7 Layer Dip

My sister Carol and I were talking earlier in February about things to cook/eat when snowed in.   There's this wonderful Mexican bean dip stuff that we make in our family that we call "7 Layer Dip."  It is a recipe that my room mate Jenni found when we were in college.  I think it was on the back of a bag or tortilla chips or something.  This can be made in just about any pan that is oven safe (Jenni and I made it in a bundt pan at least one time while in college) but I've got this one glass baking dish that I always use. To make this long story short, Carol was trying to work out how she was going to be able to cook both 7 Layer Dip and a cobbler (don't get me started on the recipe for Chocolate Cobbler that I've discovered) since she usually made both those recipes in the same pan.  

As a result of this conversation with my sister, I decided that 7 Layer Dip would be most excellent if cooked in a pottery baking dish.  I'm working on making baking dishes that are the same basic shape and size as my glass dish.  Here is the first effort.  

7 Layer Dip:

1 can refried beans

1 medium onion chopped

8 oz sour cream

1 package taco seasoning

sliced black olives ( 1/2 to 2/3 of a can is what I usually use.  I eat the rest while waiting for the dip to cook or save them to put on a salad.  You can leave this layer out if you are not a fan of olives.)

sliced jalapeno peppers (I cut the slices into smaller pieces.  Use as many as you like.  These can be left out as well, but I would not recommend it.)  

grated cheese (Cheddar or Mexican blend are my favorites--Do not skimp on the cheese! Use enough to make a generous layer on top.  I do know know how much that is since I just pile it on until it looks right.)  

Layer the ingredients in the order listed above. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes.  Serve with tortilla chips.  YUM!  

Time Flies

Where did February go?  Seriously how is it March already?  I'm glad that spring is a little bit closer, but I feel like I should have accomplished more in February than I did.  Oh well.

This week in pottery class (because I know that you are dying to hear what I learned) we glazed.  Other than this shot of my pots with glaze on them I have nothing fun to show off this week.

My pots are the ones closest to the camera. I will try to take an "after" shot this week once they are fired.  I'm actually pretty excited to see what a couple of these glazes look like.  These are all glazes that are different from what we use at Allen's studio and I really liked a couple of them on the testers. I'm also anxious to see if the lid fuses to the jar on that one pointy lidded thing in the left of the picture.  Since that piece was fired "lid on," I tried to keep the glaze off any surfaces that would touch.  Since those surfaces are inside the pot, I'm not totally sure that I did. There's always the possibility of the glaze running a little bit when it is fired too.  Keep your fingers crossed.  

I did a little work in the studio this weekend.  I'm working on getting my mug inventory back up.  I fired 4 at Allen's this week (one of those sold before I even got it home) and 2 more at the college.  Then there are these 6 that I made this weekend.  

Chugging Along

This week in pottery class, Ron showed us how to facet pots.  This was my most successful effort.  Believe it or not, I used a stretched out spring from a ball point pen to make the design.  If you pull the wire straight through, the spring will make stripes.  To get this effect, I gently moved the wire back and forth as I pulled through the clay.  The sides of the pot were vertical when I cut the facets.  After cutting the design, I pushed out from the inside (while it was turning) to create the curve.  This also caused the facets to twist a little which I think is really cool.

I can't wait to experiment more with this technique.  I didn't get a chance this weekend.  I have thus far been unable to reproduce the stretched out spring tool.  The one pen I have taken apart so far had a very wimpy little spring in it that seemed way too flimsy when I pulled it apart.  Warning to ball point pen users everywhere: your pens are not safe until I find the spring that I need.  I also had a pile of things that had to be glazed this weekend, so I took care of that instead of making new stuff.

In other good news, we learned that we will be making our classes up that we missed due to snow.  Yipee!

More Snow and Some Cold

We got more snow this week.  A LOT more snow.  It started about mid-morning on Wednesday and Cleveland Community College closed at 11 am.  All day and night classes cancelled.  Oh well, there goes another pottery class.  As excited as this southern girl gets about seeing snow (yes, I stocked up on bread and milk earlier in the week), I would like to request that our next snow happen sometime other than the middle of the week.  We are 5 weeks into this class and have missed 2 nights!  Enough already.

While at home being snowed in, I caught a cold. I suppose it is a good thing that I could spend some time resting on the couch while feeling punk.  For this I am grateful.  Friday afternoon, I managed to get off the couch and the roads were clear enough to make it in to town to the studio.

The big project for this weekend was an oval platter.  I started by throwing the rim.  

The next morning, it had dried enough that I could cut this off the bat, sort of squish it into an oval shape and attach a slab for the bottom.  

I think I will probably try something different for texture on the bottom next time and I wish the sides were a little more flat, but its not too bad for a first try.  Does it need handles?  

Then because I saw it on a video this weekend and I was rolling out slabs anyway, I tried making one of these.  It is really different from anything else that I've done and was pretty fun to make.  What do you think?  If I make more of these trays, I'll need to figure out a way to make it more "mine."  This one is almost an exact copy of what the potter in the video made.

One-Piece Jar

We missed our pottery class last week because of the snow.  I'm pretty sure that ours was one of very few groups of students at Cleveland Community College who were disappointed to miss class.  The big question that we had for Ron this week was, "Do we get to make last week up?"  Not one of my math students asked me that question.  

This week, Ron had something special for me to work on - jars with lids that are thrown as one piece and then cut apart.  My first few tries weren't particularly impressive to look at, but this weekend I managed one that I'm not embarrassed to show you. 

This is the finished piece.  

I almost forgot to take pictures of the process, so this isn't exactly what it looked like when I finished the throwing part.  I started with a cylinder and then closed the top and made the knob.  Closing up and making the knob is by far the most challenging part of the whole process.  Step by step pictures of that would be nice, but my hands were way to messy to touch my phone at that point.  Then I used a tool to push in that gallery that you see.  Then the piece needs to dry to leather hard.  Over night worked for me on this one.  

Then I used a tool to cut off the top.  Its important to make the cut at the very top of the indention so that the two pieces fit together correctly when you are finished.    

Next I did some trimming.  Using the bottom of the jar as a chuck, I trimmed the inside of the lid.  I also trimmed a little bit off the outside of the indented part of the bottom piece.  

The idea was to get the lid to fit over the indented part of the bottom.  In this picture, I've gotten the inside edge of the lid and the outside edge of the bottom trimmed just right.  

Clumsy, Clumsy, Me

I made a big, round  baker yesterday.  To be fair, it's not all that big probably, but for me, this was a big, wide piece.  I had to take the drip pan off my wheel in order to have room to get the tool I was using where I needed it so that I could clean up the sides.  Anyway, I was feeling pretty good about what I'd created.  Maybe too good.  As I was moving it to the table and sliding it out of the way, my hand slipped and I poked the side of it with my thumb.  No more big, round baker.

After a few minutes of being disgusted with myself, I decided to do the adult thing and NOT smash it with my fist.  The poke didn't go all the way through, so I put it back on the wheel to see if I could fix it.  I never got it back exactly how it was before the accident, but I managed to salvage it.  When it is still, you can't really tell that its out of round a little bit.

The handles went on today.  Since I'd kind of goofed it up already, I tried experimenting a little bit with the handles.  First I tried pulling handles.  That did NOT work...for a number of reasons, so I pulled those off and tried again.  In this picture, the handle on the left looks like it is out of proportion with the piece.  I hope that is just perspective.  The handles were the same size when I made them and the one on the right looks OK size wise to me.  My current focus is on making substantial handles.  I've been feeling like some of my handles were too delicate for the pots they were going on, so I'm working to correct that.  I will try to remember to share a picture of this when it is finished.

I'm Trying...

I won't win any awards for beautiful handles yet, but all those cylinders from last week are now mugs.   

I already see things that I would do differently.  This is good...motivation to make more and try again.  

I have not had much success in the past pulling handles, and that is one of the things that I hoped to learn in this class that I'm taking.  For these, I started with a coil, flattened it out a bit, attached it to the cup, and then pulled it.  After 6 of them, I started getting a better feel for what I need to do to make this work.  

And I didn't even freeze too much.