behave this weekend.....

(new pottery by Gary Rith)
The wife was like, wicked sick for the last couple of days. She is MUCH better, but you can see how we all rally 'round her bedside.
Here are the latest pots, I am at a huge fair in Binghamton this weekend at the Roberson museum, come see me!

a hawt and spicy evening.....a reflection on men and women...

The wife and I picked apples from the neighbor's tree, and prepared to make apple pear chutney. I wish I could say we picked the pears, raisens, spice and onion too, but we picked them up at the store. You say "what is chutney?" and I answer "sort of a salsa-jam thing from India." You lay out all these tasty Indian foods on your plate with rice and bread, then add dollops of hot chutney here and there, like you would would with salsa or ketchup, but chutney is made with fruit and hot peppers :)

How do you make it, you ask? Similar to jam or apple sauce. Dice pears and apples, cup of raisens, sugar, vinegar, boatload of spice and hot peppers, boil for an hour, then put into sterilized jars, HUZZAH! Eat up the next day and for many days to come...

But here is the difference between men and women, or maybe, just this man and this woman. The wife is a detail obsessed type, good with accounting and the like, and I am a slob. SO, recipe in hand, the wife is captain of this chutney ship, reading directions, wearing her tidy apron, while her husband disregards the directions behind her back, randomly chopping and throwing things into the pot. At one point she was like
"stop that! measure those apples!" and I am like
"I don't need to, it looks about right" and she grabs things and measures, and, um, I had prepared enough for a double batch, not one, so I was like
"OH! I s'pose that is good to know, that we are, um, making a double batch now" and she is like, glaring at me...then we get to the spice, the cloves, cinnamon and whatnot, and I grab jars and start to shake
again "what are you doing! we need a 1/4 teaspoon!" (does such a measure exist??????) and I am like
"the more the better! its chutney!!!!" and she is like
"forget giving this to anybody!!!!" angrily trying to open and measure the cinnamon and I am like
"gimme!!!!" and grab and dump, seeing that there is, I dunno, not too many spoonfuls left in the jar, figuring, its time to start a new one, but at that point she is MAD and the apron comes off and she starts to huff away
"noooo! come back! I'll behave! you were right about the double batch part!" and she returns saying
"I am in charge, alright?" and the dutiful husband is like
"OH! Of course!" and I take a huge hunk of ginger and begin chopping and she is like
"what are you doing! I thought I was in charge?" and I smile guiltily and pass it over...about ten times the amount of ginger required...but she dices it and tosses it in saying
"we canNOT give this away, how do you explain that it is a ginger bomb?"

Stuff boiled a little more than an hour and we got a few STRONG cups of chutney, and a hawt and spicy smelling house. I give the wife credit for putting up with me, but I figured chutney is like salsa: take it easy and throw in a ton of stuff!

And the next day, eating it with rice? UNBELIEVEABLY yummy :)

letters to .......

The wife had been talking to her friend Zee about a writing exercise: who would you write a letter to? Zee would say "the celestial rolodex is always open" and when you think about it, that is true, I mean, you could write to JFK, your grandmother in heaven, your spouse, who is NOT yet in heaven, your friends, anybody! What would you say to them? Doesn't mean you have to send it, maybe you would burn the letter, but you have to consider the value in writing a message to somebody for YOURSELF, because saying it can change you and express something bottled up in you that needs to come out. Or you could share. Like, in my case, reading my letter to my cat TO my cat. Please go to comments and tell us who you would want to write to and why, and, well, feel free to whatever---here is mine:

Letter to my cat Spike:

Dear Spike--You have been home with us for 4 years and you are just such a delight. You were at the shelter for 4 months while I volunteered there, and I tried to get somebody to adopt you, being the friendliest cat of the hundreds there, and it is lucky that the shelter does not euthanize cats after 2 weeks. (what a horrible thought!) Anyway, you came home with us, and that is all that matters.

Our old dog Buster, your brother, is really quite tired and frail. You sleep next to him every day. When he comes in from outside you greet him at the door. You kiss him, purr to him. He gets excited to see you and the 2 of you clown around, as much as Buster is able, and then the 2 of you fall asleep together. What kind of awesome cat takes care of an elderly dog? You do, and I love you so much for it, for making Buster's last days worthwhile, so that he has a small friend to keep him company and play with when I am not around.

I love you Spike, thanks so much for coming to us. Gary

please TELL ME about your own bad self....

I was listening to a radio program several years ago, about the DESERT ISLAND. What would you take? Lauri Anderson, the avant garde singer, insisted she was taking her best friend and partner, Lou Reed (geez, who WOULDN't take Lou REED?). The announcer kept saying you cannot take somebody but she insisted--that is LOVE. Anyway, I would suggest a 3 part question: If you were sent to a heavenly desert island where all the food and shelter basics were provided 1) what THING would you have to have? 2) what BOOK would you have to have? 3) what person would you have to bring? ANYBODY.

ANYWAY, you answer those questions in comments please, and add your website, OK? Here is my set of answers for the desert island: (I am poorly behaved, stubborn and rebellious and may not follow my own rules, you know?)

1) what THING? hmm.....gosh, I mean you want to bring your wheel and kiln and all the rest, but I s'pose I can try to scrounge sculpture tools and supplies on the desert island, so I am gonna need a lot of sketchbooks and pencils---with those I can write stories, I can doodle little dogs, I can draw pictures, I can GO GAUGIN as it were

2) I have reread one book in only a few cases--Annie Proulx's SHIPPING NEWS, Brad Smith's ALL HAT and all of the Robertson Davies books. I eat books pretty fast: zip throguh, enjoy, then forget, so, frankly, let's have a daily drop from an airplane of the NY Times newspapers. That way I can keep up with the Yankees and do the daily crossword and check the recipes and restaurants on Wednesday, the movies I am missing on Friday...

3) One person! Well, THE WIFE of course. Plus my cat Spike and 2 dogs. And Lou Reed and Lauri Anderson to hang out with, dang they ARE COOL.

days of wine and....kittens....

WELL, as I have said repeatedly these last couple of days, I was at Six Mile Creek Vineyards for the weekend, gorgeous days, near my house, fabulous wine, lotsa customers, beers, ICE cream and kittens from the SPCA. You would want to take home a whole box full, wouldn't you????

I was next to Cayuga Creamery ice Cream..and vegan ice cream, yaaaay! Voted the BEST in the state, its wicked tasty and isn't it awesome they would have non-dairy choices too? Watch me dig some here, with the band...yes! There were bands too! Come out for this next year yourself!

golden sunshine

You will recall that this weekend I am set up down the road at Six Mile Creek Vineyard. Holy cats its a great weekend. I am heading over shortly, PROMISE to get even better pics today, but here are a couple of views of the gorgeous place. The weather was a bit overcast at first, but then it was golden sunny. Everybody soooo friendly, ice cream, food, beer, wine, just the nicest fall event.

wine + great weather = :)

You will recall that I was asked a day or 2 ago if I wanted to spend the weekend at Six Mile Creek Winery, down the road from my house, selling pots and hanging out and enjoying the weekend at their big deal festival. I will be going over there soon to setup, and then 12-5 saturday and Sunday. What could be more fun on such a pretty weekend????
In other news, my best pal Brett had a link the other day "how to draw a fox" and I had fun trying it, and ended up altering it and making the fox my own, of course, foxes being handsome and fun to draw.....

boring you to tears.....the cholesterol talk...and wicked tasty foods...

My mother-in-law,
The party animal, came.
Gnocci and beers, yesssssssssssssssss.

That is one point here: have you recently, as an adult, tasted something for the first time which kinda blows your mind? I had Joe's gnocci in basil-tomato sauce, and why have I not HAD GNOCCI before? They are little potato dumplings, used like pasta and holy CATs they are tasty!

As far as boring you, well, people start talking cholesterol and anybody under 40-50 would be like, eyes rolling up in their head. But here I go, with the second mind blowing new flavor in my life.

First, I am a an active and fit 125 pound 40+ year old vegan....and should have, as my wife does, totally low cholesterol. I mean, cholesterol is basically butter in the arteries, right? And I have not had anything like that in decades, but as the ads will show you, high cholesterol comes from your genes too. My family background is obviously terrible for high cholesterol, as mine is QUITE high. Really high. From March till now I had blood tests, ramped up the activity and all, and it went up quite a bit. However, I am determined to lower it through food and more exercise. Oats supposedly carry cholesterol out.

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/oat-bran-vs-oatmeal.html
(a food and health discussion)
I was wondering about oat bran vs oatmeal, having just discovered how superb tasting oat bran is compared to oatmeal in my own personal taste tests. It is like my old favorite cream of wheat, creamy! Kinda gluey but not wallpaper paste, you know? I am getting DEEP into the oats as it were. I think oatmeal tastes OK, but DANG! Oat bran is a zillion times tastier.
It is fortunate that peach jam and peanut butter remain pretty much zero cholesterol, because a bit of toasted bagel with that on it plus some hot oat bran with apple sauce in it is a wicked tasty breakfast.
These bowls would hold plennnnnty of oats....

and suddenly....

It was one of those remarkable things. You are sitting there with the end of the week ahead and the party animal mother-in-law due in from out of town and suddenly there is a last second invite to set up a display for the weekend at a winery. I was like "WELL, OK then! Bring it on!"
I will be set up at Six Mile Creek Vineyards Saturday and Sunday 12-5 and the weather is expected to be AWESOME. Stuff like this teapot just outta the kiln! In other news, julie and Seth got married and went to Mexico and got me a painted SKULL they did indeed....

(new pottery by Gary Rith above, and a friendly Mexican skull from Jules and Sethie below)

enormously cute

If you had such enormously cute dogs, you would sculpt them onto sugar bowls too, wouldn't you?
(Buster and Penny, penny by herself and new pottery by Gary Rith)

cats, dragons and zebras.....

I was like "SPIKE! Sit here, lemme get a pic of you, me, my shirt....."

AND
You will recall I talked about making a tall dragon sugar bowl, where here tis! Most awesome eh? I was thinking "I have made a lot of zebra things lately, dragons are similar to make, I should........this and a skull mug, just added to my etsy shop....

FRANZ the FRIENDLY turtle....

You will recall I told you Helen was like
"My old roomie took off and left me with only one mug. You had made it, it has a bunny on it! I need 4 more. Like, one with a frog, one with a turtle, the others with amphibian, reptile type things." and I was like

"snake and inch worm?" and here they are....

WELL, when I delivered them, I had not realized exactly WHY Helen wanted turtle etc...until I met FRANZ, Helen's awesome turtle. He was found in a dumpster last JANUARY and brought to the shelter, and when he thawed out, Helen adopted him.....Franz is the most friendly turtle, he gets all excited when people come in the door!

in other news, I told Michelle "let's go a little shorter than usual, up top" and the wife thinks I went too far, but I am like "hair is a nuisance, I don't want to think about it...."

ten years ago...

Ten years ago today I recall having 36 piggy banks drying that needed to be finished. If things are drying out, you have no choice but to work on it, get it done. Both of my sister-in-laws live in NY city and we were on the phone at different times, the one looking out her office window, watching the whole thing burn directly in front of her.
They were fine, but I recall thinking that day, as the radio played the news, the sun shone beautifully, that it was quite a contrast, to be sitting there working on something so cute and sweet as piggy banks while such a horrible event was unfolding.

my BRILLIANT idea

(new pottery above and below by Gary Rith)

More about the dragon sugar bowl in a minute...first, my brilliant idea, in a dream? I was dreaming just now that I needed to pee and I go into a public john, where all the urinals are electronic video games. You, um, pee into the usual sort of lower bit, but up higher is a video screen. So, there is a sensor in the lower bit, and you direct your stream around it, killing the usual space aliens and whatnot, which registers on the screen up higher. The only problem was fumbling a quarter into the thing, also, well, most of the time, its gonna be a really quick game isn't it? Gives new meaning to the equipment name "JOY STICK"

(gals, its true, men are always thinking of little games and missions and other flights of fancy like target practice when.....)

OK, the dragon sugar bowl up there? Not much to say, i just wanted to try it :)