Lilly and Molly

Here are some photos of the dogs playing with Fred this lunchtime.  As you can see Molly has grown like a weed!

Gaia, She is all the life there is.

So here we are again with our world view changed, seeing ourselves back in the centre of the known Universe. We moved from seeing the earth as the centre four hundred years ago, to the earth being a tiny speck on the ocean of the Vastness, and then back again to the centre in one huge fell swoop.

For, according to a mathematician or two, we are likely to be the only, sole unique life force existing anywhere in the terrible cold vastness of space and time. It is apparently full of energy, but not of life. He has worked it out, plotting the variables for life against the numbers of stars and planets. And its just us. So again, we are alone.

Why should it matter? Why should we care in the day to day minutiae of mortgage, bills, work, children, friends, sleep, what difference does it make?

For Buddhists to be born human is they say the most special and fabulous thing. They have this lovely image of a blind turtle swimming in the Pacific Ocean and catching on its head the only golden ring floating in the beauty of that sea. To be born human is as likely, they say, as that turtle catching that ring. How much we should then value our sentient, thinking, beauty appreciating, language adorned life, woven through with love. How we should wonder at new life, especially new human life, for its rarity and its wonder and its self-awareness.

Maybe it is not a turtle and an ocean we need to think of. Maybe, if we listen to that mathematician, it is one planet and one life force in one Universe. Only one, we are the only one.

Without us all, all this teaming life that exists everywhere and in all sorts of difficult places on this beautiful blue globe, the Universe is truly sterile. It is just explosions and gases and elements and rocks - one enormous science lab without anyone to watch its experiments. One terrible cold, linked by terrible heat without anyone to look at and love it.

Let's be careful of nuclear bombs, chemical warfare, biological weapons, global warming, poison on the land, chimera, people made in jars, animals made for experiment, mountains of food and starvation of children. Let's watch out for tsunami, earthquakes, volcanoes, hatred, greed and lies. Let's condemn cruelty and violence of any kind, towards anyone and any form of life.

We must be careful, we are all there is.

Michael's Quilt

I have finished Michael's quilt which was supposed to be for his 60th birthday, only 2 years late!  Anyway, here it is

I am pleased with it as it is very men type colours, I wouldn't have made it for myself!

He wanted ying and yang symbols, which are his favourite, and I had this put on in the all over quilting pattern -

Callum, my nephew, is taking it back with him tomorrow.  I just hope Michael likes it!

Date, Honey and Apricot Slices

Friday

5 October 2001

Date, Honey and Apricot Slices

Here we go again with the tray bakes, this must have been a big meeting with the ceremonial group. Now I cook for the cake sales in St. Mary's church in Glastonbury, and some day I hope for my children in Newcastle.

I wrote -

'I made these as a try out and gave them to Wendy for the boys – they were lovely so I made more to take to the meeting in Glastonbury on Sunday.'

I spent a great deal of time driving up and down the motorway in this year and found lots of different ways of getting to Avalon. The best was the motorway, because you can't get lost, even me, on two straight roads. This was before we had a satnav, now I rarely cry in the car through frustration at being lost again.

Good old Jane, the satnav lady, though she does sometimes send me up very strange roads, better her than myself.

Oven: 400F/200C/Gas 6 for 25-30 mins

Ingredients:

1 pound mixed dates and apricots

7 oz butter

10 oz wholemeal flour

4/5 oz soft brown sugar

5 oz oats

2 tbspoons water

1 tbs honey

Steam dates and apricots for 10 minutes, mash and chop up and mix with the honey.

1. Rub butter into flour and add sugar – it can be good to chop up the butter when it gets sticky.
2. Add coats and mix in lightly
3. Pack half of the oats mixture firmly down into the tin and cover with the date mixture
4. Put remaining oat mixture on top like breadcrumbs.
5. Bake and when done leave to cool, cut into slices in the tin.
   Ice if desired.

World's Greatest Carrot Cake Recipe

Friday
5^th October, 2001.
World's Greatest Carrot Cake Recipe

This is by far the greatest carrot cake recipe of all time and it has its own story.

I used to teach RE in Plymouth at Tamarside School and every breaktime we had this carrot cake being sold in the staffroom and everytime at breaktime I had a square. I asked the school cook on lots of occasions for the recipe and although she was fond of me, she never would let me have it.

Eventually the school was OFSTEDed and we failed. However, being put under special measures the teaching staff managed to get masses of new training and due to this I beat 4 teachers in London for a Head of RE job in Acland Burleigh School in Camden. Beware of what you wish for – I wished I had stayed in Plymouth. Never mind, at least I met my lovely second husband Fred, but that is another story.

On the day I left Tamarside the cook came up to the staffroom and gave me this recipe in an envelope and kissed me goodbye. It is The Best cake recipe ever – if you make nothing else from this blog make this one!

Oven 190/375/Gas 5

Ingredients

12 oz carrots grated

4 eggs

8 oz soft brown sugar

6 fl oz sunflower oil

8 oz wholemeal flour

2 tsp ground spice

4 oz desiccated coconut

4 oz raisins.

1. Grease roasting tin very well – if you want to make a tray bake, which is really what this cake is all about, you will have enough for the tin and maybe some left over for a 1lb loat tin cake.
2. Whisk eggs and sugar until really thick
3. Turn down mixer and whisk in oil very slowly
4. Mix in the other ingredients really well.
5. Pour into the roasting tin, leaving enough room at the top for it to rise.
6. Level the top of the mixture and bake until firm, shrinking from the sides and golden brown.
7. Cool in tin, sprinkle with sugar, cut into squares and serve.
8. Fantastic.

In my book I wrote -

'I made this to take to Glastonbury for a ceremonial meeting. Wendy grated the carrots for me and gave me a hand mixer she never used.'

My sister and I were talking again at this point – we had fallen out for years over nothing at all, and yet over lots of things all bundled into one. How we made friends again, or really for the first time, is also another story. Wasn't it lovely that she gave me a mixer?

The ceremonial meeting was in the third or fourth year of the Goddess Training. Now this is how it went -

1999/2000 Priestess of Avalon training (Millenium Priestesses)

2000/2001 Rituals and Rites of Passage (Still teaching)

2001/2002 Devotional Year (9.11 and beyond)

2002/2003 Goddess Project (Bed and Breakfast)

I remember now that the ceremonial meeting was for the Goddess Conference – I managed to be in the Ceremonial Group – the group of 8 who held the conference together – twice. In the first year I was West – Earth – and had a magnificent costume with a badger head. In the second year I was East – Fire – and was so exhausted after the conference that I had to rest for a good week – I expanded so much energy in prophesy and nearly caught fire in the fire ceremony, another story for another time.

Date and Banana Cake

Ladies in Germany feeding pilgrims

with cake - excellent!  I have lots of aprons just

like this and indeed it could be us outside St. Mary's on a cake sale Sunday, except we do not have such a posh canopy, would be nice!

Unfortunately this entry gives no idea why I didn't just go out and get some eggs.  We were still living in Stoke Road at this time, and maybe my back was too painful, it was a difficult time, though the rest was improving the spasms.

Friday

28^th September 2001

Date and Banana Cake

My information for this cake is -

'I had three very ripe bananas and no eggs and wanted to make a cake for Luke and Claire and found this recipe which I added to.'

Oven: 160 C for 50 minutes

Ingredients;

10 oz SR flour + 1 tsp baking powder

6 oz chopped dates

3 ripe bananas

mixed spiece, ginger and vanilla

½ pint milk

4 oz margarine or butter

poppy and sesame seeds

water icing

1. Put the flour in a bowl and add the chopped dates (I chop with scissors)
2. Mash the bananas with milk and melted margarine or butter.
3. Mix in some seeds for crunch and taste.
4. Then add banana mixture to the flour with a spoonful of mixed spice and one of ginger and some vanilla essence. You can vary the spicey mixture to your taste. Mix everything very well.
5. Bake for up to one hour
6. Cool and water ice (add boiling water to icing sugar until it is spreading consistency and use to ice the cake with a hot knife (dipped in boiling water))
7. This cake is lovely and moist and moorish.

Charm Square and Layer Cake Bag

I went to a class at Barrington Hall and learned to make this bag, which I am now adapting as I think a quilted lining would be better than loose.  Anyway, here it is -

I plan to make one with 10 inch squares instead of 6 inch and a smaller one with 5 inch squares, as examples for the first class of the Improvers Quilting Group.