C 10 soda salt test tiles

Here's the last group of Cone 10 soda/salt test tiles from my web page. You can access the names and recipes at my web page:

http://www.shambhalapottery.com/c10sodasaltglazegroup1.html

Tonight is our regular Friday night porch sitting with our friends Jim and Laura, so today I'll be tidying house and hopefully, making peach gelato since I didn't have enough ripe peaches to do it yesterday. The banana ice cream came out great. The secret is to use very ripe bananas. We have some Italian wine,an assortment of imported Italian cold cuts and sausage,hot cherry peppers stuffed with prosciutto,marinated artichoke hearts,Italian cheese,Italian cookies and bean bruschetta, etc.etc. on the menu, with banana ice cream or better yet, the peach gelato,if enough of the peaches are ripe enough to make it this morning.

It's raining, with more rain and thunder showers expected throughout the day and night, so there won't be any gardening today.

I did get out yesterday to pull a few weeds, pick more summer squash and spray the newly sprouted bush beans and corn with the rotten egg, cayenne mixture that is supposed to keep the deer and bunnies away; but I think it's the crows that got the corn last time since the whole seedling was pulled out. Hope they'll avoid the corn because of the spray. My plan is to put down some remay cloth over those corn seedlings as soon as the weather permits; and leave it there until the corn is big enough that they can't pull it out.

Cone 10 R soda/salt test tiles #2

Here's another group of C10 soda test tiles. If you double click on it, it brings up a larger version. The descriptions and recipes are on my web page. This link should get you to the right place. If not, just got to the home page and follow the links.

http://www.shambhalapottery.com/c10sodasaltglazegroup2.html

I've decided not to plan any more days, period! The weather, how these old bodies feel on any given morning, etc etc. seem to determine, or I should say, change each days plan. Because the weather was good yesterday, we decided to shift our Thursday plan to Wednesday and drove almost 3 hours to the Lake Norman area in my search for a real Italian deli! The search was very successful, I'm happy to say. Turns out the owner is from my childhood stomping grounds in Brooklyn, NY.

The deli ( http://www.ferruccis.com/ )imports real Buffalo Mozzarella and all kinds of dried Italian pastas, fresh made raviolis, and other pastas,Italian wines (had one of their Primativo reds which was great),canned goods, meats etc. It's amazing how many wonderful food items they have in this small store! We will definitely go back, but decided that we would make it an overnight next time and add some clay and other shopping and a nice dinner in one of Charlotte's many new, and great restaurants. There's a really nice Fresh Market a half a block away from the Italian deli, so with an overnight we can get in a lot of play time, maybe go to the Opera, have a great dinner, pick up some pottery supplies and bring home a lot of gourmet goodies.

We couldn't find a picnic area on our way out of town and wound up having our Italian munchie lunch picnic well after 3 o'clock at one of our regular rest stops in Marion. Dinner was late, but super easy - spaghetti with meatballs (which we bought at the deli).

This is peach season and I was able to buy a basket of peaches on route 16. I was hoping to make some peach gelato today for our Friday porch sitting; but I don't think there are enough ripe ones to do that today. We have two young peach trees and their fruit isn't ripe enough yet, either. So, I'm going to make choclate granitas after breakfast, instead.

I'm feeling better than the past two days, so if this rainy morning opens up to something better, I may get out in the afternoon and transplant some of my hollyhocks, otherwise I'll get into the studio and do more paper sorting and filing and clearing on my studio desk.