grand day out at the fair.....

SO, as I said, went to the Groton, NY Olde Home Days thing Saturday. Gosh it was FUN. Its just a tiny little town a couple miles away from home, and I was between my best pals Nance with painted pots and Stevo with the pictures. Nance is a colorful character, and I didn't realize I had gotten so many pics of her..........tres amusing!

Nance above, Stevo's family below...Janet gave Nance a massage...we did sidewalk chalk drawings...holy cats, who invented huge sidewalk chalk? What awesome stuff! people should draw on sidewalks EVERY DAY.

Saturday = Rotten Groton!

Well, NO. Sounds funny, and people in other towns, like me, say it for fun, but do people who live in Groton think it funny? Find me Saturday about 10-4 at Groton, NY Olde Home Days, selling stuff which says "AWESOME GROTON!" and the like :) ...plus here is a fun sculpture I was working on today...it opens up to be a sugar bowl, and Elephant is holding his own teapot and cup....

Thursday night art par-TAY!

SO, Peg writes to tell me that the Cooperative Gallery 213 in Binghamton is having a party Thursday, come along! Get to know the place! So me and the wife did just that. First we went to Lost Dog cafe...oh gosh, it is the awesomist--there was one here in Ithaca but they closed it to concentrate on the one down in Binghamton--A PLUS! You can see I am a wee piggy here with the vegan treats.....and we went around the corner also to Riverread books....to see THOREAU THE CAT...also known simply as THOR, the nicest bookstore cat..and bookstore, anywhere...

Me with Glenda and Peg at Cooperative Gallery 213..you will see more of us there, I am gonna JOIN!

You will remember that I was asked if I could make skull spoons to go with skull cups and the like, sure I can! Good skull and other stuff available at my etsy shoppe.....

killer eggplant!

Amy shows up with a bag full of awesomeness from her farm up the road every other day....she and Dave are our buddies, but YES, pottery is involved from our side. Last night, for example, there were tomatos and Thai hot peppers and pretty green and purple lettuce, but last week? A bag of gorgeous eggplants. They have the most pretty color don't they? I had just seen an awesome article in the NY Times about eggplant steamed with peanut sauce, oh WOW! It is an immensely simple recipe---you can look at the original, but this is how I did it.

for 2 hungry people: steamed eggplant with peanut sauce and noodles

in large pot with a steamer for veggies, pour in an inch of water and put onto high heat, do the same with a small pan half full of water

cube an eggplant

when both pans start to boil, toss the eggplant into the big, and 2 handfulls of noodles into the small, turn each down to low heat as you would usually cook pasta, and set timer ten minutes

dice 1/2 cup tomato and 1/4 cup onion and when pasta done, add a small spoonful of oil to the noodles plus onion and tomato

in bowl, mix 1/2 cup peanut butter, 1 tbs soy sauce, 1 tbs brown sugar, 1 tbs lime juice, garlic powder and red pepper powder and 1/2 cup water, stir!

eggplant should be tender after ten minutes steaming, divide onto 2 plates, divide noodles with it then top with the peanut sauce, sooooooo tasty!

making a little gem.....

More on LITTLE GEM in a second.
FIRST, if you live in upper NY state, come see me Saturday at Groton, NY Olde Home Days! Groton is not our town, but it is just a couple miles up the road. I will be selling some Groton stuff and other stuff too. You will recall that people around here, who do not live in Groton, call it "Rotten Groton" and I started making some joke items with that on there....and realized right away what a BAD idea that is. Instead, cows, dogs, pigs etc with <3 Groton, NY, etc

The little gem? I make a lot of things and I make stuff that is you know, like Groton things, orders for others, but really, as I get older, I just want to sit there and make the little gem. The sweet and awesome little item. I had a student tell me once "Gary makes pottery like Dr Seuss would have made!". YES. That is the way to go. Below you see my sketch idea for a zebra sugar bowl, then you see the parts, then you see it finished, with a frog sugar bowl and a fired zebra sugar bowl, giving you an idea about what color it will be...I cannot tell you how fun it is to make things like this, you are creatively and physically transported...if you are low, you are lifted, just like the rush of riding your mountain bike (I did that too yesterday). I am a creativity-productivity addict: I like to get things done!

keeping it simple!

Judy and Liam came over in April and brought super tasty super fudgey brownies, vegan! No dairy, no eggs! The recipe is impossibly simple. I thought it would be cute to make little baby brownies in the tiny muffin pan, each having its own nut, so both pan and tiny muffin versions presented here. I am no good at removing things from pans, therefore the wife did that for me, but next time I use the little paper liners, you know?

vegan brownies

2 c flour
2 c sugar
3/4 c cocoa
teas bake powder
one c water or coffee
2 sticks earth balance margerine (16 tablespoons)

preheat oven to 350
grease 9 x 13 inch pan OR use tiny muffin pans with paper liners

mix everything thoroughly, pour into pan or muffin liners--
stick nuts in! bake 9x13 25-30 mins
bake tiny muffins 18 minutes

beauty and beastliness...

It cracked me up: we are driving down the road and there are 2 enormous fields of sunflowers and I stop and make the wife pose with them in her BRIGHTLY COLORED pants and the little sign there does NOT say "don't pick" as i thought it might, it says "grown for Ithaca Agway" which is a thrill because guess where we buy our sunflowers for birds????
Anyway, and then this nice goth type sends me a message "if I buy a skull cup, will you make me a teaspoon to go with it?" which I thought was sooooo funny, and so, Sunday I realized after the fact, i was listening to The Cure in a skull tee making skull spoons...which all kind of adds up right....I have to admit--there is no rule book on sculpting spoons and I have never done it before, so I figured you just hum a few bars and fake it and HAVE FUN doing what you wish....

off to Aurora where I was a VERY BIG DEAL....

OK, maybe not that big of a deal, but I was a featured artist in a gallery meet and greet Saturday at Aurora Art and Design and Center....the wife took a lot of pictures.....we have a HUGE ARTISTS PARTY Thursday August 25 5-7, so you could come and see everybody then if you missed Saturday! Anyway, Saturday? I had a stuffed nose, but what you see below is driving up through the pretty orchards and farms of central NY--we went to a peach farm coming home and will go back as soon as possible for more--then you see unpacking and setting up and hanging out with Fran the jeweler also featured and Jacci who runs the gallery (with camera and orange top)....you know, you are sitting there with a stuffed nose and a dead brain, but golly, you get into a fun event and have a BALL, such a good time meeting people....

all that and muffins too

(blueberry muffins and new pottery by Gary Rith)

I am at the Aurora Art and Design Center today, half an hour north of here up the lake, at a gallery talk and hullo type thing. You could come over! I'll be there 2-4!

In other news, made my favorite blueberry muffin recipe Friday. The beagle is always at my feet when I am in the kitchen, I drop all kinds of tasty things by accident. This recipe is made with yogurt, soy yogurt in this case, and impossibly good.

Gary's yogurt blueberry muffins

preheat to 350

grease a 12 muffin pan--although this time I made 15....so, if you can, have a 6 pan close by...

-crack egg into bowl, add 1/2 c oil, teas vanilla, 1/2 cup sugar and STIR!

-add one cup yogurt, stir some more

-add one cup wheat flour and one cup white flour, one tsp bake soda and 2 teas baking powder and stir

-gently stir in one cup fresh or frozen blueberries, I added 2/3 cup of walnuts too

-spoon batter into baking pan, bake 25 minutes until a knife stuck in comes out clean---so easy and tasty!

Chinese-ish cucumber salad with the tri-color menace

You probably don't think its funny that my beagle was sitting on my lap at dinner time on the back deck and she crawled onto the table to lick plates and I laughed and took photos....my wife didn't think it was too funny either...

ANYWAY, you will remember that last week the wife came home with 8 cucumbers and I talked about making tasty Thai cucumber salad. We are still eating tasty cukes, and here is a recipe that I have adapted that is wicked tasty for all those tomatos filling up your garden too....

chop 2 medium-small cucumbers into serving bowl, wash and add 1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, dice half of a purple onion or use a few green onions diced, 3 tablespoons, more or less, of walnut

In second bowl, pour in 1/4 cup balsamic or rice or red wine vinegar, 4 teaspoons sesame oil, many shots of tabasco, shakes of black pepper---whisk mixture, pour over veggies, stir it all around then serve and YUMMO!