OIL BOTTLES

Sometimes, creating and teaching ceramics can be tiring.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining! Being creative all day and connecting with others is incredible, but all the decision-making can leave one mentally drained. Not to mention that wedging clay, making pots, and loading kilns is physically demanding. Another creative task, cooking dinner, sometimes feels monumental after a tiring day in the studio. I often need a spark to get in the mood for cooking after long, busy studio days. My go-to spark is the smell of fresh garlic sauteed in olive oil. That aromatic goodness revives me enough to start cooking.  Half the time I don’t know what I am going to cook, but if I can get motivated enough to chop some garlic and sizzle it in olive oil good things will happen from there.

Freshly thrown oil bottles drying on ware boards.

My favorite part of beginning to cook is when I take our stoneware oil bottle and drizzle golden oil into the warm cast iron skillet. The bottle is one that Kent made, and the glaze is matte yellow with iron speckles. Kent has been making many oil bottles like ours lately, so I thought I would write a short blog highlighting the top reasons why I think the bottles make great gifts.

TOP FIVE REASONS

BLUE SAGE OIL BOTTLES MAKE GREAT GIFTS:

1. It prevents oil from rancid by blocking light, oxygen, and heat.

2. Metal tops let the oil drizzle slowly, making you feel like a chef!

3. Ceramic pottery is safer for food storage than plastic because plastic can contain chemicals that leach into food.

4. Potter’s thumbprint on the pot's side makes it easy to grab when cooking and reminds you that a human being made it!

5. You can have beautiful, functional art on the kitchen countertop.

Fired oil bottles in the kiln about to be unloaded.

Glazed and fired oil bottles are on display in the gallery at Blue Sage Pottery.

My favorite thing about our wheel-thrown oil bottles is that you can have original art on your countertop. The bottles are made with stoneware clay and finished with glazes we create from scratch. Each is thrown on the potter’s wheel and dipped individually in the glazes. That results in each bottle being totally unique! Kent and I believe that you should surround yourself with things you know to be beautiful, and that is one reason we are motivated to make and sell functional art for the home. If you are looking for a special gift for someone who appreciates artisan items and likes to cook, the oil bottle makes a great present. You could also purchase two, one for oil and one for vinegar, if you want to give a matching set. We have several oil bottles in our gallery, but you can purchase them online on our Kitchenware Page. Feel free to message us about the availability of other glaze colors. We would love to help you find the perfect gift!

Get Cooking with a Handmade Oil Bottle

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SUMMER SOUP

Kent’s small soup bowl is perfect for a light lunch.

We recently finished up another firing at Blue Sage Pottery. This last firing included hundreds of soup bowls. I thought it was odd for Kent to make so many soup bowls in the summer, but then I went out in the garden to find giants! We have grown Zucchini the past few summers because they are easy to grow here! This year we started “Grey Zucchini” from seed, and then transplanted them into some new garden beds. This type of zucchini is a summer squash, perfect for making big batches of soup! I researched a lot of Zucchini Soup recipes online, and most recipes are similar.

“Grey Zucchini” from our garden.

Fresh herbs from our garden!

Usually, you begin by sauteing garlic and onion in butter and oil. Next, add chopped zucchini and saute for a few more minutes. After a few minutes, add the stock and cook for 20 minutes. You really can’t get much easier than that!! Some recipes don’t blend the soup, but I like a creamy blended version best.

In addition to several squashes in the garden, we have many herbs growing. You could add a mixture of rosemary, oregano, lovage, and basil to put your spin on Zucchini Soup. If you haven’t grown herbs before, I highly recommend oregano and lovage, which grow almost as well as mint here in the Panhandle!

Blue Sage Pottery ‘Soup Bowl’

Lovage, a perennial herb, was recommended to me at the May Garden Sale at the Amarillo Botanical Gardens a few years ago. I took home a little Lovage plant and stuck it in a tough spot near the back door, which doesn’t drain well no matter how much I amend the soil. The lovage survived there, so it passed my hardiness test! The following year, I moved it to a slightly raised vegetable garden with better soil, and it has grown into a big, beautiful plant. At the moment, it is hidden by a trio of gargantuan tomato plants, but I am confident that it will be fine. Lovage tastes like celery; like celery, you can eat the leaves and stalk. I chopped the oregano, rosemary, and lovage and threw them in with the onions. I added the basil in the last few minutes of cooking for more flavor! See below for the full recipe!

The best part of making homemade soup is eating it in one of Kent’s bowls. They hold one cup perfectly, which is excellent for a ”soup and salad” lunch. Kent also makes a bigger soup bowl, his Chowder Bowl, that I like best for chili, so I have the extra space to load up on toppings! That is more of a football season meal for us, so I guess I will blog about that in the fall!

savor your soup in a handmade bowl

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CUPCAKE ADVENTURE

Bacon made with our Bacon Cooker, ready to be crumbled onto the cupcakes!

Cooking is an adventure, baking especially so!  Like pottery, baking is something that takes experimentation and creativity.  Of course, I am an artist, not a chef, so sometimes things don’t go as planned in the kitchen!  Our daughter and I have wanted to make Maple Bacon Cupcakes, mainly because we guessed they would be oddly delicious.  (They are!)  Our first batch of cupcakes resembled tiny volcanoes.  Marin, a little optimist like her dad, pointed out that we could fill the crater with icing!  Luckily, our second attempt at the cupcakes turned out amazing.  We have developed our twist on a family favorite and a new Maple Cream Sauce (recipe below).  Read below to learn how we did it! 

First, we cooked a pound of bacon in our microwaveable Blue Sage Bacon Cooker.  You have to cook the bacon in a couple of batches.  Kent then chopped and crumbled the crispy bacon.  Check out my last blog post for instructions on how to use the Bacon Cooker. We then poured the bacon grease through a small metal kitchen sieve and kept it to use in the cupcakes.  I know that sounds weird, but it gives an excellent bacon flavor to the cake.  We first tried subbing in half the butter with bacon fat, but that was too much bacon flavor!  We settled on subbing in a ¼ cup of the butter with bacon grease, and that worked great!  The cupcake recipe we used is one that my mother-in-law, a frequent and excellent baker, gave us.  You could use any vanilla cupcake recipe you like, replace ¼ cup of the fat with bacon grease, and replace the vanilla extract with half the amount of maple extract (a little maple extract does go a long way).

While cooking the bacon in batches, we made the Maple Cream Sauce.  We looked over lots of recipes and blended them using what we had in the refrigerator.  It turned out awesome!  I will definitely be using this on other decadent treats in the future.  The recipe below makes just enough to drizzle onto the frosting, which is gilding the lily, but Marin insisted we have drizzles on the cupcake swirls.  We decided to add ¼ cup of the Maple Cream Sauce in the frosting, and it made it soooo good!!  It was the best-tasting maple frosting I have ever had because the flavor was not overpowering.  You can take your favorite Buttercream Icing recipe, one good for piping, and blend in the Maple Cream Sauce with a mixer for a subtle maple flavor and smooth icing.  

When the cupcakes cooled we piped the frosting using a basic round tip and drizzled the Maple Sauce over the icing with a spoon.  The last step is to sprinkle bacon crumbles all over the cupcakes.  The bacon should stick to the sauce and frosting!

MARIN’S MAPLE CREAM SAUCE

Sit back, relax, and enjoy that cupcake!

In a bowl, combine the cornstarch and water and set aside.  In a saucepan, combine the syrup, butter, and half n’ half.  Cook over medium heat, stirring for about three minutes.  Stir in the cornstarch mixture, and turn the heat down a bit.  Keep stirring while it boils down.  When you have a thick creamy mixture, remove from the heat and let it cool:

Ingredients:

½ C Maple Syrup, Grade A

1 TBS Butter

2 TBS Half n’ Half

1 TBS Cornstarch

2 TBS Cold Water

Learn about the Blue Sage Bacon Cooker

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HOW TO USE OUR BACON COOKER

Where did you get the idea for the Bacon Cooker, and how do you use it?  Those are two of the most frequently asked questions about our Blue Sage Pottery Bacon Cooker.  In today’s post, I will share how our Bacon Cooker came to be and how to use it.  Several years ago, Kent and I saw a ceramic bacon cooker you could microwave.  It was small, more like a mug with a flat little tray.  Kent decided to play around with the idea on the pottery wheel.

Always the optimist, Kent was sure it could be awesome, so he went about making different forms and experimenting with the design.  He made them a little sturdier and taller, making the tray more of a big bowl with a spout. He came up with today’s Blue Sage Bacon Cooker, and it sold me on the possibility of microwaving bacon!  I rarely ate bacon in the past because it was a mess to cook.  The cool thing about our Bacon Cooker is that it is easy to use and clean. Plus, it doesn’t make the entire house smelly! Now I enjoy cooking bacon occasionally.

SAVE THE BACON GREASE…IF YOU’RE INTO THAT

Two of my favorite things about the Bacon Cooker are the crispiness and the ease with which you can render the fat. The drippings run right down into the attached bowl. The bowl catches all the fat, and then you pour the grease through the spout, making rendering super easy. Our Bacon Cooker is also a great design because it is larger than most, so it holds a lot of bacon and is easy to handle when hot.

If you already have a Bacon Cooker or are considering purchasing one, I am including a “How-to” below to help you use it.

How to use the Blue Sage Bacon Cooker

1. Cut long strips of bacon in half with kitchen shears.

2. Drape the strips over the center cylinder.

3. Place a paper towel over the Bacon Cooker.

4. Microwave approximately 4-5 minutes.  (The time depends on how much bacon is on there, the thickness of the bacon, and the power of your microwave.  Experiment with times until you achieve your desired crispiness!)

5. Remove the Bacon Cooker from the microwave with an oven mitt and place it on a trivet or wooden board. (If you are cooking more, let the Bacon Cooker cool a bit before using it again.)

6. Try to keep your family from eating all the bacon before you get a piece:)

7. Render the fat.  Pour the grease through a small metal kitchen sieve into a mason jar.  Keep the rendered bacon fat in your refrigerator for up to six months and use it to flavor food or cook with it.  (One 12 oz. package of bacon makes about ¼ to ½ cup of grease.)

8. Once the Bacon Cooker has cooled, wash it by hand or put it in the dishwasher.  Our glazes are dishwasher-safe!

Find a Bacon Cooker in your favorite color

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WHERE'S THE BACON?

“Bacon, bacon! Where’s the bacon? I smell bacon!” Words from thirty years ago surface in my mind as I write this blog. The title of this post seems relevant during these crazy times, but I wasn’t thinking about grocery store shortages. I was thinking of how our three kids are exactly like that determined golden retriever in the famous Beggin’ Strips commercial. “Bacon, bacon gotta be bacon…There’s only one thing that smells like bacon and that’s BACON!” It is the smell of bacon cooking that gets them out of bed on sluggish mornings or the scent of brinner that gets them off Minecraft and into the kitchen in the evenings.

Quick bacon for Baked Potato Night this week!

These Bacon Cookers are ready to be unloaded from the kiln.

Since we cook every meal at home, it is the perfect opportunity to use our Bacon Cooker. We are using this time to test out some new recipes. We made Baked Potato Soup from our old standby cookbook, Southern Living, the other night. It was so rich and comforting on a cool, gray day!  (The downside was that it had a lot of milk in it, and of course, milk is a precious commodity these days!) This week, my daughter and I look forward to baking some Maple Bacon Cupcakes. We have wanted to make them for a while, and I recently bought some new icing tools. Of course, for all this cooking, we use one of our Blue Sage Pottery Bacon Cookers that Kent (a.k.a Dad) made.

Kent fired the kiln over the weekend and unloaded it this morning. Hundreds of new Bacon Cookers are in the kiln. As you probably know, each of our Bacon Cookers is made by hand on the potter’s wheel and dipped in glazes made from scratch (just like our cooking).  Our unique finishes come from how we combine and layer our glazes. There are so many variable color possibilities achieved by layering glazes, and we love that! We hope that all the options for different colors allow our customers to find the perfect Bacon Cooker for their kitchen!

Select your favorite bacon cooker

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