Summer Salad, All Year Long

Summer Salad Lettuce Leaf Bowls

This week, the first frost is expected to hit eastern Montana. It's October 1, and the gorgeous fall weather has extended the garden season by nearly a month. But with the frost, it's time for me to decide what to do with my plants - the bushy tomatoes, the gigantic zucchini, the frail peppers hanging on by a thread. All summer long, I traipsed out to the garden to harvest broccoli and spinach for my summer salad bounty. But like all good things, this too must end.

Or DOES it?

These fun salad bowls that I just listed on Etsy remind me of summer's cornucopia of produce, all year long. The thin, organic looking bowls are created by rolling a slab of clay thin, then impressing it over a glass lettuce leaf bowl. The edges are left intentionally uneven, giving the bowls an elegant yet natural appearance.

The glaze on these bowls is one of my favorites. It's called Antique Copper Green, and it never comes out of the kiln the same twice. The glaze varies in color depending on the thickness, and in this case, it makes lovely dark green streaks in the veins of the lettuce leaves.

These salad bowls are my first creation using impressed slump molds. I am so pleased with them, I know it won't be my last.