It's here!

Surreptitious wave

When you're a pre-adolescent boy who should be too cool to interact with my teddy bear, but still can't resist. 

Success is its own punishment

How successful was Clayfolk? I don't have the numbers yet, only know that I did over $2300 in sales on Friday alone. Checks should have gone in the mail Wednesday, so I hope to have my final info tomorrow.

I do know that I was successful enough that I had to load a glaze kiln on Monday in order to have pots for Holiday Market on Friday.

I came back from Medford with less than a dozen each of dinner and dessert plates. Two pie plates. Three batter bowls and one covered casserole. I had some replacements in the shed for the batter bowls and casseroles, but none for the plates.

Fortunately, I had a substantial amount of glazed ware sitting on the shelf, leftover from my last firing, almost enough to do a four-stack firing in the big gas kiln (I normally do six shelves, stacked). I also had a kiln load of bisque ware, and some prepared, dry, cone packs, so I only needed to glaze about ten pots on Monday, and then went ahead and loaded up the kiln. Fired it on Tuesday, and filled the time while it cooked making more pottery for my next firing, still scheduled for two weeks out, casseroles and batter bowls, mostly, a few pie dishes. I also brought the van down, so pulled out all the boxes of pottery and did a physical inventory, so I'd know what I needed to restock. Finished the firing about 3 pm, with roughly the same gas usage as the last four-stack I did, back in July. I won't have everything I'd like for the weekend, but I'll be a lot better prepared than I would have been otherwise.

Left everything in the kiln room to firm up for an hour or two before wrapping in plastic, so that I could come back Wednesday morning to apply handles, remove things from bats, and then scrape the bats off to take home. Ended the day at the fairgrounds, setting up my booth for Holiday Market.

Just desserts

Every year, I'd bake a pie for Thanksgiving. Usually apple, sometimes black/blueberry, occasionally pecan. Never pumpkin; I hate the taste and the texture. Nasty.

And every year, we'd end up so stuffed with turkey and sides that there'd be no room for pie before, oh, breakfast the next morning. And no room in the fridge for the leftovers, so by the time we got around to finishing it off, we'd have to look out for blue spots--mold--under the crust. Yuck.

So this year, I decided to try something different. I somehow ended up with a two-pound bag of cranberries from the Grocery Outlet (or Groce Out, as we fondly refer to  it), so decided to divert some of them from sauce to make something completely different.

Cranberry Upside-Down Cake.

I've got a very good recipe for Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake, and I figured, Cranberries are just as tart, right? So I did a straight substitution on a half-recipe. And it turned out wonderful.

Here's the recipe:

Base:
1-1/2 cups cranberries (I used fresh, but I think frozen and thawed would work even better)
3/4 cup granulated sugar

Cake:
1/4 cup shortening
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
7/8 cup flour
1/8 tsp salt
1-1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup milk

Thoroughly grease an 8" square cake pan. Butter or shortening is best. I used pan spray and got some stickage in the middle of the pan. Spread the cranberries evenly in the pan, then the sugar. (Here's where I think frozen and thawed would put out more juice to dissolve the sugar. Will have to try it sometime.)

Cream the shortening and sugar and beat in the egg. Whisk together dry ingredients, then beat into shortening mixture, alternating with milk. When completely combined, beat another two minutes on medium-low. The batter will lighten up and gain in volume. Spread evenly over cranberry/sugar mixture, covering completely.

Bake 35 minutes at 350° F. Remove from oven and sprinkle a little powder sugar over top. Let stand for 5 minutes, then loosen the edges with a knife and turn over onto a plate or platter. (I happen to have this square hand-built plate that's the perfect size.) Cool a little before serving--sugar on top will be hot!

Hell freezes over

So the furnace replacement crew arrived on schedule Wednesday morning. Denise and the cats removed to the bedroom while they tore out the old unit, climbed up the roof to bang on the chimney and install the new flue liner. I left them to it around 11 am, went down to Club Mud to handle casseroles, from there at 2 pm over to the fairgrounds to set up for Holiday Market.

I was up on the step ladder hanging my booth sign at 3:40 pm when my cell rang. It was our contact from Marshall's Heating and Air Conditioning, saying they couldn't install our furnace.

He'd made a mistake; he'd quoted a unit, 80% efficient, that wasn't legal to install in our situation, a furnace closet adjoining a bedroom. His boss had caught the error on a site visit, and shut the whole process down. He'd have to send us a revised quote on a different, more efficient system that met the current building code.

I was good. I didn't swear. I did nearly cry. We'd been without heat for twenty days at this point, and the thought of Thanksgiving in the cold just about broke me. He promised to send over some space heaters for us to use, which i didn't have high hopes for. The one I have now will barely heat a small bathroom with the door closed. But I said thank you, and that I couldn't talk about this now, I was tired, my knee hurt, and I needed to focus on getting my booth set up. Called Denise to break the news, but she was at physical therapy and it went to voice mail.

The space heaters are rather better than I expected. Higher power, and they have a safety switch that shuts them down if they go off vertical; if, say, you pick one up to move it, or the cats knock them over. So we can leave them on all day. With one in the bedroom, one in the kitchen, and the radiant heater by the table, Thanksgiving was almost cosy.

Got the new proposal(s) Wednesday night, for a 95% one-stage furnace and a 96% two-stage, although the numbers didn't make sense. The one he said was between the original unit and the more efficient two-stage in cost seemed to actually be about $500 more. Confusing. Finally talked to him today and discovered he'd got the prices reversed, so we settled on the one-stage unit, he'd put in an order, and hopefully could install it on Tuesday. Thursday at latest.

Fingers crossed. Toes crossed.