forget the pots, IT'S SNOWY!

It is true, I have all these fine pots to show you, but probably all my California and southern friends agree that a boatload of snow is MUCH more fun to look at today.  Maybe not on their lawn, but on MY lawn.
We live in probably the most Christmassy place on earth.  We have the "over the river and through the woods"  right here! And such a pretty little church....and beagle....

Below, Baptist church in center of Etna...


Penny in our back yard...the rock to her right suggests we got up to a foot in spots...


Our house!  Yesterday's house picture was across the street, there was some confusion...hard to see but our only outward holiday decoration is the Danish hearts on each door.


River looking south toward Mt. Pleasant.


The bridge has an open steel deck...cool pattern, eh?


Downtown Etna--church on right, PO on left.  That's it!  All we got :)


Looking north at the river---our back yard is just there on the right as the river bends....

not exactly Buffalo, but STILL up to a foot.....

We were s'posed to get an easy 3 inches over 2 days....
not exactly.  There was still school yesterday, but right now it looks like we got a foot or more.  These pictures show things when it was still just a few inches, Soupy the neighbor's corgi and our Penny plus Soupy's house in the snow across the street....
IF THAT ISN'T CHRISTMASSY I don't know what is :)
(with flash and without, cool eh?)

 

have a ...GODZILLA Christmas....

Do Jewish people look at American Christians and think they are nuttiest people on EARTH?
I was driving past a school yesterday and saw its neighbor has huge blow up stuff all over the yard, and this Godzilla Santa cracked me up so I took the picture...but the more I look at it, the more I say
"should the designer of that thing have maybe placed the tree....a little higher.... or maybe it would be better for no tree.....maybe a bag of toys at his side?  Because it looks like Godzilla Santa has ...um, unusual predilections."

As far as American Christians and decorations go, I am a Quaker as many of you remember, and we believe no day is more sacred than another.  Including December 25th.  We also tend to go a little toward the plain side with decorations. Doesn't mean we don't have celebrations or decorations, but maybe try for a little less.....excess.....although, as  a retailer, I dearly hope that people will be excessive when they shop my work ;)

Everybody loves piggies with corks in their nose, but I like to make sitting ones too...there is a slot in back....the ones below the sitting pigs are for an order, and I was surprised to find I used my LAST 2 corks on them...had to order more...


IN OTHER news, I am babysitting Scoop the cat this week...she is, as you recall, a favorite of mine.
She goes bananas when I come to the door....

gluten-free vegan veggie burger!

I havn't had meat in...decades.  Then, of course, I had to take out dairy and gluten...what are we left with????? SO MANY THINGS!
Veggie burgers from the store can be tasty, of course, but they often have gluten...and I figured there had to be an easy way to do something with black beans, etc and came across this recipe that basically uses 4 simple things ground up together:  spice, cooked rice and sweet potato and black beans, that is IT! And OH my, so delish...makes you wonder why everybody thinks cooking has to be complicated and difficult....
AND like I said yesterday, I like avocado whipped with lemon juice, what a perfect topping on there....
have an awesome Tuesday!

avocado lemon...

There are a lot of ways to enjoy avocado, but more about that in a second...
I had a fine fair yesterday at Temple Beth-El.  Old friends everywhere I looked!  I was pretty cold and tired at day's end and the dog and I fell asleep probably around 7...I dreamt I was running the Boston marathon and the Queen was along the way taste testing ice cream, and she dramatically spit out some she didn't like...in another dream I got a puppy and played with it all night...that, folks, is the glamorous life of the artist, right? Next Sunday I have the last fair of the year and cannot wait! I think it might be a pretty big deal....

OK, avocados, right?  You can slice them and eat them on your taco or salad or rice, you can mash it with spice and lime etc and make guacamole, but my favorite?  Courtesy of Martha Stewart who once suggested it:  just blenderize your avocado with lemon juice, that is IT!  It makes a lovely light green color, too, but it makes the most wonderful smear for any taco, potato, anything...

SO, that color?  I am tinkering with this glaze, see below, and it is that very avocado lemon color.  I hope that the glaze works out.....


(new teaset by Gary Rith)

little bundle of joy...

We gave up long ago, trying to keep the dog off the bed and sleeping in her own doggy bed.*  The cat took the dog bed, of course....

I am at a small local fair today, yippee! Temple Beth El, Ithaca, 9-3!

*We kept the dog off the bed for her first 3.5 weeks.  Then gave in.  I mean, c'mon, not only is she CUTE, but please, winter is COLD! Nothing better than a dog's warmth under the covers....

giant robotic hazmat suit....

Not sure what the reason was or the hazardous materials BUT I dreamt I needed to get into an enormous hazmat suit with robotic controls...a cool item, actually.  Naturally, in that dream, I passed the wife the camera so I could blog it the next day, as I do.....
(new frog mugs by Gary Rith)

Shakespeare and curry burritos!

I was dreaming just now about teaching a huge high school class 8th period drama and acting.  I have never done this before, although I taught high school English 20 years ago, Shakespeare included.  I was teaching these skeptical students who needed to be won over.  I assured them there would be little homework but a LOT of in class acting practice, starting right then with Romeo and Juliet.  Boys and girls were to pair up BUT boys got to be Juliet, girls Romeo...and not as a joke, but to really try to BECOME those roles.  I woke up before getting too far with the lesson, but i was patting myself on the back, feeling like I was heading the right direction with them :)

IN FOOD NEWS: Vegan Stoner has the cookbook and the awesome blog.  I planned to make their chickpea curry yesterday, but decided to stuff it into tortillas rather than on rice. I make my own gluten-free tortillas with rice flour as you have seen here, but Bob's Red Mill has a new product out:  One to One gluten-free flour mix.  Anyone who has started baking gluten-free knows that it takes some practice getting used to rice flour or chickpea flour, etc...I have become very good at it, with a full recipe collection of breads, cakes, cookies, pies etc, as you have seen.  But with Bob's new One to One mix, you can try to simply make ANY ordinary white flour recipe without thinking about it....

SO yesterday I went to the back of the Vegan Stoner Cookbook for their flour tortilla recipe.*** Their tortilla recipe approach is a little different from other methods I have tried in a couple of ways...but HOT DAMN did that recipe with Bob's One to One work SO PERFECTLY...and with chickpea curry filling?!!!!!


*** In a bowl stir together 2 cups flour, dashes of salt and 3 tbs olive oil.  Slowly stir in one cup +/- of water, to get a nice, spongy dough, not sticky, not dry.  Use your hands to mix it too.  Then roll out 8 balls on a floured counter or like I do, between sheets of floured wax paper.  Heat a skillet to medium-hot with a tiny bit of oil, cook each side until brown, a minute or 2, then placed finished tortillas covered in a clean towel, until all are done.

badass little dragon teapot ...

With racing stripes?! Noooo....just red and blue with a sly little dragondinosaurmonsterGodzilla on top...I have decided I am good at making those characters and will fill the world with them :)

(new pottery by Gary Rith)

Nook and Abu!

Many of you remember one of my dogwalking clients, NOOK!  Nook is an Alaskan eskimo dog, a cute little white fluffball.  Nook got a KITTEN!  Abu is a 7 month old grey tiger ragdoll mix of some kind....good LORD i want to kidnap them BOTH but will remain content to visit them and play...


We can be honest here:  Abu looks and acts like a stoner, SOoooo mellow....



Nook and I went over to Ithaca Falls.  The little river in my back yard a few miles down tumbles through a 400 foot deep gorge in a series of huge waterfalls in the middle of downtown Ithaca, so pretty!


DO YOU REALIZE that there is only about 3 weeks until Christmas???? What are you waiting for, order from my etsy gallery NOW! (click HERE!)

HACKED!

I had a data breach.  "WTF is that?" you ask, "Somebody stole a recipe???? Used Spike's photo of him licking himself on their own blog without asking first????"

No, this one was money, MY money.  Credit card bill shows up in the mail yesterday, and it is like HUH?  That is high. 5 charges, 4 of them I recognize.  But BURLINGTON COAT FACTORY for 184????????

I have a credit card I only use online (that one) and a bank acct for online use too, with a different card and bank acct for old fashioned uses.  YOU SHOULD TOO.  That way, if you lose your wallet, your online info is safe, and vice versa, like when some Russian azzhole in Moscow somehow hacks your Amex number and somehow uses it at Burlington Coat Factory, you know your wallet card is fine. Etc.
Here is a timely article from Huffpost yesterday about this very subject.  Amex has not told me yet what happened, and I hope they figure it out, but the reason people LOVE Amex is they quickly reassure you it is NOT your responsibilty to pay the fraudulent charge, and a new card and number is on its way...a quick and easy call.

EXCEPT for one thing.  They kept calling me "Missus Rith" and "Ma'am" and I had to insist 4 times IT IS ME.  I remember David Sederis claiming on the radio that he "has the speaking voice of a little girl" and he sings Billy Holiday covers brilliantly.... I do too, actually.....

 

apprentice for a day....

I had a really great open studio.
Saturday afternoon Angelika and her 6 YO daughter came over....after poking around for awhile and eating some chocolate I asked "would you like to roll out some clay, mess around?" which led to, inevitably, the blob of clay on the wheel and TWO HOURS of muddy fun....