#20 Constancy

Today I am taking care of myself. A nice rest at home sometimes is just what you need more. 

I have a warm cup of ginger tea beside me while I am writing, and a Tibetan music in the background. I have been recently to a meditation group nearby home, related to master Thich Nhat Hanh. Meditation gave me a positive effect of concentration and relaxation, and I appreciated overall the opportunity to meditate in company, with a sangha, a group of "noble friends". I hope to find a costancy in my meditation practice thanks to their support too.

My post today is related to the importance of constancy and company in doing things, in order to include it as part of your own personality. So I decided to make another baking: Chocolate Brownies! and offer again to my flatmate (who has been also inspired by me and want to bake too).

Let's start from ingredients (I used just half of these):

200 g quality dark chocolate (70%)

250 g unsalted butter

50 g chopped nuts , optional

80 g quality cocoa powder

65 g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

360 g caster sugar

4 large free-range eggs

Ready?

1) Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas 4. Line a 24cm square baking tin with greaseproof paper.

2) Snap the chocolate into a large bowl, add the butter and place over a pan of simmering water, until melted, stirring regularly. Stir through the nuts (if using).

3)Sift the cocoa powder and flour into a separate bowl, add the baking powder and sugar, then mix together

4) Add the dry ingredients to the chocolate, nuts and stir together well.

Beat the eggs, then mix in until you have a silky consistency.

5) Pour the brownie mix into the baking tin, and place in the oven for around 25 minutes.

Allow to cool in the tray, then carefully transfer to a large chopping board and cut into chunky squares. 

Enjoy and Share !
Our loving kindness need practice.

#19 I deserve it

I was listening to this Buddhist monk talk this morning. At one point he focused on how often we forget we deserve good things in our lives, instead we think we don't deserve. For this reason he use to say Yes I DESERVE IT whenever there is the opportunity. It can be because of a compliment or a good thing happened to him. Then he says, loud: thanks, I deserve it. :-)
I found this true. We often forget to deserve good things, and we don't care of ourselves.

Last sunday I was at a BBQ party of my friends Alessia and Charlie, who got married last year and have just moved to a new big house. We were enjoying the nice weather and the happy atmosphere in their garden, when Charlie came out with a homemade lemon cake and two  ice creams. As a couple they use to cook often toghether and prepare nice food and cakes even without guest...why? First of all they love each other, but overall they deserve it, without a particular reason.

Anyway their fridge lemon cake was lovely, so... I asked for the recipee and made this afternoon!!!


Ingredients:

1/2 packet digestive biscuits, crushed

50g melted margarine or butter

1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk

2 lemon juice and lemon skin

300ml  fresh double cream

Optional: Berries, lavender for decoration

Method:

Combine digestive biscuits and melted margarine or butter; tip into a buttered cake tin and using the back of a tablespoon, press down firmly. Put in oven at 180°C for 10 minutes. 

Whip cream, adding the skin of lemons and Condensed Milk.

Then slowly pour the lemon juice and all the mixture will become thick!

Spoon this mixture over the biscuit base (when it is cold), cover with cling film and leave it for a few hours or overnight to set in the fridge.

I have decorated this lemon fridge with raspberry, blueberry and lavender.

Why I made this?

Of course...

'Cause I DESERVE IT.

This cake has been shared with my flatmate, and has improved much our relations !

#18 Lightness, open to love

Last week I got an invite for a dinner on Saturday night. It was made by a friend of a friend of mine, who I had never met before. I knew this stranger guy was going to cook vegetarian for all of us just because I am vegetarian. I found this extremely kind, and I wanted to make something myself to bring at the dinner. On Friday evening I was at Sainsbury for some shopping and I saw on a shelf the dried coconut. I remembered a easy and nice recipe for some coconut biscuits, which I prepared in a sunny and peaceful Saturday morning. 

I used just three ingredients: 3 egg whites and 250 gr of dried coconut, 130 gr of icing sugar. A light recipe! 

Beat egg whites until foamy, then powdered sugar gently beating until the sugar dissolves completely.

Add in the coconut and stir until combined. Make some small balls of coconut, and lay in a tray on the parchment paper.

Leave in preheated oven for 15-18 minutes at 180°

Golden, nice, smelly coconut biscuits!

All of us appreciated this sweetness at the end of the dinner, plus many biscuits last at the owner's house for the next days. I really enjoyed making an homemade gift, contributing to the dinner. I was in a deep peaceful feeling for all day, and meeting this new person was interesting and nice (his food was amazing by the way!). I also brought a bottle of wine, but before entering the house I gave it to another guest who had forgotten to bring something at the dinner. So she pretended to bring the wine, and I lukely had the biscuits.

This makes me think that more you have lightness in your heart in doing things, more you have openness towards new people, more nice things happen and it is possible deeply enjoy Life.

Some biscuits for the next day breakfast at my place...

#17 Defrost your heart

This year I am back to London, so this blog deserves a new post and a happy face :-)

I am going to pass my New Year's Eve with two Italian friends. We already had together an amazing and rich meal for Christsmas, enjoying also the cooking time. 

This time, we decided: "we are not going to cook anything. We DEFROST!"

So we bought a lot of frozen food. Nice food, Indian vegetarian samosas, prawns and fish.

This fact make me thinking about one lesson. Sometimes the food (the LOVE) is already made, prepared... you have just DEFROST it. It just need a warm contact, to come back in a new life.

I hope you'll find a warm heart inside yourself.  Love is always there, under layers of freezing pride and fears.

Happy New Year.

#16 Do not waste the good things

I received for Christmas a beautiful gift... the centrifugal machine, that can provide me of the best vitaminic fruit juices of the world!

Yes, but what about all the edible waste?

I am creating new recipes for that!

I introduce you my new "Fruit chapati"!

Serves 8 chapati

Chapati flour 240 g + 20 g (or 2 parts of wheat flour and 1 white flour)
180 ml water
 1/2 teaspoon salt
cinnamon powder
apple and pear (the scraps of the centrifugal machine)

Preparation

Place in a bowl the flour, melt the salt in and then pour in the flour a little at a time. With the help of a spoon or your fingers, mix the flour with water; and add the rest of apple and pear, adding some cinnamon powder. Then continue to work the dough on a pastry for 10 minutes, until dough is firm and smooth, then form a ball, put it in a bowl, cover and let rest for 20 minutes. After the interval of rest do take the dough a long shape.

Immediately after divide the dough into 8 pieces to which you will later take the form of palliine, each weighing about 50 grams; with the help of a rolling pin roll now the balls into thin disks of the measure of 15 centimeters in diameter. While roll out the dough put a little 'of the flour on a work surface to prevent the dough from sticking.

Heat the pan for crepes, or a frying pan and, when it is hot, cook the pasta disks one at a time. When you see that it begins to form bubbles, or after a few minutes, turn the disc of dough and cook the other side. Remove at this point the chapati from heat and place in a sheet of aluminum foil-lined paper; close, in order to keep warm and soft chapatis and continue in this way for all the disks of dough.

The kitchen lesson today is...
...always use the scraps in the kitchen, they can turn into a surprising new recipe version! and in love?
Keep and use every moment to get higher your Love for yourself and other.

Don't forget to share!