AU Market, Plates, & a Willow Recipe!

This round platter from my "Pursuit" pattern

would look even better with a special cake!

This is a little blurry....I should name it: Still Life, Still not Focused!

Every Thursday afternoon from three until six in the evening during the summer months, local farmers, bakers, and gardeners bring their produce and products to the Auburn University Market. This is just the fifth season, but it is growing and getting better. Each year I add a new favorite vendor to my Must Visit list. Yesterday Lee ( a high school friend of my older son) had buckets full of deep red and ultra flavorful strawberries. The blueberries are from a NEW person...need to get his name...they are large and plump and so sweet! Mr. Hooks had shelled peas and squash and homemade strawberry jam. Harman Farms had the tomatoes and cucumbers so I came home happy.

So...all this had me remembering that luscious recipe Willow posted last week while I was at the beach: Raspberry Buttermilk Cake! Then I remembered that she and Derrick and a few others had a made posts on PLATES!!!

Now, I am sure I don't have as many as Our Lady of the Manor (wink), but I do love china and dinnerware, so I pulled out a few. The problem is that I am working with a different camera....a 'bigggun' that has too many bells and whistles. (My favorite one is out of town.) This Bad Boy gave me fits....almost had me cussin' this morning. Well anyway, you be the judge! Click on a photo to enlarge it.

This is a one of a kind piece by Shirley Ingram who has her studio - Mud Hen Pottery - in Smith Station, AL. She called these plates Moon & Stars. She used a glaze named Albany Slip from Albany, NY. When I asked for more plates a few years ago, she sadly reported that the area where this glaze was extracted had been covered up by a mall. (deep sigh) I set the plate on the seat of a dining chair.

This was a problem to photograph with the Big Bad Nikon D100!
It wanted a central object on which to focus....or at least the particular lens with which I was stuck wanted it! (I tried not to end my sentences with a preposition for all the grammar police out there.) Hmmm, wasn't it Winston Churchill who said,

"That is a rule up with which I will not put!" ?

So here is another version of our Coalport Hunting Scene. Several companies made this over nearly a fifty year period, possibly longer, beginning with Crown Staffordshire, then Coalport, and finally Wedgwood. It is now discontinued.
(Be on the lookout, Willow, Derrick, Michael, & Rowan!)
I sometimes can find it on eBay if I wish to add a piece.

And here is my variation of Willow's recipe. I used some of the strawberries and blueberries instead of raspberries. I do want to make it with the raspberries and will when I can find some good ones! I turned my cake out on the round platter from our every day dinnerware: Pursuit by Keltcraft (made in Ireland by Noritake)...yet another hunting scene. I guess you could say I am always hunting for china....}chuckle{ !

Well this last photo is a little muted and glazed over...just like we will be when we savor this cake! Yum, yuuuuuum, yummers!
Have a wonderful Saturday evening !