gluten-free brownies to DIE for and TWEE serving plates....

(serving muffin or cake stands by Gary Rith, muffins and brownies too!)
We live in TWEE times
(def. from somewhere on the internet):  excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty, or sentimental.

24 year old women in Ithaca go down the street on vintage bikes with cute footwear.... (OK, yes, they are just as cute as they think they are...I doubt if many men have ever complained about this), men wear handmade hats with beards knitted on and then..... there are the cupcake stands.  This is part of our TWEE TIMES, as I see it.

Cupcakes themselves are totally TWEE.  But a cute decorated WEE little decorative stand to PUT ONE ON?  That is like TWEE SQUARED or twee taken to the nth degree...and I am OK with that :)

I have made larger ones for actual cakes or a bunch of cookies and made some small ones for, like, one muffin, cookie, cupcake, or even BROWNIE (as hard as it is to make a larger cake stand, HELLO!  Small ones are really EASY, note to self.....)

The picture below is my kitchen and odds and ends, including a yellow cake stand I use all the time, as you know.  The brownies are Bob's red mill brownie mix:  I make my own from scratch, and this was given to me and....well, it is a mind blowing (and healthy!) mix.  Gonna buy some for the cupboard..in case of emergencies...

You may need a new frog cup, right????? I wrote a haiku back when it was WARM, 2 days ago (yesterday morning was in the 60s but it went down to the 20s and snowed 3 inches!) And YES, haikus are twee, doncha think?

Spring sounds like a
Million peepers on the
Banks of Fall Creek

Of course, Fall Creek is the little river behind our house (or large creek). Peepers have something to do with frogs, right?  And they were LOUD.  Wonder what they are doing NOW...
Anyway, you can have this mug! From my etsy shoppe! Here is a twee band singing about BEING TWEE...and they are so cute....

TEAPOT TUESDAY number one and dreaming of TWINS!

(teaset by Gary Rith)

Before we get to more important items of business, let me tell you about dreams.
And let me preface this by saying I DO NOT do drugs! NONE! I am no flake! I don't even drink caffeine, but sure, the glass of white wine with dinner, sure, but that is about it.
But my dreams, GOOD GOLLY.  I make pottery in dreams, wake up and make them.
I live other people's lives, having their jobs and living their lives.  I wonder if I am psychic, because it is so vivid?
I have a PET in my dreams, as many of you remember:  my dream hamster Robert.  I have dreamt of Robert for years, he is like this living and breathing little fuzzy dude waiting for me to come back to him and put in some fresh pine shavings and some corn flakes.
Sometimes I even dream about my own life, but it can be WACKY SH!T.
I told you last month I dreamt the wife and I had a BABY.  I was shocked and surprised to find, as a childless but childish old man (as my parents remind me:  they were grandparents when they were my age) I was amazed at how much I really loved that baby, almost as much as I would love a puppy ;)

OK, so last night????? WACKY SH!T:
the wife and I were riding in a train moving to Chicago.  (20 years ago we moved AWAY from Chicago) When it came time to disembark, surprise! She went into labor and gave birth to twins.
My wife is the thinnest woman you have ever met in your life.  Her internal furnace must be something fierce, because she has the appetite of a heavyweight boxing champion.  Same weight, within a pound, since she was 13.  Her father and grandmother were the same, just the way some people are. (and she will kill me for writing all this, but she won't read this till later, soooo...)
Anyway, my point?  Would such a small woman have an easy time giving birth to twins on a train platform???  Well, my wife did, just popping out twins like it was just another task on the list to cross off, along with dusting and cleaning the telephone and microwave with a q-tip.

ANYWAY, these twins, a boy and girl, oh how I loved them!  They were so small, so alive.  So tiny, too, and like little wrinkled raisins.  I have very detailed, very vivid dreams, as I say, and feel it for real. I would be holding a sleeping baby in one room, she the other sleeping in the other room, and if one woke and started to cry, the other would do the same...you could tell they had a connection.  The dream ended with "oh, we should name them!".
I had no ideas at first, but the wife said "I have always like Archer and Asher but I also like Giselle and Grace".  Later I would think of other names like Arthur, but although we did not finish deciding, you have to match first names to the last, so they sound nice, right? Ours is a short, one syllable last name, you have to think carefully. We were thinking Monica Rith and David Rith when I awoke....

Thursday I told you it was TEAPOT TUESDAY, but it didn't count because it was Thursday.  And that I would try to remember to start TEAPOT TUESDAY on ... Tuesday! I wrote it on my calendar, I remembered!

Don't you love this wee set, size of an orange with 2 golfball size cups?  For sale now at my etsy shoppe!

WHAT could be more cute?????

Look at this young dude, using my car bowl for his snack!  Kate and Jim's grandson Elijah KNOWS things taste better in one of my car bowls, tres cute, hmmm?


I told you yesterday I was making Vegan Stoner's pineapple pizza and holy CATS it is good. I have never had pineapple on pizza, and you KNOW I love pineapple...this pizza also has spinach and soy chorizo:  BRILLIANT.  I usually make my own gluten-free pizza crust, but had been given a Bob's red mill gf pizza crust mix and used it for the first time also...superb all around!


Why yes, the cat was checking it out in the oven and those are my bare toesies, cute, hmm?  Don't look too close...
The wife is super cute, as always, and will kill me if she finds I posted pictures I sorta almost maybe promised I wouldn't post....and then I did it TWICE.  I am bad.... have an awesome Monday!

improvisational cooking: "just so good I want to savor it" sez the wife

Do you know The Vegan Stoner?  Beautifully illustrated, fun, affordable, healthy, EASY cooking blog.  I have cooked items from the blog for some time but just got the cookbook and I am making my way through it!  The latest listing for pineapple pizza I am making tonight, for example.

Their idea is cheap, simple, healthy that anybody can do, and in a way that is SO easy.  The first recipe of theirs I tried cracked me up, the mac and peas, because it was just a couple of instructions including "a handful of this, a spoonful of that".  That is how I cook!

Last week we made their chili cheese fries (remember-no cheese, just a vegan cheesy sauce), pad thai on Friday, and because my cheese fries had no chili, I decided to try making their chili last night.  It basically says "fry a diced onion, dump some canned beans, corn and tomatoes in a pot with BBQ sauce and stir awhile".  And because I always creatively improvise cooking and this cookbook encourages it, I added diced carrot, bell pepper and spinach. Soooo yummy, and I paired it with Nicole Hunn's gluten-free on a shoestring's cornmeal flatbread, a new one for me, just a couple of ingredients baked in a skillet:  like, cornmeal and coconut milk mixed together, that is pretty much it! BUT WHAT a tasty, rich, crispy wonder :)  Have an awesome Sunday!

the first morning WITH and the first morning WITHOUT and that f$%king mouse...

(piggy sculpture by Gary Rith)
I was all excited...the first half hour I was up this morning I got into my robe and was like "hey, the house is not too cold, maybe for the first time this winter I don't need to turn the heat on!"

It has been our coldest and longest winter ever.  I remember the blizzard at Thanksgiving, and we had never seen below zero in March.... but it has been nice the last couple of days, maybe even 80 Monday! Snow expected Tuesday, though, no joke....

Anyhow, the heat is on now, but still :)

In other news, I made these choco chip cookies yesterday and they are flippin' AWESOME.  Gluten-free from Bob's red mill!  I was given a mix, and although I always cook from scratch, this is a REMARKABLY tasty mix.  Mindblowing even.  My breakfast consisted of one of those, the first time EVER, with peanut butter on it, and a muffin I had made....

That f%$king mouse? Cheeky bastard.  I tossed the muffin paper into the compost under the sink.  I am sitting here with Spike the cat and FIVE minutes ago I hear rustling under the sink....and the paper is out of the compost and dragged toward the hole by the pipe.... this has happened so many mornings I can't count--this mouse loves muffin papers!  And where is my killer kat Spike in all this?  Asleep on the chair next to me....

Have an awesome Saturday :)

the FERN that ate my head....

I opened the window Thursday!  Temps went from 24 to 68...sooooo nice and sunny too.  Spike never goes out, and he spends the first day of open window IN the window with the fresh air....

The wife brings home this giant fern....and wants to get it out of the sh!tty plastic pot....lucky she knows a dude who can help her with that  ... I could almost crawl into that flower pot, although the fern might get me first....



Yogi was playing in our yard with Penny Thursday...look at what a little princess Penny is...
have a great Friday!

THURSday can be teapot day too....

I just had a brilliant idea:  Teapot Tuesday!  But it is not Tuesday.  We'll see if I can remember that next week...and the weeks after....

These guys just came outta the kiln.  This is why you become a potter:  because when you were 19 your girlfriend challenged you to make a teapot that did not drip and you have been obsessed with teapots ever since :)


(new teapots by Gary Rith--3 out of 4 here are the size of an orange)

the last mention of _____, I SWEAR it!

OK, sure, it probably gets TEDIOUS, right?  Me and my birthday week, which this year somehow stretched from March 28 to April 8?  WHY THE FLIP NOT *** sez I...it has been a long and cold winter and is still not exactly WARM. But most of the snow is melted and gone, BONUS!

So, I promise this is the last you will hear about my birthday...for at least 50 weeks.

I visited my mom and dad at their farm to celebrate this famous birthday.  Yep, the actual people who had more to do with my birthday week than any other!
3 months before I was born, my great-grandmother sent my expectant mom a paper birthday clown to decorate the table for my older sister's birthday.  That clown has BEEN THERE for me and my birthday for, um, 48 years...

below, my dad in front of the barn and garage with my beagle





above, me on their pond, below, my father in front of it


*** there are 48 year olds with kids and grandkids, and I have a dog and cat--THEREFORE perhaps it is easy to understand why I never progressed past the age of 15, I am still quite childish, hmmm?

when life GOES TO 11: a couple of unexpected prizes in small packages...

I was thinking yesterday, as I made gluten-free zucchini bread, which you KNOW I love so much, although you could argue I love anything full of cinnamon which I can cover with peanut butter, I asked the universe "I wonder if there is such a thing as peanut butter bread... I bet there is!" and do I need to tell you, THERE IS?  So many choices!  I chose the simplest recipe and... it goes to 11.  It is the BEST and easiest bread I have EVER made--when you consider easy and tasty.  I have made a lot of bread, and a lot of yummy gluten-free bread, and all are good.  This one happens to be flexible, can be made gluten-free and is even vegan and healthy AND (click here for peanut butter bread) the woman who developed it is a healthy cooking and dessert genius. I mean, LOOK at this huge and lovely loaf, and imagine how lovely the house smells, of peanut butter and cinnamon!

Other unexpected prizes:  the light green glaze lower down is a huge favorite, as you know, and I wondered what might happen if I switched the (green colorant) copper for (blue colorant) cobalt?  The result was not what I imagined but SO MUCH more electric and wonderful--a sharp cornflower or sky blue.  I have a glaze I call baby blue which is periwinkle at times, but this glaze is a darker tone, and somehow just POPS.  What a nice summery color, hmm?

Have an awesome Tuesday!

(vases and cups by Gary Rith)

what would Dumbo do????

You never know where you are going with decorating:  TOO MUCH or not enough?   There is something about an elephant teapot, with Dumbo or Babar spouting tea out of his trunk, that MAKES sense, right? Therefore, balanced design and decoration :)
Have an awesome Monday yerself!


(elephant teapots by Gary Rith)

Penny had some people over to party....

If it is your birthday week and you fill the house with cupcakes, you HAVE to have people over, right?  
My dog is an excellent hostess :)  have an awesome Sunday yourself!

KILLER kupcakes... gluten-free!

It was my birthday week...and I get the daily email from Nicole Hunn's gluten-free on a shoestring blog... Easter cupcakes!  I have not made cupcakes in awhile, but I have made a lot of cakes and muffins, and holy KATS, what you realize about cupcakes?  It is that they are very TIDY.  Just their own tiny, neat little package, no fussing, no slicing, one nice serving.  OK, sure, they have been very fashionable in some quarters, even TWEE and TRENDY:  as the wife and I joke "get yer free-range Brooklyn artisanal cupcakes here!".

I can make artisanal cupcakes too...and as I remark to the wife "now I need to make a tiny little cupcake stand, like my cake stand!" and she is like "to hold just ONE cupcake???" "right" "how CUTE!" and I am like "how tidy!".  She wants me to make a bunch of large flower pots. I think cute little cupcake stands made at the same time would be hilarious.

With this recipe I did not bother with the decorations she used in the recipe, and I have to make things dairy-free, so used margerine for butter and soy milk and dairy-free chocloate for the frosting AND, inside?  I did not see any reason to not put chocolate chunks into the cupcakes, then I made my mom's recipe chocolate frosting and put MORE chocolate chips on top of THAT... and finally, if a person wanted the vanilla cupcake made chocolate, just add some spoonfuls chocolate powder and a little more milk to the batter, ta da! (the wife told me "you're not gonna post that picture of me with the frosting pan are ya?" but we all know it is better to blog it first and apologize later...)

day of the dogs?

(Maxie, me, Nook, flowers)

Ever have a day where you fall asleep like you climbed a mountain range??? Ever have a day CHOCK FULL of dogs...and cats? And the many pots you are glazing and finishing?  It was like that Thursday, baked cupcakes too... more on that another time.

Most of this week I have been happily up to my elbows in dog walking.  The vet tells me yesterday "Penny has gained weight, she needs to lose it by June 1 when I see her again!" and I sputter "but poor dog, it has been so cold, there were days she couldn't do her miles!".  But I have to keep in mind:  don't walk so many OTHER dogs that I forget MY OWN, of course.  And besides, Penny has gained only 1.5 pounds.  Pah.  A pittance for a little athlete like her in spring!

Yogi was a nervous pup yesterday, with construction going on over there.  He stayed with us a lot of the day.  I also had to go take out Nook...who has his cousin Maxie visiting... I would LOVE to kidnap Maxie, what a sweetie....

(below, Yogi with Penny and Yogi with Spike)