The Alabaster Jar - Penitent Thieves' Oil Infusion

While not the first creation, we are officially unveiling the first product of The Alabaster Jar: Penitent Thieves' Oil Infusion.

So... I have no idea why it won't post vertically. My apologies. Oh, and... the spelling error will be corrected on future bottles.

Thieves' Oil has a long (though albeit somewhat sordid) history of protecting people from disease and disinfecting homes and bodies. Britt's infusion was created by using the traditional methods of creating this disease fighting blend while honoring the Tradition of St. Dismas, more commonly known as "The Penitent Thief".

While the actual Thieves' Oil essential oil blend is too potent for direct contact with skin or surfaces that will come in contact with food, Penitent Thieves' Oil Infusion is both mild enough to use throughout the household but strong enough to help disinfect and protect those who dwell there.

Infusing Penitent Thieves' Oil Tincture with natural disinfectant qualities of fresh herbs.

Penitent Thieves' Oil Infusion was lovingly handcrafted by Britt in our home by brewing cinnamon bark, lemon rind, fresh rosemary and whole cloves to infuse anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-microbial oils into the tincture. Eucalyptus essential oil was added after the infusion had cooled to preserve the potency of the oil.

*Same disclaimer about weird verticallity problem as above*

Penitent Thieves' Oil Infusion can be diluted 8:1 with water and used as a general purpose cleaner to clean kitchen counter tops, bathrooms, children's toys, etc. By adding 1part vinegar to the general purpose cleaner it can be used to clean mirrors and glass surfaces. A wood cleanser and polish can be made by combining 3 tablespoons Penitent Thieves' Oil Infusion with 2 cups water, 1 teaspoon castille soap and 1 teaspoon olive oil. Or 3 tablespoons of Penitent Thieves' Oil Infusion can also be added to dish washing solution or a load of laundry to further disinfect and deodorize.

While Penitent Thieves' Oil Infusion is non-toxic, since it contains such a high cinnamon and clove profile care should be taken to prevent exposure to eyes.

If you are interested in purchasing a bottle of Penitent Thieves' Oil Infusion Britt will be brewing more batches in the upcoming weeks. Bottles hold approximately 2cups of Penitent Thieves' Oil Infusion and cost $5. Refills are $3.50.

Lady is a liar

You may recall our new cast of characters here at OLAC including Charlotte's beloved Lady.

As it turns out Lady is a liar.

I reported before that Lady was a Pearl-White Leghorn hen. Lets just say that wasn't quite accurate.

Now, I know what you're thinking "uh, oh. Is Lady a fella?" the answer is no (well... I don't think so, chickens are tricky that way) though for a while I was worried that was the case too.

You see, Lady was once a pretty lil fluffy yellow chick. However, much to Charlotte's dismay, she quickly dispensed with her yellow plumage and replaced it with beautiful white feathers. But that was only the first molt, this week I began noticing that Lady, a chicken who was supposed to be a Pearl-White Leghorn, aka a very white bird, has a suspiciously reddish head/neck/shoulders. Not to mention the fact that her supposed creamy white legs were awfully slate colored.

Since I know essentially nothing about chicken breeds I presumed this meant that she got mixed up with one of the Cornish X Rocks that our friend had ordered along with our chicks. This was reasonable, as Cornish X Rocks start out fluffy and yellow, and end up white. This is a problem though because all of those chicks were male.

While I don't know much about chickens I do know that males don't lay eggs.

Luckily one of the other prominent features of Cornish X Rocks is their stocky legs. Something which Lady thankfully lacks.

When I discussed my confusion with Garrett the Chicken Man, he said that Lady's very un-Pearl-White Leghorn features are actually hallmarks for Araucanas. This comes as something of a surprise because Mango is an Araucana and she looks, to be blunt...nothing like Lady.

As it turns out though, Araucana's are bred for the egg colored trait, not for uniformity in their plumage.

Since Lady is probably going to end up with a buff/yellow head and neck, Charlotte is pleased. But she was even more excited to hear that Lady is likely to give us blue, green or even yes...pink eggs. 

If she turns out both once being a fluffy yellow chick and then later laying pink eggs we're going into the chicken breeding business and marketing Lady's offspring as Princess Chickens, perfect for little girls.

Make It: Collage Writings

A small teaser for the upcoming Aggiornamento Art and Cultural Exhibition opening tomorrow night.

Eat Your Colors: Eggs

Britt keeps up with the food hippie stuff more than I do, but I have heard from time to time that the new trend in deciding on what type of diet one should be eating is to "eat your colors."

The main intent of this notion is that each color in a food represents a different vitamin or mineral and that by eating a variety of colors you are also consuming a variety of necessary nutrients.

This seems awfully simplistic but as a ceramic artist I am accustomed to the visual cues that certain mineral oxides display in a given clay body or glaze recipe. While these days we order mined or purified forms of minerals (red iron oxide, cobalt, potassium carbonate etc.) from specialty shops, in the initial stages of glazing ceramic objects early peoples had to rely on the naturally occurring mineral deposits found in trace amounts in the materials around them.

In fact, the first glazes weren't even applied to the ceramic objects at all, but rather each object was given a vitreous, glossy surface simply by the ash from the wood used to stoke the fire achieving such high temperatures that it began to melt and left behind trace minerals such as calcium and potassium, which when left to cool, hardened to a glassy finish.

Because of my background in ceramics as well as my identity as a Catholic I have a intimate understanding of the hidden inner essence of things which are often only hinted at by outward appearances.

That being said, the thing which finally convinced me to foot the bill for cage-free eggs wasn't animal rights, wasn't ecology, but rather it was the fact that factory produced eggs have less food in them.

Sure, a dozen cage-free eggs is still 12 eggs as much as a dozen industrial eggs. But within each egg which came from a chicken who was allowed to actually walk around and maybe even scratch around to eat a bug or two there is a substantially larger amount of nutrients.This became most evident to me when I compared a run of the mill, industrial egg to one of the cage-free eggs we purchased. The color difference was striking, the yolk of the industrial egg literally paled in comparison. It was yellow, barely yellow, where as the cage-free egg was what one might call orange.

According to Real Food University , which sites studies from two articles published in Mother Earth News, an egg produced by a pasture raised chicken versus an egg produced in an industrial egg factory contains:

• 1/3 less cholesterol
• 1/4 less saturated fat
• 2/3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene
• 4 to 6 times as much vitamin D

Of course, as with all dietary guidelines, understanding vocabulary is half the battle. I mentioned above how we had decided to switch to cage-free eggs over standard industrial eggs. However, after re-watching The Natural History of the Chicken (a splendid and highly entertaining mini-documentary by the way) I saw a scene of a huge industrial barn swarming with chickens and lamented the practice to which Britt said, "yea, well that's technically cage-free."

Sure enough, the rolling lush green hills littered with frolicking chickens which I had imagined was an utter fantasy compared to the actual practice of cage-free egg production. Now, don't' get me wrong, when given the option between a cage of chickens huddled unhealthily close together who are never allowed to walk around or even touch solid ground and the crowd of chickens I saw milling around the floor of the vast barn complex, I'd gladly choose the latter, however its still not quite the ideal I had in mind.

In comes Val, our new Transylvanian Naked Neck, and her lovely large brown eggs. Because we were saving some to give to the priests who serve our parish we actually had yet to eat any of Val's eggs until this morning. Charlotte eagerly helped crack them and was excited to make breakfast with me, however we only had two of Val's eggs to the third egg I added to the skillet was one of the cage-free eggs we had bought. The difference was stunning, in fact I had flashbacks to the day we compared industrial eggs to cage-free eggs. The difference was so stark that while our typical breakfast conversation is Charlotte asking for more "yellow egg" (yolk) today she was asking for another bite of "orange egg."

I'll give you 1 guess as to which 2 are Val's

Why are Val's eggs so much deeper in color? Because not only is Val not confined to a tiny cage, not only is she allowed to walk around and scratch up the dirt to eat bugs and rocks (both of which have a wide array of mineral contributions to her diet) but she also gets to see the light of day. Whether you care about humane animal practices, if you care about your food you'll quickly realize that a happy chicken, is a productive chicken, in both the quality and quantity of her eggs.

I can only imagine what it would be like to compare Val's egg to an industrial egg, it would be like seeing a yolk's ghost.

Moral of the story? Don't just eat your colors. Eat vivid, deep, rich colors, because there's more food in there than their pale counterparts.

I'm a Winner! - Update

So we received our wonderful drawing from Reading (and chickens) the other day and its, well... awesome.

(note, just so you aren't confused, the drawing is the second image)

I'm a winner!

So I was over at Reading (and Chickens) the other day and noticed an awesome little contest that she was putting together in which there was a drawing for some goodies inspired by nothing more than the goodness of her heart. The goodies were sweet, but I was much more interested in getting one of her trademark drawings, so I do what any sensible person would do: pretend like the drawing included a custom drawing and put my name in the proverbial hat. (its like a situational red herring) Since she's a nice lady, and since I was the only person who was in that particular part of the drawing that I made up, I won!

After many attempts to get me to email her I finally sat down and composed the following. It was so absurd that I figured I'd share it with you all (and posting here fulfills my part of the contractual obligation at the end of the email) So without further ado: my email to Reading (and Chickens):

 

Thanks for graciously accepting my entry into the drawing drawing that weren't even aware you were having. And to boot I won!?!?! woohoo!

My wife seems to think a portrait of me would be fun because I'm kind of the personification of a cartoon character as it is. (fat beardo who is often holding either a baby, a dachshund or both)

However, a fun project that I sometimes subject my family and friends to is the aesthetic version of mad libs (don't have a name for it yet, maybe you can assist in that avenue). Essentially you ask 3 separate people for 3 separate words which you them must incorporate into an image (or object for that matter, but the internet hasn't come so far as to be able to deliver things of the 3rd dimension through fiber optics...yet)

To give some semblance of sense to the would be image it is permissible (read:recommended) that you give the prospective word giver a category to refine their seemingly random word choices.

To further complicate things, other individuals can supply the categories as well.

Since that is highly convoluted, lets set a scenario:

(cast of characters: Artist: a woman who percievably loves reading and chickens, Person 1: her husband a man who loves women who love reading and chickens, Person 2: her son, lover of reading sentences which include exclamation marks, Person 3: Joey, [as noted above] a fat beardo who is often holding either a baby, a dachshund or both)

Artist (to person 1): Give me a category of nouns.
Person 1: Things you'd find in the back of the fridge.
Artist (to person 2): Tell me something you'd find in the back of the fridge.
Person 2: That sticker that explains how the fridge works.
Artist: Hm...very accurate, thank you.
Artist: now give me a category of verbs
Person 2: things you'd do to a penguin
Artist (to person 3): Tell me something you'd do to a penguin.
Person 3: um.. cuddle it, I'm not sure there are any other possible answers to such a question.
Artist: touche', now give me a category of places
Person 3: places you'd never want to work
Artist (to person 1): Tell me a place that you'd never want to work
Person 1: hog rendering plant
Artist: *begins diligently working on a drawing of Joey cuddling a fridge sticker at a hog rendering plant*

See? Isn't that ingenious? It has all the esoteric class of fine art, but all of the shenanigans of blog art.

(rereads the above email)

Ok, on second thought, just post and illustrate the above email, that would be super entertaining.

I'll post it on my blog if you post it on yours!