Strictly Functional

I'm delighted that one of my double-walled camellia bowls was accepted into this year's Strictly Functional Pottery National show, juried by Simon Leach. The exhibit runs from today through October 22 at Kevin Lehmann's Pottery in Lancaster, PA.

Penguin kilometerstone

The Potters' Penguin Project passed a kilometerstone (a metric milestone) this weekend: the colony hosts 997 penguins and three eggs--1,000 objets d'penguin--which puts us a whopping two thirds of the way toward our goal of 1,500. Here's what that looks like packed into boxes:

All of these birds, plus at least 500 more, will emerge in early January for an exhibit at Claymakers in Durham, NC.

Reduction

I've been getting satisfying results with sprayed glazes, and the process has been helping me really appreciate my electric kiln--to the point that (hard to believe) I've been declining occasional access to soda and wood firings. But every once in a while, I glaze a pot for the gas kiln at Claymakers, and the results make me covet reduction firing again. Case in point: I really like the carbon-trap halos around the wax-resist dots on the shino-glazed bottle below. On one side of the bottle, the halos are black; on the other side, they're orange. (The bottle started out as a bottle demo, then turned into a darting demo. I'm not sure why I stuck a horn on it, but it does make a nice place to put a thumb.)

Banana bread recipe revised

The winning recipe from the epic Banana Bread Taste Tests of 2015 is still the recipe we use. I've been going to the source for the recipe, but it always bugs me that the order in which ingredients are listed is not the order in which they're used in the recipe. So here's a revised version that fixes that.

Champion Banana Bread

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C), and butter a 4x8-inch loaf pan. [Or use muffin tins, or a glass baking dish, or whatever. You have enough baking experience that you don't need to feel bound to the 4x8-inch size.]

Mash:
3-4 very ripe bananas, peeled [The recipe actually specifies "peeled." I haven't ever tried it with unpeeled bananas.]

Mix in:
1/3 cup melted butter [Hooray for melted butter. This is what makes this recipe is so easy.]

Mix in:
1 teaspoon baking soda [Seems like a strange order, but it works.]
Pinch of salt

Mix in:

1/2 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix in:
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

Optional:
1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips and/or
1/3 cup pecans, shelled [I wrote "shelled" to keep the "peeled" bananas company]

Bake 45-50 minutes or until done.