To make the ground firmer

A while ago I travelled to my little village in Poland, to the place where I grew up. Going back to Poland used to mean refreshing my old dreams, things that as a child I promised myself I would do in life; it meant checking up on those aspirations that in my teenage years I drafted for myself, it meant going through some sort of evaluation process that I usually didn’t score that well against or getting a reminder of where I was meant to be going.

The last visit was different. I didn’t hear the voice of my old self – that voice has nothing to say. It was as if I’ve eventually become the person who I always wanted to be or maybe I’ve eventually become happy with who I am and what I am doing. It was as if I’ve pleased my old self and now it’s chapter two… not yet written.

So it’s time for a big move and other life-changing experiences, I thought to myself. It’s natural to crave for them and I do see that many of my close friends are getting ready for those moves so I quite naturally wonder if those changes are also for me. Would I like to move from where I live and from what I am doing here in our little town in the middle of the UK and would I like to start building our family life elsewhere? After a long internal conversation, self-questioning and heart-checking I’ve decided I don’t, at least not now. My heart does not crave for a new-starter-sort-of-change. I think I am passed that step. I am really longing for deeper community, for closer friendships, for stronger engagement in the life of my town and my neighbourhood. I want to be more involved in what’s happening at my son’s nursery and other places that we visit and go to. I think I want laughter and jokes and stories and food eaten and cooked together. I think I want to build bonds and be more present in the life of others. I see many opportunities for my family here. There are many friendly people and many friendly spaces in the Midlands, I just need to learn to drive to them…

Simple and nutritious

There are a few things that I could write about related to bread-making. I couldn’t decide which take to develop for this post so here are a few loose-end thoughts:

Bettering yourself

Making your own bread is always a better option than buying it. You avoid the unnecessary additives, sugars, enzymes and calories and you give your tummy a break from digesting and absorbing them.

Recipe

350g of malthouse flour
200g of white pasta flour
1 full teaspoon of dried yeast
lukewarm (on the cold-ish side) water (400-500ml)
4 tablespoons of olive oil
1-2 teaspoons of bread

I explained the methods a while ago. You can find it here: https://postcardswithoutstamps.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/whats-inside-our-bread/

Explore the season

Of course, it would be difficult to survive on bread alone. So above there’s a photo of some vegetables that are in season. I found them all in my favourite place in Derby Market Hall. Runner beans and the chicory were my favourites today. Which ones do you look forward to?

At the market

Talking about the chicory, here’s an interesting story from my greengrocer: ten years ago he could sell quite a number of boxes of lollo rosso, frisee endive and oak leaf lettuce. Now he is lucky if he can sell two lettuces out of a single tray. The restaurants and cafés used to be big customers for these lettuces but no longer. They instead insist on the small plastic tubs containing mixed leaves. This begs the question – can’t chefs wash and chop lettuce anymore? And are we really happy about having all our food pre-packed in plastic?

Dream

I always dreamt of having a home that smelt of bread. I associate bread-making with strength, not only in its physical sense but also emotional and spiritual sense. I love when recipes are being tried and passed on through generations and when the skill remains in the family and in the community. I also like when fresh pieces of bread are being shared around the table – there is something very beautiful in that gesture of passing the basket around.

(The cheese used in my dish above is called Fontina and it comes from the Valle d’Aosta in Italy. We had a chance to look at how it is stored for maturation over there – see the photo below, more to come soon.)

To allow a change to happen

Education in its all forms, studying, teaching and researching, has always been a big part of my life. Irrespective what was happening, commitment to knowledge was guiding my choices, preventing me from making wrong decisions or coming to the rescue when I already made a bad one. I’ve never tried taking my eyes off books for too long – I felt uneasy if I did that – until now.

I am taking a break from the research I’ve recently been engaged in. It was a tough decision to make because what led to it were many years of hard work and determined dreaming, hundreds of sleepless nights and countless hours of learning how to gather evidence and how to express ideas (I’m still at it, by the way). Just when the library books started filling my shelves and my notebooks thickened with ink and photocopies, just when I (perhaps too proudly) started thinking of myself as a researcher, my body decided to rebel. So I’ve stopped… to allow a change to happen, to allow myself to heal and recover, to regenerate. While this is happening, I am rediscovering my days and am for the first time in my life seriously attentive to how to look after myself. I’ve never been terribly good at it but I notice that with self-care comes a better understanding of how to look after others and obviously the strength to care for them too.

It’s ironic how life works sometimes. At the very beginning of this year I wanted to make the subject of care one of the dominant themes on this blog. I didn’t think then that I would be writing about myself. Luckily, it’s summer and with it come many opportunities for entertaining healthy living: fresh fruit and vegetables are easily within reach, the sun is omnipresent and its rays keep sneaking through to us even when we try to escape them, the garden invites us irresistibly, and friends and family give us excuses to travel. Regeneration away from our usual four walls, away from our heaps of unsorted paper and endless to do lists is what makes the biggest difference. It allows us to stock up on good energy and boy do we need that. The summer doesn’t last forever and before we know it, it is … I won’t say it. I’ll let the summer linger a little longer..

‘Bene così ‘. – It’s good like this.

Alex Britti. Bene così . Song.

“There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call ‘the breaks.”

~ Countee Cullen

The gift of the mountains

“The greatest gift of life on the mountain is time. Time to think or not think, read or not read, scribble or not scribble — to sleep and cook and walk in the woods, to sit and stare at the shapes of the hills.”
― Philip Connors

There was no Internet where I was last week but a truly wonderful land to explore. A few photos above. Welcome back friends!

Memory

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”― Maya Angelou

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“There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call ‘the breaks.”

~ Countee Cullen

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“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”― Maya Angelou

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