ginger cashew carrot fat cat....

We were talking last night, speaking of Spike cat, saying that CAT is in the word CONTRARY don't you agree? No surprise is it????
You can dig Spike cat's extensive sprawl here, and the super duper sugar bowls I made, but look below! A RECIPE for carrot ginger cashew soup, holy cats, soooooooo awesome!*




*carrot ginger cashew soup, done my way

--saute an onion, few cloves garlic, a couple tbs fresh ginger, as it sautees:
--chop 1 1/2 pounds carrots and toss them in too--sauteeing total will be at least 15 minutes, soften things up then
--pour in a cup of white wine and 7 cups broth (veggie broth!) and start it to a boil then
--reduce heat, cover and simmer 45 minutes and then
--add 2 tbs lime juice, 1 1/2 cups cashews and pour into a blender and puree baby, puree!!! you can keep the soup warm in the pot on the stove while
--prepare some noodles, we had these Chinese cellophane noodles which are perfect and beautiful, and prepare a green veg--the original recipe asks for green onion, but I just diced green pepper
--put soup in bowl, put some noodles on top, then add some green stuff then eat! A MILLION times tastier than you could EVER imagine, and super easy to make :)

vroom vroom!

Like I was telling you, I made a working car teapot, and here tis, out of the kiln! Its just awesome, I am soooo excited....It rolls, oh yes...it does not roll well, but it rolls :)
(as my favorite teacher would say, though, "make more!")

(rolling car teapot by Gary Rith)

20 years plus.....

Before I talk 20 years, you will notice we were walking around Cornell's campus goofing around Sunday...why not? It has been so warm! I went to Bennington which has what some people call the prettiest campus on earth....but others would say Cornell has the prettiest campus on earth...both groups would be correct. They are both very beautiful places.

ANYWAY, me and the wife met on a campus NOBODY would ever call beautiful, when we were graduate students at University of Illinois at Chicago. Much of Chicago is beautiful, although UIC had some pretty spots, most was sorta dark and utilitarian. I was happy there though, and the wife ran the ceramic studio and gallery where I messed around...and it was 22 years ago this week that I met her. 1989!!!! We were friends for awhile, but it was ALSO this week, 20 years ago, that we had our first outing in 1991. Not a date, really, yet, but we started palling around outside the studio 20 years ago this week....(and got married 13 months later, Christmas 1992 :)

teapots on teapots....

A joke that I have always liked: turning the knob atop a teapot into a little teapot itself :) Happy Sunday!

(teapots by Gary Rith)

jammin'

Many of you will remember we were out late one July evening at the farm picking raspberries in the 96 degree heat...it had been 100 earlier....and got a boatload of my FAVORITE berries and froze a bag of them...to make into jam when it is not 96. We do this in the summer--freeze a measure of berries to make jam over the holidays when it is cooler to make jam, plus it is, you know, a taste of summer. The wife had also picked and frozen strawberries, and yesterday was the day...I am famously impatient and bad with this operation, so she clearly has to run the show: you can ruin jam easily. I was taking pics, per usual, and there were screeches of "don't blog this!" which I am sure she did not really mean..... in other news, I was fiddling around and got an excellent new green-blue glaze scheme idea, and gave the wife the mug below, super nice, and finally, potters will laugh when they see that Spike's favorite bed is a clay box set on the heat vent .....

hotter n' hell Thanksgiving :)

SO, like I was saying, we made chocolate cake and cashew stuffed jalapenos for Thanksgiving. Superb and delicious!!!!! (and all vegan) Anyway, I cook with jalapenos every day, but that is like, one jalapeno in a big pot of soup, you know? These suckers we wrapped in tortillas with tomato and were soooo good...but soooo hot. Took us over the edge! Next time, I gear it down one level, to banana peppers, which are about, what, 25 percent as spicy as jalapenos.....

some of you have been asking about my slippers...

I was like, without consulting anybody,
"the heck with pumpkin pie! I want chocolate cake for Thanksgiving!" and you will recall that I recently made us a small yellow cake stand....and here they are together...its a pretty big, badass cake for a small cake stand, wouldn't you agree? Vegan, no eggs or butter, just chocolate, chocolate, chocolate as far as the eye can see. I am glad the wife has a big appetite because otherwise I wouldn't know what to do with it (the wife also feels about chocolate the way I feel about peanut butter :) Based on this recipe.

Yes, we do some untraditional things for our holidays, it is the anarcho-punk way. I like to make cranberry apple crisp, and we shall have some for breakfast.....I had a picture of last night's sweet potato burritos but it was blurry---another twist on traditional Thanksgiving foods. We are making cashew stuffed jalapenos for Thanksgiving dinners...which is probably as far from turkey as you can get :)
In other news, many of you will know about the secret of the slippers. I will not say any more, except to show my collection here--nearly 20 years ago I asked the wife to turn my pair of grey slippers into mice, and then about 12 years ago I asked her to turn my red slippers into dogs. She is pretty handy with a needle :)

beagle O'rama......and then some

I was adding a couple of awesome mugs to my etsy gallery, and needed to find some way to tell YOU without being boring and repetitive!

So I thought of a new advertizing twist, and I am like "come here little beagle" and she is sleepy, and then I wrap her in lights, for that festive mood that makes YOU say

"I really need a beagle mug!!!!"

g




(awesome new pottery for sale in Gary's etsy gallery)

the most fancy teapot you have ever seen in your life

Many of you will recall that this summer I started making car jars...wheel thrown parts assembled into a sculptural car shaped pot. Its complicated.
I was sitting there with the wife having the beer:
she: why are you sitting there with a distant and dreamy smile?
he: I just got an idea!
she: ???
he: OK, what if you made a car teapot...that rolls for real???

And I did. Wheels not attached in this pic, windows not finished and not fired yet, but this gives you an idea of its awesomeness....and fired and finished car jars in the lower pic....

Tuesday's post TODAY

I am realizing that I have an immensely short attention span, and that I am already bored with my Monday morning blog post, and I knew this one was lined up for next, so I couldn't help but post it NOW (as Denis told me once "you are the least patient person I have ever met" and the wife reminds me of that...daily... :)
Anyway, I told you last week I had ordered a slick electric drip coffee pot that never came, so I decided to make us a huge one of our very own, to replace the last drip I had made for us and which I cracked. This doggy drip coffee works FANTASTICALLY and makes about 9 good sized cups. Suz had mentioned she did not know how a pot like this works, so maybe these pics show....
you just heat up water, put coffee into a filter in the funnel top and voila!

(Gary's new coffee pot, made by Gary)

because of ME the breakfast room got locked.....

OK, so you know, I am at a new event this weekend in Syracuse, I don't know these people, but they are very nice and invited me to join them etcetcetc, and I arrived to find that I AM THEIR POSTER CHILD. Well, not really, but they had put my work on the postcard, this zebra teapot of mine there. Nice!
Anyhow, this thing is at this nice hotel, and Saturday people are going back and forth across the street to Dunkin Donuts.
I see the hotel cafe and breakfast room "free continental breakfast for guests only" and it is next to the exhibition space. I am no dummy, and I have my mug, so I am in there Saturday helping myself--the heck with Dunkin Donuts. Twice. Ignoring dirty looks from the staff. I figure "I am an invited guest alright, and this space is costing the group TWO THOUSAND BUCKS for the weekend...they can spare some continental hospitality with me..."
OK, after my third trip? I see them locking the door to the free cafe....and further dirty looks from the staff....which didn't seem all that friendly to me. What does 2 thousand bucks get you these days, hmmmmm?
Anyway, lucky me, I was treated well by this nice bunch of folks, all these potters gossiping, such fun!!!!! In the last few minutes, some lady showed up, and I swear I am not making this up, bought TEN of my cookie jars and teapots, holy cats!

smooth sailing so far....

SO, like I say, I am at a fair in Syracuse this weekend. Actually, I am NOT, but my stuff is. They do the selling for me. As the door opened to customers and my shy self slipped out the door and away the first customer was buying one of my yellow teapots...seemed auspicious to me! More on everything later, and here is another wall piece: beagle mama! As many of you know, our wee adorable beagle Penny had been found in a snow storm, aged about 2, having just given birth to puppies. Nobody ever found the puppies, nobody ever posted flyers that they had lost their beagle who had just given birth. (I like to imagine she had wonderful puppies in some nice family's home, cared for them nicely, and one morning saw a squirrel and chased it 100 miles and got lost---which, if you know beagles, is an entirely plausible possibility) Anyway, I love the mother and child, beagle mama and pup motif....

oh gosh, see ya...when????

I had some rather fine and nice items come out of the kiln today, like bee stuff! Some of it went straight to my online etsy gallery (6 items sold right away....could it BEE that BEE items are a popular thing????)

ANYWAY, I will be at the Syracuse Potter's Guild Holiday Sale Saturday and Sunday, Maplewood Inn which they tell me is conveniently located near where interstate highway 81 meets the NY state thruway, also known as interstate 90...sooooo, you could drive over from BOSTON! Or SEATTLE! Or even, I guess, come over from Montana or up from Philadelphia or......anyway, have a nice weekend, loves ya :)


(pottery by Gary Rith, for sale now at his etsy gallery...6 may have sold, but there are still plenty left!)

The Pythons had a thing about bees....

diary of a BAD CAT and pottery in action....

You will recall a day or 2 ago, my first cake stand came out of the kiln--the wife asked for it, they are kinda hard to make and fire, but ours turned out great...so I had to make a cake! A wee blueberry torte.....




In other news, Spike cat had one of those days....he sleeps 23.5 hours a day, but sometimes when he is awake? TROUBLE.