when it goes up to 97 degrees you bring out the PENGUINS....

One of my favorite jokes.  Have an awesome Friday and weekend :)

A man drives to a gas station and has his tank filled up.
While doing this the clerk spots two penguins sitting on the back seat of the car. He asks the driver, "What's up with the penguins in the back seat?"
The man in the car says, "I found them. I asked myself what to do with them but, I haven't a clue."
The clerk ponders a bit then says, "You should take them to the zoo."
"Yeah, that's a good idea," says the man in the car and drives away.
The next day the man with the car is back at the same gas station. The clerk sees the penguins are still in the back seat of the car.
"Hey, they're still here! I thought you were going to take them to the zoo!"
"Oh, I did," says the driver, "and we had a great time. Today I'm taking them to the beach."

fill in the blank: "when a loved one travels________"

Thanks for all your grooovy messages yesterday!  Golly, I love the conversation here, amongst far flung strangers becoming friends!

LET'S DO IT AGAIN.  I am sitting here composing the haiku and....I can't finish it!  Nonono, not because of a blank mind, but TOO MANY possibilities.

 Go to comments and add your line!

(as you will recall, the wife was on the road and returned last night)

The wife returned
We shared a glass of joy!
She is still sleeping.

The only good part
When a loved one travels
Is______

I was thinking like:  "finally somebody comes home and makes the bed" or "you can stay up late and watch FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH or DUMBO!" or even "when you are alone nobody thinks it odd when one day you eat peanut butter sandwiches breakfast lunch dinner and then the next day you eat burritos...breakfast lunch and dinner" or maybe "your friends can come over at odd times and share frosty brews" or lastly "the dog and cat have PLENTY of room in the bed..." (even though the cat still sleeps ON my feet, no matter how uncrowded the bed).
Of course, there is always "it is wonderful when they get home!"

Dig this teapot:  I was like "make an ordinary teapot with... A HUGE FLYING PIG ON TOP! Why the heck not :)"

(new pottery by Gary Rith)

29 things I think are AWESOME!

First of all:  I invite YOU to tell me 3 of your favorite things in comments here, OK?  Won't that be fun? And go nuts and blog your own 29 or 30 or 10 whatever the days' date happens to be!

My best pal Sandra blogged the 27 (or whatever the date was) things she loves, is grateful for the other day.  I looooove that idea and got started! You can too!
I just rolled with it, adding items to the list all day, willy nilly, not thinking about it much...

1.  apple anything, pie, sauce, crisp, scones, muffins! SEE BELOW.  Frankly, raspberries, blueberries, pineapple too....
2. peanut butter--do you have any idea how much of that I eat?  I think my body is some kind of fast burning furnace and craves peanut butter and jam sometimes...really! But it is good for cookies or on pasta andandand... :)
3. Jam!  We make all of our jam.  Our favorite since fall since it is easy to make all year (berries and peaches have their seasons, right? apples available year round) is APPLE SPICE JAM! Jam making is fun and the wife and I cooperate on the task and then cooperate on the eating.
4.CATS, especially my Spike who was on my feet all night long, and now?  Here at the desk?  Again on my feet!
5.  small beagles!  Esp. MY small beagle Penny.
6. mountains!  see my post of a couple of days ago, where we climbed one!
7.  the sea!  When I was a kid we lived for awhile on the Connecticut coast which is where I first had swimming lessons...that was a chilly morning experience, but pretty smart to learn how to swim under difficult circumstances, right?  I remember when we moved from Chicago back to the east coast and our first trip to the beach brought us to Gloucester, Cape Ann and Rockport, Mass... about the prettiest area on EARTH...years before I was visiting the Florida Keys--most of Florida had been a crushing disappointment to me, it was NOT like Miami Vices best scenes, instead overcrowded, overbuilt, too many cars BUT there is a state park on the Florida Keys that is probably the prettiest spot in all of Florida, and reminds me of what humans have ruined down there.
I have a big conch shell I found there, can you believe it?  It is on the back deck now...
8. New York City!  The wife is returning here from there today, LUCKY GIRL.  As you guys know, we visit there often, 2 sisters live there, I lived and worked there in SOHO for an artist one winter in the 80s, my family all lived there for many generations AND the wife's family....it is one big urban playground, the best place in the world, and not as dangerous as it used to be!
9.  trains!  The wife rides the train home today, lucky HER
10. bikes! esp. my bikes!  I have not had as much chance to bike this year....
11. baking!  we bake everything....see below for more baking goodness!
12.  running! although with all the thunder and lightening out there this am, I am like "maybe not today..." I run in any weather, but maybe lightening is an exception....all that rain is probably killing my new basil and tomato plants, par for the course
13.  drawing!  see the bunny mugs below!  I have limited drawing skills...but love it so much, and it is amusing to me... the bonus I give my cat sitting and dog walking dogs is an illustrated note of our adventures....I think that is why my pet sitting business is EXPLODING and growing (adding...CHICKENS to the resume this weekend) because of the amusing drawings I make of people's pets when I care for them....
14.  reading! all my life my nose has been stuck in a book....my mom too, and her family, even her grandfather who worked in a factory with barely any schooling but read all the time....
15.  clay! glazing!  I made some fun stuff yesterday AND opened the kiln to see bunny things ...see below!  what a perfect occupation....
16. checkerboards!  I have come to realize that my neurotic self really like the tidy order of decorating with checkerboards....a favorite glaze scheme, as you know, is a turquoise and blue checkerboard...
17.  greens!!!!!!!!! all kinds of light greens!  you should the green thing I just ordered with a gift cert. I was given (the phone company so grateful for my contract they gave me a HUGE bonus), the wonderful and lush woods on the riverbank behind our house WHICH as you know we recently had painted green and, of course, the many green glazes in different shades that I use...
18. forget me nots!  mmmm...green and light blue...YES, that is the color combo we used to paint our house...
19.  wine!!!! the guy at the NY Times wrote that "wine is a joy" YES. Yes it is, a nice dry white is like a glass of sunshine.  So soft and lovely!  I will say in the evening to the wife "would you like a glass of joy?"
20.  COFFEE!  I try to like tea, but it is SUCH a distant second choice to strong, black, hot espresso....
it powers MY machine
21.  SUMMER!  Holy cats, we have the BEST summers in upstate NY, 70s and blue and green all summer long....my favorite day of the year????? JUNE FIRST!  Then you know we have 3 guarenteed nice months ahead....
22.  spring!  spring is an exciting preface to SUMMER!
23.  FALL!  well, fall is golden and colorful and hopefully not too cold and snowy, right?
24.  CHRISTMAS!  I like Christmas so much we GOT MARRIED on Christmas, as you know.  Quakers believe that no day is more sacred than another, but Quakers are not total killjoys, we live in the world, and I was surprised last year there was even a brief pageant the kids put together (Quakers also worship in silence with zero pageantry) and it was cute...a couple of carols and TWO babies (where one baby Jesus is cute and a good idea, you should probably employ another baby as an adorable bear in the manger...)
25.  my FRIENDS!  Trevor was over last night having the frosty brew on my porch...you would love my friends...of course, you reading this?  a beloved friend too!
26.  our house! it is such a nice house, on a river, VERY old, and now painted like a forget me not...
27.  birthdays!  MINE! and yours!  just like Christmas, BUT it belongs to you alone and you don't have to share, although celebrating them with others is FUN
28.  rock and roll....
29.  the wife!!!! good golly, gone for a few days, I miss her...

Like I say, go to comments and add your 3!!!!

I love bunnies, who wouldn't?  Catherine asks "I will need bunny mugs for my sister, do you ever do BUNNIES???" and its like "of course I do! And you should see all the bunnies around my house, driving my beagle NUTS and inspiring ME".

In other news, Bronwyn loaned me her vegan cookbook. I was madly going through it, recipe cards and pencil in hand like it was THE BEST HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT EVER.
And remember number one up there, how much I LOVE APPLES etc? There was a recipe there for APPLE PIE CRUMBLE muffins and I set my pencil down and baked those puppies right away and HOLY CATS they are SO perfect!  I did not have any cider, so I mixed a little applesauce with water, voila!

Time warp Tuesday: Petey and Penny!

Sheesh, where does the time go?  Summer 1993 I had been married to the wife just half a year and on July 4th in Chicago it was 90 some degrees and we went out for a run and....found a dog!  My dream dog was sitting under a tree.  He had been hanging around that tree for a bit, because we could see a water dish and food dish that neighbors in the townhouses had put out for him.  I settled in on the ground, he was skittish, and asked the wife to go get a rope for a leash.  By the time she returned a moment later, he was sitting on my lap, my new best friend.
I love dogs.
I grew up with hounds.  They are full or personality.  Stubborn, not very obedient, but so loving and fun. Petey seemed to be about half beagle, half corgi.
The minute we got the rope on Petey he puffed out his chest and was like "I have a home!  I have a family!".  You could see that he had been missing his rightful place as the boss of a family...further enforced when he marched into the apartment, past the hissing cat, settled onto our bed like a teddy bear and looked pleased.
Petey was named after the dog in Our Gang, The Little Rascals, which I had enjoyed when I was a kid.
He had terrible bloody bite marks on his face from fighting (he was a fighter alright, he was absolutely fearless and would attack any large dog that menaced him, pit bull or German shepherd always backed down when he snapped) and he was a little underweight but otherwise healthy.  He also would duck in fear whenever you went to stroke his head.  Somebody had hit him in the past.  Luckily, as the years went by, Petey forgot to be afraid of human hands.
Petey lived with us until he was nearly 19!  We moved from Chicago to New England, and 5 weeks after we moved here to Ithaca he passed, 7 years ago today.  It was like he said "I helped you choose a good new home, my work is done and I can go now".
The morning after he died I could not understand how anybody could get up in the morning if they knew that one day they would feel so much grief and loss.
He is buried out under a tree which we had brought with us from our last house, one which he had peed on many times.
I was poking around in my UNorganized photos yesterday and was glad to find this one.  The wife and I had a totally choice apartment in the 90s, 350 a month for a 2 bedroom outside the Chicago Loop, with, as you see, the world's tallest building 4 blocks away (not the tallest anymore, but anyway...).
I am wearing that same Cubs baseball jersey right now as you see in the second pic.
6 years ago this spring, 11 months after Petey passed, another stray small hound came into our life from the shelter, Penny the beagle.  They are absolutely and utterly alike in so many ways.

Sammy version 2.0

Many of you will remember several months ago I mentioned that a glaze I had developed but not used for years had been named for my first cat's eyes, Sammy.  A pretty but tempermental spring green! Just as he had been....last fall I made some small changes to it and tried it again, version 2.0.
It is once again a favorite glaze, used in the pieces pictured below.
I gave myself this mug when it came out of the kiln.  It is next to me right now.
I continue to make potential vases for our Quaker meeting house, one after the other.  Unusual for me, to make one shape over and over, but I love this and it is fun.  Will I ever have one I think is perfect for flowers during worship?  Of course I will, and many other perfect ones along the way....
(new pottery by Gary Rith)

so, like I was telling you, we climbed a mountain and other such adventures....

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

4am, 500 miles, hundreds of feet....

Friday the internal clock clicks ON and I was dreaming of climbing a small and rocky mountain, REALLY!  The dog jumps on the wife as she exits the bed and the wife says "I could do with another hour's sleep!" but I am like "think of the FUN!" and so we eat the coffee and scones and hit the road....
500 mile drive, round trip for the day, over and back.

TODAY?  I feel like I was dragged up a pile of rocks and down...and I was!  There is nothing like a small energetic beagle to help you hike a mountain, and I am SORE.
It was incredible though.
I will fill in the details Sunday, here is a beginning:
In 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne had just written THE SCARLET LETTER and  met Herman Melville for the first time to climb Monument Mountain in Great Barrington, Mass.  They were hit by a very heavy storm and sheltered in a cave and enjoyed chatting about writing (we had good climbing conditions on our climb, but it was REALLY stormy before and after, and it is such a dangerous and treacherous hike I am glad it was dry) .
Melville came down and wrote MOBY DICK and dedicated it to Hawthorne.
We went to find that cave.
We did!
(I think we did)
More later....

Remember my last post, about cowboy cookies?  Mountain climbers need them too!  But NOT beagles.
Penny is a champion hiker and rider.  She looooves what we love, marching for miles!  Then sleeping like the DEAD.  Good golly I slept like the dead last night...


Shortly after starting I was like "this cave?" and the wife was like "that is more of an OVERHANG".
Truly, there might be caves all over the place but.....


We came around a corner and saw THIS waterfall and CAVE. The cave goes back in a bit, and would easily shelter 6 or more people (hard to tell from the photo...but WOW).  We were like "this is IT!".


Climbing to the top, as you will see in pics tomorrow, was impossibly perilous.  You are climbing up very steep rocks...and down...and across narrow ledges with dropoffs of hundreds of feet!
This is one of the 2 summits....Penny kept pulling me to the edge which is why I sat down I was so scared.  Just beyond her tail is a sheer drop all the way down to the valley... unbelieveable view...

of cowboys, ponies and barns!

GIDDYUP!
I post at least once a day, as you know all too well, except for when I don't!  I don't think I will bother Friday morning, for reasons that will become VERY clear Saturday, but I am making up for it with 13 (THIRTEEN! more or less) photos and a flippin' awesome cookie recipe.

From what I understand cowboy cookies are named that because:
(according to my mom): They are called 'cowboy cookies' because they traveled well in the cowboys saddle bags when they were out on the range and did not crumble as other cookies did. The harder outer shell was ideal.

although I myself am not a fan of hard cookies at all and my new recipe is decidedly and pleasantly SOFT.
I had never heard of them until my best pal Claudia made them the other day, mmm mmm they look good!  She made them for roofers..in the rain!  Any cookie that could satisfy roofers in Florida rain has GOT to be special.
The idea is you make an oatmeal-choco chip cookie and throw other things in.

I saw them and I was like "I wanna make them...vegan!" and holy CATS is this recipe spectacular!  Forget cowboys and roofers:  they are totally cat and Missus Tastycakes approved. **** I chose this particular recipe because:  it is simple, vegan, and I had these particular ingredients in my cupboard! MAKE THEM TODAY.



In other news, Peter from next door comes over with his mother last week and is like "WOW, I really like that mug there!" and I tell him "thanks, funny you should mention it, I have never made that form until today and I REALLY like it too!" and then I glaze it with a glaze experiment (take one of my light green glazes and double the copper OH WOW I love it! and sure, yes, I do have quite a few different light green glazes, don't I?).
The one with the elephant on the right.
It came out of the kiln and I washed it and I am USING IT NOW.
Don't worry, I am making more like it...



FINALLY, I was headed over to Yogi's house to babysit him and horse around!  My neighbor Tom sees me walk Yogi and is like "That dog is such a PONY! He looks huge with you but even bigger with his mama!".  His mama is, well, quite tiny....
ANYWAY, I asked the wife to come along, as Yogi has a yard with a very pretty old barn, and she wanted me to take portraits and it seemed like old barn boards would be a nice backdrop, and it WAS!
Have a great weekend, see you Saturday....

from http://www.thesnarkychickpea.com/2011/10/crazy-cowboy-cookies-vegan-mofo-4.html

Vegan cowboy cookies

What you need:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 8 TB vegan butter, softened but not melted
• 1/3 cup plus 1 TB sugar
• 1/3 cup plus 1 TB brown sugar
• 1 flax egg (1 TB ground flax plus 2 1/2 TB hot water mixed, then let set 3 minutes)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup old-fashion oats (also called rolled oats)
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips (I only use Ghirardelli semi-sweet chips. They're accidentally vegan.)
• 1/3 cup plus 1 TB chopped pecans. I forgot to toast them first, but they were lovely anyway.
• 1/4 cup sweetened shredded coconut

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 baking sheets with silicone mats or parchment (if using parchment, give it a quick spritz of cooking spray.
2. In a small bowl, mix together the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda.
3. In a medium mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugars till it looks smooth and such. Then add in the vanilla and flax egg and beat until perfectly combined.
4. Using a hand mixer, blend in the flour in several batches. I used mine on the low setting. If you over-beat the dough, the cookie texture will suck. So, only beat until you see no dry spots.
5. All at once, pour in the coconut, oats, pecan and chocolate chips. Run your hand mixer around about 3-4 times. Then stop. Remember, no overmixing.

6. Use 1 1/2-inch dough scooper or tablespoon to plop them onto the cookie sheets. Be sure to put the dough balls 2 inches apart because they will spread

7. Put the cookies on the 2 racks of your oven. After 6 minutes, switch them around so the bottom goes on top, etc. It helps them cook evenly this way. Cook another 5 minutes, or until the edges are just golden. Remove from the oven and let sit on the pan for 5 minutes. Then transfer to a cooling rack.

remember mother's day?

You will recall that on mother's day the wife asked for me to make a watering can for her...and I did.
Here it is, along with its friends from the header...
have an awesome day!



(pottery by Gary Rith)

Time warp Tuesday: mother's edition!

I may be the only one doing Time Warp Tuesday regularly, a chance to show your old photos! TRY TO STOP ME!
In May 1992 the wife and I had known each other 3-4 years and had been an ITEM for about four months and would get married Christmas of '92.... she had a place outside of downtown that I later moved to with my cat Sammy.  But Sammy and my bachelor pad was in Chicago's most fun neighborhood (named BOYSTOWN not long after I left, full of young fun people like me, yuppies, old buildings and...well, sure, BOYS).  Anyway, I was so close to Wrigley Field where the Cubs play I could walk it in about 5 minutes.
The Cubs were definately a loveable team in the 80s-90s (and I hope they still are!).  You could turn in 6 candy bar wrappers and get a free reserved ticket.  The very first Cubs game I went to, I sat in a chair on a roof across the street from the stadium!  A real neighborhood spot.
I took the wife to a game there this week 21 years ago, on what turned out to be Mother's Day.  They gave her an awesome tote bag!  Harry Carey the radio and TV announcer was in a booth just past her shoulder and would pop out to sing "take me out to the ballpark...".  Pretty flippin' awesome....we went to White Sox games too, I was never one of those Chicagoans who liked one team more than the other (although at this point I still have a White Sox hat and the wife a Cubs hat, suggesting we are a mixed marriage).
She is wearing one of my shirts here, which I still have....