travel – St GEORGIA & Boo

creative endeavours and healing

I have been slowing down, sifting through, and clearing out on purpose. Life has presented me with an abundance of challenges over the past few months, with children, family, finances and grand life decisions. I keep reassuring myself there is no wrong here, just different paths to take, i keep reminding myself that i am only one person, and all will be well. Friends are important right now, at least one in particular. I think without this friend, my challenges would have been inevitably harder. She has been my breath when i have found it impossible to breathe, she is the one who listens as worlds fall apart, makes the tea and wipes away the endless tears without trying to change or move me into feeling better. She is alright sitting beside the hurts knowing only too well that they must be felt and really is powerless to change them anyway. It is with this hand, of this friend, that things are able to rise to the surface and be felt at the very depths that they require, without holding them in judgment or with regret. It is with this, that things are ever so slowing changing form, making room for new ideas, new beginnings, creating space, honouring growth. She is the one who reminds me to be more gentle with myself, to nurture my soul and more importantly forgiving myself for the minor infractions I so harshly hold myself accountable for. She reminds me that All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.

Slow roasted chicken with silky potatoes green beans and veloutè sauce

Slow roasted chicken with silky potatoes green beans and veloutè sauce.

Slow roasted chicken with silky potatoes green beans and veloutè sauce

we ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other

Earnest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Restaurant Polidor 41 rue monsieur Le prince 75006 ParisPolidor restaurant featured in Woody Allen’s, Midnight in Paris 2011

We dined here three time during our four night stay, at this wonderfully humble restruant famous for Hemingway. I ordered the same meal twice not for any other reason than to simply indulge my senses once more in the simplicity of this succulent dish, suprême de poulet veloutè de morilles,purèe. ‘superbe’

Slow roasted chicken with silky potatoes and green beans with veloutè sauce

Ingredients for the chicken: 4 large pieces of free-range Maryland chicken,1 litre chicken stock, 3 continental parsley stalks, 2 cloves of garlic, cracked pepper

Method: place all the chicken into a deep baking dish, they can rest on top of each other. lay the parsley over the chicken, add the garlic whole to the baking dish, lightly season with the cracked pepper and then pour in the stock. Cover tightly with foil the entire top of the baking dish to keep all the steam contained. Set the oven at 180°C and slow roast for 2 hours. Check the chicken after approximately an hour and ladle the stock over the chicken sitting out of the stock, recover with the foil and continue roasting. Meanwhile prepare the veloutè.

ingredients for the veloutè sauce: 100grams butter,100grams flour,1litre chicken stock

Method:In a saucepan gently melt the butter without letting it colour. Remove from the heat and add the flour all at once and stir to combine. Place the pan back on the heat and cook over a gentle heat to a lightly fawn colour. Allow to cool. Bring the stock to the boil. Add the stock to the roux (flour mix) slowly over the heat, beating in well and allow to thicken before adding the next ladle. Bring to the boil, adjust heat to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes.

ingredients for the potatoes: 6 large desiree potatoes peeled and chopped,50grams butter, 250mls cream, salt to taste

method: In a pot of boiling water add the peeled and chopped potatos, boil on a rapid heat until cooked through then strain and return to the pot, mash well until there are no lumps . In another saucepan gently heat the butter until melted and add the cream cook until warmed through then add the mix to the potatoes. With a cake spatula and over a gentle heat work the cream through the potatoes until silky smooth.

Next, boil the string beans for a few minutes, ladle the veloutè into wide bowls add a large scoop of the potato and place a piece of the chicken on top finally drain the beans lightly drizzle in olive oil and season then place a few onto the chicken. Serve.

sacred spaces

sacred spaces.

sacred spaces

Religion is, as I say, something universal and something human, and something impossible to eradicate, nor would I want to eradicate it. I am a religious person, although I am not a believer.

Philip Pullman

These pictures were taken from a few of the many breathtakingly beautiful churches around Italy. I always love the feeling that becomes present when you first step through the doors into these places, and take the moment to really see, what it is that is surrounding you. Religious or not, believer or non, really it doesn’t matter or is of concern. You are welcome into the divinity of these walls that have been standing for the test of time. They have heard and hold deep within the deepest of secrets, immeasurable stories and prayers to ever be recounted. These places are sacred, not only by vertue of religious believers but by their very presence and the silence they keep on all that has ever been confided. It is here, that it is for ever memorable that I light a candle for the passing of my mum’s dearest friend, Ruth.

words from whitman..

words from whitman...

words from whitman..

Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.

You must travel it by yourself.

It is not far. It is within reach.

Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.

Perhaps it is everywhere – on water and land.”

– Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Photographs taken at MISO DI RISO, BIO BISTRO, Vegetarian, Vegan, macrobiotic restruant Borgo degli 54r Firenze (FLORENCE)

where we layed our hats, in Florence

where we layed our hats, in Florence.

where we layed our hats, in Florence

Our studio apartment in S.Maria Novella, Florence can be described as no more than, à la mode, perfectly designed in layout, filling every space so cleverly that you really didn’t feel confined at all. The windows opened wide looking onto the streets below and across to neighbouring apartments in true Italian style. It was light and airy and full of chic with bountiful books and mags to read in moments between exploring this wonderfully alive city. We soon discovered a vibrant little cafe around the corner that humoured us as we practiced our limited Italian with ordering our coffee and croissants to have standing at the bar, as the locals would tell you, there’s simply no other way to do it.

Via dei Canacci, Florence, Tuscany 50123, Italy, book through Airbnb.com

Shakespeare and company

Shakespeare and company.

Shakespeare and company

Fifty Grand and The Sun also Rises, introduces us to Hemingway. His individual and his concept of human nature were both very close to ours (referring to Jean-Paul Sartre). Hemingways lovers were in love all of the time, body and soul, actions emotions and words were all equally permeated with sexuality and when they gave themselves to desire, to pleasure, it bound them together in their totality.

There was another thing that pleased us. If a man brings his entire self to every situation, there can be no such thing as a ‘base occasion’. We attached much value to the small pleasures of daily life, and Hemingway lent romantic charm to such things as a walk, a meal or a conversation;… at the touch of his pen insignificant details suddenly took on meaning. The kind of realism, which described things just as they are.

words by Simone de Beauvoir, Prime of Life

One thing that I have taken great delight in was the unforeseen wonder of the bountiful bookshops prevailing in this endearing city. Paris was indeed full of surprises. We visit the well-known Shakespeare and Company and immediately are captivated by the lively atmosphere of passionate literary fans wandering in awe of the scene of books that they are surrounded by. Upstairs there is a library, of donated books that are neither for sale nor for borrowing, they are priceless in their value and you can take great pleasure in making yourself comfortable in a worn leather chair and immerse yourself in one of the precious pieces for a while. No one will ask you to move or to leave, you can sit, absorb, dream, write, read or even play the piano if you are inspired to do so.

Paris’s bookshops are alluring and plentiful, they are a wonderful way of intimately getting to know this enchanting city.

a thought

there should be a two-year period after high school where it is socially expected that kids not work, or go to school or do anything but take road trips, read books, meet new people and take lots of pictures..

-via withshoeslikethat

what a wondrous ‘une période de transition’ from adolescence to adulthood and learning about one’s self.

thoughts on Venice

thoughts on Venice.

thoughts on Venice

Venice, she’s relic, loved passionately, admired for all her beauty,taken

advantage of, mistreated, deep in-depth, full of secrets, helpless, relentless, breathtakingly beautiful, fierce yet ravishing, seductive in nature and history, provocative, hidden, devastatingly captivating and deeply mysterious in all her ways.. how could you not fall madly, deeply in love with her.

-carly macaulay