Family Throwdown

After one of Charlie’s wonderful smoked barbecue dinners, my family decided that they wanted to throw bowls on the wheel. The crew ( my son-in-law, two grandchildren and Riley’s girlfriend) had limited to no experience. The guys hammed it up with the aprons. Julie and Rachael cheered them on. I wedged and centered the clay. and gave a quick demo. Surprisingly, they all turned out pretty good. Julie was taking photos and was laughing so hard she could barely hold the camera still. They all agreed that it was harder than it looked. Family potting continued the next week after I broke my arm. I was determined to get my bisque load glazed and fired even though my left arm was in a sling..Julie and Rachael ,who have no experience in glazing, came over one afternoon and glazed ( with my guidance) the load above. Charlie, my right hand in pottery, as always, loaded the kiln .The design on the red mugs had been under glazed in the bisque firing. Everything turned out beautiful. This week the girls will come over to pack up the pottery to take to my booth upstairs at South Water Manor.

Now week three, Ethan has become my official pottery assistant. The last picture shows him wedging clay.

September Pottery

The first item is designed to hold a paper towel roll, The mushroom is a tooth brush holder. The owl is a kitchen sponge holder. The two split cylinders are designed to hold a brush for washing glasses and a sponge (see example in the next block). Next is a hollow decorative pumpkin (about 10 inches tall). The last two are hand painted platter and saucer .

Book Making Projects

My latest artistic endeavor is making handmade books. Basically, this is creating signatures out of blank paper , designing covers, and binding them into books with endless types of stitches. Actually, a lot of work goes into them. At one time I was making paper. To get the pulp, you tear up paper and put it in a blender with water.. Charlie could’t understand the logic of tearing up paper to make paper. I plan to do watercolor paintings in the journals which are 5 x 7 in size. Here are a few books I have made and some watercolor sketches in a themed journal about the animals in our yard.

Pecan Crusted Trout

This was the best trout I have ever eaten. Charlie and I are working on cutting down on carbs. He used crushed pork rinds in the breading.

Ingredients

• 2 rainbow trout fillets
• 1/2 cup Panko crumbs Artisanal fried pork rinds (Walmart)
• 1/4 cup finely chopped pecans
• 1/2 stick butter
• 1/2 cup mayo
• 3 TBS Dijon mustard
• 2 TBS honey
• 1 tsp thyme
• olive oil

Procedure

• Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Be sure to have a rack positioned at the top level
• Mix the mayo, dijon mustard and honey together. You may need to add a tsp of water, as this mixture should be a consistency to drizzle over the trout
• Melt the butter and mix with pecans, panko pork rind crumbs, and thyme
• Pat the trout dry, rub olive oil on the skin side,
• On the other side, salt and pepper, then drizzle half of the honey mustard mixture on that side and rub over the side of the filets you just drizzled. Save the other half of the honey mustard mixture to drizzle on the fish as you serve it
• Lightly oil a baking sheet. Place the fish on the sheet.
• Mound the pecan, butter, pork rind crumb mixture on top.
• Put in the oven on top rack for 12 minutes.
• Remove from oven and drizzle remaining honey mustard sauce on top and serve