wherein the wife goes out of town, Spike goes all ninja with a large library book and I invent the RATINI

(pottery by Gary Rith)
Why YES, yes I do accomplish a lot when the wife is out of town. You can see some of my many accomplishments here, of course, but first: Spike.
When the wife is gone you gotta get them BIG books from the library. I have a stack. I began the second in the stack yesterday evening, and at one point I took the dogs out and returned....Spike was hiding in my book. You can't make this sh!t up....


Wicked cold and snowy here in upstate New York, as it is all over the US and Canada. Stinking JANUARY, GOSH.....






My pal Kasey wanted to do a post on us drinks pioneers. She has invented TWO!
You will recall that yesterday I talked of the DAY OF THE RASPBERRY and made a NEW drink, the raspberry martini. I have named it the RATINI, recipe below...




Winter and Summer Ratinis


the winter ratini: place 4 raspberries in your favorite ratini glass, stab one with a fork lightly 4 times (releases a wee bit of juice!)
-pour 2.25 ounces, no, go ahead, make it 3 ounces, Absolut vodka or some other pretentious brand over the raspberries then drink with appropriate background music and a beagle at your side, but watch the beagle, because she will try to steal your drink.
the summer ratini, when it is NOT stinking 15 below zero outside:
-put four raspberries into your favorite ratini glass, stab one with a fork lightly 4 times (releases a wee bit of juice!)
-place ice cubes in your shaker, pour 2.25 ounces, no wait, make it at LEAST 3 ounces, Absolut vodka or some other pretentious vodka over the ice cubes, close shaker and shake DO NOT STIR vigorously a moment or 2
-pour that iced vodka over the raspberries and watch out for the fuching beagle, she will try to steal your drink ;)

Most excellent background music here

even when the wife is out of town she STILL steals the covers at night

Like I say, the wife is on the road, in Kansas for a couple of days. She arrived on time yesterday, but its a big snow storm there (HERE now!) and the rental car agency gives her a 2011 mustang convertible...good GOD...probably the worst car for snow EVER, and at 17 degrees? Who is popping the top open?
ANYWAY, you can see in the pics here that Spike and Penny have the bed all split up. I get the little sliver of space in the middle between them. And even with the wife gone? The sheets and blankets STILL end up on the floor at the wife's side. How does she do that, steal the covers even when she is gone?
At 5 yesterday the dogs were watching at the window for her. They saw the bus go past and went bananas. I had to take them out. After a while we went back in, and Penny stared out the window waiting for her for quite a long time....
and that was when I invented the raspberry martini.* You will recall that I broke the bank and bought a box of raspberries yesterday. They have many many uses. By themselves. With cracker jack. On my breakfast porridge, and OF COURSE they make, as it turns out, the most brilliant martini you have ever tasted.
*I KNOW, somebody probably did this years ago and recipes are probably also all over the internets, but I like to think I invented the raspberry martini :)

the wife goes to Kansas and....

The wife goes out of town, and basically, everything goes to hell.
Well, no. Of course not. But we get up at 3:40 so she can catch the plane that departs at 6. We live 5 minutes from the airport, but, well, you gotta get up and have a goodbye feast and take the dogs out and put on the lipstick. She tells me cheerfully "I'll be watching everything you do on your blog!". So, basically, gotta keep her updated.

Honey, I went to the grocery store after I dumped you on the cold and dark and snowy curb at 5:30. No, you know I am not one of those hang around and say goodbye types. Not since they forbade guests from walking with passengers to the gate. What can I do, hang around outside, looking through the glass longingly at your pretty face?
Anyway: the store. There were 3 Russian or Serb types doing things to the floor with equipment and one large dude at the checkout. THAT WAS IT as far as I could see. I think the large dude doubles as cashier and bouncer. I was in and out SO fast, but honey, I spent a fortune on raspberries. You know I could not resist that temptation, I was like "fork it, she gets to go off and have fun, leaving me behind to clean the cat box and such, therefore: RASPBERRIES IN JANUARY"

And honey, yes, I walked the dog and finished a boatload of teapots by ten am. It is absurd how much you can get done in life when you get up at 3:40, but then, of course, you want lunch at 10. It was cracker jack and raspberries....probably about all I am gonna eat these next few days....

NINJA KITTEH kicks some yarn in the azz.....

You know how insulting yarn can be to a cat, and Spike just wasn't gonna take any more of that crapola....
yesterday I tell the wife
"Just because I have a head doesn't mean I can think" and she replies
"Its just there for looks?"


dig these guys

extreme bliss

What makes a perfect and blissful day? Warm studio, making and glazing a boatload of pots. I especially looooove teapots, as you know, and I was talking with Peggy who shows my stuff at a gallery in Chicago:
"need more teapots???" and she is like
"how about those teapots on teapots you do? its been awhile and TRES CUTE" and I am like
"YES!"
Making teapots and more teapots = BLISS





Penny showing her extreme bliss by break dancing with joy at the prospect of her dinner, she's a Buffalo Gal....

STILL stinky

You probably love the piggy bank in the header. I have made thousands of them since 1989. There are some piggy banks and other groovy items for sale at my etsy shop now!


Yesterday I was like
"hey Georges, bikini girls and free drinks just through this door!" (I was holding the washer open) and my rude French sock monkey Georges Le Soq is like
"mais oui, I am there!" but he is not quite that dumb, and he balks at the door and scurries off. Still smelly, still stinky.


You get to dinner time, and Georges tells me he has a secret to share
"Mon ami, I forgive you zee trick earlier. I make you ENCHILADAS LE SOQ. Ees easy"
"Tasty too!" I agree.

"Zee gestalt, mon ami, ees dis: warm something up, put in zee tortilla, den bake it with zee enchilada sauce on top. Ees all you need to know"* and he is right, this sauce does all the work for you....



*enchiladas Le Soq, the way he made it yesterday
-saute onion, pepper, carrots, add soy sausage, cooked rice and beans, then add olives and cilantro and spice
-put non- dairy cheese onto 6 tortillas
-dump warm contents from fry pan onto tortillas, roll en up
-place in pan, dump the tasty enchilada sauce and jalapenos on there, bake at 350 15 minutes
WICKED GOOD!

Still loooooooooove Godsmack....

crispy fritters with a crispy critter

You can see twas the usual most excellent weekend.
You have the oven going, baking the apple crisp, and LOOK AT SPIKE. Yes, I know, prolly the biggest cat you have ever seen in your life, true, but he suddenly wants to nap on the oven when you're baking something....smart on the one hand, rude on the other hand....

Speaking of RUDE, my rotton French sock monkey Georges Le Soq is like, slicing and dicing and baking up a storm yesterday.
He is like "mon ami, dis easy American thing, zis apple, how you say, CRISP, ees most tasty, no?" and I am like "why yes, tis awesome" and together we made some for breakfast (recipe below--tres easy). The recipe comes from an office where the wife worked years ago. They would share dishes potluck style on Fridays, and this sh!thead she worked with brought this one day. The wife brought some home and I was blown away. The sh!thead was nice enough to share the recipe, so I guess she wasn't ENTIRELY awful :)





apple crisp
-preheat to 375
-chop 4 apples, stir them together in baking dish with 2 tbs. sugar
-in bowl add 1/2 c rolled oats, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/4 c flour, sprinkles of nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves plus 4 tbs butter or marg----use a knife or pastry thing to cut it all together into a nice crumbly mix
--top the apples with the crumbly mix, bake about 25 minutes, WICKED GOOD!

American Chop Suey made VEG by a rude French Sock Monkey

I dreamt overnight that I burned corn bread when I was baking it. In the dream I was a college student trying to put the moves on this girl and I forgot the corn bread I was baking and she was UNimpressed.

Speaking of the kitchen, last night my rotton French sock monkey Georges Le Soq volunteers to make one of my favorite dishes. He is like
"ees easy, American chop suey, but we do it, how you say, VEGAN, because you so picky and healthy, Gary" and I am like
"I AM picky and healthy, abut unlike you, I don't smell bad" but I don't think he heard me, he was in the fridge.

If you are talking ziti bake vs. American chop suey, because they are similar, the chop suey is easier and moister and gooier---therefore better to my mind.

Vegan American Chop Suey

-cook 8oz noodles as directed
-chop and sautee veggies, like an onion, bell pepper, and we added carrots, but mushrooms or whatever all work
-sautee veggies, like ten minutes, until things seem tender, toss in these frozen BOCA burger bits plus oregano, pepper, hot pepper etc, stir around for a minute
-add 28 oz can of diced or crushed tomatos and 8 oz tomato sauce, simmer about 15 minutes while you have that glass of wine and conversation with the wife
-add cooked pasta to sauce and stir, then stir in some of that fake cheese or real cheese if you prefer

As Georges was saying "wicked tasty mon ami" and it is :)


I am working on mug styles, these look pretty nice....

The wife likes the Stereophonics...mmm...why not?

"CM looks like a movie star..."

The wife and the dog doing the arctic thing, below a couple of small piggy belly dishes.
The small details of my life? Thanks for asking, thanks for caring: after hacking away at my website yesterday and finishing a boatload of pots and freezing my fingers, it all felt like wicked good accomplishments in need of an AWARD, so i go pick up the wife at work and we go out on the DATE. A camera-free date! I love Mid-eastern restaurants, always tasty veg items.
Then, you know what a 3 dog night is? I think it is an Eskimo expression, or maybe it isn't, meaning "its so cold you get at least 3 dogs to cuddle around you in bed". Well, we had Spike cat and Penny dog and I had more crazy dreams than I have ever had in my life. In one, I was over at my pal Ben and CM's trailer (she does not live in a trailer, but they had restored this nicely) and she looked like a million bucks I was like "CM! You look like a movie star!" and she did, although she looked exactly like herself, and the rest of the dream was discussing "is it polite to tell somebody they look great?". I don't know the answer on that one and you can tell me in comments, but in the dream and real life, she does look like a movie star. Then I had another dream where I was lost in a basketball game, there was another where our woods which we own was being cut down and FINALLY I dreamt Penny disappeared into a sewer...but I saved her and got up and out of bed. ENOUGH with the heavy dreams.


You can dig these fine pots at my etsy shop--a cute sitting piggy bank or a tall goth mug with a skull--whaddya gonna be today, naughty or nice???




You'll love CREED...

Holy cats!

I am poking through pics, backing things up and such, updating my website www.garyrith.com and come across the pic of our house in August....VS this pic of our house today :)

"my job is very boring I'M AN OFFICE CLERK!"

The wife shot some pics yesterday morning when we walked Penny at the park. January, on the one hand, is cold and snowy, lacking good holidays and sucks eggs. On the other hand, it can all be remarkabley pretty :) Penny is like a little kid, digging and playing in fluffy snow. We got s few more inches of top of that now. She is a 13 inch beagle (13 inches toe-shoulder) and now the snow is above her head.

The wife loves this tune. I remember it well, gosh, we can back at Echo Beach someday! (title of this blog post also comes from that song)

how do you draw yourself?

A couple of days ago I had posted a cute drawing my pal Kasey had done of herself. It is pretty simple and she has a cute skull tee on. I wanted to draw my own self as a quick doodle, and drew it repeatedly, trying to figure out what I see in myself. Hair all over, glasses, smile (some people have told me I have a nice smile, frankly, I like to smile and laugh). I was drawing myself with a skull tee too, but then it became a beagle. Here is the real and the drawn me. Kinda looks right, doesn't it?


LOTSA snow out there today.....


Gosh, Bwie, huh? I know, canNOT be beat. Heroes, TWICE.

BADAZZ baking with Georges and Georgine....

As you will recall, Leslie sent us the uber secksy sock monkey Georgine last week. My rotton French sock monkey Georges and his cousin Jacques Le Soq each have a thing for her, and so far as I can tell, she has not decided who she likes better. (of course, Georges is filthy and smells horrible, but anyway...)
So, Leslie ALSO sends us her simple peanut butter cookie recipe, so simeple even a sock monkey with brains of old socks could make them. I am like
"these are missing something, nothing good could be that simple, could it?" and then Georges is like
"Oui, zometing ees missing, ees CHOCOLATE" and I am like
"right on Georges!" but anyway, after a prolonged and noisy interlude in the closet, Georges and Georgine come out looking all flushed.
"Georgine, I am, how you say, FAMISHED" and she blushes prettily and then he is like
"ees time to try baking zee simple peanut butter cookies". And they did not make too much mess and they are DELISH!* Thanks Leslie!


*Georges' Impossibly simple peanut butter cookies
-preheat oven to 350
-mix one cup CHUNKY peanut butter, one cup sugar and one egg in a bowl, stirstirstir!
-Have a cup of tea while you wait for the oven to heat, because that did not take very long ;)
-mix in a bunch of chocolate chips---I prolly put in a cup
-spoon nice little balls onto a cookie sheet---I made about 15
-bake about 8-9 minutes
---------"eees perfect!"