a FLOOD! and other things....

( Campbell Meadow Park down a ways, Yogi on the bridge by our house)
WHOA! Enough rains, alright?
We have seen worse floods, but by inches this is one of the worst.  We have a small river behind our house called Fall Creek, about 2-5 feet deep and about 20-30 feet wide usually.  It came up several feet and hundreds of feet wide in spots yesterday, and my neighbor took a pic of the new park down the street by the riverside:  water going OVER the grill and picnic tables...it rose higher still, until the flood crested about 7 pm on a finally crystal clear evening.
Below:  Yogi came exploring with me... behind him is the riverbank at my backyard!


The bend in the river there at the right is directly behind our house.  No water got close to us. We are pretty high.


In other news, Tiffy likes my cow over moon sculptures...and wanted a set!  She got laughing dog and now.....in progress......
have a great Saturday!

making TEMPEH tasty....

I mean, WTF IS tempeh anyhow?  A soy item used as a meat replacer for vegetarians, less processed than toadfood, I guess, or processed differently anyway, and with MORE nutrients.
It is an ODD ITEM, but so is toadfood.  And kale.  They are all odd items, but most things are until you get used to them (how did that chicken breast look when you opened the package, hmmm?), and these are all so flippin' HEALTHY it is shocking, and mindblowingly tasty when done right.
TIP:
--the best way to prepare and eat toadfood or tempeh is to marinate it and bake it then use the pieces on top of a favorite dish, like stir fry or noodles or whatever.
That's it!  Now you know everything!
My favorite oven baked tempeh instructions are click here and for toadfood click here and to see how I put this tempeh-kale pad Thai together click here!

In other news, I wanted to get a picture of my VERY successful sunflowers potted out front, with their friends the cosmos, but I got a BONUS!  A wee and happy bee.....
Have a wonderful Friday!

probably the CORGI PLAYGROUP is more cute....

(teapot and teaset and doodle by Gary Rith)
YES, I dig this style of loopy and decorated pottery and will DO MORE!  And in more color....

In other news Penny was playing with the corgi across the street, Soupy, last night.  HOW CUTE IS THAT?  Have an awesome Thursday!

the wife tells me: "post the hippo!"

I tell the wife, with some excitement and enthusiasm: "I have something else wonderful to post Wednesday, but I made my first ever hippo bank!  I make elephant banks, penguin, dog, etc, AND make hippo bowls and sugar bowls, but never made a bank before!" and she is like
"but that sounds exciting, post the hippo!" So I am, freshly made and drying.  With a doodle of it!
Have an awesome Wednesday!

everybody loves BUNNIES...

I sure do!  My favorite childhood book was PETER RABBIT and I remember well the horror of Peter's father made into a PIE (the English sure are strange) and wondering for years what chamomile tea was.  But Beatrix Potter is a hero of mine:  always observing, always drawing, illustrating notes and letters to others:  I do that!  She also bought and preserved thousands of acres of England's prettiest countryside, and donated it  as preserved parkland.

ANYWAY, we have bunnies everywhere outside this summer and I love them, and use them all the time in my drawing and work...

(bunny mugs by Gary Rith)

chasing BEEs and what to do with all that kale...

You hear that kale is this nutritional powerhouse, it can save the world!  And you look at the numbers and it is impressive:  a veggie full of LOTs of the usual vitamins and minerals like spinach or broccoli, but with loads of calcium and iron too. You also hear that up until recent generations, humans ate a LOT of it.
But man, it sure is a bitter and tough item, you know?  I love broccoli and spinach but kale has been hard to get used to.  First, I find most kale UGLY.  That is my hangup:  it looks like a weed by the roadside.  Ssecond, it is tough and bitter, so how to prepare?  I find spinach wonderful in many ways, as a salad green raw or cooked any way I want.  BUT, my 2 breakthroughs on kale have been a)  think of it as flattened broccoli (they are related) and cook thataway---steamed, stirfried, whatever and b)  find PRETTY kale.  I was given a bunch that was green with purple veins!  At the store they have red leaf kale, soooo lovely!

OK, so I have some good recipes, and this pad Thai is out OF THIS world, click here for recipe.  And since it uses nutritional yeast and peanut, with the kale it is probably the most nutritious meal on EARTH, yet wicked delicious (I use rice noodles, gf! use 6-8 oz any noodle you want)


In other news, the wife canNOT believe I grow beautiful sunflowers in pots out front...they do SO well. Yesterday I saw bees all over our flowers and snapped a couple of pics...have an awesome Monday!
 

the tiny road trip....

I don't go many places, why would I?  I like it here!
BUT it is fun going to Syracuse where my clay supplier is.
I lived there 26 years ago when I finished college and taught at my nephew's preschool.  Syracuse is a groovier place now.

Clayscapes is a family owned business, selling clay and supplies and with a gallery and huge teaching classrooms, where anybody can take classes!  That's my order, coming out of the warehouse ...

We had a little time and drove through my old neighborhood, on the edge of Syracuse University.  The eastern edge of the university borders Thornden Park and Westcott, which is all beautiful old frame houses and fun restaurants AND America's second best rose garden!  People reserve it all the time for events...including just after our visit somebody was having a wedding there!  Thousands of luscious roses, even lavendar colored...

Then we went to Alto Cinco, my FAVorite restaurant in upstate NY!  We have great Mexican food in Ithaca, but Alto Cinco is one step up...as I get older, I get more neurotic about some things, like waitress service.  I hate waiting for waitstaff, and Alto Cinco has counter service, then you can see all the young hipsters go past, all the artists who are saving their pennies to live up here rather than Brooklyn :)

Finally, hey, my sunflowers, wow! Coming along, and huge!

thanks to YOGI...

I was babysitting Yogi Friday, my neighbor's fuzzy dog, and he was helping with a bunch of projects..again!  You will recall he helped last week with raspberry oat bars. Well, Friday? He was back, helping with a pile of important projects.  You might wonder, in theory, how a HUGE golden doodle puppy could help with anything, but he is WILLING and able....
first we made blueberry oat bars, which I shared with Yogi's family and my guests Friday evening:  um, excuse me, I have made the raspberry version for years but the BLUEBERRY....! WOW.  Better!
Mmmm...click here for its recipe, and I used a smaller pan than it asks for, so they were a little thicker...



In other news, I opened the kiln Friday and there was stuff I was giving to US!  You will see how this all works out in a second.  But first, the cute yellow tile?  We have had zillions of bunnies all summer and I wanted to make mugs with little bunnies all around the base...and I did.  But I always try to use a test tile to paint a design before getting onto the actual pots...PLUS I was mixing yellow glaze and it looked WEIRD.  As in, the new bag of talc was grey, and made the yellow glaze mix LOOK grey....since when is talc anything but white?  So I tested it...and obviously and thankfully, grey talc fires the same as white, NOT ruining my yellow glaze mix :)  I also gave us a pitcher, which I put flowers in for guests to see last night (pic below)
But all these TILES???? Keep reading....


We have a wonderful picket fence.  We live on Main St, and the dump trucks, buses, 18 wheelers, Harleys, hot rods, redneck pickups and sportscars all consider the 35 MPH speed limit a serving suggestion...to be ignored.  SO, when we bought the house 7 years ago we had a wonderful and pretty picket fence put in, painted blue-grey last fall.  BUT, the fence posts are just cut off, as you see Yogi peeing on one here.  Water is getting into those fence post tops and creating some rot on some of them.
I have considered my best courses of action for years:  copper tops?  Wooden tops?  OR I devise I clever tile to affix to the top of each?
My 4 x 4 tile maker happens to be JUST bigger than each fence post, and I figured if I made a bit of a side and put in a screw hole....... WELL, guess what?  I WAS RIGHT!  Clever idea huh?  The wife knew nothing about this...she and guests came home Friday to a party in our back yard and....YES! Big surprise!  The tiles vary, and 2 have frogs....I miscounted and there are 12 fence posts.  I made the 12th yesterday thinking "this one can be EXTRA FANCY" and I will show it to you when fired next week...
(before-Yogi pees on a naked fence post, while Penny pees)


First tile!

Looking down from our back porch at our personal Stonehendge...and several newly topped fence posts... I considered what color the wife might like, and decided on my blue-grey glaze which is nearly identical to the fence paint, because I knew the wife would like that WITH the green accents, right? For a little tint of variety...and frogs....


Finally, I was drawing the dog sleeping....here she is with the cat...have a great Saturday!

olde world family torte made GLUTEN FREE!

It is for real: you know a month or so ago it dawned on me that maybe the reason I have had a stomachache for 3 years was wheat or gluten and the first day I was without was a pleasure...the change was THAT fast, a normal belly! No agony!

I wondered on the weekend WTF was wrong.  All of this is still new to me, and I wondered about the return of the agony.  After 2 days it eased.

I was at the store buying a new jar of mole sauce, tasty Mexican chocolate-peppers sauce which we had used for enchiladas Saturday.  With leftovers.  Anyway, there was a jar I had not seen before, and I thought it looked cute and read the label and HOLY CATS they make it with BREAD CRUMBS? I checked the jar we had used, sure enough, that company makes mole sauce with wheat too.  My body sure noticed it.  

Anyway, I have posted the wife's family torte recipe quite a few times.  It belonged to the German grandmother originally, and this card came from the aunt who served me that family plum torte before the wife and I got married, and she shared the recipe with me, 20 some years ago.  It is simple and rich and delicious.  I have made it with oat flour instead of wheat for gluten free relatives, and it is still really good.  

But then I realized that the success is really in the berries on top of a rich cake, NOT rocket science, and the original recipe has a lot of that OLDE WORLD fat, to be honest.  So, make that if you like, but HERE is a killer version, wicked healthy!  GLUTEN free!  I invented it, after horsing around.  Sure, 2 eggs in there, but brown rice flour is a very good whole grain.  The first time I tried it was good, but needed...something.  Needed more richness and less dryness, and vegetarian bakers know that apple sauce is your friend!  HUZZAH!  Perfect.

The wife tells me she has totally forgotten the family version, MINE IS BETTER.****

****

Gary's gluten free berry torte!

1 1/4 cup brown rice flour

2 TBS  (+ one TBS sugar reserved for the top)

2 tsp baking powder

dash salt

2 eggs

1/2 cup milk (I use soy)

1/4 cup canola oil

2/3 cup applesauce

about one cup blueberries, sliced apple or plum etc.

____

 

-preheat oven to 350

-grease 9 inch torte pan or 8 x 8 brownie pan

-combine first 4 dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl

-beat the 2 eggs in a second bowl, then add the milk, oil, applesauce, stir nicely then add to dry ingredients and stir it ALL nicely until mostly smooth

-pour batter into greased pan, top with an even layer of fruit and then sprinkle the 3rd TBS of reserved sugar on top

almost famous...?

(pottery by Gary Rith)
Ever had a day filled with unexpected warm fuzzies..followed by more warm fuzzies?
The last 4 years I have been asked to consider joining a groovy coop down the road, and have not gotten around to it....several members REALLY pressed it in July.  They said such nice things!  I finally went down to meet up with members and the director and get papers and show what I have and see the gallery...they were SO NICE to me, I am fortunate....this is gonna be a lot of fun, let me tell you more about it later. This is the sampling of 12 items I brought to represent myself.  I was like, to the wife
"here is 12, I want to bring 8, which ones???" and she is like
"BRING THE 12" which worked out well....

THEN after that rather friendly and supportive meeting I get home?  And the newspaper wants to interview me!
I talk to an editor and we have a rollicking fun conversation.
I talk to a reporter (who is typing furiously) and it is rollicking good fun...and since the contact came through my website (and suggested by other potters) they are saying nice things about my work....
It is an article about Ithaca's pottery scene, so, I am, if included (she did say "wait, I want to be sure I got that quote correct" and "OOOOH! i love your teapots!") amongst many other potters.
As we closed the reporter said, with delight, "oh!  you have a blog!!!" and I was like
"help yourself to any pictures" and she is like
"the newspaper would send over a photographer" and I was like, to myself "oh really???"
although who knows if it will come out next week, or includes me, we shall see :)


You may need some of my specials on froggy things!  For sale now at my etsy shoppe!