Nachos

Last night was nachos night - an easy, fast dinner using some of the tomatoes and serrano chiles so abundant this late in the season.

Yesterday and still this morning, I'm dealing with chills,swollen glands, etc.etc., so I opted to skip the studio and sit on my rump most of the day other than preparing our meals. I got a lot of computer photo cleanup done, read and filed a lot of old email and dealt with some paper work chores that seem to pile up way too fast, and put together a couple of wooden molds for slab work.

Looks like Jim may be coming down with the same bug so we won't be doing porch sitting with friends tonight. No need to share this.

There's some cooking to be done today - meat sauce for a pasta dinner and a green bean bisque to make for the freezer. Since I'm still not feeling 100% I think cooking will be it for today unless I perk up later. If I do, I'll try to get to the studio to just do some decorating on already slipped pots.

Lovely wall sculpture from Japan

Here's another photo from Japan. This is a very strong piece with great texture and a wonderful blend of colors. The artist's name is lost in my long lost trip notes. I remember that we saw his work in his own gallery, which was a storefront, very different than the other potters we visited, who sold their work at their own studios as well as through retail stores.

Well, today I finally got a couple of hours in the studio. A few mugs I had covered over a week or more ago, were leather hard, so I cleaned them up, pulled some handles and got them recovered. I did a bit of cleanup and got the clay mixer going; but the clay had hardened too much, so I added some water and covered it with plastic and will have to let it all sit for a day and try mixing again.

My back is now in spasm just from that little bit of work. This is going to take time. Tomorrow I'll try to throw a few small things and see how that goes.

Fortunately I had a quick dinner planned - pork chops with a cream sherry reduction, some leftover potatoes au gratin and baby peas. Now I'm going to enjoy my glass of wine and watch a Netflix movie, while going over the slides I scanned yesterday. First look at the slides isn't encouraging. The new, cheapie scanner creates bright blue flares on a lot of the scans - very strange. I didn't figure I'd get a quality product, but I didn't expect it to be this lacking. :-(

Last night's pizza

Last night was pizza and margaritas. I'm starting to get the shape better. I think this was one of the closest to round yet.

Yesterday was another day to not follow my initial plan - at least for the morning. After breakfast I decided to put off planting the bamboo. My upper back was way too sore from digging all those potatoes the other day, so I got a bunch of hand weeding done instead and then headed for the studio where I continued putting things away. I got the seconds off the ware cart and into boxes, sorted through a lot of other small items, did a few other chores, then came in and made some marinated eggplant crostinis for our lunch.

After lunch I got started on my pizza dough, got the toppings all prepped then back outside to pull more weeds. After dinner we watched the Brit coms (our Saturday night ritual), while I went through some of my pot sketches.

This morning I spent a lot of time printing out a bunch of recipes from Top Chef, Master Chef show, and others. Now it's time to get Bonnie kitty and head for the studio. This mornings job is to move those bottles of oxide washes and slips, which I didn't have time for yesterday. After lunch I think I'll just relax, read the Sunday papers and watch the tennis while I do more paper work.

Dinner is gumbo that I had in the freezer, so I'll just make some cornbread to go with it.