Author: bevnewman

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Vegan Peanut Butter & Banana Superpower Muffins (that happen to be flourless and delicious)

This sounds like the answer to my prayers. I’m often faced with the dilemma of what to do with bananas that are over-ripe….this could be the solution.

COOKING ON A BOOTSTRAP

These are my sad black bananas. I wanted to make them happy again, by making them into supercake. These are my sad black bananas. I wanted to make them happy again, by making them into supercake.

What do you do when you have a pile of black bananas sitting in the fruit bowl? I don’t even know how this happens – I generally work from home, bananas are my go-to snack because I can reach them and don’t have to do anything except peel them and shove them in, yet all too often my darling other half leaves a small pile of them on the chopping board with a hint to Do Something About Them. Sometimes they get sliced and flung in the oven to make dried bananas for the kids, sometimes I whizz them with yoghurt, milk and oats for a breakfast smoothie, but today I fancied neither of those things. It’s freezing. And raining a bit. And I’m a bit tired and gloomy. What I wanted…

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Stones that made food

Really interesting – travel and history combined. Makes me want to put Norway on my list of places to visit. That is, when I get over my fear of flying…..

Bente Haarstad Photography

kvernstein_hogfjellet_cw-2

For centuries there was production of millstones in these mountains, now a national park. The production in Kvernfjellet (The millstone mountains) started sometime during the 1500s, and lasted until 1914. There have been many sites for millstone productions in Norway during history, but this was the biggest with more than 1000 quarries. For some centuries this area supplied more or less all the country with these stones.  In the 1800smostof the bread eatenin Noway was bakedfrom flourmade withthes stones, that is mica-schist scattered with 2-5mm large crystals of hard minerals. In the picture above is a broken millstone left in the mountains.

kvernstein_hogfjellet_cw-3

Millstones were needed to grind grain, our most important food source, in Norway as in so many countries. There have been a lot of scientific work on these sites lately. A multidisiplinary research project involving geologists, archaelogists, historians, botanists, geographers and…

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Autumn into Winter

It’s really cold and windy this morning. On days like this I know I live on the westernmost point of Brittany, where the land juts out undefended into the wild, wintery Atlantic ocean.

Trapped indoors by the weather, it is time to cook, read, keep warm, hibernate. A glut of apples led to an afternoon of  baking. The apples were a mixture of windfalls collected on nice autumn walks and “other found” apples (more on that in another post).

Result – choc chip crumble, Finnish Apple and Cinnamon cake and mini apple turnovers…..all eaten in less than 48 hours by the swarm that is my family. image

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Pink Wellies

Pink Wellies

Getting ready to garden…..the end of March approaches and with it the likelihood of frosts. Time to think about the garden and new projects. Will it be more veggies … more flowers…a new chicken coop?

All in good time! The essential is to be able to be outdoors and get some daylight time in.

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Baie de Morlaix

IMG_0182 A  sunny lunch break and my iPhone… sandwich in the car and a coffee gone lukewarm from being all morning in a thermos. Sometimes it is just nice to stop and think about nothing in particular. Just to be.

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This week…Nelson, The Colour Purple and other sadnesses

It has been a long week.

A week in which Nelson Mandela left us at a great age leaving an enormous legacy of how we can learn to live in truth, tolerance and pardon.

I’d just finished reading one of Tony Hillerman’s Navajo Tribal Police books “The Dark Wind” and was fascinated by the Navajo philosophy of “walk in beauty” which means to be balanced, in harmony with oneself and nature, a state of health in its broadest sense.

As I closed the book and switched on the evening news on BBC radio, I heard that Nelson Mandela had died. My first thought was “This was someone who walked in beauty”.

Sleep was a long time coming. There were many thoughts about death, life, my new grandson, tomorrow and its tasks. I needed to ground all that somehow.

So I read. Late into the night. “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker. In revisiting the story of Celie, Nettie, Shug, Mister, Sophia and Harpo something touched me. Common to all the events of the week. Death. Birth. Life. To be lived. To be grateful for its gifts.

Celie’s story says it all

” I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I’m here. Amen say Shug. Amen, Amen.”

Well, I’m not poor like Celie or like millions of other people on this  planet. I’m not black, although that should not make a difference. Whether I’m ugly or not or whether my dinners are edible or not, you’d have to ask other people – I’m biased. But I am here. And grateful.

Thank you, Nelson, for your life lived in beauty.

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A city by the sea – part 1

When I first told friends I was moving to Brest, they looked sad….

 
Brest has a reputation in Brittany… an ugly concrete jungle thrown up in a hurry to replace the old city flattened during the Allied bombardments in 1944. To an extent this is true. The city centre has little to recommend it to the eye. Built on the “block system” in symmetric grids, the city centre is modern. Not quite modern but recent. It’s 1950’s origins show up loud and clear. It could be worse. It could be a whole lot better.But if you scratch the surface, Brest is a lively and thriving city with some really interesting little corners that surprise and delight if you know where to look. I spotted this little gem from the top of a multi story car park serving FNAC, H&M, the Body Shop etc which was finished a few years ago. One Saturday, doing the “shops” with the Girls Of The Family, the lower levels of the parking were all full. So rather than doing the trawl from level to level, I just headed on up to the top on the basis that there is always space up top. 
Yes, there was space. And a superb view over a cemetery with an amazingly gothic skyline profile. Not having time to get down there that day, I noted it for a trip out another day, minus the Girls Of The Family. 
 
 
 
Two weeks later, a grey Sunday with little else interesting to do, I set out with the significant other on our motorcycles to do the visit. I couldn’t work out how to get to the cemetery from my limited knowledge of Brest’s backstreets. But luckily significant other did, having lived just next to it for several years and regularly crossing it on foot on his way to work. 

We spent over an hour exploring the alleys between the tombs, fascinated by the monuments erected by wealthy families to their loved ones over 150 years ago. Poignant details of short and sometimes tragic lives seemingly forgotten in the intervening years. 

Occasionally other walkers crossed our path, a brief “Bonjour” and a nod. Respecting each others’ enjoyment of a peaceful Sunday stroll. 

I couldn’t resist recording some of the details with my iPhone camera – deliciously gothic and poetic vignettes of the general atmosphere.

A bit of research reveals that the Cimetiére de St Martin was created in the 18th century and was in the countryside. It was forbidden to buy the dead within the city limits. Shades of Amadeus… in the early years animals dug up the corpses overnight and quite soon a wooden fence was erected replaced a few years later by the first stone walls. 

The cemetery is still open to the public and many of the gothic style family tombs are up for sale to new owners. Descendants often think that the City Council is responsible for the upkeep of the tombs but legally, the ground and the monument belongs to the family.
Some work has been done to try and locate descendants and to let them know the situation. For some tombs, no family is left to maintain them or show any interest. The most original and interesting tombs are part of a salvage programme. 

It seems a huge shame that little interest was shown until relatively recently and a superb site is gradually disappearing for want of civic interest in the little that is left of Brest of the 18th Century when it was a major part of the French sea defense and a thriving commercial port.

For me, part of the charm is the way that nature is taking over the abandoned tombs. These gargoyles are almost enhanced by the ivy that creeps around them.

A calm and beautiful place to walk or reflect a while, a little haven slap bang in the city centre, this is a place to visit.

While some might find this a morbid place to linger, I’d say the contrary is true. It’s a peaceful place with poetic forms created by the chaos of abandonment.

There must be a fair few regular visitors. Several of the tombs seem to be used by a community of feral cats. Signs of nesting and regular use are visible and it looks like people come regularly to feed them. Tupperware containers tucked into a corner with leftover food and plastic bottles cut down to hold water bear witness to the cat-lovers’ activities. 

I’d guess that some of the tombs house living residents at night too. Odd blankets and signs of someone trying to decorate their “home” can be spotted by the careful eye. Funeral vases from other tombs have made their way onto shelves and have artificial flowers placed in them despite the fact that the original owner’s descendants have long ago ceased to be interested in the site. This window is part of a tomb that is probably, at least occasionally, occupied by a homeless person. 

The cemetery is clean and closes at night. The alternative population have their own ways in and will not disturb a lunchtime visit to eat a sandwich in peace and quiet, just a few metres from one of the busy streets criss-crossing the city centre. An hour quickly passes. 

Strangely enough, I feel recharged and relaxed after a break here. It’s like finding a quiet place within, an earthing. 


 

Thinking of visiting – Here is the map. http://goo.gl/maps/8e2gZ