The simple bread

Late in 2006 I got back into shortbread making, I had been away from it for a while and thought that I could share my cookies with people. Most cooks like to get that special smile from people when those tasters sample something the cook had made. Be it a pat on the back, or high praise in the annuals of National Food Critic (wherever that would be in the real world). But I never got more than some high praise from a few friends and everyone else, just seemed sort of blah about shortbread.

Then I got back into my first love, bread making. I experiment a lot, the basics are flour and water. If you add yeast you get bubbles, if you add sugar you get more bubbles, if you add oil you get more flavors, if you add anything else it is a Boom of flavors. The kinds of bread are only limited to the numbers of hours in your lifetime that you have to make them. But that does not limit the numbers of breads that are possible. I don't think anyone but GOD knows the limits to them.

I got into experimenting with Olive Oil as the oil in my breads in 2008, perfecting several recipes. When I say perfecting them I only mean that I can actually recreate them again, which takes making the time to make detailed notes on what you put in the mix. I usually just start throwing things together and if they work, and I like the outcome, I go back and try to remember how I made it. Sometimes I have to nix this, and add that, or slow down here, or speed up there to make the recipe work better, the second, third or fourth time I engage in making it. But I have found that the five things I need to start with, are the best ones so far. I am sure someone else would want to add things to the recipes I have made, and I might not be the first person to have made them, I don't know, I only have one bread book cookbook and I have not read it in over a decade. Once you know the basics everything else is fun.

I have it here somewhere, the one with Olive oil in it. Flour water yeast olive oil sugar. simple.

This year I am trying something new, Flour water yeast cocoa butter sugar. The first one was not as great because I was looking for a pourable dough and that seems to need a few more tests. But this morning's second try seems to have worked out exactly. I'll post the recipe only when I know it works correctly, It is still rising.

Share the things you see here, If I post a recipe, I don't care if you credit me or not. Heh, If I really had to claim anything, this posting medium would be claim enough.

But I don't want to limit things, If I share it with you, use it and even patent it if you like, I don't care, sharing is better.

Yours in Christ,
Charles.

The BioWebScape Ideals

There has been a movement for decades toward sustainable food production, It goes by many names, Edible Landscape, Permaculture, Forest Gardening, and I am sure some I have not heard about.

I would like to add this over all concept to the pile.

BioWebScape

Biodeversity and web design and Landscapes/ waterscapes all rolled into one cultural changing concept.

We have a vast system that is not controlled by any one country, or any one person, or company It is known to us all as the Internet. It is a combination of many things all tied together with a set of rules and protocals that insure that it is open and flowing.

We have a world that we live on that is so biodeverse that I doubt any one person knows all the plants and animals that live in and on it. This system is also called the Web of life. The interconnected whole has so many layers and nodes that when we pull on one thread others flow with it. Biology is the understanding of these systems for growing things.

Landscape Architecture teaches you design with natural systems, but it has a tendency to build in neat rows and containers and a man made structure. But we also have Dreamscapes to discribe those times when we dream and the flow of time stops and we see things not as they are but as they could be.

Hence the new term BioWebScape A combination of all those things that make up our world as we know it today, plus hope and dreams for the future.

I hope that over the next decade we can harness the Internet's ability to connect people from all over the world, their ability to store vast amounts of data, and their ability to dream for a better future. We see the writing on the wall, there is danger ahead, why not start doing something now to prevent being harmed by it. If we do nothing we will regret it in the future.


As a child I always had this dream of living in an earth shelter home, that was in the middle of a garden, when you walked into the area where the home was, no one could find the front door. After you were shown where it was, and went inside you were amazed at the light streaming into it from outside. If you were outside again, you would have to almost be guided again to find the windows and the other features that were part of it.

I had many drawings and filled my head with dreams of living within this home until I was very old and grey.

That is one dream that I would like to see others sharing in, a place where their homes and foods are all grown into a living system.

I also envison going into space, but we first have to be able to live here on earth in harmony. When we can stop our fighting and start our living then space and all that is out there beyond this single planet would be open to us, and we won't just be looking up at the stars and dreaming What IF?

Yours in Christ,
Charles.

Well it is official

There is about 3 inches of snow on the ground and it is still coming down at least for the time being.

And just to remind people I did walk outside barefoot in it, both last night when it was first happening and just a few minutes ago when the snow flakes were rather large as they fell.

It is nice to finally have snow back in the area in the winter time.

Hope you all are safe where you are.
Charles.