vegetarian, baking, tomatoes, summer, french food

simple tomato tart for summer

square puff pastry tart with sliced tomatoes

It's now late summer, and if you have a vegetable garden like I do, you're festooned with a glut of tomatoes. Maybe you've already made gazpacho, fresh tomato sauce, Turkish salad, and more tomato things. The tomatoes keep coming in from the gardent. It's time for something French: a tomato…

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pottery, making pottery, 3Dprint

3d printed wheel shield clip

photo of a Brent pottery wheel, with clips on the splash pan, holding a strip of plastic as a sheild

I was having a serious problem with my new plaster bats. They're tall enough to raise the throwing surface above the edge of the splash pan on my standing wheel. This was resulting in a fair amount of slip spatter on the walls: It's a clay studio, so a little…

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pasta, vegetarian, spring

spring pasta with green vegetables

photo of a large serving bowl full of curly pasta with green vegetables and cheese

Spring vegetables are in, and around our house that means salads and pasta. With enough veggies, you can have both in one bowl. You could call this a "pasta primavera", I suppose, although that name has been abused enough that I'd just as well rather not. I'll give you an…

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eggs, vegetarian, cheese, french food

cheeeeeeeeeese!!! (and a souffle)

me holding a box full of gift cheese from Widmer's

One of the few remaining good food magazines is Culture Cheese Mag, to which we've subscribed for more than ten years. Because we love cheese. And one of the things that Culture does periodically is reader giveaways; we've actually won twice, once a decade ago, and once this month. What…

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#portland #politics #voting

District 3 Candidates Forum

photo of the D3 candidates posing after the panel

On Tuesday night, eight candidates for the new Portland City Council District 3 visited Roseway for an informational panel. I came away from this panel with a pretty good idea of who will and won't be on my ranked choice ballot come November. Thanks so much to RNA for organizing…

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pottery, pottery tech

making foot-groove plaster bats

my studio worktable, holding four plates drying on plaster bats.  in the background are five more plaster bats in a metal rack, plus various tools

I'm doing a large order of plates for a customer, which need to match and stack properly (they even have to stack with plates made by another potter, but that's a complication I'll leave out of this article). One problem making porcelain plates is that you have to throw on…

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