Man's best friend

A couple of old faithful friends came to visit this week. Our very good pal Cam Stewart (also the much appreciated caretaker of our home back in Canada), decided to take our much beloved pooch on a road trip south. Cam and Macaudo arrived late Tuesday evening with a truck full of bisqued pots with plans to do a soda firing while he was here, and the trip was also an opportunity for Cam to meet the USU folks and check out the facilities down here.

Cam spent a good chunk of time at the school with Robin, met all the other grad students and faculty and even had a chance to show some of his slides to the group. We hosted a potluck on Friday night at our place and Saturday the guys unloaded the kiln in time for Cam to head north again early this morning. They got some pretty good results out of the kiln and Robin is raring to turn around and do another one as soon as he can get some more work made. 

 

It was sure great to see and visit with Cam and a real treat to spend some time with Mac. Mac is getting up there in his years, (turns 10 next week), and Cam has him looking really slick and healthy these days.  We're lucky to still have him kicking around, and even more lucky to have a great friend like Cam. 

Get er' done

We've been getting a dose of winter weather this past week. Which has been a good motivator for me to finish the sweater that I was making for Isla. With spring right around the corner I didn't want the project to get left undone. And seeing that I picked a pattern with a cropped style, she likely won't be wearing it next winter, all the more reason to get it done for what is remaining of this one. 

I made a few modifications to the pattern which worked out in the end, and the result is a two toned purple pullover, with a cable and ribbed feature along the cuffs and bottom, and a happy preschooler.

Wildlife viewing

I took the kids out to a nearby wildlife management area yesterday afternoon to do a little elk viewing with our friends Caroline and her daughter Arianne. Hardware Ranch is the name of the place, and it's about a 45 minute drive south from Logan, eastward up another beautiful canyon in this area. 

The drive there is pretty winding but opens up at the end to a large plateaued area where the elk come down to feed in the winter. There can be upwards of 600 at a time there and have become very accustomed to the visitors that come to see them. We hopped on the horse drawn wagon ride to get a closer look at the seemingly docile animals. My kids seemed more like the wildlife on the ride and I missed most of the interpretive talk because I was kept busy trying to keep them (and their mitts and hats and snacks) from falling out of the wagon into the elk poop!  

Regardless, it was a fun way to spend the afternoon, and get ourselves a good dose of Vitamin D. 

For a great cause

One of Robin's teapots recently went up for auction on a website honoring our very dear friend Tom Rohr who passed away suddenly last summer. Check it out. The website is an online exhibition and auction to raise money for the Tom Rohr Memorial Scholarship fund. It'll be up and running from now until March 11th, and one of several fundraising events planned for this year.

Another event will be a second auction later in the year, which will include some of Tom's work. Robin plans to participate in a wood firing in Saskatchewan in May with fellow potter and friend of Tom's, Martin Tagseth, which will hopefully result in some great pieces to be donated to this event as well.

As the website says, Tom gave to so many through his friendship, his teaching and his art. All the work has been donated by artists who in someway experienced Tom's presence in their lives. If you are in need of a teapot, here's an opportunity to buy one - for a good cause, remembering a great man.

Basil Brulee

To quell my homesickness yesterday afternoon, I sat down with a favorite cookbook (Whitewater Cooks) while the kids were sleeping. The book is the second of two, recipe compilations from our local ski hill back in the Koots, Whitewater. Shelly Adams was the previous co-owner of the ski resort, and turned the lodge canteen into a fantastic and hip eatery, known for it's unique menu items. Shelly then wrote her first cookbook featuring many of the recipes from the hill, and then put out a second book last year. We have both books and have given many a copy away as gifts to friends and family. 

So on a whim we invited our friends Donna and Trevor over for supper and I decided to try out the Chocolate Basil Creme Brulee, just for kicks. I've never made such a dessert before, but felt up to the challenge after reading the recipe. I was also intrigued by the chocolate and basil infusion as I've only ever eaten vanilla.  

Robin even made me my very own ramekin dishes because I was considering making it for the Chocolate festival that I entered a few weeks back but decided against because of logistics of making them for many people to sample. My 'Some like it Hot' Chocolate chili and raspberry cake didn't win this year, but I gratefully received many compliments and it was auctioned off that night for $65.00! 

So we put the new porcelain ramekins to the test and my skills at making baked custard and the end result was scrumptious! The best part was using the portable blowtorch that we borrowed from the clay studio to caramelize the sugar topping. Nothing like incorporating butane into your cooking experience!

All eyes on Canada

All the Olympic buzz these days has been making me homesick. We don't have cable, so my Olympics viewing is limited to bouncing around on the web, but reading the highlights and seeing the images of what's going on in my home province has made me miss it all the more this week. 

Other than Roscoe's triple axle flip and my near double McTwist down the stairs last weekend, there hasn't been much for sports going on around here. I've had to give up my gym visits to let my shoulder heal, which continues to throb and ache. I'm hoping we'll make it to the hill this weekend for a ski day, but even the job of wrestling kids into snowpants makes me cringe. 

And mom came tumbling after....

In true nursery rhyme fashion, Roscoe and I played out our own rendition of Jack and Jill yesterday. Although our story didn't include a pail of water or a hill, instead it featured a clumsy footed two year old, a panic stricken mother and a flight of carpeted stairs. 

So today for Valentine's Day I am nursing a very sore shoulder and Roscoe is apparently fine! Isla and Robin have headed to the ski hill for a little daddy daughter time and Roscoe and I have parked ourselves on the couch with a pile of books and a pot of tea. 

We did acknowledge Valentine's Day with a heart pancake breakfast much to the kids delight. I have a feeling I might be getting requests to make heart pancakes more often. Happy Valentine's Day!