To do or not to do...

Why is decision-making sometimes so hard? As we grow older it seems to become more and more difficult. Whatever became of ‘older and wiser’? Children, it seems, dart here and there on a whim, grabbing one toy, discarding another, crawling purposefully across the room after that carelessly abandoned shopping bag, cooing delightedly as they pull everything from the bag, strewing purchases all over the floor, spilling cream from the carton, shaking the egg box with no thought for the consequences, emptying the muesli, digging little fingers into juicy, fresh strawberries, howling with rage when these treasures are snatched from their grasp.

For us ‘big people’, life is so much more complicated. There are so many considerations, so many factors to weigh up, so many people to please. Children know what they want. So did we once. Now decisions are not so simple and over the years we have so often been disappointed, frustrated in achieving our goal, that we have learned to adjust our behaviour.

So what do I want? What shall I do? Shall I say yes – or no? Who will be disappointed? Who will approve? Will my plan succeed? Will it rain? Will it cost too much? On the one hand… but on the other hand… I must consider this carefully.

Stop! I want to become a child again. I am tired of pretending that I don’t want to do it because it will cost too much. I am tired of telling myself I don’t want to go when really I do but I don’t have the energy. I am so good at pretending that I don’t want to try because I suspect I will fail. I’m tired of pretending I am excited at this new challenge when I’m tired and want a rest. At least I need to know what it is that I want … even if in the end I can’t have it! To dare to dream… to dare to chase those dreams… to dare to do – or not do – and take the consequences!

The strawberries look so good – so big, so juicy, so red, so tempting... I’ll do it! Hang the consequences!

Summer Solstice - June 21st

Mid-June and already summer is feeling tired. The early spring growth is over and the fresh spring greens have turned dark and the woodlands are overgrown. The drought has taken its toll this year too and everything is looking dry, dusty and worn out.

I’m tired too. I love to be in tune with the rhythm of the seasons but at this time of the year it’s hard! At ten in the evening I start to pull the curtains, load the dishwasher, draw glasses of water to put on our bedside tables and amble slowly off to bed. It’s an early start in the morning and I like to be prepared. But nature thinks differently. It’s still light outside. I pull the blinds in our bedroom, draw the curtains and try to eradicate those chinks at the side of the window where the light still creeps through. In the morning, it’s worse. 4.30 a.m. in the morning and the first light appears. The blackbird is already singing outside my window. I turn over, pull the covers over my head and try to go back to sleep. At the weekends it’s worse. I need a lie in! Doesn’t nature understand?

Years ago, friends who were older and wiser than us used every bit of sunlight to their best advantage. In March, dressed in their overcoats, they sat on their front doorstep, with steaming hot mugs of coffee, welcoming the first rays of sunshine. Crazy! We shivered indoors and turned the central heating up. In June we welcomed the onset of real summer. They, in turn, started to lament the onset of winter! The solstice, for them, marked the beginning of the end and the long, depressing descent into winter and darkness! We laughed at them in those days and thought their world was upside down. Now we are beginning to understand. But we are also looking forward to getting some better sleep as the solstice passes and the hours of daylight start to decrease to manageable proportions.

Summer in northern Europe doesn’t last long. In a few short weeks it will all be over and we’ll be getting our thick sweaters and winter boots out of the cupboard again. Still, take heart! We can soon snuggle down under the covers and catch up on our sleep and, come mid-December and the winter solstice, we can get ready for summer sunshine again and rejoice that the days are 'drawing out’! It’s a topsy-turvy world!

Easy as Pie!

It’s been a while since we tried to decipher any brain-teasers, so perhaps it’s time to consider. As I was explaining recently, creativity has taken an interesting and unexpected turn in our household just lately, after a trip to Majorca renewed our gastronomic interest in the good old-fashioned pie. The Spanish seem to be masters of pie making and their empanadas excite all my creative and gastric juices! However, I have found over the years that pie making is by no means straightforward.

As a young ‘newly-wed’, the art of pastry making was a mystery to me. After moving in with my mother- and father-in-law for a while, ‘between houses’, I was forced to upgrade my rather scanty cooking expertise and try and rustle up a few more recipes that would hide my woeful ignorance of the culinary arts. On our arrival, anxious to impress, I had informed my mother-in-law that I would, of course, do my share of the family cooking. It was only later that I realised just what I had signed up for. So far I had a repertoire of just about enough tried and tested menus to last the week before returning to the beginning and starting again. After a while my mother-in-law started tactfully to offer me some hints. We began with pastry! What a struggle! Paddington Bear had fewer mishaps than I did when it came to pastry. It was too wet and stuck to the work surface, my hands, the rolling pin and everything else; it was too dry and fell in pieces before it reached the dish; it was too heavy and tasted like cardboard after I had rolled it out unsuccessfully a dozen times before cooking.

Strangely, one day everything just fell into place – just like Joyce said it would. I did nothing different, as far as I could see, but suddenly the mystery solved itself and although I’m not sure I can lay claim to perfection, or even to have reached mother-in-law’s high standards, I am satisfied with my efforts and so are my family. But ‘easy as pie’? I don’t think so!

Since our visits to Majorcan bakeries I have been experimenting with a few of my own variations on empanadas, inventing recipes and working out what to cook them in and how to cut out the pastry to the right size. Here are the results:

Empanadas (small savoury pies)

I discovered muffin tins make excellent pie tins. For a cutter I used a small round plastic storage box as I had nothing the right size and for the pie lids a round fluted pastry cutter. The larger rounds of pastry have to be eased gently into the muffin tins, filled with meat or vegetables and then covered with a small pastry lid, brushed with milk and baked in the oven for 20 – 25 minutes at no.6 or 200 degrees C. If they begin to bubble and the filling threatens to overflow turn the oven down a bit. The pies can be most easily removed from their tins when cool. It took some trial and error to discover this! The failed experiments still taste good even though their marks for presentation might be a little sub-standard.

Some suggestions for fillings: the amounts of ingredients can be adjusted according to personal taste – this is art not science!

Mediterranean vegetables
Chop onion, courgette, red, green and yellow peppers and aubergine and fry gently in oil. Drain off excess oil and add some chopped tinned or fresh tomatoes, salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme and marjoram and a teaspoon of tomato purée. Simmer gently for a few minutes till most of the liquid has evaporated. Leave to cool before filling the pies and covering with pastry lids.

Chicken, bacon, mushroom and onion
Put chopped bacon in a heated pan and fry gently until some of the fat from the bacon is released into the pan. Add mushrooms and onions. Remove from pan when soft and golden. Fry chicken fillet in remaining oil. Chop everything small and mix together. Make up mushroom sauce from a packet and simmer for a few minutes. Mix together with meat and vegetables. Add seasoning to taste. Allow to cool before filling the pies and covering with pastry lids.

Sausage and onion
Fill pies with sausage meat or strip skin from sausages and use this to fill pies. Chop a small amount of onion and place on top of sausage meat. Season with salt, pepper and mixed herbs. Smear with a little tomato purée. Cover pies with pastry lids.

Now my creativity is back on track – I can diverge into culinary creativity and then translate it into writing again to satisfy the readers! Wow – multi-tasking again!

New!

We all like new things! Some of us like them more than others but human beings seem to be made with inexhaustible wells of creativity – for creating new things! Sometimes it seems as if the well runs dry. Writers get writers’ block. Musicians search desperately for the inspiration they need to finally perfect the song lyrics that elude them. Architects are defeated by attempts to branch out into the new and innovative design that they can see in their mind’s eye but cannot get down on paper. Artists, engineers, cooks, teachers, tour guides, gardeners, poets, parents – the list is endless – all rely on the necessary functioning of their creative juices. Whilst creativity is flowing we take it for granted. When we experience a block we start to falter, to doubt ourselves and to despair.

Sometimes, however, creativity has not failed; it has simply changed course. We are not machines. We need stimulation and input or we just get bored. I love to write. Usually the words flow fairly effortlessly. The results are not always good but the well rarely runs dry. I am a creative person. Many people think that they are not creative because they don’t write poetry or paint watercolours. But creativity comes in so many shapes and sizes. Creative thought is invaluable. People who just sit and think change the world. They invent new things. They dream up the worldwide web. They solve global problems, using their innate creativity.

Creative cookery is a gift! Recently I have been inspired by a visit to Majorca where we were enticed by empanadas – simple little pastry creations, filled with meat or vegetables and flavoured with mouth-watering Mediterranean herbs. I am no ‘foodie’ but for once I was inspired and, on my return, have been inventing my own creative recipes for filling the freezer with a whole variety of these wonderful little pies. Packed lunches and picnics will never be the same again!

I love my garden. I plan green leafy bowers and explosions of colour. Sometimes they work – sometimes they don’t! But in this wonderful spring I have been tempted away from my computer to the great outdoors to create and to sit back and enjoy Nature’s own creativity.

Temporarily the creative juices have been diverted and my blog has faltered. Maybe you’ve missed me! I’ve not been so inspired to write just lately but the creative urges are still there. They just took a holiday to a different location! Why limit myself to only one particular brand of tried and tested creativity? Why not branch out? I’m not really single-minded. I don’t have one passion that excludes all others. I’m a multi-person! I like new things…

Fault!

I had an appointment today. It took me 45 minutes altogether: a walk, a tram ride and a further walk to get to the house. I rang the doorbell, ready to offer my friendly opening greeting - an admiring comment on the colourful bedding plants laid out ready for planting on the flowerbed next to the front door. However, I was taken aback when the door was opened by a rather confused cleaning lady instead of the person I was expecting to see. "I have an appointment" I said "at ten o'clock." "Lady is gone" she replied in broken English. She made it sound like the house had been sold and the people moved out. "What do you mean?" I asked, bewildered. "Where has she gone?" The cleaner didn't know. She simply repeated that lady was "gone" - in the car with a friend who was staying with her. OK, she hadn't moved out. Together we rang her mobile but got no answer - just the voicemail. "When is she coming back?" I tried. "I don't know." I persuaded her to let me in to use the toilet, as the situation was becoming a bit desperate if I had to go straight home again. She looked doubtful about my request but in the end seemed to think I wasn't much of a threat and apologised that she had not yet cleaned it.

I gave up on my appointment and went home - 45 minutes: first a walk, then a tram ride, then another walk - all good exercise. Later in the day a distraught email appeared on my computer screen. "I can't apologise enough!" It made me smile. In fact, strangely, I'd smiled most of the way home. I had had a wasted journey across the city. I had achieved nothing, except a little exercise and a bit of reading on the tram, all morning. It was a silly mistake. She had forgotten to put our appointment in her diary. But, do you know what, it made me feel better! Not worse, but better! "She does it too!" I thought with happiness.

It's so much better when the errors you make, the stupid mistakes, those problems you create that look so insurmountable, are made by someone else too! Faced with her mistake I could view it rationally. I could see it for what it was. It was just a slip-up - an administrative error. Some errors have bigger consequences than others, but in the end the size of the error is the same.

My sense of humour held up today. I'm so glad it did. It saved me a lot of frustration. If I, however, had made the same mistake as my friend I would have felt the same as she did - hopelessly guilty and unable to forget the trouble I'd caused: "I can't apologise enough!" But the error would have been the same. If a similarly small administrative error had resulted in my hotel room being double-booked and my holiday ruined I would not have been so forgiving. But again, the error would have been the same. It just depends on your point of view, who makes the error and the quality of your sense of humour when faced with the consequences! Isn't life strange?