Oatmeal bread

Since I was up at 4 am, I decided it was a good morning to get another loaf of oatmeal bread made. This loaf is a bit better looking than the one a few days ago; but I'm still getting uneven raising in that bread machine, on some loaves. 

We decided to drive to Asheville Friday, which is always an all  day trip. Our aim was to buy some fresh seafood, have lunch at the Mexican restaurant and pick up clay at Highwater, which was out of Phoenix. Last time I was in there they were out of clay as well. Why don't they just buy another used mixer, I wonder. If I were younger I'd be mixing my own again; but at 70, I've become wise enough to resist that temptation, so  I wound up getting couple of boxes of a white stoneware which I also use.

We've been eating blue shell crabs, steamed clams and fried shrimp the past 3 days. We have definitely saturated our seafood itch! It was so good to find a source for really fresh fish and seafood. They will be seeing us pretty regularly.

Besides husband and animal care, gardening, indoors and out, cooking, there has been no time for studio other than a stolen hour or so the other day to throw a couple of bowls and mugs. Seedlings are sprouting and need to get planted, others need watering, moving outdoors and back in on very cold nights, feeding and transplanting. I've lost quite a few from damping off which has never happened with this expensive seed starter; and I don't know what has caused it this year. Hopefully enough will make it through OK. All the kale, cabbage and broccoli are doing fine and need to get transplanted in the garden later in the week, along with onions and leeks.

It was a gorgeous day yesterday, and  I finally got some heavy duty outdoor gardening done after a couple of morning hours of indoor seedling care and planting. I dug in some metal supports, mixed up some planting medium and planted a couple of red raspberry bushes, a low, fragrant sumac bush, a couple of climbing roses, then pruned the rest of the other non climbers and did some weeding.  Now there are only 2 old climbers to prune. Saying I was totally wiped when I came in, is an understatement, but I still had to muster enough energy to make steamed clams in a wine, garlic, herb broth, for dinner.

The rain today made this another indoor gardening day again with more seedling care and planting. I also got three of the four varieties of potato seeds I'm planting this year, cut and curing.  That was followed by a short stint in the studio before dinner to trim the couple of pots I threw a few days ago. I should be able to get a bit more studio time in tomorrow. There was too much else to do today, including baking bread. I even found time after lunch to read a couple of pottery magazines that have been sitting here for weeks.

Whole wheat loaf

This light whole wheat bread tasted fine; but you sure do get funny shaped loaves with this bread machine. What the heck is that knob on the top of the loaf! LOL

It's been a busy few days dealing dealing with seeds, planting, weeding, and bread baking and no time for studio yet! A whole bunch of old seeds sprouted two days ago and I had to spend the day planting them, and then I wet down another bunch which may begin to sprout in the next 5 days or so.

Yesterday was a gorgeous warm, sunny day, so instead of the studio, I headed to the garden and put down some organic fertilizer on several planting beds, did a bunch of weeding, and unloaded and stacked 14 bags of mushroom compost and manure. Checking the sun, around noon, I realized I had to change my garden plan so those high sun requirement plants were in the right place, so I measured all the beds and make a graph and started on a new companion planting plan for this year. We joined friends for a Tapas/Spanish wine dinner at the Knife and Fork, which was delightful. My favorite tapas was the little steamed clams with sausage and veggies.

Today was the day I planned to plant a few perennials and transplant some cold weather crops but it looks like the rain is going to be here any minute, so I'll be indoor gardening again.

Yesterday Jim picked me up a bunch of replacement grow lights and I need to get them changed out this morning. I'm planning on a simple pasta dinner tonight, so I may even have time for some studio time after lunch, which will be nice.

A day to rest

Each morning I quickly check the peat pots to see if any new seeds sprouted overnight. This morning there were some Opalka, San Marzano, Campbell's and Italian heirloom, tomatoes and artichokes that peeked through overnight, as well as a couple of cippolini onions and leeks. The Bok choi seedlings were early sprouters and now they need to get separated. I'll probably do that after dinner when it will be less stressful for them.

It's damp, cool and windy - a precursor of the rain that's expected, so it looks like I'm going to have another day or to wear my magnetic belt and rest my strained back and catch up with some paperwork.

We just finished a huge breakfast of corned beef hash and eggs and now it's time to read the Sunday papers. We were hoping to watch the finals of the tennis from Palm Springs this afternoon but Charter cable in our area decided to play a woman's softball game instead. Wonder who does their programming schedule over there! On days like this I wish we still had our old satellite dish! We're big tennis fans and we really looking forward to Andy Roddick's final match. I was hoping that Fox sports might stream the match but after checking their web site it doesn't appear that they do that. :-(

First day of spring brought glorious weather

I'm so grateful that mother nature decided to make this first day of spring sunny and warm. Despite a bad night (up at 1am with headache and not able to get back to sleep till after 4 am), I couldn't resist the call of the garden. So I donned my wide brimmed garden hat to protect my skin from the discolorations that are a side effect of this antibiotic I'm on, and headed out to do some weeding and hand spread a bag of calcium on my vegetable beds.

I was too tired to do much more; but it was a start. Hopefully, after a good night's sleep, I'll be able to give the garden more time tomorrow.

My latest planted seeds are starting to sprout and now I'm trying to figure out where to put them all!

Hellebores and other garden news

Spring is ready to break through. These hellebores look like they will be opening any minute!

Yesterday I got out in the garden to do some pruning and early weeding and decided also,  to tackle the old grape vines which probably had never been pruned - what a mess! I watched some you tube videos on grape pruning before hand, but none that I watched was too helpful with these arbor grown Concord grapes. I did find out a lot about grape pruning and growing. There are two pruning methods used for various types of grapes.Commercial growers thin the grape clusters and snip the bottom of the clusters to get bigger grapes. They also remove some leaf cover before the grapes ripen, etc. But, and it's a big but - these old vines of ours are such a tangled mess I can't figure out what to cut or how! I figured out that the main truck is called the cordon. This morning I'll watch a few more you tube videos (there are a lot), and maybe I can get a clearer picture on how to deal with the tangled mess.

The only video I found on arbor supported Concord grapes said to leave the pencil thin burgundy colored  stems; but the only burgundy colored stems on those vines were parts of wild blackberries!  On top of that, the area under the arbor was another sea of a tangled mess of wild blackberry vines that I had to cut down. The worse part of it all is that this arbor was built for munchkins. It's so short that I can's stand up all the way under it making it doubly difficulty to maneuver or see anything. Needless to say, by the time I got back to the house my back was killing me. Also, one of the vines is either died or is dying. The main trunk is split and rotted, so I may just have to cut it down and plant a new, healthy, seedless variety.

Last year I planted a new, different variety grape; but it's too early to tell how well it fared it's first winter.

I worked on that vine till 4 o'clock and then came in to make a pot of mushroom bisque for dinner.  Soup is a comfort meal for me and one that I needed last night!

On the bright side, it's going to be a beautiful, warm, sunny day today, so after breakfast I'll water indoor plants, tend my seedlings, drive to Johnson City to do some food shopping at Earth Fare and plant shopping at Lowes. I'm looking for a yellow climbing rose and the new yellow knock out rose and fish fertilizer; and I'm sure I'll find some other goodies to add to the cart.  I always do!

My original plan for the day was more pruning and garden clean up; but I'm too weary and sore from yesterday so that will have to wait for another day.

More seeds planted

 Here's the latest group of planted veggie seeds. Later today or tomorrow, I'll try to get some of the perennial flower seeds planted now that I have most of the early veggies started. The less hardy fruits and veggies will be planted in another couple of weeks or more.

We had a great corned beef and cabbage dinner with friends last night, followed by Irish coffee for dessert, in the living room, while we watched the Three Irish Tenors video (that is when we weren't chatting away). It's the same ritual every St Patrick's day -same meal, with either watching "The Quiet Man", or "The Three Tenors" afterwards.

Some of my seedlings sprouted over night so I've moved that flat to a south facing window in my office - one of the only two non obstructed south facing windows in the house that will get late morning and some  afternoon sun. Yesterday I moved the cabbage, broccoli and other hardy veggies to porch to harden off for a few days before planting. I do so love this time of year!

Looks like it will be a good afternoon to do the rose and some other pruning. I still have another couple of weeks to go on the latest antibiotic for this eye/sinus infection, so I need to don my silly, wide brimmed, hand painted floral designs, lavender, gardening hat so I don't get skin discoloration from this medication.

I'm gearing up to get in the studio Sunday or Monday at the latest. I'm soooooo ready!

Seed starting and gnocchi update, change in Gougere recipe

ATTENTION: I forgot to put the amt of water in the mushroom gougere recipe, so for those who said they want to try it, I added the water to the recipe in the original post. It's 3/4 of a cup of cold water.

As I mentioned the other day I was going to make my first batch of gnocchi. It was a lot of work and frankly, not worth the effort. I told Jim for all that trouble I could have made pierogi's which are a much better use of mashed potatoes and flour! I once had gnocchi in a restaurant and wasn't that fond of it, but since I've been on an Italian cooking kick, I thought I'd try home made, hoping they'd be better. The gorgonzola cream sauce was a winner and gave some punch to an another wise boring dish.

Yesterday was an indoor gardening day. I planted the large tray of seeds above - everything from tomatoes to bok choi, made a rough garden plan for this year and got a lot of older seeds wrapped in wet handtowel  paper and baggies to test their viability. Today I'll start some more veggies and put some of my older cabbage and broccoli seedlings outdoors to start hardening them off. The greenhouse window is a bit overcrowded and I need to make room for these latest seedling once they sprout. After it warms up a bit in the afternoon I need to prune my butterfly bush and maybe spent a few minutes on other garden cleanup.

If any of my local, gardening friends want to try some new seeds, I'd love to share. Seeds like lettuce and peppers don't last long and we can only eat so much! So give me a call, come over and sit and have a cup of tea and we can go through my huge seed stash.

This time of year I'm usually splitting my time between studio and getting ready for the spring planting season.  With Jim doing so much better, I think I'll finally be able to get in the studio by next week; and I'll only be about 100 feet away if he needs anything. I'm skipping the spring studio tour so I'll be able to work without the stress of getting a firing in before the beginning of June. There's still a lot more work to make to fill the kiln.

Mushroom gougere

 

Here's last night's mushroom gougere.  Someone requested the recipe a while back, so I'll post it below.

Tonight I'll be making my first potato gnocchi with a gorgonzola cream sauce. After that lovely chicken cacciatore recipe from my latest Italian cookbook, I decided I wanted to try more of her recipes and try some things I've never made. Since it's definitely not gardening weather, other than the care and feeding of houseplants and seedlings, it's been a good time to do more cooking.I've been on an Italian kick - made an escarole, potato, turkey sausage soup the other night which we loved. It's a recipe I created by taking the best of a few other recipes. It's definitely one that is going in the recipe box.

Jim and I went to Asheville the other day and bought a new bed - a Tempurpedic, which we hope will allow him to get out of the recliner and sleep in a bed again! He drove both ways and didn't seem the worse for wear. We even had dinner out Friday night and he made it through all three courses without much more than feeling a bit tight in his back.

Yesterday I got my potato seeds, but it looks like potato planting is going to have to wait till the end of the month when, hopefully, the weather will be more cooperative and that will fit planting during the waning moon, which my local friends and neighbors tell me is the time to plant potatoes. Supposed if you don't plant at the right time you get a lot of leafy tops and only a few potatoes. Who am I to disagree with people who have learned to garden this way, through observing nature, for centuries!

Here's the Mushroom Gougere recipe: Serves 4 with a salad or a side vegetable like steamed asparagus, or broccoli.

 Filling:

1 small onion, peeled, halved and sliced

1 carrot, grated coarsely

8 oz button mushrooms, washed and sliced

1 tsp tikka or mild curry paste (if you can't find either, you can use a mild curry powder to taste; but only add a little at a time till you reach the taste you want)

2T all purpose flour

1 1/4 C milk

2T fine chopped Italian parsley

salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

2T flaked almonds

For the gougere(choux pastry part of the recipe):

3/4 C cold water

1/2C all purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

6T butter

3 eggs, beaten

3/4 C diced Gruyere or aged Gouda cheese (I use Gruyere)

Preheat oven 400F. Grease a shallow, round, ovenproof dish, about 9"

Make the choux pastry: First sift the flour and salt onto a large sheet of waxed paper.

Next, in a large saucepan, heat the butter and water until the butter just melts (don't let the water boil!). Then fold the paper holding the flour and dump the whole thing, at once, into the water, melted butter mix. Keep the heat under the mix and beat vigorously with a wooden spoon until the mix is no longer lumpy, and starts to pull away from the sides of the saucepan. Once it reaches that stage, set it aside to cool for about 10 minutes.

In the meantime make the filling: Sautee the prepared carrot, onion and mushrooms in the butter for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then stir in the curry paste or tikka, then the flour. Stir well, then add the milk, mix and stir and cook until it thickens. Lastly, add the chopped parsley.

While the filling is cooking, when the choux is cooled enough, beat the eggs and little by little, add to the choux pastry mix, beating well to incorporated. You may not need to use all the beaten egg. You want the mixture to pretty stiff. Then fold the cubed cheese into this choux mix  and then pour the mix into the baking dish, forming what will look like a wide, donut ring on the inside of the dish. Then pour the filling in the center; and bake 35 -45 minutes until it has risen and is golden brown. About 5 minutes before it looks done, sprinkle the almond slices and bake another 5 minutes.

This is a delicious and very rich dish. A tossed salad goes well with it. Enjoy!

Oatmeal bread

Here's the new  oatmeal bread I just took out of the bread machine. It's definitely not a pretty loaf, but it tastes really good; and the house smells incredible! I think it's going to make a nice toast. I need to check out the instruction booklet again and find out why the color is uneven.

While the bread was baking I headed for the garden and planted those two thornless blackberry vines that I've been meaning to plant. I'll have to replant them when I get more compost because the soil has a lot of clay in it. After that I decided to check out the cold frame and found a bag of compost I didn't know I had, so I cleaned out the cold frame and dug the compost in and now I have to figure out if I want to plant something in it or just use it to harden off some of my seedlings. Maybe it's time to google "cold frame planting" and find some useful tips.

I did it!

It took a while but I finally got it together. I only have one wrench of the right size, so I had to struggle with it and a pair of pliers to do the job! Now all I have to do is get some high octane gasoline and add the oil and I'll be ready to go!

Jim got a great report from the osteopath yesterday. Only 7 weeks after fracturing 9 vertebrae and his sacrum, he's healed enough for her to do a full osteo treatment. He has another 7 weeks to go with limited activity; but he's doing great; and the best  part  is that he doesn't have to have surgery!

A couple of blackberry plants arrived in the mail, but I think I'm going to wait till tomorrow or Monday when it's expected to be a bit warmer, to get them planted.

It's time for lunch and then I think I'll look for a new bread recipe to try in the bread machine and then give myself a break with my new Mother Earth News and a pottery magazine that's been sitting her a couple of days.

Mantis tiller - my new toy/tool

The ad said I'd just have to attach the handle. Yeah, right!  I'll try to tackle assembling it later this afternoon.

We finally have  a sunny day with no snow in the forecast and we're expecting temperatures in the high 50's over the weekend, so I'm going to try and tackle pruning the ancient grape vines up the hill Sunday or Monday. I don't think the previous owners ever pruned them.

Last night the possum was back feeding on Tommy, the feral/abandoned cat's food. What was so funny to us was that Tommy was sitting very comfortably about two feet away while the possum ate his dinner. He didn't seem threatened by the possum, but seemed to just be waiting patiently till the possum finished. When I opened the door to scoot the possum away, who by the way, looked at me as if to say "Can't you see that I'm eating here!", timid Tommy ran away. Fortunately he came back this morning for breakfast. Hopefully he's learned not to wait till dark to come back for dinner, because once dark descends, I'm taking the food back in to the house!

Got a bunch of my veggie seedlings separated and transplanted this morning and finally got around to planting some penstemon seeds. The hummingbirds love them!

Chicken Cacciatore

Lidia Matticchio Bastianich's Chicken cacciatore recipe was a winner. Even Jim, who said he never had a chicken cacciatore he liked gave it a ten.  Thank you Lidia! This was my first time cooking chicken cacciatore and it wasn't until it was almost finished cooking, that Jim made the "I don't like chicken cacciatore" proclamation. It's a good thing he didn't say anything earlier in the day or we would have missed a lovely recipe! I served it on a bed of spaghetti - so good! I can't wait to try more recipes from that book.

Yesterday I got all my new recipe cards sorted and most filed. I just need to get one more double recipe box just for my Indian and Italian recipes.

I ordered a Mantis tiller the other day, to help with my gardening. Hopefully, having the machine do a lot of the soil prep will keep  my damaged neck and back from acting up. I got the model with the Honda motor (Ebay was the cheapest place I found). That model is a bit more powerful than their standard model; and the other benefit is that I won't have to mix the fuel. It's lightweight enough that I'll be able to lug it around the garden myself.

We're doing takeout from our local seafood restaurant for dinner tonight, so I'll be able to use my afternoon time going through more of my paper piles and continue searching ebay for a vintage, double recipe box.  And maybe there will be time to tend my veggies seedlings a bit, which I think are getting ready for their first feeding. First I have to check if I have any fish fertilizer left over from last season.

Nice textured teal glaze

Here's a new glaze of mine #8486V# B. It has a very intriguing teal color and texture. The dark strip on the right is from the 2% iron lip under the glaze. I often put this slip on my white stoneware or porcelain tiles. On darker stoneware, I'll often put a strip of white porcelain slip on the tile. This test is on Loafer's Glory, a porcelainous type stoneware, fired to cone 10 in my soda kiln. Here's the recipe if anyone would like to try it. The color is a bit more on the teal side than is showing on my monitor.

#8486V# B Cone 10

18.3 Kona F4 Soda spar
10.5 Whiting
11.0 Ferro Frit 3195
 8.3 Talc
12.2 Neph Sy
21.7 Silica
  1.8 Fluorspar
13.5 Tennessee SGP#1 Ball Clay
  2.7 EPK

B color: Add 0.5% Chrome oxide, 0./5% Cobalt carb

Domesticated and wild critters have all been fed, we've had our oatmeal breakfast (snowy, cold mornings definitely calls for oatmeal), and I've made tonight's dinner decision - Chicken cacciatore from Lidia Matticchio Bastianich's cookbook, "Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen".

I also took all my spices off of one shelf and cleaned, organized and rearranged everything in alphabetical order. I have more of these shelves to do but first need to get more staggered, wired shelves. I keep the most used spices in the cupboard next to the stove and the more International spices, i.e. Indian, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, etc. in a different cupboard. The next job of this morning is to file a whole bunch of new recipes followed by catching up with some snail mail and other paper work.

We're still getting some snow flurries, so it doesn't look like we'll head to town to pick up the mail today. It's a good day for sitting near the fire and working on the paper piles till dinner time.

My quiet green, Hamada clone, test tile

Here's another green glaze test from my last soda firing. This is my take on Hamada's green. I can see where this would be a nice glaze to use over my flashing slip with some wax resisted areas. The contrast between the glaze and flashed areas should be nice and I can probably use the resisted area as a backdrop for some of my black decorating slip brushwork.

Now that Jim is getting around a bit, I'm getting ready to spend some time in the studio as soon as this cut on my finger heals completely. Those loppers cut deep!

Yesterday was food shopping day. We were out for over 5 hours just making a couple grocery store stops, a quick lunch and another stop to pick up our mail. Where did all that time go! Fortunately with such a big lunch, neither of us wanted a regular dinner so I just make some buttered, parmesan, popcorn with a sprinkling of cayenne.

Trish, here's a link where you can find a no knead bread recipe as well as 2 nice videos about it: http://www.breadtopia.com/basic-no-knead-method. I haven't forgotten about your request for the curried mushroom gougere - will try to get to it soon!

There are also videos on yout ube with the originator of this method, Jim Lahey. He only uses white flour, whereas the fellow on the video link from Breadtopia, uses some whole wheat along with the white.

We're expecting snow again - looks like it's going to start any minute. Glad I took the chicken/shrimp gumbo out of the freezer yesterday for tonight's dinner.

Baking day yesterday, seed planting today

Here are the 2 loaves of no knead bread I baked yesterday. It seems that most of my day was spent in the kitchen. I made a couple of pizzas for our Friday night, porch sitting with our friends Jim and Laura. It's the first Friday in about 6 weeks that we've been able to do it.

Jim fared well with the visit but this morning he's a bit achy from the fractured sacrum.

The robins have arrived, so spring is in the air even though the weather is still hanging on to winter. Even in this cold, some perennials and bulbs are starting to peek through.

I've been planting seeds this morning - Genovese basil, Italian parsley, 2 types of spinach,  artichokes (which have to be in the fridge for 2 weeks), and a bit more Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage. After lunch I'll plant another savoy cabbage variety "Chieftain". My kitchen greenhouse window is almost filled to the brim and same for the grow lights in the basement. I wish I had more south facing windows in the house. I may have to clear my studio desk and put seedling on it once I've used up all the house space.

Today or tomorrow I'll need to transplant some of my Broccoli Raab and cabbage seedlings. The first crop of mixed lettuce seedlings are doing well, so far, in the basement. One of my over wintering geraniums is actually flowering under the grow lights!

Pottery in Seagrove NC video

Here's a link to a short video on pottery in Seagrove, NC.

Seagrove Pottery


Between caring and cooking for Jim and taking on his chores as well as my own, there still isn't time for the studio. I have managed to get in an hour or so of garden time two days ago and have gotten some seeds started in the house. I now have broccoli, spinach, cabbage and lettuce sprouted and started some onion seeds and Red Russian kale today.

These days my time is centered on husband, house, animal and plant care and cooking. Jim is healing, but it's a slow process. The past couple of days he's been able to do some local driving to pick up the mail and today he drove to Spruce Pine to get his hair cut; but that's pretty much the extent of what he can do. He's still sleeping in the recliner because of the pain from all those spinal fractures, so it may be another month or so for those fractures to completely heal.

Latest Cinnamon Raisin bread

After a big breakfast thing morning -  fried, leftover mashed potatoes, some nice thick, hickory smoked bacon and this cinnamon raisin toast, I headed for the garden. Thanks Bonnie for tip on soaking the raisins. The bread was much lighter; but I did have to hand knead it a bit to get better distribution of the raisins.

We were blessed with two glorious spring like days that allowed me to do a bit of cleanup, severe pruning of one of the peach trees, weed a bit, dig in some mushroom compost and  plant a short row of peas today. I cut my finger on my jammed pruner which made it all take longer that I planned. It's amazing how one cut on one finger, especially one that won't stop bleeding, will interfere with planned chores!

Now I'm going to sip my wine, watch the Olympics and peruse an old Dom DeLuise cookbook, "Eat This It'll Make Your Feel Better", that I just received. I did a quick scan of it this morning and I think it's going to be a fun read.  Some of his childhood memories of growing up in the Italian neighborhood in Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn are the same memories I have of a similar neighborhood of my childhood in South Brooklyn in a mainly Italian, and Polish neighborhood.

I can still remember all those exotic smells of the Italian and Polish bakeries,  Italian and Danish delis and even the live poultry market where my mother sent me every Saturday to buy a chicken. The Italian neighbors bought the more exotic things like pigeon and rabbit. The same was true for the fresh fish store. Dad loved to go deep sea fishing, so we never bought fish. In fact, dad didn't like fish. He only loved to fish! The way he would tell people the best way to cook his catch, would give the impression that he was a real gourmand; but he would rarely eat the fish. So most of his catch was given away to the nuns at school or neighbors. Dad loved seafood  though, so almost every Friday he sent me down to buy either a dozen crabs and on rare occasions, a lobster at the fresh fish market down the street. There were baskets of snails at that fish store and I always figured that the Italian neighbors bought those, although I never did see anyone buying them.

In the summer we would take the Staten Island Ferry and go crabbing. I remember one time when the entire bath tub was filled with the crab we caught. Our other trip to Staten Island was in the fall, to pick mushrooms. Dad only picked two varieties that he knew from his childhood and mom would can them to be sauteed with onions and served on top of pan fried steaks in the winter.

In the 40's and early 50's there were no supermarkets in our neighborhood other than a small A&P; but that wasn't where you went to buy meat, fruits or vegetables.  It was all those wonderful, little specialty food stores where most of our food was purchased. Walking home in winter, with a freshly, baked loaf of Italian bread that was baked in a wood burning oven, holding it close to my body to keep me warm, was one of those wonderful memories. Often the bread arrived with a few bites out of one end; but Mom never complained. :-)

Somebrite test tile

Here's one of the tiles from the last soda firing. It's called Somebrite and  is a well known glaze which is often used only as an accent on soda/salt pots. It contrasts very nicely with flashing slips. I won't bother to post the recipe as it can be easily found by googling the name.This tile was fired to cone 12 at 2 o'clock; but it works just as well at cone 10 and may work at cone 9 as well. This glaze has to be applied quite thin to get this color, otherwise it will comes out a deep green. My test had a hydrometer reading of 51.

Since copper carb is toxic and this one has too much copper in it to be a safe glaze for food, it should only be used on the exterior or any pots that anyone might be included to use for food.

It was snowing lightly again, this morning and at the moment it doesn't look like I'll be venturing to town. The roads look OK but our driveway is too snowy and icy, so I'll wait another day.

I've been feeding a tom cat on the front porch every day for about a week and even left food out overnight since he was making several visits a day. But two nights ago, a possum was on the porch feasting on his food, so now I'm taking it in for the night.

This morning he and Bonnie seemed to be enjoying each others company until he saw us at the window ooing and aaing on how sweet it was that they were becoming friends. I don't know if he's a feral cat or a pet who was dumped (that happens a lot around here); but in any case, he's very wary of us.

After breakfast I got another big seed and garden order written up this morning and have just three more catalogs to peruse; but I think I've ordered all that I need. This afternoon we'll be watching the Olympics while I get my veggies prepped for our roast chicken dinner.

I roast the chicken on a bed of cut up carrots, celery, onion,  apple and orange wedges (I squeeze the juice into the pan and some over the chicken), with some parsley and a small bay leaf added to the mix. I loosely fill the cavity of the seasoned bird with some of the cut up apple, a wedge of the orange which I squeeze as I put it in, a couple of cloves of garlic and a wedge of onion and a sprig of fresh thyme if I have some. Then I pour some pale dry sherry over the chicken and roast it, basting it a couple of times as it roasts. All the fruit, veggies, herbs and sherry make a lovely, simple sauce. While the finished chicken is resting, I put the pan on top of the stove and boil down the juices to thicken a bit and then strain and serve over the cut up chicken. It makes a lovely, light, tasty sauce.

Another loaf of cinnamon raisin bread

Here's the loaf of cinnamon raisin bread I made again, last night, in the new bread machine. I don't know why the raisins aren't getting evenly distributed even though I'm pristinely folowing the directions! I even hand kneaded the heavy dough a bit while it was in the machine and still wound up with way too many raisins at the bottom of the loaf. 

This new snowfall is certainly bringing even more birds to our feeding station. This morning we had 8 pairs of cardinals. That's 3 more pairs than we've ever seen at one time. I think the word has gotten out! The red bellied woodpecker was also here as well as all our regulars. I'm probably going to give them several feedings again today. It must be so hard on these little guys to maintain body temperature in this crazy weather; and I'm hoping all the extra rations and suet are helping a bit.

After feeding our domestic and wild critters, we enjoyed the cinnamon raisin toast for breakfast. After breakfast I perused a sour dough bread machine cookbook that I got through inter library loan and decided it was worth buying. I found a copy for around four dollars on ebay. That was ten dollars less than the cheapest one on Amazon.com. It does pay to shop around.

We're still working on our leftovers, so tonight I think I'll make some potatoes au gratin to go with the leftover meatloaf. The rest of the afternoon will be spent going through more seed catalogs and watching the winter Olympics and a few more outings with Bodhi before dinner.

Jim's healing is going slowly, but he is making progress. He's completely off the pain killers now and is sleeping well in the recliner now that he can move the recliner back a bit more. He's getting up and around more but I'm acting a bit like a tough  staff sergeant when he attempts to do too much. 

Alkaline green glaze test

Here's an non barium, alkaline copper green test tile from my last firing, on Phoenix, a light stoneware from Highwater, . I designed it for cone 8- 10 but this was in a section that had cone 12 starting. The expansion is pretty high which accounts for the crazing, which probably was increased due to it overfiring.

I love the color, so I'll be interested in seeing what this will do at Cone 10. I was hoping that it would be more of a turquoise; but when you have to add enough silica for cone 10, it tends to shift the alkaline to a more acidic environment which makes you lose that brighter, turquoise color.  I need to try lowering the expansion without losing the color - more testing to come!

It was an eventful morning with the sound of fire trucks coming down the road, only to realize they were at a neighbors house across the road. Unfortunately, it looks like the house was gutted. No one was home. If they were, the house might have been saved. The information I got from a friend is that it looks like it was a chimney fire; and it was only when the roof seemed to be on fire that another neighbor noticed it and called 911. I can't imagine having to deal with the devastation of coming home to fine your home and everything gone - too sad to even contemplate.

Our long driveway is covered with a new layer of snow, so we're going to stay put for a few days until these snows stop, which should be Thursday or Friday. In the mean time I'm pretending it's spring and ordering seeds, starting some seeds of cold tolerant vegetables, cooking and enjoying the Olympic events.

Dinner is already prepped, other than making a salad later, so I think I'll get another loaf of cinnamon raisin bread started. Somewhere in this huge pile of papers is the bread machine manual and recipes!                                  




 

My new copper blue glaze on a Loafers Glory test tile

Since I don't have any studio news at the moment, I thought I'd at least put some ceramic information on the blog once in a while. Here's a Cone 10 reduction copper barium test from my last soda/salt firing. The clay is Loafers Glory, a white, porcelainous type stoneware from Highwater.

I was looking for a buttery surface and this looks very promising. I'll probably use this  on small bud and ikebana vases with a white or shino liner. I got the idea of the copper and rutile percentages from an old Ruth Gowdy McKinley glaze.

Here's the formula is anyone is interested in trying it (of course be mindful that this is not a glaze for pots used for food. Barium carbonate and copper carb are toxic, so make sure you use safe studio practices when mixing, applying, etc.

June's Cone 10, Buttery BaO Copper blue #9785V2

38 Neph Sy
32 Barium Carb
17.3 OM #4 Ball clay
12.7 Silica
Add: 3% Copper carb, 6% rutile  

After lunch I started going through some of my old seeds and got a few cold weather veggies started (Cauliflower, Broccoli Raab, Cabbage, Parsley, etc.). After going through several seeds catalogs, I realize that I probably won't need to buy many more seeds, since I have plenty of just about everything.

I've got leftover turkey meatloaf for dinner, so I might use some of that kitchen time to start another loaf of cinnamon raisin bread to bake overnight if I can figure out that setting on the new bread machine!

Fettucine Alfredo ala Perry

Here's the fettuccine with Alfredo sauce, and sauteed ham, onion and mushrooms that I made for dinner.  It's one of our favorites. This is my serving. Jim's was twice as much! :-) This is definitely a heart attack special, which I don't make often; but Jim opened a nice bottle of wine to counteract all that cholesterol. We're firm believers in the French paradox. :-)

It was  a cold but gorgeous day, sunny day. Bodhi got lots of walks and Bonnie kitty spent half the day outside.  I was able to get down the snow covered driveway and into town to pick up the mail after lunch; neither store got any bird seed deliveries so I'm going to have to watch my last bag so I don't run out before I can get out again in a few days.

We're expecting another 2-4 inches of snow tonight and more snow every day for the next 3-4 days, so we'll just snuggle in for the duration with hot chocolate and lots of good leftovers, and time to continue with my spring seed buying. There are too many selections in too many catalogs and it's taking me a long time to make my choices.

Cold, but happy birds.

The local bird population at our feeding spot  has increased since I tripled their feedings. I've had my National Audobon Society bird book out, trying to identify some of them. We finally figured out that the pretty black, rust and white bird is a Rufous-sided Towhee. Who knew!

The birds have had a big breakfast and so did we. Now we're all curling up in our safe places till the next meal. Jim is napping and I'm catching up with computer work before I start searching for my turkey meatloaf recipe.

With another inch of snow overnight, cold temperatures, and slippery roads, I figured that this is a good night for a comfort meal of turkey meatloaf and mashed potatoes, and watching some of the winter Olympics events.

Yesterday I was able to get to the village and pick up a few necessary groceries. I was hoping to get another large bag of bird feed but everyone was out. Fortunately I have a back up bag which should last till I can get to town again. It was nice to see that our neighbors are also giving extra rations to the the birds during this cold, snowy spell.

My other chore of the day is to continue going through these garden catalogs and get the rest of my spring seeds ordered.

Latest no knead sourdough

It snowed all day yesterday. Fortunately it was never very heavy so we only wound up with about 3 or 4 inches. It was a good day to bake a loaf of my no knead sourdough and drink hot chocolate for lunch.

The neurosurgeon has to perform emergency surgery, so Jim's appointment was canceled, which is just as well with this weather. Jim's doing much  better. In fact, he's now able to lower his recliner chair a bit more. I'm amazed that he's been able to sleep as well as he has while almost, sitting up!

It's going to take another 4 -5 weeks of healing; but at this point I think he's leaning to not even going to the neuro surgeon. The surgeon saw the MRI's and wasn't in a great rush to see him, so we're assuming that he probably agrees with our doctor and the radiologist that since the fractured vertebrae are not compressed, 8 weeks of rest should heal the fractures without invasive surgery.

 So much is on hold right now, including studio time. Hopefully by next week I'll get through the piles of mail and seed catalogs and order the rest of my spring seeds.

Cinnamon raisin bread

Here's the cinnamon raisin bread from my new bread machine. It rises a bit more on the left, so I'll have to manually re-arrange the dough at the first rise next time; but pretty is as pretty does and the bread was great!

Today was a running around, doing chores day - post office, drive to Burnesville for my osteo treatment, then a shopping stop for groceries and  to pick up another prescription for  this sinusitis that's been plaguing me for almost 2 months.. I may be allergic to Bonnie Kitty; but I sure hope that isn't the case!

By the time I got home, unloaded and put away another huge load of groceries, walked Bodhi, fed kitty as well as giving the birds as second feeding, it was time to get dinner started. Fortunately tonight's dinner was leftover gumbo and hot fudge sundaes (a mini one for me!). Now I'll finish emails, take care of my Facebook farm, go through a couple of the newly arrived seed catalogues, watch some TV at the same time, give Bodhi and Bonnie some play time and finish the evening with yoga and meditation.

I was so happy that the bad weather held off till I got home. We've snuggled in with a full fridge and freezer, so let the snow and sleet come if it wants!

Experimenting with a new cookbook

I just came in from feeding the birds. Right now it's sleeting on top fo the couple of inches of snows that we got overnight. It's fierce out there! It's going to be a dismal  day with this sleet  followed by freezing rain, turning to ice. I'll be happy to stay warm and cozy in front of the fireplace the rest of the day, working on my laptop or in the warm kitchen, cooking..

Last night I decided to make one of the pasta recipes from my new cookbook ""Great Women Chefs". It was a rigatoni with sausage, mushrooms, peas and onion and a sauce made from tomatoes, 1/2 and 1/2, ricotta and parmesan. It was tasty but a little bland even though I added some pepperonici. If I make it again I'll use a small ziti, because I think the rigatoni is a bit heavy for such a light sauce, and I'll also add a bit of garlic and cut back on the amount of pasta so there's a hair more sauce.

After breakfast I have to spend a lot of time cleaning up my Verizon software. Overnight, they  mixed up all my emails and put everything in my "deleted" folder. What a mess! So now I have to go through hundreds of emails and determine which ones are truly deleted and not part of current or saved emails. Aren't computers fun!

Another no knead bread

Here's a no knead bread from a couple of days ago. I've been doing a longer rise (15 hr proofing, plus 2 more hours for the second rise). This is Jim's favorite so far, so it's the one I bake regularly. Hopefully I'll find some more good recipes in my new Bread Machine cookbook. It has 300 recipes so there have to be some treasures in there!

Today is my shopping day. I'll wait till this afternoon to make sure the roads aren't icy since I have a 25 minute drive to get to a large grocery store.

We've got a few days of bad weather coming in two days, so I'm going to do some stocking up on some groceries and other things. Jim suggested I should just bring home some take out Chinese food - good idea! After a big shopping day, by the time I get home, put away groceries, feed kitty, etc. I don't think I'd feel like cooking.

I didn't make the cinnamon raisin bread last night  because the bread machine recipe I have calls for powdered milk, which I don't have and neither does out small, in town, grocery store.. That's one more thing to add to my already very long,  grocery list.

Brioche

Here's the brioche I made in my new, Kojirushi bread machine. With Jim recuperating and my being housebound for the next several weeks, I'm using this time to expand my bread making repertoire. I think I'll make a cinnamon raisin bread after dinner. Yesterday I got my bread machine cookbook. It has 300 recipes. That will keep me busy for a while!

I've also used this time to get all my sourdough starters re-vitalized. For a while there I thought I'd have to buy a couple of new starters because I hadn't used two of them for a few months; but after a day or two I was able to revive them. Now I just have to remember to keep feeding them  regularly!

It's a rainy, slush, dreary day out there. If I didn't have studio plants to water or a dog to walk, I'd be spending all day indoors with the fireplace on. Kitty Bonnie stuck her nose out the door and decided this was not a day to play outdoors. Smart kitty!

This has been a good day for some paper work.. I completed my first seed order of the season and still have a lot more catalogs to go through. I was happy to find annual artichoke seeds that will fruit the same season. It's too cold here to winter them over (I've tried before and it hasn't worked). This year I piled a  lot of straw around the plant; but I'm not holding my breath. Next month I'll start the annual seeds and hopefully we'll get a crop of artichokes this summer.  Italian style, stuffed artichokes are one of my favorite dishes.

Mexican margarita madness night

It was a gorgeous, sunny, but cool day and I really enjoyed taking Bodhi out for his many outing and he enjoyed it as much as me - leaping and bounding through the snow, like a puppy. Bonnie kitty wasn't eager to tackle that snow; but maybe tomorrow he strong desire for some outdoor play will over ride her "snow discomfort."

With Jim facing another 5-6 weeks of healing, I'm trying to make things as comfortable for him as possible and give him some small pleasures, like cooking  things he loves. I was going to make a chicken, andouille sausage gumbo tonight but had everything but the green peppers, so I used the chicken to make my Mexican stir fry with tomatoes, onion, garlic, chili peppers and herbs, along with cheese topped refried beans and margaritas.

Since I can't get in the studio I'm using this time to get caught up with feeding my sourdough starters and hopefully, soon, I'll be able to tackle more of this paperwork. This morning I made him a huge breakfast of bacon, sunny side up eggs, bacon and sourdough pancakes. A 100 year old starter I thought had died, was able to get resuscitated after a couple of days of frequent feeding and that's what I used in this morning's pancakes. Usually I can't get him to eat any other pancake but buckwheat but he actually enjoyed these, so they will be on the menu in the future. It's a mild starters than my North West one, which is pretty much like the classic San Francisco sour dough starter.

Our  road is still snow covered, so I'm hoping that in a day or two I'll be able to get out and do some more grocery shopping. We don't have so much snow that would make it impossible to drive through - I hope! Fortunately, I usually have a pretty full larder and freezer and can always keep us well fed if we're snowbound.

Another pizza night

Jim likes pepperoni  and I finally discovered that the whole pepperoni has much better flavor and texture than the variety you buy already cut. I'm not a fan of it but I found I could tolerate the higher quality of the whole pepperoni.
                                                    
We got the results of Jim's MRI this morning. He has 3 vertebrae fractures as well as  a broken sacrum. We're keeping our fingers crossed that he may be able to avoid surgery. The report was sent to the neuro surgeon today and hopefully he'll agree with the radiologist and our doctor that since there was no compression of the vertebrae that another 4 weeks or so of rest should heal these fractures without surgery. We're hoping he won't have to be driven to Asheville to see the neuro surgeon since driving even to the local hospital was pretty uncomfortable and Asheville is well over an hour's drive each way.

The past few days have been busy going to the doctor, then  the hospital, doing a big grocery shopping to prepare for the storm that is now upon us,cooking  and all the other household chores and animal care that need tending. I'm exhausted but determined to make things as comfortable as possible tor Him and cook him  a lot of his favorite things to make this healing process a a bit more tolerable.His spirits are very good considering how badly he was hurt in that fall on the ice.

My newZojirushi bread machine arrived today, so tonight I'll spend some time watcing the instruction dvd and reading the instruction booklet.. Since I have a batch of no knead bread proofing, for baking  in the morning,  I might wait another day before trying the machine. 

                                                           

Pizza night and Cauliflower Potato Tomato Curry recipe

Tonight's dinner was a veggie pizza, margaritas and butterscotch pudding. I was out of mushrooms but  used some thinly sliced shallots, bell peppers and fresh tomatoes. 

Jim has been on a pudding kick lately. I think it's a big comfort food while he's trying to heal.

I also have a no knead bread batched which will proof for 19 hours and get baked tomorrow. This was one of those very busy days and now I'm settling in, catching up with email, and watching some tennis and giving Bonnie kitty some mom play  time.

Here's a requested Cauliflower Potato Curry I made last night. I haven't forgotten about getting the mushroom gougere recipe up and will get to post that soon. Lately there just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything!

Cauliflower, Potato, Tomato Curry

1/2 tsp black mustard seeds
3 T oil (I use olive oil)1 lb potatoes peeled, cut in 1" piece and par boiled till just tender (don't overcook)
1 head of cauliflower (about a 1 lb size) washed, cored and cut into small pieces.
3 cloves of garlic finely chopped or put through a garlic press
1/2 tsp each of tumeric, cumin and coriander powder
1/4 tsp cayenne
1 tsp salt
1- 11/2 cups water (start with a cup and add 1/4 cup more at a time if curry gets too dry during cooking).
1 large tomato cut in chunks or if you don't have a tomato.juice of a small lemon or lime.(I used a small tomato and a bit of lemon juice).

Heat oil in a large, saute pan on medium  heat. Add the mustard seeds and as soon as they begin popping, lower the heat a bit and add the garlic, stirring it till it turns a light golden color (don't burn it). Then add the cooked potatoes and raw cauliflower and toss and cook a minute or so. Then add tomato if using, all the spices and salt, stirring often for about 5 minutes. Then add the water and when it start to simmer, you can turn the heat down a bit, cover it and cook it for 15 minutes. Check after 15 minutes to see if the veggies are tender and add a bit more water if needed and cook another 5 minutes, stirring to make sure potatoes don't stick. If you didn't add a tomato, then sprinkle the lemon or lime juice over the veggies, toss and serve.

*It goes great with dal and rice. You can find a lot of dal recipes on the Internet.

Busy, rainy day

Today was a big cooking day. My new Indian vegetarian cookbook had a recipe for a cauliflower and potato curry which sounded good. It went well with the basmati brown rice, our favorite  dal and Naan bread.   The recipe I wanted to try, called for the bread machine, so I retrieved it from the  basement only to find that the machine was kaput, so I wound up figuring out how to make it work with the kitchen aid. The timing was totally off on the recipe and I burned the first batch not even cooking it the full time. Next time I'll try one of the Naan recipes from one of my own, trusted Indian cookbooks.
While the bread was rising, I got on line and did some bread machine research and wound up ordering one that has two mixing arms which is heavier duty than the now "late" bread machine. This new one is supposed to be very quiet which will be a welcome change over my old one. I was also surprised to hear that many of these bread machines only last 3 years, which I hope isn't true. It should last longer in this house since our favorite, every day bread is Jim Lahey's no knead bread.
Jim's football game just went into over time and I'm watching the Australian Open tennis as long as my eyes will stay open.

Banana bread

Here's the banana bread I made yesterday , on a wonderful Ron Slagle plate. It will go nicely with boiled eggs this morning. Eggs are one of Jim's favorite foods and boiled eggs come a close second to - Eggs Benedict, his favorite egg dish.

Now that I've got this laptop with Windows 7 working well enough, I've decided to leave it as it is and not fool around with dual boot drives. My old desktop has XP so I can use that for programs that just won't work on here. Hopefully, those software companies will soon have versions that will work with Windows 7 or at least have new drivers that will make those programs compatible.

The studio has been calling lately and I think I should be able to scratch that itch and get in there next week - maybe even this weekend. Jim is doing well enough in his healing process that I won't feel guilty leaving him for a few hours of studio time. Yesterday he drove to town on his own and although his back was tight and sore, he was able to do it. His spirits are better now that he can see some progress in the healing. He even feels well enough to go out to dinner at the Mexican restaurant with friends tonight. I'm definitely ready for a night out, Mexican food and a margarita!

More no knead bread

Yesterday I baked another loaf of the no knead bread, this time, an oval loaf  in my new, cast iron, oval pot.. It was still too big to fit in the toaster, so I'll have to stretch it a bit more next time. I let it proof 15 hours, then a 2 hour rise before baking and it had a beautiful crumb. I used half bread and half unbleached, all purpose flour - both King Arthur. There wasn't much difference between that and using all bread flour. The bread was just a hair heavier. Next loaf I'll use all all purpose flour. I also read that a tiny addition of vitamin c will help the bread rise more, so I'll try that as well. Bread making seems to be a good substitute for not being able to get in studio time right now and Jim is very happy that I'm using my free time in the kitchen. He loves this bread!

It's raining again and cooler than it's been. I got into the studio earlier to water plants and put some things away; but making pots will have to wait a bit longer.

Jim still needs me to do his chores,, so there isn't much free time or energy for more physical activity. He felt well enough the past two days to take Bodhi out for a walk once or twice. This morning he wants to try to drive to town to pick up the mail. It's only 3 miles each way so he should be OK. I gave him a good rub down with arnica which seems to help his injured back.

Last night we had wine for the first time since his accident. To make up for that time with no wine, he pulled out a really lovely bottle of Lytton Springs Zinfandel. We  threw caution to the wind and instead of having our usual 5 and 10 oz, we finished the bottle, without any guilt!

Today I'm going to make some banana nut bread. Jim's appetite seems to be returning, so tonight I'll make his favorite  pork chops au poivre with a cream, sherry reduction and oven roasted garlic rosemary potatoes and probably green beans. I think I still have a couple of packages from last seasons garden in the freezer.

Shopping day

I baked bread yesterday and this time I used bread flour. It made a very light loaf, which Jim loved. Next time I'll try half bread flour and half all purpose. I did let it proof a couple of hours longer than usual but I think it was the flour that made it so light. Personally, I prefer it with a bit more body.

Since it was such a lovely day I drove us to Spruce Pine to do some shopping and have lunch at the China Buffet.. Jim fared pretty well, on this, his first time in the car since his fall. He had one or two uncomfortable moments and by the time we got home his back was pretty tight. I massaged some arnica into those muscles and he's now resting. This healing is going to take a while!

I did most of the grocery shopping, loading and unloading myself and now I'm enjoying just sitting, doing some computer work, and watching the Australian Open tennis.It was a tiring day for both of us.

Neither of us is wanting a big dinner, after a big lunch, so I think I'll just heat up the pea soup for me and make Jim a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich which sounded good to him. 

Another spring like day

It's almost springlike weather out there. If I weren'r busy with cooking, nursing an injured husband and caring for animals and plants, I'd be in the garden pulling some weeds and doing other cleanup . I  just might steal afew minutes out there this afternoon. It's very  tempting on this warmish, sunny day.


I've got my no knead bread rising and will be making a curried pea soup to go with it. I'm going to try to change the baking schedule and try a cold oven baking. Others have reported that it works very well. I imagine the bread might rise more putting it in a cold oven.

Another project I'm working on is getting old audio tapes converted to MP3 files with the use of my new ION Tape 2PC machine. So far, it doesn't seem to be doing a great job. I'm getting funny repeats. I can live with it on lecture tapes for my own use, but it is definitely extremely undesirable on music tapes. I'm going to write the company and see if there's a fix for this glitch.

Touching base

Not much to blog about right now. Jim is doing a bit better. He actually got out of bed by himself this morning, so progress is being made. He's eating more and looks perkier; but he's still in pain and his mobility is very limited because of the pain in his back.

I'm making comfort food for him. Tonight's dinner was linguine with bolognese sauce, one of his favorite comfort meals. He's going to try to stop some of the pain pills and just let me continue with the topical applications of arnica, etc.

He must be feeling a bit better because he's getting excited watching this Arizona, Louisiana football game!

Well, that's it for today. Oh, side note - I finally got the iTunes computer glitch fixed. Microsoft finally sent me information to get into the registry and remove all the iTunes entries. Now I'm keeping my fingers crossed that removing those didn't mess up something else! LOL

Spring like weather

Today was a beautiful, spring like day. In between my nursemaid role, computer woes and meal prep,  I managed to get a bit of time outdoors pulling a few weeds and doing a tiny bit of garden cleanup.

Right now there's no time for the studio. Taking care of Jim through his healing process, animal and plant care and household chores is all there's time and energy for right now.

Jim's big ouch!

I've been playing doctor and nurse since Jim took a bad fall on the icy driveway last night - landing hard on his back, followed by his head. :-(  He is not a happy camper right now and hurting a lot, so this is going to be a short blog update.

Fortunately I had rescue remedy, arnica and other things on hand to try to ease his discomfort. Judging by how he was last night after the fall (dizzy, nauseous), we think he may have gotten a mild concussion; but like so many other men, I can't get him to go to a doctor! :-(

My computer woes continue even after a Windows 7 re-install over the old one. I'll try one more time tomorrow and then be back on the phone or emailing Microsoft. :-(

Mushroom gougere

Here's the curried mushroom and gruyere gougere I made for dinner last night. We'll have the leftovers tomorrow. Pasta is on tonight's menu - stuffed shells with a simple marinara sauce.

It was definitely a hot chocolate lunch today! The snow has now stopped and the sun is shining -  a lovely day at the moment. I took Bodhi, our Jack Russel for a walk. The poor little guy is having some tummy problems and wanted to eat grass during our walk; but not much was to be found amongst the snow. :-(

I finally got my important files backed up and did more computer cleanup. Later I'll try to get Windows 7 re-installed over the current one. I'm a bit reluctant to do it; but Microsoft assured me that it's possible, so I'm going to bite the bullet as soon as I go over the instructions.

Mushroom gougere tonight

We woke up to another 5 degree F morning - just two more days before this cold spell breaks! My sister in law in New Smyrna Florida had  snow two days ago - crazy weather due to the somewhat rare occurrence of the river of air that usually runs east to west, protecting us from all that arctice air, going into a zig zag pattern creating some unusually cold weather on the east coast and unusually warm areas elsewhwere.

The Christmas tree is completely down and put away for another year. The nice thing about an artificial tree is that you can enjoy it for such a long period of time and not have to deal with allergies from the chemicals or mold as well as potential  fire dangers from real trees.

My computer back up finallyworked; but I found it's not an easy task trying to get a view of what backed up. Since the backup started yesterday I removed a lot more video and picture files so I'll probably re-do the backup which took all day yesterday and continued overnight.

I 'll check  my Windows 7 The Definitive guide book, to see if there's another way to open those back up files. This computer problem is definitely never ending! I have to make sure all the files I want are in the backup folder before I re-install WIndows 7. The way these computer problems are going pottery may have to wait till my next lifetime! :-(

I'll keep working on this and stop around 3:30 to start on dinner. I'm  making a curried  mushroom gougere. It's one of those vegetarian meals that Jim will eat and actually enjoy!

Tree coming down today

Finally got enough files deleted or moved and hopefully this latest computer back up attempt will work. Other attempts have failed so I don't have a clue as to how long it should take, nor what files it's backing up.

Today is the "take down Christmas tree day" (Jim's job with a bit of help from me). I had studio and basement plants to water and lights to change as well as the unending computer work.. The studio water was frozen this morning but all was fine by early afternoon. We're really looking forward to Wednesdays weather - sunny and temperatures in the  high 40's . It's going to feel like spring after these low 20's days and 5 degree night time temperatures.

If this backup works, my next job will be to reinstall Windows 7 over the current one and then make a new partition and install Windows XP  on that partition. That job will probably be on tomorrows agenda,  since I suspect this backup is going to take hours.

Well, time to feed my furry critters and then us. It's cornbread and beans for us tonight - good, cold weather, comfort food. 

French onion soup in my 80's shino glazed bowl

Here's a picture of the French Onion soup in one of my shino glazed bowls from the early 80's.

This was the coldest morning yet - 5 degrees F this morning. Our high of the day was around 22F; but this weather is supposed to break Monday and go up to the 40's by Monday afternoon.

Yesterday we got the carpets out of the studio and our dining room is now back to normal. Jim dismantled his under the tree village today and will take down the tree tomorrow. I've been  on the computer all day. I'm still deleting duplicate photos - thousands of them! This is taking forever; but I need to get it done.

Microsoft called me yesterday about some of the problems and I found that Windows 7 allows you to partition your computer so I'll be able to install Windows Xp in a new drive and have Windows 7 in another. So I'll be able to have a dual boot system and use XP with my old software. I asked him to email me detailed instructions on how to do this; but it will have to wait until I get the cleanup finished and back those documents up on the stand alone hard drive.

Jim's watching football and I'm still working on this computer. I've made a  lot of headway the past two days. There's still more to do but I am seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. I'm looking forward to closing it down at 8 o'clock and watching the Brit coms  and giving  kitty Bonnie some play time, followed by Poirot which we'll watch in bed at 10pm. Other than meal prep and animal care, and a short stint on my Farmville distraction, I've been cleaning up these computer files all day. I'm beginning to wonder if there's life after computer woes!

Another BRRR day

It's a cold, dreary day and we're expecting a bit of snow later this afternoon. We're just nesting in our now dry house and recharging our batteries after the flooding clean up.

The doctor put me on a generic Cipro and this particular antibiotic is causing some interesting symptoms like nausea, headache and affecting sleep. There are worse symptoms from this stuff, and hopefully I won't deal with them; but I need to get this sinus infection under control so I can get back into my studio. I have 9 more days on this medication and hope my body can deal with it for that time.

In the meantime, I'll use my time to cook and keep working on this massive computer problem. There are thousands of files to go through and file or delete. I'm hoping today I'll free enough of the stand alone hard drive to do a back up.

Jim and I did some shopping yesterday so I'd have enough groceries to avoid driving to Spruce Pine for the next several days. This weather isn't going to break till Monday, so we'll cozy up to the fireplace and enjoy some nice vegetarian meals for a few days. Tonight it's fettucine alfredo with additions of sauteed mushrooms and onions.

BRRRRRR!

The sun is shining in the midst of some very slight snow flurries. If I didn't have to go out to pick up my prescriptions for this sinus problem I'd sit tight with some hot chocolate.

We got lucky, if you can get lucky after two burst water piipes flooding the house; but the good news is that the plumber could access those pipes and replace them with pvc, without tearing down walls in the bathroom. He was able to break through a closet wall to access the rest of the pipes. The tense moment was when the water was turned back on. If there were other breaks below the access points, we would have had to remove the siding on the house to access them. Things are drying out nicely and we have the dehumidifier on in the basement to help things along.

When the area rugs dry out we'll have to get all the dining room furniture back in place. Needless to say there hasn't been any time for much of anything other than cooking,  animal care, the continued computer cleanup and dealing with this current mess.

Well, that's it for today. Time to get back to computer cleanup for another hour or so.

Jerry Brown 9th generation Alabama potter

Here's a link to very nice video of Jerry Brown, a 9th generation pottery from Alabama. Enjoy!

 http://www.folkstreams.net/pub/FilmPage.php?title=30

Yesterday was a most interesting day around here. After being out 5 hrs with a doctors appointment and food shopping, we came home to find part of our house and whole basement flooded due to a burst water pipe upstairs. I won't go into the gory details of cleanup; but will just say that it could have been a lot worse.
The wet wall paper in the dining room and  powder room seems to have dried and looks OK. The wet area rugs are now drying out in my studio and front porch. Dear friends Jim and Laura came over and helped with cleanup and the plumber arrived and did some temporary work to at least give us some water on the first floor. He'll be back today to replace the broken copper pipe and replace it with plastic.
When we were done with getting most of the water mopped up,  Jim opened a big bottle of a 2003 Merlot which the four of us finished with some cheese, fruit and cookies. That was dinner last night instead of the shrimp I was going to make. Fortunately we had a big lunch while we were out and we were too tired to eat much anyway.
Our friend Jim checked out the crawl space behind the upstairs bathrooms and thinks the break will be able to be fixed without tearing out a wall. We're keeping our fingers crossed that it will turn out that way.

Hot chocolate and soup night

It was 8 degrees F when I got up and it's warmed up to about 12; but kitty still wants out. The sun is shining so we're letting her out for a bit; but I'll check on her every 15 minutes. I can't believe she'll be happy out there for too long!

This is a day for hot chocolate and soup. My first thought was to make a potato soup to go with the sourdough I baked yesterday; but I'm now thinking that maybe I'll do a French onion instead. I have a lot of leftover gruyere and I think the French onion would be a bit heartier than the potato.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time crusing the Internet in search for a particular sauce I once have in India, on a breakfast masala dosa. I still haven't found that recipe but I did find some others and spent a lot of time writing them out on index cards. We've eaten a lot of red meat this holiday season and we're both ready for some vegetarian or lighter meat and fish, and Indian food is delicious as well as full of vegetarian choices since 70% of the worlds vegetarians live in India!

I dreamed about being back in the studio last night, so hopefully I can get this computer problem solved this week and get my hands back in clay. I'm definitely ready mentally, if not physically. This sinusitis is not responding to the doctor's suggestions so maybe when I have my appointment tomorrow we can explore some antibiotics; because I'm getting real tired of having one eye half closed and feeling like I have cotton up my nostrils!

Well, time to do more file cleanup and tranferring. Tomorrow I'll be back on the phone with Dell.

No knead sour dough bread

Here's the sourdough, no knead bread I made this morning. Other than overcooking it somewhat, it came out well. I substituted  6 oz of whole wheat flour  for 6 oz of the 3 cups of white bread flour that I usually use in the recipe and used some sour dough starter instead of yeast. We shared a test slice and it's really good; but we'll save the rest for tomorrow night's soup supper.

Jim says it's bread with a Mohawk! When I plopped the dough into the preheated iron pot, it didn't land evenly. One side was squished up against the pot. It rounded itself out, but came out with these peaks which were ripe for charring.. I'll have to work at aiming more to the center, since this very wet dough can't be moved until it's done; or at least I've never tried it for fear of making a mess of it!

Jim bundled up and finished getting the outdoor Christmas lights down and put away; but he promised to leave the tree up for a few more days. The house always looks so bare when we take down the tree and other holiday decorations.

I'm using this winter, post holidays,  time to  other things like cooking and organizing all sorts of things. It was so cold this morning that I went searching for my hand knit New Zealand, wool sweaters and found 3 boxes of sweaters in the upstairs closet, some of which I had totally forgotten I still  had. It was like Christmas all over. Tonight I'll try to find places for them in our bedroom closet; but for now I'm be doing more computer file cleanup for a couple of hours before I start on dinner.

For breakfast I made a South India scrambled eggs recipe which was quite good. Here's the recipe if you want to try it:

4 large eggs, a fine chopped  onion, garlic paste which is 2 parts fresh  minced garlic and 1 part fresh minced ginger ground into a paste (I used my mortar and pestle), 1 to 2 serrano chiles (I used 1 1/4), a small , diced tomato and salt to taste. I combined two recipes and  it worked very well. One onion was plenty for that amount of eggs. One of the recipes called for two onions which I think would be way too much.

Directions:

Put about a T or so of clarified butter in a 9  or 10" skillet. When hot, add the onion and cook stirring till it become translucent. Then add the minced serrano chiles, and cook, stirring often, till the onions start to brown lightly  (don't allow them to burn).. Once browned a bit, add the tsp of garlic paste and diced tomato.  Stir well and cook about a minute to warm the tomato pieces, then lower heat to low or low/medium, add the eggs and stir/cook till they reach your preferred consistency. If you don't like too much heat, then just use one minced serrano chile. Both of the recipes I found had 2 chiles but even though I like a lot of heat, I think that might be too much. One and a quarters serrano chiles was perfect for our taste. You can serve with toast or one of the Indian breads like Naan, Chapati or dosa, etc.

Bon Appetit!