.                             

More inspo. When I bought longaniza, I also bought chicken and pork to cook adobo which we hadn’t eaten in ever so long. Last night Patrick even ate my leftover adobo along with his steamed broccoli. I was too lazy to even cook a green vegetable, but justified no vegetable at dinner with my huge green salad at lunch.               

Another leftover for dinner I’ve been eating this work week are the hard boiled eggs gratins I prepared at the tail end of spring break.  

And I've listening to a lot of music while making art and cooking.

But food wise, I hadn’t cooked a lot because I was so obsessed with drawing and swimming every day. Because I couldn’t surf, I swam a mile each day of vacation, taking only a break the Friday and the weekend before returning to work. An uneventful and non-destination vacation, but I was glad to just relax and enjoy Sadie.