The studio is having its annual holiday ceramics sale this weekend, so I have been busy making, glazing, and firing a bunch of new pieces for that as well as filling several orders that have come in since the last plate-related post. (Thanks, Zoomie). Here’s a rundown of the most recent batch, beginning with these oval dinner plates for friends in Boston.
It warmed up a bit, and that made for a November Sunday perfectly suited to getting some chores done. I spent a couple of hours out in the garden dismantling tomato trellises and then cleaning out all of the tender beds; the blasted remnants of cucurbits and nightshades all got raked into the compost along with lawn trimmings, the kitchen pile, ashes from the grill, and some leaves.
I had such fine ideas for dinner, really. But as those of us in the reality-based community know, wishing does not make things so. Dinner ended up different than intended, but in a good way.
I forgot to post this back when it came out on Monday. For this month’s Chronogram article, I explored how graduates of the Culinary Institute are building an identity for the region by opening their own restaurants in the Hudson Valley.
We’re lucky enough to have a good venison farm in the area, so those of us who do not hunt have a source for deer meat. Next year may be the one in which I begin hunting, but for now I have to say I’m OK with the steps I’ve taken so far to curate my food sources. Venison is super-lean, flavorful, and, when cooked properly, offers an elegant alternative to beef.
So when I wrote the last post I thought it was a pretty nifty illustration of the way in which I try to let the previous meal inform the current one, thus making efficient use of the various leftovers and remnants in the fridge and making me feel like I’m living up to the expectations of my frugal, persecuted ancestors. Joking aside, I think that an excellent counterweight to our rampant, compulsive materialism-as-grasping-antidote-to-spiritual-bankruptcy culture is the conscious production of good food at home. And, like Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, those leftovers kept on givin’. You betcha!
A recent outing to a place that carries decent if inconsistent seafood yielded a dozen littleneck clams and a bag of wild Pacific shrimp. Our seafood options are limited up here, so I was thinking of ways to mix up what we can get that is both tasty and defensible. So on the ride home I did some thinking, and then some more once safely back in the kitchen. The results were quite good, and paved the way for a very compelling meal the following night. The difference between good and great food often lies in saving bits and pieces from previous meals.