how PB and J cookies changed my life....

I have eaten PB and J all my life.  I remember my pre-K self going out to a restaurant:  what do you want to order?  The Spready Freddy!  Fancy name for a PB and J.  We went to see my grandparents in NY city when I was 6:  what did I want to order? PB and J!  What do I survive on now?  PB and J!  Gluten free suddenly, what do I eat?  PB and J on gf bread that I bake....

OK, so obviously I love chocolate and peanut butter too.  I remember when I lived and worked in NY city in the 80s and had about 2 dollars a day to spare, what did I eat?  Reeses!  When I bake peanut butter cookies I always put chocolate IN or ON the cookies.

So how come I had NOT YET MADE PB AND J COOKIES UNTIL YESTERDAY????  I saw a variation of a simple peanut butter cookie I already like (gluten free!).  With that I always put a bit of chocolate on top when they come out.  It melts on there and is killer. That is what is wrong with most Americans:  they don't put chocolate on their peanut butter cookies, but you could!

 Yesterday I decided to try the jam variation  and I WAS SHOCKED.  PB AND J cookies are better than anything I have ever tasted, better than anything in the world! (even better than secks? get your filthy minds out of the gutter...then get nekkid with your sweetie and eat these cookies and see where it takes you...) Recipe follows....




PB and J cookies

preheat to 350, grease 2 cookie sheets

In a large bowl, whisk a large egg.  Add one cup peanut butter (I used creamy) and one cup sugar and one teaspoon vanilla.  Stir well.  It creates a nice moist dough.  Use a spoon to scoop out 8 cookie balls onto each cookie sheet,  pat each one round, push down a little bit flat.  I used my teaspoon measuring spoon to push an indent into each cookie then filled each indent with 1/2 teaspoon jam.  Do not overfill. I used blueberry jam we made a couple weeks ago.

Bake the 2 cookie sheets about 5 minutes, reach in, rotate pans and switch top to bottom, bake about 5 minutes more, edges will look a little brown.  Remove sheets from oven, let cool a bit then use spatula to place each onto a wire rack to finish cooling, MMMMM!
--chocolate variation:  you don't have to indent, but you could.  Bake cookies, pull them out and put any chocolate bits or squares onto cooling cookies YOU WON'T BE SORRY!

throwing away....

...my other pizza recipes!  I know, always tinkering in the kitchen, right?  And recently, going gluten free!  I was flipping through my new cookbook GLUTEN FREE ON A SHOESTRING which is also a blog, and saw "polenta pizza".  Polenta is cornmeal boiled first then baked, for a funky cornbread.  It is simple.  It is also massively tasty as a side dish on your dinner plate...and it turns out, a PERFECT PIZZA!  As a matter of fact, it is pretty much the base for original Chicago Deep Dish pizza.  The recipe is here.  The only thing I did differently was use my skillet and bake longer than she suggests!

In other news, I came out of the store and HUGE thunderclouds were gathering and the radio warned of terrible rains coming...and I had a couple days pots back home drying on the back deck!  Rain would turn them to mush and I was ten miles from home!  I raced home, blowing through ten red lights, driving 75 (explain that one to the state troopers "I need to get home and get the drying POTs of my back porch") until I got behind an elderly neighbor whom I tailgated (I know, bad karma, right?) but still made it home as drops first started coming in buckets, and got it all in...you can see rain streaks on these pots that are mostly dry... no damage :) and no ticket! Or accident, actually....sheesh!

Finally, of course, I had sooo many dog walk jobs Thursday, including Nook at Cascadilla Falls (what a PLACE, huh?  A cool Eden on a hot day!) and Yogi came over to...play with my cat Spike :)
Have an awesome weekend!

MEANWHILE, back in the studio....

I did art fairs and farmer's markets and craft fairs approx. every weekend June-Christmas back in my late 20s through my thirties.  I don't do that sh!t anymore, NO NO!  I sell here on the interwebs so much, I can choose a few nice fairs and events to go to, and my back thanks me.  I was at, as you know, a 3 day fair last weekend, WONDERFUL, but I am glad I don't do too much of that anymore, cause it tired me out.  Plus, you know, a bonanza-busy week, as it turns out, of dog and cat sitting...and busy back in the studio, of course!  Some things coming together so far this week...

AND YES, yesterday and today and all this week:  babysitting, in addition to my own cat and dog, Puffy the cat, Nook and Maxie the dogs and Yogi the dog...it is all tremendous good fun, but has not left much time to visit YOUR blogs which I plan to get back to soon :)  Have an awesome day!

frittering time away....

Can you ever get enough of YOGI?  Yogi is my neighbor's dog and I babysit him sometimes.  It could NOT be easier, as we have a fenced in yard for our beagle Penny and it is nice and cool and shady on hot days....but, as you know, Yogi is nuts for our cat SPIKE.  Yesterday he would come over, breeze past Penny and point at the door "I wanna go in and see SPIKE"....and Spike would run down the stairs and be like "Bro'!".  

IN OTHER news, zucchini are now EXPLODING...which means ZUCCHINI CORN FRITTER time!  I used a recipe like this one (click here) and there are other simple recipes out there, but OH MY GOODNESS they are tasty with spicy rice and vegetables on the side.....mmmm!
Have an awesome day!

3 waterfalls in 3 hours....

You hear that Ithaca has 150 waterfalls.  I think we visited the biggest, the tallest and the smallest on Monday!
The wife was on her last day of vacay and I had a dog walk job with Nook and...Maxie.
Maxie's owners need to be careful:  I love her so much I want to kidnap her!  She is a soft medium sized Lab mix who reminds me of a doggish teddy bear....
we walked with Nook and Maxie to Ithaca Falls, the biggest waterfall in Ithaca that comes from Fall Creek which is also in our back yard--those dogs have thick coats, and the falls gorge is so cool and they can go swimming....then later?  Taughannock State Park (highest falls in the northeastern US!) on our way up to Cayuga Creamery!  Cayuga Creamery was named New York state's number one homemade ice cream, and they are so smart they make dairy free ice cream, gluten free cones AND they have a tiny little gorge of their own with a tiny waterfall, and picnic tables...it was 93 degrees and a lot of people were visiting for ice cream...they all sat in the sun!  We thought we would be fighting to sit by the cool waterfall but we were alone down there....crazy huh? GREAT way to spend a hot summer day!  Take care of yourselves...
 

a whole lotta tats....

You go to a summer art festival with rock and roll and art and food and warm and sunny FINE weather and...you see a lot of FLESH.  People have their tats on display, on parade....
My favorite was the customer with 2 cute elephants on her leg.  But in some cases, you wonder if that unicorn ages well...or the portrait of the girlfriend on the hairy leg.  I think, ahem, that the person who puts a tat of a girlfriend from a photo on their hairy leg is maybe, well, asking for trouble...I don't know if it is very easy for a tattoo artist to make that girlfriend look good on the hairy leg, you know?  In blue????  Better to go with the line drawing of the unicorn...

ANYWAY...it was a BLOCKBUSTER fair over the weekend.  Looking back, it is amazingly tiring spending 3 days on the road...LONG days.  Customers may not realize what it is like to get up at 3:30, driving an hour in the dawn (see photo below:  sunrise!), then schlepping your boxes and crap, setting up for 2-3 hours, standing in the sun for 12 hours...then doing it again for 3 days....exciting but a lot of work.
But then you go to the bank :)

SO, you like it when it pays off! Oh my, it did.  I think Saturday was my best selling day ever...or at least since 2000.  The whole 3 day thing was great, so many nice people...that is the best part.  You noodle around in the studio by yourself all the time, then you get out and people say nice things to you and throw money at you!  Awesome :)

Some observations about this fair, which other artists will know represents many if not most fairs and fairgoers:

--somebody told me I should "make glug glug jugs, everybody is!"
--ditto OWLS!  "How come you don't make owls?  Everybody needs owls!" (I do sometimes, actually, and the guy with the ugly brown pots over there has 'em, so go make his day, alright?)
--"I saw this potter in Alabama, he carved SAINTS on the bottom of his pots!  You should carve saints on the bottom of your pots!"
--which brings you to people and their ideas at fairs, maybe they are well meaning, but they know NOTHING about creativity:  I want to tell some people (I am a polite person...except here on the interwebs)
"Hey, I could make glug glug jugs, great idea!  And why don't you paint your living room yellow?  Get a shorter haircut???  Maybe you should have pasta for dinner, everybody is having pasta for dinner!  And everybody needs plumbers, why don't you become a plumber!"

----which leads to the different type of art fair customers:

--the psycho, homeless dude:  well, in an urban setting with a Salvation Army shelter on down the street, and a nice day, all kinds of people are out having a nice time....this type of customer may have a lot of stories to tell you, and, sadly, may also prevent customers looking to buy something from visiting your booth...
--there are customers who spend forever looking at and touching everything and talking...and spend nothing, others swoop in, grab something, pay and take off in a quick second
--the "THAT'S DIFFERENT" person, the type you often see browsing a fair late Sunday morning, a person that Dana Carvey did so well on Saturday Night Live with his Church Lady spoof....
--some customers are FRIENDS, and the best part about repeating a fair is people come to find you, including repeat customers---you readers know that this is my job, making and selling, and I am so grateful for the support of all these folks--I had cards printed about my Columbus Day open studio to give to friends and repeat customers....I did NOT give them to the psychos as you would expect...
--finally, the last type of customer is the GASBAG, who has a lot to tell you... their life story, about when they were carving wooden staffs in their garage before their wife left them and the dog died and...

OVERHEARD at the fair:
"I used to hunt, then I came back from 'Nam.  I'd had enough of guns.  Now I just use my camera"
Listen up, America, and learn.....

boxed in....

I am in the middle of a blockbuster show....one more day! HUGE.  Gosh I am lucky...
the weather PERFECT, SO MANY customers WOW!  More on this Monday...
yesterday a frequesnt customer of mine came to show me what they had done with my Godzilla being attacked by a beagle sculpture...hilarious!  They made a frame for it, a whole woodland scene with a castle....
and Spike, speaking of boxes, has helped with the packing as you see..... have a great Sunday!

"gone fishin'..."

Nonono, not really....but let's hang a sign on my studio today:

"Gone fishin'.....for customers!
Find me at the Binghamton, NY July Fest Friday-Sunday!
Downtown Binghamton, Court St, Music! Food!!! FUN!!!!
ME AND MY POTS!!!!"

Have a great weekend yerself...I plan to :)


(new pottery by Gary Rith)

"mama mia, thassa spicy meatball..."

Yogi comes over yesterday to play, breezes right past Penny in the yard and goes to the door.  Spike cat comes downstairs to the door and he is like "let Yogi come in to play!".  SO, there is my dog, outside sleeping in the sun, while the neighbor's dog comes inside...to play with my cat....

Yogi's owner was out of town last week and was at a shop and saw a curious pottery item.   I don't have the pic, but a potter had made something like a long tube, doubled it back on itself to create a vase with 2 openings at the top.  Pretty clever...so Trevor shows me that, and I get my own ideas about what I might do to make a vase with multiple openings....

There was an ad on TV years ago, an actor was doing multiple takes of eating:  "mama mia, thassa spicy meatball!" and the point of the ad was it was killing him, for real, and for real he needed an antacid....
we get these corn chips called red hot blues.  They are yummy, and not really all that hot.  Penny likes them too.  But the way she eats them is HILARIOUS.