A Recipe and Some Self Promotion

When I started writing this blog, one of the first things I said was that I was not going to bore you by writing about what I had for breakfast. Well, this one is about dinner and eventually pottery. Tina and I were spending a quiet Christmas together. No reason for a big feast. No reason to eat hot dogs either. I bought a ham and a big bag of "Normandy Vegetables ". I knew they weren't really from the coast of France but they looked pretty good anyway.I put the ham in the oven and decided to improvise a casserole with the veggies. The bag contained broccoli, cauliflower, yellow carrot slices, and baby orange carrots. I added a diced onion. I put the veggies in the microwave to defrost them while I made cheese sauce. Tablespoon of butter, tablespoon of flour, cook for a minute then add milk stirring all the time. White sauce sounds a little intimidating and I can't even spell what the French call it. For a country boy, butter gravy about sums it up. Salt, pepper, and a good dash of hot sauce or two to bring out the flavor of the cheese. I used a 4 cheese Mexican blend but make yourself happy. Cheese up the sauce to taste then take it off the heat and stir in a couple of eggs. I then took a WHISTLECREEK baking dish, buttered it and dusted with generic seasoned bread crumbs. Spoon the veggies into the dish and pour in cheese sauce to cover.Top with more crumbs and a little butter. I just made another one but the ham was gone so I chopped up some cooked chicken breast and added it. Put in the oven set it to 350 and let er go until the casserole bubbles and the crumbs brown.     ( 45 minutes or so.)  this is absolutely delicious and much much healthier than the mac and cheese that it resembles.

Oh yeah, I promised we would get to the pottery part. I have been using Hansen's 5x20 glaze with zircopax and a little cobalt carb on some of my baking dishes.( Thanks Tony ) The second picture will give you an idea of how well the glaze cleans up. Even with all the cheese, the casserole just scoops out and the dish is clean. Try this recipe yourself and you will love it. Of course if you don't have a WHISTLECREEK baking dish your results may vary but we can fix that. Thanks for stopping by.



Happy New Year

Hi everyone. Happy New Year! Life has been busy around here lately. After Holiday Fair I had a small order of baking dishes to get out. All you potters know there is no such thing as a small order. You still have to make a kiln full of stuff so you can fire effectively. So that took a week. The getting ready for Holiday Fair and hurry up throwing session left the studio a shambles. That took another week. When we were in Charlotte for Thanksgiving, I promised our Daughter Kate that I would make her a fixture to mount some bathroom lights on that also covered up where the wires came out of the wall to feed some old hanging lights. That was some work over a couple of days then three days last week to go back to Charlotte, install the fixture, deliver the baking dishes, and have Christmas with Kate and her husband Lucas. A good time was had by all and Kate even remembered how much I love Eastern N.C. style pulled pork from BUBBA'S. She gave me a tub of it to take home and it has been great.

Now, I am back home. I'm teaching a kid's class and an adult wheel class so that will help get me out of the house this winter. I'm also starting to throw this summer's inventory. A couple of years ago, I decided to throw a bunch of pots in the winter and just pile up the bisque ware. Best Idea I had in a long time. It helps my consistency to make several dozen mugs, bowls, or plates at a time and in the summer, if I am running low on a certain item or color, it is quick to glaze up a load and fire it. Oh, I almost forgot. For the second year in a row, I have received an honorable mention from TOP POTTERY BLOGS. I think it is based more on the number of posts that get reviewed than on total quality but I certainly will take it.

I have also been going out to Plain Folks Café and singing on Sundays. This is supposed to be a jam session but other pickers have not been showing up so several times I have ended up doing an hour and a half by myself. As they say it is good training. Any day the audience doesn't throw things is a good day and folks have been pretty nice. I've even gotten the occasional tip. No, it wasn't " shut up and put that thing away" I don't claim to be a great talent, but I do like to introduce people to some good old songs that they may not have heard before. Here's one of them now. http://youtu.be/np8EVnaV2yg



Holiday Fair

Saturday was the big day for the Cincinnati Clay Alliance's annual Holiday Fair. I hadn't done it for a couple of years and the format was changed from a "table show" to a 6x8 booth so I really didn't know what to expect. We had 30 artists so the total budget was $3000. Not a lot of money for rental, promotion, and hospitality.Most of the advertising was social media along with postcards and posters. We didn't draw a huge crowd but it was steady and the people that came bought well.

 I had made a flat mug display pegboard for the back of my small space and it worked perfectly. The back of the booth had the mug rack, my chair and a 42" table that ran along the side of the booth. I used my 4 ft two sided rack in the front and that left just enough space for people to walk into the booth and shop. Some of them needed an invitation to come in but most of them did.

My day started with one of the best clay artists in town coming over to say nice things about my work and buy a mug. That bit of recognition got me through the first half hour of the show as we got off to a fairly slow start. People started coming, they kept coming.They started talking about how much they use the stuff that they bought from me last year.They bought more. Not just onesies but twosies and foursies. They brought their friends and talked loudly about the quality of  my work. They bought oval baking dishes. They bought cereal bowls. They kept picking the mugs off that new rack and I kept pulling the box under the table out and filling it up again. They bought big bowls.They bought that fabulous big black and red jar that I have been taking to so many shows to help her find a good home. They came into the booth and gave me hugs. I had brought 12 boxes of pots 4 were empty, some were light.

About 11AM, an older couple came into the booth. Mom said she was looking for a soup mug so I showed her one of the new shino glazed footed ones that I had gotten out of my buddy Mike's kiln earlier in the week.We got them all down and even though they were a little pricey she settled on two. Pop said he wanted a couple of the tall coffee mugs too. Nice folks, nice sale. About 3:30 Mom came back to the show. She said that they had gone home and made soup for lunch and it was so luscious (her words) to eat it out of her new soup mugs that she had to come back and buy the other four. It doesn't get any better than that folks.That is why I make pottery. That is why even with all the hard work I do shows instead of galleries.

The show was very good to me It helped my wallet and it stroked my ego. It is always good to show with friends and this was no exception. We had to load in and pack out through a small slow elevator and all of us working together and helping each other made it quicker than expected.The show closed at 5, I was all packed and knocked down by 6:00 and on the road at 6:30. It made me glad that I don't make crap.It made me glad that I don't made gimmick pots or cute little baubles.It made me glad that I don't chase trends or make the pot of the week that everyone else is making.It made me glad that I make solid useful ware that people use everyday and that I have developed a brand and a body of work that is my own. Thanks for stopping by.

Thanksgiving

A couple of weeks ago, Tina and I took the camper and headed down the road to Savannah for some R&R. OK, she took the camper on Wednesday, I taught on Thursday and drove down Friday. We had a lovely, fairly private campsite on Skidaway Island not too far from town where we nestled in between the live oaks, palmetto trees and Spanish moss. It sure didn't look like Ohio! We spent Saturday morning driving out to Tybee Island and seeing some big waves and the lighthouse. On the way back, we visited the Confederate Fort Pulaski and learned first hand how loud a 30 pound cannon can be ( The ball is 30 lbs, the cannon weighs a ton) The afternoon was spent on the scenic tour trolley and we got some interesting information about the history of Savannah. Down on the riverfront, we had dinner at Fiddlers and I had the best fried oysters of my life. Sunday was a quick trip north to Beaufort to visit Hunters Island Campground. It was not as convenient to Savannah but they have some excellent sites that are just a sand dune away from the beach. The town of Beaufort has the most classic old south district you will see anywhere. Big mansions and lots of Spanish moss. There are potters out that way that I would like to visit some day but there just wasn't time to squeeze it all in. Monday we were back hiking around Savannah and eating seafood. A guy could get used to it. We were blessed with an abundance of rain so I need to apologize for not taking more pictures These are enough to prove we weren't in Ohio.

Tuesday, we packed up and headed to a campground near Columbia S.C. It was really just a stop over for the night and Wednesday we were on our way to our final stop to have Thanksgiving dinner with our daughter Kate, her husband and 20 or so members of his family. Of course we loved seeing her but dinner went off without a hitch too. It was all good. Another day of visiting and eating got us to Saturday and the trip home so Tina could go to work and I could get ready for Holiday Fair tomorrow.

Couples Therapy

 

This is one guys approach to couples therapy