when the INTERNET rules your life... and improves it :)

I was talking with JP last night "I made avocado pizza! I never knew there was such a thing or that I would love it so.  Until my neighbors posted pics of avocado pizza on facebook..."
and I go on to marvel at the wonder of seeing something new online and loving it passionately that same day...

OK, so I see those pics and yesterday look up avocado pizza with pesto, because my basil plant is looking a bit bushy and who doesn't love pesto pizza? I come across this SUPERB recipe with artichokes, spinach and pesto topped with avocado...a lovely all green pizza! (click here for recipe)

(You add the avocado after the pizza bakes, and since the wife and I were saving half we only topped half in the pic below).


In other news ANOTHER neighbor gives me ANOTHER new thing...dates!  I have never had dates before and WHY NOT?  They are wicked delicious...and I find they are good for baking too, as in, using some elderly bananas, dates and super-nutritious teff flour to make banana bread! (click here for recipe)



Yogi came over Tuesday.  It was hot, he still has his winter coat on.  He and Penny kinda hung out in the shade, doing nothing... have an awesome day!

Teapot Tuesday number 5: "what's that thing up there?"

(teapots by Gary Rith)
I love these 2 teapots, glazed in my shimmery dark green glaze.  I have told you I keep a box of cane and bamboo handles, ready to use depending on what comes out of the kiln.  I select a few of the right size, and hold them up and eye what fits and looks best for that teapot:  the wrapped oval here is the creme de la creme!
A customer was eyeing the small one Sunday and asked "what's that thing up there?" and I was puzzled and they asked "that thing on top of the lid?" and I pointed "this?" a nod in reply "oh, that is just a little loop for a knob" and the customer, who may not have much imagination, sniffed and said "that's different".
My wife often tells me "art education for little kids in this country sucks".

fair over = TALL FRUITY PINK DRINKS

Shall I take you through an art fair weekend?  At least a little, and just my view, right?  BEHIND THE SCENES!

Step one is wander through the studio, pluck juicy items off the shelves to box and bring... that went pretty quickly--I selected pots, packed them into boxes along with my tablecloths and display, all into the car in about 1.5 hours... I time these things, a race against myself!  (packup and car loading at the end?  a very quick 45 minutes, hour drive home, 15 minutes getting the stuff out of the car into the studio again--15 minutes = QUICK..but I gotta unpack the boxes still) ANYWAY....


Also Friday afternoon is food prep.  I made bread, scones and pizza, enough to last a couple of days... I had help...


Saturday, arrive 2 hours before the fair to set up.  This was a small fair and my small display.
There was a door and courtyard behind me, totally in bloom and beautiful and nice to visit in quiet moments.


You know how in SEX AND THE CITY they were always sipping pink drinks??? I have never had a pink drink.  So, Yogi's family calls after I am home and unloaded and says "pomegranite mojito on our deck????" and over we go.... it was such a great weekend and what an end!  I find myself in looooove with pomegranite mojito WHATEVER is in there....
have a great Monday!

"when mama ain't happy, ain't NOBODY happy"

(mother/child sugar bowls by Gary Rith)
A favorite expression around our house!
It is Mother's Day weekend and I am on the road....seeing neither mother nor mother of my cat and dog... will they be happy about that????  Do the exquisite gifts I give make up for the lack of my company?  I am sure they will both miss me terribly ;)

I love, as you know, sculpting mother and child items.  Who knows why, as a child-free adult (who, as my parents always remind me, is also the same age they were when they became grandparents, despite acting like a perpetual 15 YO) .
 Hope you have an awesome weekend :)

open sesame!

There is a restaurant we had liked a great deal, small and elegant yet informal, that had a fire nearly 2 years ago (click here).  The sign is still up, their neighbor reopened, but they have not.  We think they might reopen, but who knows? It was run by a family and a loveable place.

I love pad Thai and I love peanut noodles, but they had available either as a small appetizer or entree SESAME NOODLES.  It was a special thing, going there for those.
I never had any idea how easy sesame noodles are, basically peanut noodles made with tahini (sesame paste) rather than peanut butter, DUH!  Eaten cold or warm, not hot, what could be more perfect for spring???? With spring veggies, or whatever you have around!
Buzzfeed has links to 7 easy recipes every week.  I always groan when I see it, since I have stacks and stacks of recipes stuck to the fridge, waiting to try! But I always look, and I always find GEMS.  But this week's gem.... easy sesame noodles!!!! (click here) They use raw snow peas and green onion, I used some steamed carrot, edamame and spinach and tempeh instead, but HOT DAMN if that is not the tastiest thing you have ever tasted, this EXACT easy recipe... I am surprised.. I may toss out all my peanut noodle recipes!
(if Blue Stone can reopen, we will not take it for granted and make it our favorite once again :)

In other news, I was finishing a number of bowls and other things Wednesday (before goofing off all afternoon and hiking with the beagle, HOLY CATS it was a pretty day, although I dreamt of snow all night).. anyway, I have a fair this weekend, my first of the year! So I am gathering stuff together, like bowls.  I have these stacks of bowls around... mmm, yummy, just love a stack of bowls, right?  Sorta super sexy in their abundant and numerous curves....
have an awesome Thursday!

when pigs fly.....regarding childhood....

(pottery airplanes with pigs by Gary Rith)
You have seen me make a few pigs flying airplanes BUT I wanted to make a bigger one...with rolling wheels!  And a propeller that SPINS.  I worked on the idea and... :)

You have heard me say often enough that when I was 5 I saw Pinnichio and always wanted to be the guy who made toys (them coming alive is optional).  So, amongst the bowls or mugs you see me get these ideas sometimes... I mean, actually, I make these things with no particular PLANS, just the fun challenge of it.... have an awesome day!

Teapot Tuesday #4 and teff flour gluten-free cookies?!!!

You're like "WTF is TEFF FLOUR? AND GOOD GOLLY, lookit Gary's stache'!"

More on that shortly.

You know I started Teapot Tuesday last month.  It is rolling!   I should try to get links to other artists participating and somehow link us all or something... gotta work on that.

SO, my entry is this rather amusing teapot featuring SURPRISE! Me.  Me in the 90s.
Or Tom Selleck as Magnum PI in the 70s!
My wife is very polite.  I wore that thing for ten years.  One day she comes home from work and gets the first stache'-free kiss in a decade and merely smiles with glee :)

The teapot and cup can be YOURS forever, click here to go to my online etsy gallery and buy it!


So, in other news, I got a box of teff flour in the mail.  Why order it?  Ithaca is OUT!  Out of certified gluten-free teff flour.  It is an interesting item.  You will recall my introduction to it last month (click to see it!), I made a new recipe for gluten-free chocolate bread, made with teff flour and tahini, etc.

The back of the bag had this quick and easy recipe for PEANUT BUTTER cookies (click)... which I had to make right away, and they are DELISH. I added chocolate, of course!

Teff flour is an interesting whole grain flour from Ethiopia, one of the healthiest on earth, really! (click) It is loaded with protein and iron and even calcium.  It has a nice flavor, but as with most gluten-free flours it is a bit more grainy than you are used to.  That is why white flour is so popular in the modern world: light and fluffy BUT nutritionally worthless, about as good for you as a bottle of sugar.  Teff is tasty and sooooo good for you, why wouldn't you love cookies with it?  The bonus with this one is that it is sweetened with maple syrup...luckily our buddies Kate and Jim gave us some last month :)

Have an awesome Tuesday!

STOP THE MADNESS: Mugs and me more about them than you could possibly want to know

I was reading recently, something like:  "European's drink stronger coffee than Americans at 140 per something caffeine, with American coffee at 100 per something for caffeine BUT Americans drink much larger cups".
Later I see a picture of a chic Italian drinking coffee from a nice small cup and saucer...NOT a tiny espresso, which is cute, but a nice modest tea cup sort of size.  Which is probably what we all grew up with, right?
WHERE did we get the idea that coffee came in 50 gallon BUCKETS????

Was it FRIENDS?  Monica and the rest were always hanging around Central Perk with these absurd 90s sized coffee cups.
That was fine.  It was new, it was cute, it was outrageous, stylish, but my small wife, for example, has been asking me for years to buck the trend, and my bladder can understand why... also, think how cold that coffee would be by the time you are halfway through....

I mean, back to point one, and chic Italians:  do you want to be the ugly American wandering around Smallmart with a fifty gallon bucket of coffee or do you want to be Tonio or Sofia in a piazza sipping a modestly sized latte with biscotti before getting into your Audi TT convertible and riding to the Costa del Sol????

I was inspired by all this thinking.

I was taught that handles should be a carrot shape, rounded etc, it took me years to realize I REALLY prefer a flat, strappy handle for my fingers comfort, also wanted to make some cups and saucers of basic shape BUT with subtle decoration under the glaze, a blue blob of glaze in contrast on the cup inside and on the saucer....and I like the little blip on the saucer edge.  The wife mentions how easy it is to GRIP the saucer's blip, true! And also when you set your spoon at rest it may help...


BUT

the wife reminds me of a German designer in an interview telling the reporter:  "this is a badly designed cup and saucer.  Every time I lift my cup, the spoon slips into the spot for the cup"

I never use spoons for my black coffee or tea.  So I make small saucers.  The wife and I talk further
"a bigger saucer gives you a spot to place your biscotti!" and I am like "Aha!"

OK, so, next time maybe I make big saucers!

I gave these 4 to us.  I am greedy.  I cleared out a few of my mugs from the cupboard to set into the museum back in the studio (since I make a lot of different shapes and ideas, I need to save some stuff to remind me of where I have been).
But as I put these into the cupboard I realized our shelves are amusingly full of my work.

Other potters have other potter's work.  I don't.  This is horrible, and other potters are shaking their heads thinking "that fukking Gary, so narcissistic!" which is a fair accusation.  Always using my own work, essentially staring at myself in the mirror, right?

WELL, let's be nice here.  Instead, let's realize that I make pots to PLEASE ME, and fukk the customer! I don't really care what YOU want ;)   *** Buy it or not, I have to do what I do.   And using my work helps me reflect, as I am doing now, on what I can do better the next time.

Alrighty, enough about me, hope you are having a great Monday!

***this must all sound terrible, but I hope you accept my wicked sense of humor and read this in that light

how to scare the hell out of your guests....

You will remember I love Godzilla....watching the Creature Feature on Saturday afternoon when I was a kid, the awesome 1930s black and white horror movies with Dracula and Frankenstein and the 1950s junk sci-fi.... just loved it.  
So, let's say your friend comes over, you serve the coffee and cream?  They get halfway down and BLOW COFFEE ALL OVER your table... worth it :)


(new pottery by Gary Rith)

May = getting better all the time

(new cups by Gary Rith)
It has not been especially sunny and warm BUT a lot warmer at 52 degrees all day than we saw in January, so you could say we are getting there :)  Where is there?  There is our wonderful summer and beginning of RETAIL season!  Potters have so much to do starting in May and going through Christmas.  I mention this because I see at the top here my first art fair is next week!  It is like you hibernate then suddenly leave your den looking for berries..... have an awesome weekend!

have you seen the little piggies....

I was out walking with Nook in downtown Ithaca yesterday...he has nothing to do with piggies, but isn't he handsome and aren't the falls terrific????

I invented a snack yesterday.  Some weeks ago I saw a picture where somebody had cored an apple and sliced it to look like a bagel and then smeared peanut butter on there.  BRILLIANT.  I have liked peanut butter on apple from time to time, but apple quarters in a wedge shape always seem to drip peanut butter off the side, right?  Messy! Cutting an apple like a bagel = BRILLIANT.

SO, as you know all too well it was my birthday a month ago.  I went to the kitchen store and got a kickass apple corer, very high tech (and SWISS! I think) and gave it to the wife to give to ME so I could make little apple-bagel snacks.

Yesterday, I took it to eleven, quite piggy of me:  what if the hole was filled with a raspberry?  BRILLIANT!  I mean, raspberry jam tastes great on peanut butter, right?  Naturally this beautiful little pig out would taste even better...



Speaking of little piggies, you may need a small wall piece with pigs, maybe even for MOTHER'S DAY! A pig in a blanket! I love pigs and I love jokes, I love mother and child or Madonna and child art, and this is a little of all of those, for sale now at my etsy gallery!



(oops, later, I forgot to add this!)

The Pig

by Anonymous

It was the first of May
A lovely warm spring day
I was strolling down the street in drunken pride,
But my knees were all a-flutter,
And I landed in the gutter
And a pig came up and lay down by my side.

Yes, I lay there in the gutter
Thinking thoughts I could not utter
When a lady passing by did softly say
'You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses' — And the pig got up and slowly walked away.

"The Pig" by Anonymous. Public domain.

April showers bring....

The wife, as usual, asks this joke each spring:  "If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?" and the answer, considering it is a joke best spoken from one 10 year old to another, is "Mayflowers bring Pilgrims!".

Ahem, anyway, we grew those tulips.  April was a remarkably cold and wet and snowy month, the tail end of a !!!!! winter that began with blizzards in Thanksgiving... I only mention this because last week I showed you a rare sunny day here, where I was drying bowls outside....fired and done and looking good, eh? YES, it started to rain just after I took this photo...
 Have an awesome Thursday :)


(bowls by Gary Rith)