Damn,
have not really had much chance to bake bread for the last week or so.. have been rather slack, but something that has been brewing over the last few days, amongst a hellava lot of things.., was the concept of the hole being more than the whole.. you may ask? What the hell am i rambling on about? But it is simple, when looking at a bread, how important are the holes as a proportion of the whole? I dont know, is it the taste imparted by the glutin polymerizing with the water sugar and yeast and becoming all rubbery or is it the holes in the bread which make it? Think about the holes in ciabatta? they are more important or not? than the taste? not sure, cos if i look at mu most favourite bread it has little or no holes, i know that.. Rotti .. is that a bread, or not, where do we define a bread where does it start or stop is a cake a bread or is it a bread is it an ism or is it an art? we will have to ask Riaan about that? where do we draw the line with weat or flour based products? But i suppose as normal we can preport this argument into another realm .. damn it would be better if we did not? But at an elementary physics level, we are what we are not. The holes inside our molecules are not what we arenot, we are what the holes make us. Not to different from bread, only difference being that bread can still taste allright without being fully three dimensional? well it can ... think of pita, rotti, pizza, naan and all the others you can think of.
on a totally different track.. cannot really see where i was going with this hole whole thing really .. at the time it seemed important, but things change with time.. and this was in draft for a week or so?
so where to now, this is what we think about all the time, wondering what is important, what isnt important. This seems to take hold of us for the bulk of our day or days i suppose. des it help to be decisive or not, do we get more done by taking gratuitous leaps into the chasim of life <>, or do we get there by the road more travelled?
little to say on this really cos I cannot say.
but it does turn me towards another question regarding the basis of our lives in the way we experience life. this may seem like a terribly counfounding and convoluted statement or rhetoric to make. Over the last while, to be honest most of my life, I have been wondering more than owndering about the basis of our interactions in society? what is it that guarantees us a good life. Is it the places we go to te people we meet the friends our lives cross paths with, is it the sunrises, the perpetual traffic, the solitude next to the river. Is it the moments of absolute awe and wonder that we are filled with at moments in our days?
after reading the good Rabbi's comments on the wondering of jews through the desert to the promise of a new land, a new begining, is the wondering more preparatory or is the fnal crossing over into the new land? for those of us who have gypsy blood in our vens, both litteraly and figurativily where is it that we go? Is it the roaming in our heads, the roming in our hearts the experiences from day to day, the headlong onslaught into a new life, being dragged kisking and screaming under our breaths. how do we evaluate what is a good life, is it our living, our sleeping our interactions with family friends and siblings. the good, the bad, the happy the sad, for those of a faith is it the belief that the journey is paramount in the final outcome, or is it the outcome that drives the journey? I suppose I cannot say, I am not the rabbi ;-) I am not the sage I am just the person who lives in the hosue round the corner, with the wife the children, the garden the stationwagon and endless journeyman through the hours of traffic considerng the outcome of my life and others. I doubt there is a guarantee to finding an answer to any of these questions.
I allways wonder what it is to be somewhere else, how much of my happiness is generated from within, from without, do we generate our own happiness or is it a product of our living. this brings me to the parradox of life, wich can be likened to the hours i spend sitting on the spinning bycicle in the gym, session after session going nowhere fast and slow, but i suppose I am getting somehwere .. getting fitterto be able to partake in the challenges that life throws towards us. Is it not the reactions we show to adversity, the reactions we show to happiness, mirth and sadness. who is stronger who is weaker, where do we go?
somehow the keyboard is weaker than the heart, weaker than the wondering in my soul.. no not the wandering in my soul. That is something toally different, having an internal drive to go to places i know exist, yet have never seen, yet remain drawn to these places given to me by thoughts and soemtimes by words or phrases in a book, places that i have visualized and have been drawn to by feeligns akin to my bonds with the soil I tread, yet is this soil i tread ever mine, am i like the wind blowing through the rustlingleaves the dust being drawn accross empty plains? It may be that there are palces that draw us closer, often by word or concept or hope and the search for meaning, churches, shrines, places of energy, temples in mist, dunes in the desert the sun beating down we trod through life searching for an oasis of truth chasing down myriads of mirrages in the desert of life, stumbling accross mystical points of clarity.
i beg your frgivness for this rambling and slef indulgence, i do advise the topic of the bread of life will continue in lighter vain soon ;-)
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
on the Llama the loaf of bread and lack of any fish
It is strange how we deem to prioritize our lives in a specific direction. No this is not a parrady ,no idea how u spell that word> on the favour the watch and the very big fish ;-) this is rather just some more random ramblings relating the flavour of life, bread and general insanity at the ground level. Where to start, the bread I suppose as it is paramount in my life the Current central theme pervading my daily thoughts. I eventually seem to have managed to emulate a sour dough loaf, running out of flour and having to fill in with brown flour it still turned out all right. more on the recipe's later though, more onto the LLama, well it wasn't really a llama it was the other thing with the Spanish name, the alpacha or something like that.. and yes they do spit .. or so i have heard .. and told by the handler and owner. the dude had amazing things .. dwarf donkeys from some other small place in spain or something .. these are real small donkeys .. chinchilla's .. some funny jumping mice and even a small Shetland pony. You may actually ask me, what the hell am i telling you about this.. the significance of the llama event is the where or why rather than the.. whatever.. The garage at a friends house was having its birthday, the wondrous inanimate can even celebrate its birthday, not sure if it has a gender in English.. in my mind it is a male, but i might be wrong, it may be gender non specific. To get back to the event, i took my daughter to go and view the spectacle.. like most children she was enamored. But the amazing thing was that there was also a big Fat dude singing really poor music on a PA and there was a lucky draw for all the visitors to the shop. this fascinated my daughter as we landed up wining a prize !! a bag of cheap sweets.. and to our friends dismay as she had been their earlier and the lucky draw only applied to those who spent largely at the store ...
all in all a totally pointless exercise from my perspective, But i suppose only from my perspective. sometimes I think we focus to little on that which goes on around us, kids love these inane things, pseudo excitement which could not have been paid for. somehow I think we miss these small things in our day.. WE tend to miss these monumental events cos we are focussed on the bigger things.. the exiting and things we are looking forward to. which brings me back to the no fish .. well that is just generally sad .. but i suppose you have to fish to catch a fish .. that seems to be the premise ... or at least they say so.
well suppose it is enough rambling along onto the path to nowhere ..
we never seem to know where life is going to take us do we..
the other day i applied for a job as a CIO of a company, I thought we are so often bound by the limitations we see in our selves and never really step forward and take the leap of faith. It is not even that I perceive being a CIO of a company. But I do think we need to jump past the edge of our own expectation. But i do have to re-iterate the universe does in some way decide where our lives are going .. be it through karmic interactions or just simply by the sub conscious inertia we impart on our own lives.. who knows? But All we know is that things happen when they happen and in their own time. I dont think that this is a justification for a wait and see attitude to life, but often we will be driven with such furvour into a specific direction and things don't all ways seem to travel at the speed nor the direction we are aiming for. I suppose our mind is telling us one thing or even our hearts, but somehow our general life and living tends to be driving us in a direction we are not all ways aware of? I don't know I may have to go and re-read some of the older articles on the good Rabbi's web site ;) he at least seems to have some direction and drive :-) not that I am in any way a follower of his comments nor religeon .. just seems like a good idea at the time.
well suppose i have to get back to work now and continue on developing my life inertia and drive things in a direction that make sense .. even if it is at microcosmic level and only relates to the next 10 minutes of my day. Damn I am hungry.
all in all a totally pointless exercise from my perspective, But i suppose only from my perspective. sometimes I think we focus to little on that which goes on around us, kids love these inane things, pseudo excitement which could not have been paid for. somehow I think we miss these small things in our day.. WE tend to miss these monumental events cos we are focussed on the bigger things.. the exiting and things we are looking forward to. which brings me back to the no fish .. well that is just generally sad .. but i suppose you have to fish to catch a fish .. that seems to be the premise ... or at least they say so.
well suppose it is enough rambling along onto the path to nowhere ..
we never seem to know where life is going to take us do we..
the other day i applied for a job as a CIO of a company, I thought we are so often bound by the limitations we see in our selves and never really step forward and take the leap of faith. It is not even that I perceive being a CIO of a company. But I do think we need to jump past the edge of our own expectation. But i do have to re-iterate the universe does in some way decide where our lives are going .. be it through karmic interactions or just simply by the sub conscious inertia we impart on our own lives.. who knows? But All we know is that things happen when they happen and in their own time. I dont think that this is a justification for a wait and see attitude to life, but often we will be driven with such furvour into a specific direction and things don't all ways seem to travel at the speed nor the direction we are aiming for. I suppose our mind is telling us one thing or even our hearts, but somehow our general life and living tends to be driving us in a direction we are not all ways aware of? I don't know I may have to go and re-read some of the older articles on the good Rabbi's web site ;) he at least seems to have some direction and drive :-) not that I am in any way a follower of his comments nor religeon .. just seems like a good idea at the time.
well suppose i have to get back to work now and continue on developing my life inertia and drive things in a direction that make sense .. even if it is at microcosmic level and only relates to the next 10 minutes of my day. Damn I am hungry.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
the tao of bread making
I suppose you are wondering what the tao is .. one would imagine it must be the Tao.. well it might just be. the tao of physics may well have been inspirational in this arb picking.
What it speaks of is the duality of life existence, science religion, evolution the universe and damn near everything.
I doubt bread making is nearly that complicated, but it is still party to the duality of the universe and life.
Bread making or in my case the religion of bread making not that it is a religion or that it isnt, but that i have subsequently devoted myself to the teachings of the great dough master or bread prophets of old. But what facinates me is the complexity and completeness of something so simple. Such simple ingredeants give rise to such an array of of different products. The simple flour water salt and yeast combine to give rise to such a complex, beautifull, rough, simple and unendingly complex array of of products.
I suppose it is simple enough to say add water and yeast a little sugar and activate, or in the case of the more traditional, take flour water and let it stand. Then the yeast of the Gods, or is the bread making the product of the religeon or is the bread making the religeon or is the product the product of its existance, this is difficult to say?
To diverge ever so slightly we then wait, and tme it takes, how long we cannot say, and without to much ado I sound like somthing out of the Cat and the Hat b y doctor Zeuss. That i must say is not what I wish to say yeat am saying, this duallity thing in life really gives me the creeps, or is the .. whatever ...
We take the yeastly activate then add the flour and kneed, there is a need to kneed, we need to kneed. The bread it must be ned, or is that kned or is it kneeded, I cannot say, but all i can say is that this is what we must do, with the aid of the hands i kneed the dough till it feels right, what is right what is wrong? Dont let it stick to your finger i plead when you kneed.. OMG i am so corny at this stage andsounding more and more like my man the Zeuss. But there are cases where corn works well, but not in my case I must admit, I have failed to tempt the corn to bind and grow with the yeast and flour I must say i have failed. The bread i then kneed and kneed and yet it is not actually bread it is just an amourphous blob of dough. That it is, i place some oil i let it sit , i place my needy dough, or isthat kneedy or kneeded dough, the chees it rolls from my toungue i miust say. I then go on and place the resting dough in a plce of quiet, i let it rise .. not from the dead I say? But to life it grows, yt inside it is life and death, the death of the wheat the growth of the yeast the sun and the rain within the flour fromout the wheat it came. I wonder here on a very different tangent how we as humans began or learnt or discovered bread? how did we find this out? There must be more than the history of the church behind the history of bread, the bread it weaves its web through out the ages.
It then rises life the phoenix out of te fire, it rizes and rizes and we beat it down 3 times? i wonder of this significance, i cannot say why but I do.
We then wrestle it into the form we want it, it this not in the same way we create images of gods and beings and begin to praise them. Only to wait again for it to rize and then to send it into the fires of hell to swell and develop a hard skin outside, structure within and tase throughout. the wheat the sun the rain the yeast the salt all combine to create a structure that from within its humble combines and resonates throughout society in more ways than one, from mere food to religeon of another kind, to the happiness and joy of comunion with friends at a meal to the comunion of man and another God the cementing of he two halves of a day together by the samwich of lunch the toast of breakfast the bread and the wine during theday, the night the sabbath and all. this I must admit is my ode to the Toa of Bread, admit I must it can be asumed to be filled with cheeze, both my words and the bread, but this it is the start the end the continium of life, the continium of life the sun the rain the chlorophyl, the leaves the drought the sand the wind the sun the starts the growth of the sead, the hapopiness of the germination, the harvest of life from soil and sun and plant, the grind of life the wheat it turns , the flour it binds ourlives from begin to end. But alas I msut end only to return and torment again this absurd and silly Blob I must depart my firends and contiue my day.
What it speaks of is the duality of life existence, science religion, evolution the universe and damn near everything.
I doubt bread making is nearly that complicated, but it is still party to the duality of the universe and life.
Bread making or in my case the religion of bread making not that it is a religion or that it isnt, but that i have subsequently devoted myself to the teachings of the great dough master or bread prophets of old. But what facinates me is the complexity and completeness of something so simple. Such simple ingredeants give rise to such an array of of different products. The simple flour water salt and yeast combine to give rise to such a complex, beautifull, rough, simple and unendingly complex array of of products.
I suppose it is simple enough to say add water and yeast a little sugar and activate, or in the case of the more traditional, take flour water and let it stand. Then the yeast of the Gods, or is the bread making the product of the religeon or is the bread making the religeon or is the product the product of its existance, this is difficult to say?
To diverge ever so slightly we then wait, and tme it takes, how long we cannot say, and without to much ado I sound like somthing out of the Cat and the Hat b y doctor Zeuss. That i must say is not what I wish to say yeat am saying, this duallity thing in life really gives me the creeps, or is the .. whatever ...
We take the yeastly activate then add the flour and kneed, there is a need to kneed, we need to kneed. The bread it must be ned, or is that kned or is it kneeded, I cannot say, but all i can say is that this is what we must do, with the aid of the hands i kneed the dough till it feels right, what is right what is wrong? Dont let it stick to your finger i plead when you kneed.. OMG i am so corny at this stage andsounding more and more like my man the Zeuss. But there are cases where corn works well, but not in my case I must admit, I have failed to tempt the corn to bind and grow with the yeast and flour I must say i have failed. The bread i then kneed and kneed and yet it is not actually bread it is just an amourphous blob of dough. That it is, i place some oil i let it sit , i place my needy dough, or isthat kneedy or kneeded dough, the chees it rolls from my toungue i miust say. I then go on and place the resting dough in a plce of quiet, i let it rise .. not from the dead I say? But to life it grows, yt inside it is life and death, the death of the wheat the growth of the yeast the sun and the rain within the flour fromout the wheat it came. I wonder here on a very different tangent how we as humans began or learnt or discovered bread? how did we find this out? There must be more than the history of the church behind the history of bread, the bread it weaves its web through out the ages.
It then rises life the phoenix out of te fire, it rizes and rizes and we beat it down 3 times? i wonder of this significance, i cannot say why but I do.
We then wrestle it into the form we want it, it this not in the same way we create images of gods and beings and begin to praise them. Only to wait again for it to rize and then to send it into the fires of hell to swell and develop a hard skin outside, structure within and tase throughout. the wheat the sun the rain the yeast the salt all combine to create a structure that from within its humble combines and resonates throughout society in more ways than one, from mere food to religeon of another kind, to the happiness and joy of comunion with friends at a meal to the comunion of man and another God the cementing of he two halves of a day together by the samwich of lunch the toast of breakfast the bread and the wine during theday, the night the sabbath and all. this I must admit is my ode to the Toa of Bread, admit I must it can be asumed to be filled with cheeze, both my words and the bread, but this it is the start the end the continium of life, the continium of life the sun the rain the chlorophyl, the leaves the drought the sand the wind the sun the starts the growth of the sead, the hapopiness of the germination, the harvest of life from soil and sun and plant, the grind of life the wheat it turns , the flour it binds ourlives from begin to end. But alas I msut end only to return and torment again this absurd and silly Blob I must depart my firends and contiue my day.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
On Religion
Yes religion drew me to blogging..
I have to admit to it .. it was my religion of flyfishing that drove me to or should I have rather said drawn or lead me o blogging..
I ramble to much, to get back to the point of my comments or ramblings on life.. I was perusing my facebook the other day and noticed a firend .. or aquaintance.. whichever way you see it.. and he had as religeon jedi .. i was waondering if he was not rather a better candidate for klingonism .. But he replied a little later on and indicated that he was considering ku fu panda as this was more in tune with his current state.
But Is uppose to return full circle to Blogging I suppose it was religion that drove the nail further home, I must admit that i find blogging a rather insane and inane thing.. I doubt I would actually read any one elses blog, baring the one that drove me to blogging.. You may ask who or what, but I ramble to much I suppose.
To get back to Fly fishing, that which I do to little yet love so much, the line that drives straight through my life. Yes teh flyfishing rabbi drove me to the blogging, doubt any one atually reads my ramblings, yet many read his ramblings and cameo's on life.
I suppose if I could choose, at the moment my religeon of choice would be the baker.. no not the baker of life, the baker of bread, I am currently on search for the ultimate bread recipe or process.. It may seem like a strange obsession? Not really it is the base and simple product of nature combined with water, yeast, sugar, salt and time, something so simple yet so fantastic. I marvel each loaf i make, each time it is different, each time a new experiment, each time absoloute facination. from normal breads to french style loafs to my current natural or sour dough breads.. something so simple yet so amazing.. Damn I ramble on..
O h well another day another ramble.
But more importantly as our family prepares to embark an adventure more insane than ever imaginable, I sit here wondering about bread, the wonders of flyfishing and where things will go. will the bread taste the same, will the fishing be good. where will our life lead us.
oh to the following of kung fu pandasim
I have to admit to it .. it was my religion of flyfishing that drove me to or should I have rather said drawn or lead me o blogging..
I ramble to much, to get back to the point of my comments or ramblings on life.. I was perusing my facebook the other day and noticed a firend .. or aquaintance.. whichever way you see it.. and he had as religeon jedi .. i was waondering if he was not rather a better candidate for klingonism .. But he replied a little later on and indicated that he was considering ku fu panda as this was more in tune with his current state.
But Is uppose to return full circle to Blogging I suppose it was religion that drove the nail further home, I must admit that i find blogging a rather insane and inane thing.. I doubt I would actually read any one elses blog, baring the one that drove me to blogging.. You may ask who or what, but I ramble to much I suppose.
To get back to Fly fishing, that which I do to little yet love so much, the line that drives straight through my life. Yes teh flyfishing rabbi drove me to the blogging, doubt any one atually reads my ramblings, yet many read his ramblings and cameo's on life.
I suppose if I could choose, at the moment my religeon of choice would be the baker.. no not the baker of life, the baker of bread, I am currently on search for the ultimate bread recipe or process.. It may seem like a strange obsession? Not really it is the base and simple product of nature combined with water, yeast, sugar, salt and time, something so simple yet so fantastic. I marvel each loaf i make, each time it is different, each time a new experiment, each time absoloute facination. from normal breads to french style loafs to my current natural or sour dough breads.. something so simple yet so amazing.. Damn I ramble on..
O h well another day another ramble.
But more importantly as our family prepares to embark an adventure more insane than ever imaginable, I sit here wondering about bread, the wonders of flyfishing and where things will go. will the bread taste the same, will the fishing be good. where will our life lead us.
oh to the following of kung fu pandasim
Sunday, August 3, 2008
a little further on in life
some times i get caught up wondering about the past.. what if it was what would have been .. what could i have..
and the last couple of weeks have been no exception. I met up with some friends of old from my previous life.. sounds like i was some kind of drug lord or soemthing :-)
No something mroe mundane .. i was an entomologist .. yeah like those geeky dudes in silence of the lambs .. the dudes in the basement of the building. Not quite but it was a lot different from my current incarnation as an IT geek .. well something like that ..
Sometimes I wonder if I could have would have should have continued along on this path of life .. possibly impossible .. like i said inconsiquential babelings along the path of nothingness.. that is life isnt it .
Well more on the note of the weekend we had fun we had fun we had seasons in the sun. We had a whole lot of folk over for the day to celebrate a birthday .. fun was had by all.. but ona differnt topic I was considering our interpid adventure to the land of clouds.. Well somehow there seems to be some form of karmic or god like plan at play.. our journey seems to continiously be moved out.. something or whatever is keeping us from that journey, it appears that there are still stones unturned on this side of the curtain. The purple haze still remains over our current existance. What to do I am sure will permiate our existance, soon enough. It just seems as if our current path is predecided into another route ... soemtimes it would be nice to know where and how our lives will progress. That would be better for me .. but suppose that would be against the nature of the universe as i know it .. It just does not answer to my thoughts.. it appears that i must answer to its calls .. it amy be the slippery hills or the giant stone gongs or the huge red stone monlyth? But somethign will not give .. not without some force or fight .. things just dont seem to be within my most simplest understandings..
something that pulls and drives at the strings of my hearts my lonliest plannet and more close to me my continent of birth. I get pushed and pulled along the sands of time without conviction or hate not knowing where to goto. from the dry sands of our home to the lands of unending clouds. The mountains enshrowded in mist or should i rather say myst?
Suppose there is little in fighting the movement of my fight against my Karma, where the flows of my enternal river take me only time will kow. soon enough the reality of life will be bourne upon me with fury of the son crossing the Verge of the Horizon. Its deepr red and amber its glowing mass breaking through the horizon of time and the day.. but more tomorrow
and the last couple of weeks have been no exception. I met up with some friends of old from my previous life.. sounds like i was some kind of drug lord or soemthing :-)
No something mroe mundane .. i was an entomologist .. yeah like those geeky dudes in silence of the lambs .. the dudes in the basement of the building. Not quite but it was a lot different from my current incarnation as an IT geek .. well something like that ..
Sometimes I wonder if I could have would have should have continued along on this path of life .. possibly impossible .. like i said inconsiquential babelings along the path of nothingness.. that is life isnt it .
Well more on the note of the weekend we had fun we had fun we had seasons in the sun. We had a whole lot of folk over for the day to celebrate a birthday .. fun was had by all.. but ona differnt topic I was considering our interpid adventure to the land of clouds.. Well somehow there seems to be some form of karmic or god like plan at play.. our journey seems to continiously be moved out.. something or whatever is keeping us from that journey, it appears that there are still stones unturned on this side of the curtain. The purple haze still remains over our current existance. What to do I am sure will permiate our existance, soon enough. It just seems as if our current path is predecided into another route ... soemtimes it would be nice to know where and how our lives will progress. That would be better for me .. but suppose that would be against the nature of the universe as i know it .. It just does not answer to my thoughts.. it appears that i must answer to its calls .. it amy be the slippery hills or the giant stone gongs or the huge red stone monlyth? But somethign will not give .. not without some force or fight .. things just dont seem to be within my most simplest understandings..
something that pulls and drives at the strings of my hearts my lonliest plannet and more close to me my continent of birth. I get pushed and pulled along the sands of time without conviction or hate not knowing where to goto. from the dry sands of our home to the lands of unending clouds. The mountains enshrowded in mist or should i rather say myst?
Suppose there is little in fighting the movement of my fight against my Karma, where the flows of my enternal river take me only time will kow. soon enough the reality of life will be bourne upon me with fury of the son crossing the Verge of the Horizon. Its deepr red and amber its glowing mass breaking through the horizon of time and the day.. but more tomorrow
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