Thanks be to the ovens for the world

Here is a picture from when we used the oven on my birthday this year, I made the chair in the foreground as gift for my father, and also the fall themed banner (now complete) hanging from underneath the oven roof. We worked for months on and off to finish the oven in our spare time, even having to redo half of the cob building over again!

November is here and the family plans for the Thanksgiving holiday abound. This year we will be bucking tradition (something that happens a lot around here anyway) and having a pizza party in the cob oven. We worked so hard on it over the warmer months, and though there is more still to be done till it's finished, it'll be great to use it again.

I though I'd share my little menu that I've got planned, and it seems that every day I'd like to add something else to it to see how it does in the oven. Some of the cooking temperatures will vary, and we'll have to stagger the cooking times, it's still such a learning process but it makes the cooking so active and fun.



Thanksgiving 2010 Cob Style!

Whole Wheat Bread and Dark Rye from Laurels Kitchen Bread book (highly recommended)

Individual NY style pizzas with fresh mozzarella and sauce

Baked Potatoes with roasted garlic, cheddar cheese and sour cream

Roasted Vegetables-Sweet potatoes, onions, carrots, acorn and butternut squash

Roasted Peanuts

Mulled Cider

Pumpkin pie (made with fresh pumpkin puree, my favorite baking ingredient)

Chocolate cookies



A simple but fun menu, I'm excited to try out the grand experiment.

Valentines Update (or I love Valentines day and had to post over a week late))

This is a card I made with a big red love balloon!

A Pizza that we made, sadly this one didn't come out heart shaped like they normally do.

A beautiful pair of warm pink mitts made out of Manos lovingly made by my mom.

This photo of the red printed helmet I traced from a book I was given a while ago called "Faeries" it has beautiful images of faeries and elves, dwarves and every kind of magical creature you could imagine. This is a screen print that I did for Truckman for Valentines day of the helmet of the Irish king of faeries

These chocolates that I devoured with no shame.

Pizza and Beer

This is the tube hat that I've been working on. I have dreads, so this holds em all together up and out of the way. I used a combination of Lambs Pride, Manos, Chunky yarns, and bunch of random stuff I've had lying around. It was a quick fun crochet project, next time I'll probably make it a little bigger to accommodate all my big fat hair! Looking at it now it looks kind of like a deflated lampshade....

The good things in life really must include homemade pizza shaped like hearts, home brewed beer, and newly finished hats! This is a pizza that Truckman and I made earlier tonight, caramelized onions with red and green peppers, garlic, sauce, pepperoni, and yes a big old pile of shredded cheddar cheese. I got a Birthday present last year of the pizza stone that this was baked on which has made all the difference in the quality of the pizza. Oh, and there's a little parmesan on the top to give it a golden crunch. Mmm it was tasty, and gone in about 20 minutes between the two of us. As for the home brewed beer I don't have any pictures of that to show you, maybe another time. 

I whipped out a couple new compositions today, one in a new open tuning called Terra Patch, a traditional Hawaiian Slack Key guitar tuning, and a flamenco like piece. I've never been one for complaining about my nails breaking, except for when it comes to guitar, my middle finger nail split down the middle and I now have much less of a nail to wail on strings with. I really need to find an effective nail strengthening procedure.

I bought the soundtrack to Once today, a great movie that I saw for the first time back in the fall, check it out, great music and good acting. A creative indie film, made on a low budget, with a very true to life feel.