The Riddle Of Friendship

       'Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive,
        And it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.'
        - Anais Nin.

Today I had lunch with Gill, my funny, foodie, eccentric friend. No sooner had I written those words than I got to thinking, isn't it funny how we define our friends and how those definitions are relevant to why we choose them.

Naturally, we aren't going to say: 'Today I had lunch with my miserable, jealous, disloyal friend' it would be a contradiction surely? None of us in our right minds want to be friends with negative people. Which led me to wonder how and why we choose our friendships.

Friendship is a baffling subject and one of the least understood areas of psychology concerns the role of friends in our lives.

Scientific studies and research shows that a part of our brain which controls motivation and emotion becomes more active when we meet people 'like us.' the theory is that we naturally befriend people of our own social standing.

When we first bought our apartment in Spain it was rather like starting at a new school. All of the new homeowners were beginning a community life together where communication was a must. Gathered together, we strangers weighed each other up and rather quickly friendships and cliques were formed, but on what basis?

True friendship is a feeling of comfort and emotional safety with a person, however, sometimes we look for people who make up for the deficits we see in ourselves. Often, friends lives seem more interesting and exciting, sometimes a person associates with another person or group for the purpose of gaining some personal advantage or glorification.

The workplace is an obvious environment for making friends, yet it can crackle with competition and work friendships can take on a transactional feel, rarely do these friendships run smoothly.

Jealousy has the power to destroy even the most solid friendships, people who know us best have the capacity to betray us should the relationship turn sour. Jealousy is not always out in the open but rather wrapped under layers of passive aggression and veiled hostility. Some friends find our happiness a constant reminder of their unhappiness, in some cases they want to keep you small so they'll cut you down to size so their world feels 'right' again.

Of course the definition of friendship has changed in today's technologically connected world. In the context of social media, the term friend often describes a 'contact.' For those of us getting older, we realise it becomes less important to have lots of friends and more important to have real, loyal ones. We no longer seek validation, we look for kindness and an ability to tolerate, we seek mutual affection and when we lose friends, we have to change how we see ourselves and our lives. We live in our individual world of meaning and we need to find friends whose individual world is similar to our own.

They say 'friends are the family we choose.' unlike children and adolescents we should not, as adults, be under social pressure by members of our peer groups to adopt certain values or conform to be accepted. We don't have to stay within rigid circles pertaining to our own social standing, politics or ethnicity.

As Albert Einstein said: 'However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.'

They say we appear to be like our closest friends genetically, ie drawn by similar tastes and certain smells. My circle of closest friends certainly share my love of all things food related and Gill is a foodie extraordinaire! Lunch as always was absolutely delicious.

                                          A delicious selection of Gill's homemade wares

Gill's coleslaw

Recipe
White cabbage
Parsnip
Beetroot
Carrot
Red onion
Apple
Natural yoghurt
Mayonnaise
Lemon
Salt and pepper
Chopped walnuts
Sultanas, soaked in hot water

Peel and shred vegetables and apple into a large bowl
Season and squeeze the juice of 1 lemon over the vegetables
Add a a large dollop of yoghurt and mayonnaise and combine well
Scatter nuts and sultanas on top
Serve immediately

Treasure your friends
Love Donna xxxxxxxx

 








    

Antibiotics In Our Food Chain......Wake Up And Smell The Coffee!

As you will know, Bert has recently broken his collar bone and undergone an operation, all of which have taken their toll on his health in general. Prone to tonsillitis it was only a matter of time until he was struck down. Our doctor, upon examining Bert, informed us that Bert's body was using all its resources to recover from the op therefore he needed to take antibiotics to kill the bacterial infection in his throat.

So dear readers here's the debate...........,

As I knew he would, Bert refused to take the prescribed antibiotics, so fearful is he regarding antibiotic resistance. Yet what Bert, and indeed many people, fail to realise is the extensive use of antibiotics within our food chain.

Intensively farmed animals which are confined in cages at high stocking density are routinely given antibiotics (even if no disease is present) just to ensure they survive the overcrowded, squalid conditions they are kept in. Antibiotics help to mitigate the spread of disease which is exacerbated by the filthy conditions these animals are bred in, this leads to the development of antimicrobial resistance, which can then pass to humans.

So serious is the antimicrobial resistance crisis, chief medical officer professor Dame Sally Davies is giving it the same risk as terrorism! She warns that a post-antibiotic era is approaching, consequently routine operations and cancer treatments will be too risky to carry out. A world without effective antibiotics is a terrifying but very real prospect!

Inappropriate use of antibiotics is threatening their efficacy, however, whilst they are continuously added to livestock feed and we continue to eat factory farmed animals, regardless of how few antibiotics we personally take, we will be affected.

Chains such as Nandos, which have spread like a disease, ready-meals, ready prepared sandwiches, pizzas with their glut of factory farmed meat toppings, burger chains, cheap supermarket chickens, beef, pork and lamb, ingredients in takeaway meals (rarely does your regular Chinese or Indian takeaway use free-range or organic ingredients) Kentucky fried chicken......the list goes on and on, the fact is all of this meat has antibiotics running through its veins!

Writing this blog has become a learning curve for me, however, what scares me is the thought that these very real issues aren't scaring you. If you spare no thought or compassion regarding the welfare of animals, surely the fact that we may imminently be antibiotic resistant should concern us all.

If we lose antibiotics we will lose the ability to treat infectious diseases, to transplant organs, because doing those successfully relies on suppressing the immune system and willingly making ourselves vulnerable to infection. Any treatment that relies on a permanent port into the bloodstream-for instance, kidney dialysis. Any major open-cavity surgery, on the heart, the lungs, the abdomen. Implantable devices: new hips, knees, heart valves. We'd lose the ability to treat people after traumatic accidents, modern childbirth, before the antibiotic era, 5 out of every 1,000 women died. 1 out of every 9 skin infections killed and 3 out of evey 10 people who got pneumonia died.

Bert had to have intravenous antibiotics after his operation so susceptible was he to serious infection (fortunately he wasn't compos mentis and doesn't even realise he had them.)

Todays post doesn't include a recipe, rather, I hope it is food for thought and debate, I'd love to hear your opinions.

'Some experts say we are moving back to the pre-antibiotic era. No. This will be a post-antibiotic era. In terms of replacement antibiotics, the pipeline is virtually dry. A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill.'
- Margaret Chan.

Think about this next time you're eating a mass produced pepperoni pizza or a cheap battery hen!
Love Donna xxxxxxx

Why Don't Children Eat Vegetables?

We were having friends over for dinner recently and prior to them arriving my friend called me to remind me her two children don't eat vegetables. Needless to say I found this exasperating, to state that 'children' don't like vegetables is such a sweeping statement yet it's one we have come to accept. There are several theories out there as to why children don't like vegetables, but the prevailing notion is of course, that due to our highly processed diet we have become addicted to sugar, salt, fat and flavour enhancers.

Take my friend Clarrie, when she began weaning her baby she pureed all manner of vegetables for baby Todd to try. Admittedly he rejected some of the vegetables, but on the whole he ate them quite happily. Babies are weaned on bland food because mothers understand the dangers of sugar, salt, fat and additives. At what age then, one wonders, does it become acceptable to introduce sugary and salt laden cereals, fruit juices and squash,  yoghurts with 10g of sugar per 100g, chicken nuggets, crisps..........?

Once introduced, these foodstuffs become addictive, we develop an instinct to overeat these calorie dense foods and plain vegetables by comparison become too bland and boring.

Processed and packaged foods are loaded with thousands of additives and preservatives to control colour, flavour, aroma, texture and shelf life. Unless you have been living in a cave for the past ten years you will know the ramifications regarding our toxic diet, which is why it is all the more shocking when a parent tells me her children won't eat vegetables.

Parents directly and indirectly influence their children's food preferences from the time solid foods are introduced. We have control over our children's actions and positive influences are vital for establishing healthy lifestyle choices in our children.

Children model the behaviours of those around them and sitting together as a family at a dining table has a huge influence compared with children who eat separately. When my friends and their children arrived for dinner at my house they were quite excited at the prospect of sitting with the grown ups to eat.

I decided to serve dinner with side bowls of vegetables and placed one between the non vegetable eating children and told them to help themselves. Although reluctant at first they did both take some vegetables and seemed to like them? They couldn't name the vegetables individually, I could understand for example if my friend had said they don't like carrots or they prefer mashed swede......but there are so many vegetables out there is it really possible that those small children could already opine that they don't like any vegetables?

Another friend of mine has bought her young children gardening boxes from rocketgardens.co.uk the pack includes a selection of organic baby plants with a growing guide. She says: 'The act of planting, watering, watching the plants grow, then picking and eating their own crop has given her children a real connection to vegetables. Sowing a few seeds in pots (if you're short of garden space) is a good way to get children interested in plants, basically we can positively determine our children's attitudes towards food.

What I will say is that vegetables need enhancing with some delicious grass fed butter, which in moderation is full of vitamins and nutrients, (never substitute butter with toxic trans-fats!) Butter can turn bland vegetables into masterpieces, add a little parmesan cheese (salty) and I'm sure your children will dig in.

The vegetables I prepared for dinner were made all the more delicious by adding soft buttery leeks cooked in their own juices. Subtler than onions, leeks lend themselves very well to other flavours and add new dimensions to plain mixed vegetables or cauliflower cheese.

Leeks

Recipe

Buy more leeks than you need, because there's quite a bit of trimming
Butter
Mixed vegetables

First take off the tough outer leaves and trim off most of the dark green part
Using a sharp knife, make an incision vertically halfway down
Fan out the layers of leek and rinse under running water

Now cut leeks all the way through vertically, chop into 1 inch pieces
Place a frying pan over a medium heat, add a knob of butter and let it melt
Add the leeks, stir them around, turn the heat down low and let them cook gently for 5 minutes

There will be quite a lot of juice that collects in the pan which will be delicious

Cook other vegetables and add to leeks, stir and season

Likewise add buttery leeks to cauliflower cheese

Vegetables don't have to be waterlogged, grey and overcooked. Their bright colours and freshness should be appealing, with seasoning and a little imagination vegetables are stars in their own right.

'First off, let's clear this up - fries are not a side dish and you can't count those as a vegetable. Sorry.'
- Tez Brooks

Love Donna xxxxxxxxxx

Good Friday

                                         The good Friday procession in Jacarilla Spain

Unusually I shan't be spending the Easter holidays in Jacarilla this year. In Jacarilla, like many rural villages around Spain, Easter is a huge celebration with a strong traditional theme, villagers come together as one, starting with the procession on Good Friday. Sculptures of religious figures are carried around the village by candlelight, accompanied by spine tingling music played by the village band. The procession is an emotive experience on so many different levels, even a hardened atheist would be hard pushed not to feel some sort of spiritual connection, even if it were remembering their own lost loved ones.

Easter used to be a time of celebration and reflection here in Britain. I remember waking up on Good Friday morning (much like Christmas morning) full of anticipation. My mother would have spread the breakfast table with an array of pretty, pastel coloured boiled eggs (she would cook the eggs in water coloured with food colouring.) But our favourite treat was the homemade hot cross buns! These were literally eaten on that one sacred day of the year as opposed to now, when hot cross buns are in the supermarkets from February onwards. I suspect many people now don't even understand the significance of these buns.

Before the introduction of bank holidays, Good Friday and Christmas Day were the only two days of leisure which were universally granted to working people. I remember as a child my father being at home on Good Friday, most businesses were closed, and after our special breakfast and a post-prandial stroll we would settle down to an afternoon of biblical epics such as The Ten Commandments or Ben Hur.

On Easter Sunday the villagers of Jacarilla will don their best clothes and attend the special service in the village church. Afterwards there will be festivities, the emphasis being on the dawn of a new life. Children will collectively scour the village for Easter eggs and families will congregate in the bars and cafés for a celebratory lunch. For many villagers the Lenten period will have been about abstinence of certain foods, simple living and prayer, in order to grow spiritually. On Easter Sunday they can partake in foods which they have denied themselves for 40 days. Tapas feasts will be shared consisting of meats, cheeses and tortillas, and for many, a welcome glass of wine.

If you are spending Easter with friends and family a tapas feast is an easy alternative to our more traditional roast lamb dinner. Just place the various components on large serving platters and let everyone dig in.

Tapas feast

Firstly make your own infused oil. These have become very popular and are expensive to buy, far better to buy a large bottle of good quality olive oil and transfer small amounts into sterilised jars adding your chosen ingredients: dried chillies, garlic, herbs or peppercorns

Slice ripe tomatoes, drizzle with infused oil and sprinkle with salt and sugar

Add some whole garlic cloves and sauté gently on a low heat until caramelised
Place in a bowl and cover with olive oil

Slice a buffalo mozzarella and drizzle a little honey over the cheese, then sprinkle over a pinch of ground coffee

Lay slices of cured meat on a plate alongside marinated olives, drizzle with infused oil

Serve with baked bread

Serve with a nice bottle (or two) of red wine and enjoy.

'Would you like some warm spring pie?
Then take a cup of clear blue sky.
Stir in buzzes from a bee
Add the laughter of a tree.

A dash of sunlight should suffice
To give the dew a hint of spice
Mix with berries, plump and sweet
Top with fluffy clouds and eat!'
- Paul F. Kortepeter: A child's book of Easter

Happy Easter
Love Donna xxxxxxxx