Going Wholesale and Learning to Cook

Once again, I have some catching up to do. Shortly after my last post, I started tattooing at a shop in Meriden, Connecticut, so that kept me a little busier than usual. Then, a friend introduced me to two sisters opening a store in downtown Torrington, Connecticut, called The Art's Desire. They now carry my pottery, earrings, hair sticks, and leather cord necklaces!

As tattooing slowed down, typical of September, my pottery production has picked up. But now my focus has turned to finally stepping into the wholesale market. It's a goal I've been working toward for a while now. Last year, I began standardizing my beads and zeroing in on my favorite glaze sets. Now, I'm working on rounding out my line and producing a catalog. With every catalog or brochure, there must be photos, right?

  

This is one of my glazes on a pie plate. For the catalog, I'd like to show it with a fresh baked pie. Which has raised another project for me...cooking. I have always cheekily admitted, I don't cook, I heat. Sure, I did some baking when I was a kid, but not much since. I have never made a pie from scratch. My mother and grandmother were not much into cooking and I was raised mostly on manufactured, often frozen food, like cheese ravioli and fish sticks. The seasonings currently in my mother's cabinet expired in 1967. And I am not exaggerating. For me, cooking was just a big fat time suck resulting in a pile of stuff I had to wash afterwards. Ech. No thank you. And generally, my lack of experience and knowledge was obvious in the results, so I didn't see the point. If I wanted an excellent meal, I'd go buy one. Leave it to the professionals! At home, it was mostly still frozen and boxed.  Until recently.

My stoneware pottery line is completely functional and now includes tagines, inspired by a fellow potter, Christopher Scherer. A tagine is a covered dish for slow cooking. My research brought me to middle eastern cooking, and I've started to experiment with all sorts of cuisines, using spices I've never even heard of before. Fenugreek? Garam Masala? I thought cardamom was only for tea. Even better, I have not one, but two stores in town that sell open stock exotic spices. Who knew? The other night I made Cardamon Butter Chicken and I bought all of the seasonings for less than two dollars - score! Of course, it's got me thinking of adding spice jars to my line now. I know I'm making myself a mortar and pestle today.

Soon, my line will be in more stores locally. Maybe not in time for this holiday season, but hopefully for Mother's Day, if not Valentine's Day. Here's another photo of my crocks that would be perfect for a sexy little chocolate souffle, don't you think?

In the meantime, everything will be available in my Etsy store, of course. And if you live in the area and would like to stop by to see my pottery in person, let me know and we can set something up. Just shoot me an email. michellelydon@yahoo.com.