The poison droplet from fish should also be able to be used. It looks like these are your only two options as @thephoenixlodge has a conflicting recipe in for the potato in the mana pool with catalyst.
The flint tools you can make in the spirit world won't mine coal, iron, etc. So you are back to doing the seed grind to get the copper essences, etc that you need.
I can't tell from the screenshots... are you putting 3 buckets of water into the cauldron and waiting for it to boil before you start adding ingredients?
Thank you. I figured out my problem about 2 minutes after I posted that question. I needed a mana pearl and instead of looking if there was an alternate way to get one I was focusing on the ender pearl to make one.