Sadly broken glass

This glass was sadly broken when it was stuck inside another glass bringing it across from the Church to here to get washed in the dishwasher. I assume that it was fairly old and to have survived so long and to break so inadvertently, I feel moved.

Flat Bread

Today was a flat bread making day. This occurs about once a week. I've been making flat bread now for nearly 20 years and I feel now I have the best receipe and method of cooking. Dough is made in a bread maker, not that you need to do this.

The ingredients are 425 ml of liquid which includes 1 tablespoon of yoghurt. To this I add 4 cups of sifted plain flour, 1 tablespoon of golden syrup and 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 teaspoon of salt and finally 2 teaspoons of instant yeast.

After the dough cycle has finished in the machine I get the dough out onto a floured surface and beat the dough the way you been a pizza dough. When I feel the dough is feeling pliable enough I cut it into 16 pieces. I then make the pieces into balls and stretch and flatten them into rounds before finally rolling them with rolling pin. You can roll them out really thin to use as wraps or as I mostly do roll them out to be about 5mm thick and big enough to fit into a toaster later. While the rounds are resting I fire up the barbeque and run it on high for 10ish minutes. Then I put a little oil on the hotplate and cook 4 at a time. When the first bubbles appear I flip them over and hopefully as the other side cooks the whole bread will puff up into a ball, but sometimes I have to keep alternating sides. It also helps to push on the bread to make the bubbles spread out.

They are great fresh. I keep them in a plastic bag in the fridge and refresh them in the toaster when I want to use them. Atalanta uses them to make ham, cheese and tomato things out of them. I usually use them with dips.

I'm finding it hard to know what to write

Life goes on in its quotidian way, but I need to say something.
Today I went to an opening in Meeniyan of Andrew Southall's prints and monoprints from his work from Umbria 2009. The work was there standing on its own. In the sense that it asserted its persona, which is what I think the work should do. A couple of the prints I found quite attractive. I got a ride across the hills to Meeniyan with Judy. The hills are looking strikingly green and soggy at the moment. It is a joy to have the rain after 14 dry winters. It does bring back the need for gum boots and raincoats. Low ground has water lying on it. I hardly dare hope that the weather has turned around, but there is reassurance in something of old reasserting itself. Coming back when I thought it had gone forever.

It's been cold today

We are nearly at the end of the winter and I'm looking forward to spring and in particular some warmth. Today I was thinking that in my journal I'm going to mark the first evening that we don't need have heating on and of course next year mark the beginning of needing the heating on.

It

Cursillo training at Raymond Island

We've just spent the weekend at Raymond Island training for the forthcoming Cusillo 3 day event. The weather was lovely after showery cold days at home. I also enjoyed getting out of a built up area to have that feeling of space.

Looking across the lake.

A Drawing

New Desert Boots

Years ago I wanted some red desert boots that I seen in the Good Weekend and Athena, while in Melbourne, one day spent quite some time looking for them. Eventually she found them in a warehouse outlet in Brunswick. I enjoyed having them for a long time, but the soles have gone so that when it rains they leak chronically and the shoe repairer says they're beyond help. Yet I can't quite throw them out.

The other Thursday I was in Melbourne getting a tooth fixed and decided to followup a net search I'd done for desert boots after that. I headed for Chapel Street and wandered down in the rain until I found the shop. Then I encountered a problem in that they had the brand of shoes that I was looking for, but of the 2 styles of boot they had the one I wasn't really looking for. They had another boot that looked good so now it was down to a comparison and in the end I bought some black Hush Puppies desert boots.

Being black & suede always bring to mind, for me, the image of the monk with pointy black suede shoes wiping he blood of them in The Name of the Rose, but that doesn't stop me wearing black suede, just every now and then the image pops into my head

The other thing with these Desert Boots is the Hush Puppies brand because Athena has just read the book Tipping Point and in the book it describes how Hush Puppies went form almost being broke to becoming cool and successful. There is some dissonance in this form me though because that has happened in America, but not Australia. They are not a cool brand here as far as I can tell. Still I'm happy with the boots.

As you can see I'm very even

Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz The higher of these two numbers below indicates which side of your brain has dominance in your life. Realising your right brain/left brain tendancy will help you interact with and to understand others. Left Brain Dominance: (16) Right Brain Dominance: (16) Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz

Rationality: Starting Points

One of the troubles with rationality and philosophy is starting points. How and where you start from and the logic that ensues may lead to a logical conclusion, but not necessarily a nice one. I could think of the results of some philosophical thought processes that lead to an elitist position. So that the values that we apply to our use of rationality are important and where do we get our values from?. Ultimately I think that our values are drawn from thought and relationships that provide the context of our lives. From this we create axioms _ unprovable assertions of basic value. And these axioms in relationship with our lives construct a world view that confirms our axioms.