Glass Fish Inspirations

Lampwork glass fish are one of my favorite kinds of beads to make. They are a lot of fun to wear all by themselves as pendants. Most folks who purchase them use them in this way, so I bail them and put them on cords before I ship them out.
I find you can do almost anything with a fish body and it looks pretty nice. Last week, I decided to try making a couple of more realistic fish. The first thing I did was to search the internet for photos of fish that looked interesting to me. I was looking for bright colors, colors I might not normally think to mix together in a bead, and interesting patterns. One of the fish that interested me was a clown trigger fish. I changed up the color just a little bit- adding a little more green than was strictly called for, and came up with a sweet little fish that was quite different from others I'd made. I used Thompson glass enamels for some of the color- I like the way it works when I want to imitate a natural pattern.
The next challenge I set myself was to use up some of the glass twistie scraps I had lying around. This one is purely a fantasy fish, with a base of white and silver and a lot of pastel colors that meshed nicely.
The last fish I'll be showing today is what I'm calling a sari (or saree) fish. It is an idea I'm still working out, where one pattern is pulled across a different base pattern, just as a sari is draped around a body. This red one is my favorite in that design.

Hurricanes make me want to eat soup!

The weather here, though it is many miles from the eye of Irene, has been rainy and windy all day long. Reminds me a bit of my childhood in N.O. When hurricanes were near, we taped up the windows, filled the bathtub with water, checked the canned goods stock, filled up our individual giant red water bottles and prepared to hunker down for a while.
I always liked the feeling the low pressure gave me; it made me excited and a little bit scared . We were lucky that none of those hurricanes were really close enough to cause major damage. Afterwards, I have to admit, we went out rubbernecking- to see trees blown down and roofs on houses that were being built blown atop other houses.
Today I just did the hunkering down part and, since I am living in the frozen north, decided it was high time for a bit of mushroom soup. In typical fashion, I did not measure, but I will give y'all some guesstimates at how much of what I put into the old pot. This only makes about 2 or 3 cups of hearty, very mushroom-y soup. If you are a vegan, you can just use water instead of yogurt, and you may not want to use the beer unless you know they didn't use isinglass for clarity.
1/3 onion........................2 carrots
7 oz. mushrooms...........1/4 cup frozen or fresh corn
Chop onions, peel and grate carrots, and cook in oiled pan, stirring over medium heat until almost soft. Add corn. Cut mushrooms into slices, then cut across two or three times. Add to other veggies.
Add spices- 1 1/2 t. curry powder, 1/4 t. ground pepper, 1/2 t. garlic, a little basil, salt if you want, and anything else you think will be good. Cook all of this until nice and soft- mushrooms may get squeaky- that's good.
Add 1/4 cup beer, 1/2 t. good soy sauce or tamari and 3/4 cup water. Put the lid on and let this simmer.
In the meantime.... Make some roux.
Melt 2 T butter over low heat
Add 1/3 cup unbleached or wheat flour and whisk in until no longer lumpy.
Add 1/2 cup yogurt and whisk in until smooth. Add enough water to make it about like a thin mayonnaise- maybe 1/4- 1/2 cup. Turn off heat.
When the soup stock seems to be well cooked- maybe 15 or 20 minutes of simmering- pour a little bit of the liquid soup into the roux, mix, and then pour roux into the soup stock while stirring. Let that all cook over extremely low heat for just a few minutes. Keep an eye on it and stir occasionally. Delicious served with Welsh rarebit, or crackers, or something else!
I couldn't help but add a picture of one of my 'portal' beads- like the eye of the hurricane!

Here's a little something made by my friend smokeylady54 on etsy using one of my lampwork glass fish beads. Isn't the tourmaline and silver background perfect? And it comes with a sweet pair of earrings too!

For more pictures and more goodies, visit her shop here: www.etsy.com/shop.smokeylady54

Fruit and oat scones recipe

Many years ago, I found a recipe in a newspaper somewhere for these. I have made my own little conversions. They are one of my favorite low sugar treats- a bit crumbly sometimes, but delicious nonetheless. A little bit of butter on them would not be a bad thing!

Fruit and Oat Scones...........375 degree oven, 30 mins.

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour.............1 1/4 cups oats, lightly roasted
1 T. baking powder..............................1/4 t. salt
scant 1/4 cup honey.............................1/3 cup butter
1 1/3 cups dried fruit cut into raisin-sized pieces
1/3-1/2 cup milk.................................. 1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4-1/2 t. cinnamon

Mix together dry ingrdients- flour, oats, salt, bk. powder. Cut in honey and butter til mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in fruit. Add milk and egg,mixing until just moistened. Add cinnamon. Push into ball and knead gently 6 or 8 times. Dough will be a little sticky. If it is too moist to knead, add a small amount of extra flour, no more than a tablespoon at a time.

Pat out dough to form 8" circle on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Score into 12 wedges using sharp floured knife. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes. Cut or break apart while still warm.

Dried apples, apricots and golden raisins are a nice combination of fruits to use.

Yum! I should have been making these instead of typing this out!