Sunday, September 15, 2013
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Monday, June 24, 2013
New Compost Crock Design, Look Out New York!
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| Available at: |
https://www.etsy.com/listing/154726238/hand-thrown-pottery-kitchen-counter?ref=shop_home_active
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Tuesday, March 26, 2013
What a day!
We woke up this morning with anticipation, like Christmas, knowing that we were going to get to open our kiln and check out our transformed pieces! This is our second glaze firing in this kiln and we couldn't wait to see how things turned out. Today also had some clouds so I decided to take the chance to go out and photograph our pieces hot out of the kiln to share with the world. I'd say they were pretty great! Check out some of our new listings on Etsy:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/MinerRevolutions
http://www.etsy.com/shop/MinerRevolutions
Monday, March 25, 2013
Fun recipes of late
Well Spring Break is over for Javan and I and it is back to real life, hence why I would rather write a blog post rather than actually listen to lectures!
We made some really delicious dishes this weekend which I invented or adapted, so here are our 3
1. Kale and roast veggie puff pastry
Ingredients
6-8 small red skinned potatoes (I'm pretty sure any potato type would be fine)
8 small pre-boiled beets (ours came in a package from costco)
6 cloves garlic
1/2 an onion or so
A bit of Thyme
A bit of Rosemary
Salt and Pepper
Roast the above ingredients chopped to about bite-size in the oven. I roasted them at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes then 450 for another 15 or so. I checked them often to make sure they were nicely browned but not burned
Take roast veggies out of oven and immediately place on top of a bed of about 4 leaves of kale in order to wilt the kale just a bit.
Pile all that into a sheet of puff pastry and fold up sides. Put back in oven at 375 for about 25 minutes and voila you have a delicious way to eat your beets and lots of other good for you veggies!
2. Delicious yogurt walnut Gluten-Free waffles! Seriously, I ate mine plain they were that good! Sorry no pictures, they got gobbled up too fast
Ingredients
1 and 1/3 cup brown rice flour (we make ours in a vitamix dry container, way cheap!)1/3 cup tapioca flour
1/3 cup sweet sorghum flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
0.5 teaspoons baking soda
0.5 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon or so of cinnamon, I basically sprinkle until satisfied
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1.5 cups milk, whey or water (I used whey but I find with stuff like waffles it's alright to substitute water or milk)
1 cup yogurt (Ours was mid-fermentation but still turned out OK)
6 tablespoons butter (In the future I might see what substituting some applesauce here would be like... don't tell Javan)
1/2 cup walnuts
I mixed the dry ingredients then added the wet ingredients, cooked it up on the waffle maker and refrigerated the extra waffle batter. Once it gets all made up I would guess this recipe makes 4 of the large rectangular waffles, maybe 5. Seriously, so delicious!
3. Homemade yogurt. Sorry no pictures here, it's such a mundane affair these days I apparently have no pictures of this event!
Tools needed
Thermometer (up to 180 degrees, we use a fairly cheap one from the grocery and it works alright)
Crock pot or some other insulated vessel, ceramic retains heat really well!
Blankets
Big pot for stovetop
Ingredients
Stonyfield yogurt
2% milk (or whatever you like, a guy at WholeFoods told me he used half and half)
Before you start: Sanitize all your surfaces you may use (the pot, utensils, the thermometer, the crock you will let the yogurt sit in for hours, etc...) with boiling hot water. We just use our hot water pot and this is super simple
1. Pour milk into your stovetop pot (we make ours in gallon batches so this requires a fairly large pot)
2. Bring the milk up to 180 degrees, depending on the amount of milk this takes varying times but 10 minutes or so on our stove for a large pot. You don't need to constantly stir but I do recommend setting a timer so you remember to get back to it if you go multitask elsewhere in the house or kitchen. This heating helps kill off any competing bacteria in the milk
3. Turn off burner once you get to 180 degrees and move pot off burner. I sometimes fill my sink with cold water and put the pot in that so as to increase the cool down time. You need to bring your milk down between 110 and 120 degrees. If the pot is just sitting on a cool burner this can seriously take 30-40 minutes though I always check more often than that. The waterbath decreases this to about 10 minutes.
4. Once your milk is between 110 and 120 degrees you can add Stonyfield yogurt, I use a little over a cup for 1 gallon of milk (trial and error makes me suggest the Stonyfield brand). The best method which I often forget to do is to add a bit of milk to the yogurt first, stir to make the yogurt more liquid, THEN add to the pot, as stated I usually forget and it works out alright, just means more stirring. They recently have started selling plain Stonyfield yogurt in small cups which is great for making yogurt. Otherwise I have kept a large container of stonyfield and used it over the course of a month or so to make my own batches. I think the fewer times you end up cross-contaminating your Stonyfield container with spoons, etc... the better but that's just the medical/biology background coming out.
5. Add to the ceramic crockpot or crock that you want to use ensuring it has a lid as well. Sometimes I preheat the crock with the boiling hot water from sterilization just letting the water sit in there while preparing the yogurt.
6. Let this sit, wrapped in blankets for hours. We used to do only 8 or so hours but one day we forgot about it and it sat for about 24 hours and was delicious and had a more firm consistency than other times we have let it sit for less time. Aka I highly recommend if you like firm thick yogurt to let it sit for about 24 hours.
7. Place crock/container in fridge
8. After a day or so you can admire your new homemade, economical creation by transferring it to your old yogurt containers.
We eat TONS of yogurt, probably at least a couple gallons a month and it's great! The directions above seem complicated, but once you get YOUR routine down it's a snap to make really affordable yogurt.
OK really I should be doing homework so those are the recipes I'll leave you with for now!
We made some really delicious dishes this weekend which I invented or adapted, so here are our 3
1. Kale and roast veggie puff pastry
Ingredients
6-8 small red skinned potatoes (I'm pretty sure any potato type would be fine)
8 small pre-boiled beets (ours came in a package from costco)
6 cloves garlic
1/2 an onion or so
A bit of Thyme
Salt and Pepper
Roast the above ingredients chopped to about bite-size in the oven. I roasted them at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes then 450 for another 15 or so. I checked them often to make sure they were nicely browned but not burned
Take roast veggies out of oven and immediately place on top of a bed of about 4 leaves of kale in order to wilt the kale just a bit.
Pile all that into a sheet of puff pastry and fold up sides. Put back in oven at 375 for about 25 minutes and voila you have a delicious way to eat your beets and lots of other good for you veggies!
2. Delicious yogurt walnut Gluten-Free waffles! Seriously, I ate mine plain they were that good! Sorry no pictures, they got gobbled up too fast
Ingredients
1 and 1/3 cup brown rice flour (we make ours in a vitamix dry container, way cheap!)1/3 cup tapioca flour
1/3 cup sweet sorghum flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
0.5 teaspoons baking soda
0.5 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon or so of cinnamon, I basically sprinkle until satisfied
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1.5 cups milk, whey or water (I used whey but I find with stuff like waffles it's alright to substitute water or milk)
1 cup yogurt (Ours was mid-fermentation but still turned out OK)
6 tablespoons butter (In the future I might see what substituting some applesauce here would be like... don't tell Javan)
1/2 cup walnuts
I mixed the dry ingredients then added the wet ingredients, cooked it up on the waffle maker and refrigerated the extra waffle batter. Once it gets all made up I would guess this recipe makes 4 of the large rectangular waffles, maybe 5. Seriously, so delicious!
3. Homemade yogurt. Sorry no pictures here, it's such a mundane affair these days I apparently have no pictures of this event!
Tools needed
Thermometer (up to 180 degrees, we use a fairly cheap one from the grocery and it works alright)
Crock pot or some other insulated vessel, ceramic retains heat really well!
Blankets
Big pot for stovetop
Ingredients
Stonyfield yogurt
2% milk (or whatever you like, a guy at WholeFoods told me he used half and half)
Before you start: Sanitize all your surfaces you may use (the pot, utensils, the thermometer, the crock you will let the yogurt sit in for hours, etc...) with boiling hot water. We just use our hot water pot and this is super simple
1. Pour milk into your stovetop pot (we make ours in gallon batches so this requires a fairly large pot)
2. Bring the milk up to 180 degrees, depending on the amount of milk this takes varying times but 10 minutes or so on our stove for a large pot. You don't need to constantly stir but I do recommend setting a timer so you remember to get back to it if you go multitask elsewhere in the house or kitchen. This heating helps kill off any competing bacteria in the milk
3. Turn off burner once you get to 180 degrees and move pot off burner. I sometimes fill my sink with cold water and put the pot in that so as to increase the cool down time. You need to bring your milk down between 110 and 120 degrees. If the pot is just sitting on a cool burner this can seriously take 30-40 minutes though I always check more often than that. The waterbath decreases this to about 10 minutes.
4. Once your milk is between 110 and 120 degrees you can add Stonyfield yogurt, I use a little over a cup for 1 gallon of milk (trial and error makes me suggest the Stonyfield brand). The best method which I often forget to do is to add a bit of milk to the yogurt first, stir to make the yogurt more liquid, THEN add to the pot, as stated I usually forget and it works out alright, just means more stirring. They recently have started selling plain Stonyfield yogurt in small cups which is great for making yogurt. Otherwise I have kept a large container of stonyfield and used it over the course of a month or so to make my own batches. I think the fewer times you end up cross-contaminating your Stonyfield container with spoons, etc... the better but that's just the medical/biology background coming out.
5. Add to the ceramic crockpot or crock that you want to use ensuring it has a lid as well. Sometimes I preheat the crock with the boiling hot water from sterilization just letting the water sit in there while preparing the yogurt.
6. Let this sit, wrapped in blankets for hours. We used to do only 8 or so hours but one day we forgot about it and it sat for about 24 hours and was delicious and had a more firm consistency than other times we have let it sit for less time. Aka I highly recommend if you like firm thick yogurt to let it sit for about 24 hours.
7. Place crock/container in fridge
8. After a day or so you can admire your new homemade, economical creation by transferring it to your old yogurt containers.
We eat TONS of yogurt, probably at least a couple gallons a month and it's great! The directions above seem complicated, but once you get YOUR routine down it's a snap to make really affordable yogurt.
OK really I should be doing homework so those are the recipes I'll leave you with for now!
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Em throwing a plate!
What is in a name?
As the inaugural post on this blog I thought I would explain a little bit about why we chose the name Miner Revolutions for our pottery shop as well as for this blog. Well most obvious, our last name is Miner which explains the first part of the name. Second, Revolutions... we had considered a few different names, obsessions being one possibility but we chose revolutions because not only does a pottery wheel revolve but there is a greater depth of meaning with the word revolutions.
This depth is found in all the uses of the word. There are revolutionary ideas, people, processes and times. The earth revolves giving us day and night as well as seasons. This revolution of the earth brings about both drastic (day/night) as well as gradual (seasonal) changes to our experience of the world. We live revolutionary lives here on earth in the living out of the day and night and the living out of the seasons. Life also has it's seasons with some times of life being defined by different moments or meanings. For us, this time in our life is marked by being present to the revolutions of the earth and taking the time to slow down and enjoy living intentionally in our culture which too often ignores the revolutions of the earth giving us day, night, and seasons. Part of this is learning more about seasonal things (like gardening) and part of this is living in the moments of every day marking most evenings by making dinner together. Did you know that chickens lay eggs based on the amount of sunlight and plants also are very dependent on the length of day, not just the warmth of summer to produce?
I envision that this blog will be all about the small (minor) revolutions that happen in our own lives. We will probably blog about our worm bin, fermenting things, planting, camping and of course pottery. All these things help to keep us sane in the midst of a lot of academic work and we hope to get to share these with you so that you too might try some of this out. We are no experts on any of these things but with practice we hope to gain some knowledge and wisdom which we hope to share with you. We also sincerely hope that if you are reading this blog and see an idea that you like that you shut your computer, consider shutting it all the way down (there is so much peace in not walking by and wondering if someone has emailed you in the last 2 minutes or if there might be a slightly better version of the idea in your head online and if you should check one more time) and get up and try some of the things in which you're interested. The blogosphere can be so much taking in of other people's lives and stories that we forget to live our own.
We hope that not only this blog but also our pottery pieces can bring about minor revolutions in your own life like actually trying something new. In our pottery pieces we hope you find something that can usher you into the presence of the piece, the work that went into it and thereby usher you into taking in all of life a little bit more and appreciating the richness all around us.
We aren't revolutionary per se which indicates some large major change but we do hope to be small revolutionaries, making minor changes in our lives that spur us and others on towards a hopeful and wholesome presence in life.
This depth is found in all the uses of the word. There are revolutionary ideas, people, processes and times. The earth revolves giving us day and night as well as seasons. This revolution of the earth brings about both drastic (day/night) as well as gradual (seasonal) changes to our experience of the world. We live revolutionary lives here on earth in the living out of the day and night and the living out of the seasons. Life also has it's seasons with some times of life being defined by different moments or meanings. For us, this time in our life is marked by being present to the revolutions of the earth and taking the time to slow down and enjoy living intentionally in our culture which too often ignores the revolutions of the earth giving us day, night, and seasons. Part of this is learning more about seasonal things (like gardening) and part of this is living in the moments of every day marking most evenings by making dinner together. Did you know that chickens lay eggs based on the amount of sunlight and plants also are very dependent on the length of day, not just the warmth of summer to produce?
I envision that this blog will be all about the small (minor) revolutions that happen in our own lives. We will probably blog about our worm bin, fermenting things, planting, camping and of course pottery. All these things help to keep us sane in the midst of a lot of academic work and we hope to get to share these with you so that you too might try some of this out. We are no experts on any of these things but with practice we hope to gain some knowledge and wisdom which we hope to share with you. We also sincerely hope that if you are reading this blog and see an idea that you like that you shut your computer, consider shutting it all the way down (there is so much peace in not walking by and wondering if someone has emailed you in the last 2 minutes or if there might be a slightly better version of the idea in your head online and if you should check one more time) and get up and try some of the things in which you're interested. The blogosphere can be so much taking in of other people's lives and stories that we forget to live our own.
We hope that not only this blog but also our pottery pieces can bring about minor revolutions in your own life like actually trying something new. In our pottery pieces we hope you find something that can usher you into the presence of the piece, the work that went into it and thereby usher you into taking in all of life a little bit more and appreciating the richness all around us.
We aren't revolutionary per se which indicates some large major change but we do hope to be small revolutionaries, making minor changes in our lives that spur us and others on towards a hopeful and wholesome presence in life.
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