Wednesday 11 April 2012

Rejuvenate - detox day

Come spend the day at Flores de Cabo, Pé da Serra, Sintra!
Workshop in English and Portuguese - 49€



(Full programme - in Portuguese: https://www.facebook.com/events/426181527395448/ )

Saturday 7 April 2012

On baking bread

Over the years, we've made several attempts to bake bread using various methods and a couple of bread machines later, I think I've finally nailed it... except I only use the macine to mix the dough, the rest is done by hand.  The results are worth the extra effort.

Without going into recipes and methods right now, I'll just include the following taken from Christina Pirello's book "Cooking the Whole Foods Way" on the process of baking bread:

"Bread has always symbolized life to me.  Bread baking teaches us about success and failure, perseverance and patience.  There is no better feeling than the satisfaction we get as golden crusty loaves, kneaded by our hands, are pulled from the oven.
    Baking bread keeps you humble.  We all begin with the same simple ingredients - flour, water and leavening.  We all perform the same ritual tasks of baking - mixing, kneading, forming, baking to perfection (hopefully).  Bread dough is uncompromising and unpredictable.  Whether we realize it or not, we must submit to the influences of our environment: heat, cold, drafts, oven temperature.
    My mother [...] taught me to bake with personality.  Master the basics, she would say, and then create loaves of bread; don't just bake them.  Bread making is a symbol that we possess the ability to nourish not only ourselves, but those we love.  My mother used to say that you could always tell homemade loaves of bread because they looked as though they were baked by someone who cared."

She sums it up beautifully.
 

Friday 6 April 2012

And now this from TS Eliot

"...the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now.
...
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea."


Life...

Courtesy of Harold's Planet








I love Harold's Planet!  Starting the day without it, just wouldn't be the same.  Thank you for the smiles :)

Yoga seminar in Sintra