sometimes you just want to EAT THE WHOLE PAN....

I was staring at the 15 pounds of blueberries on my kitchen counter...we had already made jam....I had already been eating them by the fistful....and wondered
"is there such a thing as BLUEBERRY crisp?" and of COURSE there is!  I had never had it, although apple crisp and apple-cranberry crisp are favorites.
Forget those.
Blueberry crisp is the MOST TASTY thing you have ever tasted...well, until I try to make raspberry or peach crisp later this summer....
Recipe follows!


I am cat sitting for Puffy and the family is like "the garden will go to waste, pick stuff!"
I got purple basil and FLOWERS.  Cute flowers and cute gals, eh?


Finally, if you had a cute beagle like Penny, you would make dog cups too wouldn't you?

(dog cup by Gary Rith)

Blueberry crisp, vegan and gluten free!
4 cups blueberries
1/2 cup sugar
1 TBS corn starch
2 tsp lemon juice
___
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cinnamon
1/3 cup flour, or use oat flour to make it gluten free
3/4 cup oats--I used some of both quick and rolled
4 TBS softened margerine or butter

preheat oven to 375, grease an 8 x 8 baking pan
-in a bowl, combine the blubes with wh. sugar, corn starch, lemon juice, mix to combine and dump into the baking dish
-in the now empty bowl, combine the rest the ingredients with a spoon until crumbly, spread over berries and bake 40 minutes!

rocket pup!

You see the header?   Itold you last week I wanted to make a rocket on the wheel with the robot, and I did!  What is the next step???? ADD A BEAGLE.  Have a great weekend!


(sculpture by Gary Rith)

bears!

The Boston Bruins, Chicago Cubs, Chicago Bears, Smokey, TEDDY! Winnie! Koalas, pandas...polar, black, grizzly!!!!!
There is EVERYTHING to lovvvve about bears.
I draw them well.
But I have never made any.
I was topping this large cookie jar and asked myself "what up top?  I have had enough frogs, pigs and dogs for the day....."
It turned out GREAT.  Must make more!


(bear jar by Gary Rith)

I baked a vegan, gluten-free crust pizza yesterday....it was !!!!!!!!!!!!!


Finally...you know how the store suddenly has blueberries wicked cheap?  We made blueberry jam last night... THERE WILL BE MORE!  Strawberry jam is our favorite...except for BLUEBERRY JAM...and later in summer raspberry jam...or peach...anyway, the house smells incredible!



In other news, just listed this piggy bank...ther eis all kinds of great stuff at my etsy gallery, go and buy some of it for yerself!

"better than I thought..."

I interrupt the wife's busy day yesterday and later she tells me "better than I thought it would be!"...but more on that later.....

SPEAKING of better than I thought it would be, I had visitors yesterday.  Actually, I knew they were gonna be quite awesome, or as I said to Heidi and Ernest "I have a lot of visitors, thanks to blogging and selling pots.  Some of them are crazy and I don't want to meet them.  Maybe not AXE MURDERER PSYCHO KILLER crazy, but, you know, a little cracked....and I am polite.  YOU GUYS I wanted to meet.  You are, at least online, friendly and NOT CRAZY!"

SO, Heidi is a blogger from California that I met, yep, through BLOGGING! She is Small town mom and known by many of you already.  A sweetie pie, cat appreciator, and customer of mine too....her son Ernest (turns out, surprise! Not his real name...) wants to study MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

 (what is it with kids these days???? WASTING THEIR youth on MATH AND SCIENCE when they could do the right thing like I did, which was go to college to chase girls, drink beer and make a little art:  KIDS THESE DAYS!)

Anyway, he is definately Ivy League material and visited us and Cornell here.  I was able to give them the insider's tour...while I was on a dog walk job with Nook, my fuzzy little dog friend.

Heidi and "ERNEST" are the most relaxed, calm, polite and utterly personable people you have ever met, and I would LOVE with all CAPs Love to have them here.  He is looking at other colleges too...


In Nook's back yard yesterday....



I told the wife "hey, come here!  Let's make ice cream!" and she was like "I don't wanna!" but I was like
"I AM HUNGRY and this sounds good."
You know making ice cream as a kid, took forever, ice, salt, but tasty?  Imagine making something TASTIER in less than a minute, and VEGAN TOO if you wish!

Recipe for berry ice cream:
-dice a banana
-dice a cup of strawberries and blueberries and raspberries, whatever berries you have
-put them into the freezer for several hours
-get yer blender, take one cup yogurt or in my case, soy yogurt, dump in the yogurt, dump in the frozen fruit, blend it till smooth then spoon into bowls and EAT!
HOLY CATS why on earth would you EVER eat anything else?

Or as the wife said "better than I thought it would be!  I LOVED IT!" then she grabs another banana and a cup of berries and gets all that in the freezer so we can do it again....


Finally, remember those strawberries?  We made 2 lovely batches of jam last night, WOW, our house smells great, yum!  Have a great day!

speaking of those strawberries...

I am NOT one of those people you see heading out to camp, charging through the weeds, the hot sun, the cold rain, the BUGS, the dirt and mud.  I sure do like a good day hike or bike, but ppppft...getting down and dirty?  NO.  Ditto farming and gardening!  The wife and I make dozens of jars of jam every year, because I love the kitchen and eating.  She likes to pick berries.  I went along yesterday, as I told you, to Indian Creek farm to help her pick strawberries, which probably involves crawling through mud in a hot buggy field.
I was ready to heroically do what I could to AVOID any such effort, but I was SAVED.  If you buy already picked strawberries there it is just a few pennies a box more (DUH, why then would you bother going out into the field yourself?) BUT for a rock bottom LOW price you can buy their enormous flat of "strawberries for jam" which is like getting bagels half price because they are yesterday's.  Our trip to the farm yesterday took all of 4 minutes AND was cheaper than picking your own AND  a friend happened by and took our pic AND most of the strawberries were perfect in there, so we chose a lot to eat, the rest to chop up for jam....raspberry and blueberry jam require no cutting, which is not true of strawberries....it takes a while....
BTW, we are pictured standing next to their headless St Francis statue...what does that MEAN?
then, of course, I had a cat sitting job with my little friend Puffy...have an awesome day!

what makes us HAPPY..and the end of blogging as we know it?

I know what makes me happy, aside from JUNE and SUMMER and my cat Spike....
STRAWBERRIES.  We live very near a strawberry farm which has no crop this year!  The strawberry grapevine (tee hee!) has me and my friends wondering where to next:  and we hear Indian Creek farm has them!  You will recall Indian Creek is a small farm with EVERYTHING on Ithaca's west side (we live east, but that place is worth it indeed, it is SO cute and last year the only place protected enough to produce peaches).
But then I was thinking "I don't particularly like to pick strawberries BUT fresh strawberries are like NO other...and strawberry jam is a beautiful red delight".  So, happiness all around todaY!

Quick question:  blogging has been around 10-15 years, depending on how you count it, and I post at least once a day since 2006....but do you think it is dying out?  Are there fewer bloggers now?  Google reader is gone this week and I wonder if I will lose many of my readers.
This is what I think:  blogging is NOT DEAD YET, but what next....?
Go to comments!  What makes you happy today, and what about blogging and its near future?
 

here in my car....

I had made 2 car cups and put them up for sale on my etsy gallery and they both sold in an hour, so I made some more...they take forever to construct, but I love THEM!  Naturally, I figured I should try making car BOWLS!
Hey, question, I am badly behind on visiting all YOUR blobs lately, but what does this mean, google reader is closing????


Stuff drying, car bowls and other experiments...I was biking and huge thunderclouds came rolling along and I raced home just in time to get them inside PLUS my laundry!

Rastafari DOGGY: "96 degrees in the shade..."

I am telling the wife this morning:  "remember how we had 3 dogs and 2 cats for what, 15 years?  Now just one of each???  I am so glad I can babysit Yogi and Nook the dogs, with Penny, and also babysit Scoop and Puffy the cats....I have enough love for zillions of pets!  But this is easier...."

Yogi was visiting Saturday.  Penny went up to him, tail wagging, and gave him a BIG KISS..then they were playing in our yard...while the wife was gardening....they had to help....
You will notice Yogi has that awesome rasta fur coat.  I am reminded, today as we reach 90+ degrees, of a favorite reggae song I loved as a teen and heard again on the radio this week "96 degrees in the shade...real hot in the shade..." this is an AWESOME tune and performance, just love reggae...
HAPPY SUNDAY!




 

Moles, chapter two: from YOUR yard to my kitchen...

Forget blind rodents...I am talking MOLE sauce, a Mexican sauce made with chocolate and peppers!  It is spicy but not hot, and delicious.  Our favorite restaurant, ABSOLUTE favorite, serves many low priced take out burritos and the tofu mole is my favorite.  We deconstructed one the other day, and when I found mole sauce at the store decided to try to make it at home:  in a large flour tortilla they add guacamole, rice, black beans, and tofu in mole sauce.

SO, my version did NOT taste like theirs, lucky them!  I will still go there!  BUT it is something delicious and shockingly good and fun and easy.****


****  The wife helped and we made tortillas and guacamole from scratch.  I made Mexican rice (cook 2/3 cup rice with 2/3 cup tomato sauce and 3/4 cup water and added diced veggies, anything you feel like:  I added corn, chickpeas, bell pepper, broccoli, spinach, plus a spoonful of oil and spices.  You probably need to add more water as it cooks) and prepared 4 oz tofu (drain and dice tofu, roast 15 minutes in a little hot pepper flakes, cumin and oil then prepare some mole sauce in a hot saucepan--spoonful and 3/4 cup water then simmer the roasted tofu in it until thick).

In other news, YOU probably need groovy pots and cups, like these! Available now at my etsy shoppe!

MOLE: not just blind rodents! Chapter one....

Part 2 tomorrow, but let me tell you:  what a surprise!  You can get MOLE SAUCE at the store...and it is cheap!  It seems like this exotic item at the Mexican restaurant...but then, just like avocados, there it is, no mystery or secret about it...
Yesterday I made a version of these tofu, sweet potato mole burritos and HOLY CATS I am glad I did...the dog and cat helped but didn't get to have any...




In other news, I told you yesterday I was making the NEXT version of robots and rockets...amazing how beagles are ALWAYS POPPING UP IN MY DAY isn't it????



Finally, i was fiddling with a new green glaze and OH I love it so, isn't it nice with the blue?  Have an awesome weekend!

June moon....

This all ties together, OK?  Hang in there:
I dreamt last night that it was going to be -43 degrees, the coldest day ever recorded here!  It was with relief I awoke to a gorgeous and pleasant morning, but earlier I dreamt somebody had driven their BMW into our house....talk about kooky and surrrrrreal....

It has been topsy turvy in our lives in recent weeks.  I am always interested in what comes out of that, creatively!  You think of birth as a very difficult and painful process, but in the end it is exhilirating and joyful...

I came up with the MOON in a recent tarot reading...from wiki we get a number of ideas what that means
"If one gets this card, one may be going through a particularly difficult emotional time." 
" The association this card bears with imagery and fantasy can put one in touch with visions and insight, creativity and psychic powers"
and "The face of the mind directs a calm gaze upon the unrest below, and the dew of thought falls. The message is: "Peace, be still," and it may be that there shall come a calm upon the animal nature, while the abyss beneath shall cease from giving up form."
and finally "The Moon can be interpreted with the feeling of uncertainty, where the past still haunts, unsure of a journey but still going ahead with it, feeling watched and because it is commonly associated with dreams, fantasies and mysteries this card can also be interpreted with surreal feelings and situations in your waking life."


We are also facing a full moon, known as the strawberry moon, which is falling right around the time of  the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere! Sounds powerful...

SO, with all this in mind, here is a series of pics showing the making of some sculptural plaques--a view into my mind!  This popped into my head on a challenging morning, and my usual way of facing such things is with humor and smiles, right?
You know I have made robots, you know I have made cows jumping over the moon, but as you see from the doodle below, I wanted to make a ROCKET!  (lower drawing shows the next idea...and a piggy...more on that next week)
SO, how to make a rocket?  Not so hard, as it turns out, you throw it on the wheel like a small bottle...same thing with the robot!



final assembly


into the kiln to be fired to 2200 degrees...



You can get this ADORABLE rocket and robot plaque for YOUR walls, just go to my etsy shoppe and order now!