Cooking with Santa

Posted on August 6, 2012 by greenmackenzie

I was in Edinburgh today, soaking up the festival atmosphere, bathed in unexpected warm sunshine. It was so warm and sunny that the pavement side cafes were filling up and it all looked very continental. I decided to pop into the newly refurbished Assembley Rooms on George Street to take a peek at Jamie Olivers new Italian restaurant.

It’s beautiful, with warm vibrant red walls and an incredible marble topped tapas bar in the centre. You can sit and eat at the bar….very Spanish (its probably very Italian but I know my tapas from years of Spanish holidays :-))…and its festoned with thousands of pounds worth of aged hams and salamis which they slice freshly for you as you order….yummy

It all left me feeling very mediteranean so when I got home I wanted Italian for tea…… I decided it was time to pick and cook with the first of this years tomatoes from the green house. Which ones to use..these looked promising

Then I spotted these wee beauties…the vibrant orange caught my eye. Reading the planting label I see they are called ‘Orange Santa’….strangely unseasonal name, but they looked delicious.

I grabbed some of this basil which I’m growing along the front of the beds. The smell is amazing when you pick it, and it grows well as it like the same growing conditions as tomatoes……perfect 🙂

Then I headed for the veg patch and picked a couple of courgettes and some fresh thyme and oregano. It’s such a lovely feeling selecting and then picking your food, and the smell of the herbs is intoxicating. I made my favorite tomatoe and veg sauce, and decided on spagetti as the pasta….yummmm

Here’s the Recipie if you want to try….

Warm a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan, before adding as much chopped garlic as you like (personally I don’t think there is such a thing as too much garlic!),and then soften  a finely chopped onion, and yellow pepper (bell pepper) in the garlicy oil….after a few minutes add the diced courgette and a good splash of the best balsamic vinegar you can afford (the best stuff is old..over 20 years is best :-)….and it gets sweeter and more expensive with each year of aging!!).

Once all the veg are softened throw in the chopped fresh tomatoes (I just cut the Orange Satas in half) and a couple of tablespoons of tomatoe puree and let it bubble gently. To make it more filling and nutritious you can add frozen minced quorn at this stage…but its nice with just the veg.

All thats left to do is to throw in the chopped fresh herbs…(the yellow is marigold petals…they add a lovely earthy citrus richness…and the colour is fab) and season with freshly ground pepper and salt. If it’s not sweet enough add a dash of heinze ketchup…my Mum who was cordon bleu trained taught me this :-)…but if you use fresh tomatoes the sauce is so sweet and creamy you shouldn’t need it. And the enjoy!

Simple but delicious…and I love cooking with produce fresh from the garden. It makes the whole exercise of cooking so much more mindful, and  I swear everything tastes better when it was alive on a plant minutes before being cooked…….let me know what you think!

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Swift Flight

Posted on August 5, 2012 by greenmackenzie

Flying delight

We were walking the dogs in our usual local park, yesterday evening. The sky was blue with a few fluffy clouds and the air was warm with a gentle breeze. The water level of the Esk was relatively high for this point of summer, and most of the boulders and rocks that we would normally see in the river were sumberged beneath its iron red waters. As we came over the bridge and stepped out onto the parkland we were greeted with the amazing spectacle of dozens of low flying swifts.

I was literally halted in my tracks, and we stood and watched in awe and amazement for about 15 minutes as these incredible arial acrobats performed a show for us. We were the only people in the park and it was asthough time had stopped, and the birds were interacting with us. For some reason the swifts were swooping down really low and skimming across the top of the grass along the whole length of the park. They would keep a dead straight course and then suddenly without warning would turn on a pin. At times there would be a bird heading straight towards us, and surely it was going to hit us, and then in a millisecond it would curve up and over our head.

It was breathtaking and I found myself grinning from ear to ear and my heart beating faster as I was caught up in the miracle of the display. My whole awareness and attention was resting on these tiny gymnasts, and for a little while nothing else was passing through my mind. Their sense of joy and delight as they stretched their wings and pushed their limits somehow passed into me as I watched enthralled. Perfect mindfulness in the heart of nature……And then the spell was broken by a few other dog walkers and some kids who had come to play football, suddenly spilling onto the grass. The birds were still flying but the connection was gone and we continued our walk……still smiling….

The swifts usually arrive here in May and stay for the summer. I always love watching their small distinctives shapes high in the sky above me…..but this had been a special treat…up close and personal.

They are incredibly powerful birds and they rarely make a touch down. In fact if you find one on the ground it might need your help to get back into the sky. They eat, drink, bathe and preen on the wing, travelling at amazing speeds, without ever resting, and are thought to be the only bird that mates while flying!

Here’s a poem I love about them….(well their close relative the swallow!)…contrasting their weightless gravity defying delight with our earth bound heaviness and effort…….by Ted Huges

Work and Play

The swallow of summer, she toils all the summer,
A blue-dark knot of glittering voltage,
A whiplash swimmer, a fish of the air.
But the serpent of cars that crawls through the dust
In shimmering exhaust
Searching to slake
Its fever in ocean
Will play and be idle or else it will bust.

The swallow of summer, the barbed harpoon,
She flings from the furnace, a rainbow of purples,
Dips her glow in the pond and is perfect.
But the serpent of cars that collapsed on the beach
Disgorges its organs
A scamper of colours
Which roll like tomatoes
Nude as tomatoes
With sand in their creases
To cringe in the sparkle of rollers and screech.

The swallow of summer, the seamstress of summer,
She scissors the blue into shapes and she sews it,
She draws a long thread and she knots it at the corners.
But the holiday people
Are laid out like wounded
Flat as in ovens
Roasting and basting
With faces of torment as space burns them blue
Their heads are transistors
Their teeth grit on sand grains
Their lost kids are squalling
While man-eating flies
Jab electric shock needles but what can they do?

They can climb in their cars with raw bodies, raw faces
And start up the serpent
And headache it homeward
A car full of squabbles
And sobbing and stickiness
With sand in their crannies
Inhaling petroleum
That pours from the foxgloves
While the evening swallow
The swallow of summer, cartwheeling through crimson,
Touches the honey-slow river and turning
Returns to the hand stretched from under the eaves –
A boomerang of rejoicing shadow.

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Weekly Photo Challenge (Growth)

Posted on August 4, 2012 by greenmackenzie

New growth from old wood

I love the lush but delicate blossom that springs each year from the old knarled wood of this apple tree. The buds start out such a deep pink and fade into pastel as the flowers open. Each flower has the potential to grow into a sweet juicy apple…..the tree grows in my garden and before me my Granny lived here…. so four generations of my family have grown healthy and strong eating the apples from this tree.

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Sweet Dreams

Posted on August 1, 2012 by greenmackenzie

Image

After a long days work, followed by a long dog walk, I am very ready to climb into the crisp clean sheets of my bed…..

This isn’t my bed…but a girl can dream….(find it at http://www.inewidea.com)

For some reason looking at this image brought back a little prayer which was taught to me by my ‘Highland Granny’, when I was a little girl…perhaps its the fairytale style of the bed which did it.

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

If I should die before I wake

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Its a prayer which soothes me because I remember saying it sunuggled up in a cozy bed in my Granny’s house, usually after being spoilt with love all day long 🙂 However as I examine it a little closer it is quite dark, and the thought that I might die before wakening doesn’t seem so soothing. It harks back to an age where life was less certain and where we were closer to the reality of our mortality.

Many of the older Scottish prayers connect us firmly to our proximity to death, but in a way which seems to normalise death. Perhaps we would be less scared of death and aging if we could regain some of this acceptance….

It also leads me to think about how closely sleep and death are intertwined. Both sleep and sex are described as ‘little deaths’ by psychotherapists….two spaces where we let go of our conscious control and slip into our unconscious, and the realm of dreams.

I feel that perhaps I slide with wild unmindful abandon into this realm each night, so maybe I can pay a little more attention to the threshold I cross……if not every night, then at least tonight.

In the past, transitional times were carefully noticed and protected as spaces where the unknown could flow in unexpected ways into our lives, and poems, prayers and rituals attempted to keep harmful forces at bay. This little prayer is a fragment of these protections, and we can use these ideas to keep us mindful of the little daily transitions and thresholds we pass through. Noticing shifts and change around can waken us up to the reality of the life we are living….

Oh too many deep thoughts… I’m away to slide over the threshold of wakefulness into the blissful realm of dreams

I’ll leave you with a poem which I loved from childhood, by Scottish poet Robert Louis Stevenson

The Land of Nod

From breakfast on through all the day

At home among my friends I stay;

But every night I go abroad

Afar into the Land of Nod.

 

All by myself I have to go,

With none to tell me what to do-

All alone beside the streams

And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

 

The strangest things are there for me,

Both things to eat and things to see,

And many frightening sights abroad

Till morning in the Land of Nod.

 

Try as I like to find the way,

I never can get back by day,

Nor can remember plain and clear

The curious music that I hear.

Enjoy……sweet dreams……

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Cloud watching

Posted on July 31, 2012 by greenmackenzie

So this morning I sailed into the Gym for my usual yoga class, only to be told it had been cancelled, very last-minute, for gymnastics…..I was so stunned…it was fairly early in the morning….that I didn’t ask any questions. As I headed home I wondered if winning the bronze medal yesterday meant that now gymnastics ruled the gym…

I was about to go and change out of my yoga kit when I suddenly noticed the warm enticing sunlight, and so I grabbed my yoga mat and headed for the garden. If there was no class why miss out? So I did my own yoga, in the garden, bathed in glorious sunshine.

It was such a lovely experience that I wondered why we don’t do more classes outside in the sun, then I remembered that I lived in Scotland. What I found was that I was far more aware of my body and my poses, and sun salutation took on a whole new meaning when I was actually raising my arms towards the light and warmth of the real thing.

Feeling the suns rays on my back for ‘down dog’ again intensified the pose, and the gentle warm breeze brushing over my skin was both relaxing and enlivening. The sounds of a sunlit morning in the garden washed through me, leaving an intense feeling of calm and connection with nature. I lay back afterwards and gazed up at the clouds drifting across the clear blue sky and a feeling of my smallness in the Universe allowed my mind to let go for a little while. No need to think or do anything. I just lay and breathed and watched.

These same clouds were drifting on the warm breeze across the vastness of everybodys sky, and making just a tiny appearance on the stage of my view….who else was watching them……where were they going……

…..timeless mindfulness.

Later in the day I headed in to Edinburgh to see an Art exhibition of the Scottish Colourists at the City Art Centre. The bold and vibrant use of colour in these paintings is incredible. I found myself standing back, then zooming right up close to see how they had applied their brushstrokes, and then stepping back again to marvel at how these lines of colour came together into a coherent image…totally amazing. There was one painting which had a half peeled orange at the front and I swear I could smell the orange oil in the air it looked so translucent and juicy. Yet when inspected up close the brushstrokes and colours gave no hint at how alive it would appear from a distance.

My favorite was a huge mesmerising sea and sky scape, filled with shimmering lines of light and motion, by local boy William McTaggart (1835-1910). He had captured the timeless, restless quality of sky and sea beautifully, and I could have gazed into it for hours…

As we left the gallery I glanced up to my left, towards the mound, and I think I saw where those clouds from this morning had wandered….

I was entranced by the sky one more time. It’s amazing how looking up can give such a feeling of space and calm, even in a busy cityscape filled with locals and visitors gearing up for the immanent Festival……
The Scottish Colourists exhibition is running from 21 July to 14 October 2012, and admission is free. You can find the City Art Centre behind Wavelry Train Station, the opposite side to Princes Street. They are also running free family drop in art sessions on Sat 4 and 18 August between 10:30 and 12 noon.

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Old Folly

Posted on July 30, 2012 by greenmackenzie

We stumbled across this old folly on an atmospheric walk through Colinton Dell, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, yesterday. There were bursts of warm sunlight interspersed with dramatic showers of rain, and we took shelter in the folly during one of the heavier showers.

We were deep in the gorge of the Water of Leith, close to its source in the Pentland Hills. The river itself was flowing fast, full of newly fallen rain. The surrounding woodland was bursting with lush foliage, head high ferns, ripening brambles and raspberries and soft green moss. The air was filled with the scent of newly damp earth, and the folly itself seemed to rise from the undergrowth cloaked in ferns and moss.

The atmosphere inside was hushed, and the dim light was speared with shafts of green light from its three curiously shaped windows. The largest window at the back opened its arch onto a view of a little waterfall tumbling down from a spring high above in the rocks of the gorge. The silver tinkling of the water was enchanting, and as I sat on a low stone sill in the shadowy folly I wondered who else had been in this space before me….

The ceiling had the remnants of what had once been a shell covered roof, and the windows had been robbed out of a much older building, perhaps even a church. The walls themselves included strange warped and holed rocks giving the whole an air of mystery…..which I suppose must have been its intent. The mysterious feel brought a playful smile to my lips, and this was how I stepped out of the folly back into the sunlight and the rest of my day.

Apparently the folly was built around 1830, in the grounds of Craiglockhart House, as a romantic grotto in the Moorish style. It was comissioned by the owner of the house, Professor Alexander Munro (1773-1859) who was a famous medic of his time. So there may well have been some playfulness in the follys past…

Colinton Dell itself has a much older history, with a prehistoric vitrified fort overlooking it from the top of Wester Craiglockhart Hill. This fort was re-occupied by the Romans during their time in the Lothians.

Colinton village has its footprints in the old packhorse roads which wound their way down to the ford which crossed the Water of Leith here. This explains the steep narrow roads which are such a challenge to our cars! It helps to keep the surrounding area relatively peaceful despite its proximity to the centre of the City of Edinburgh, and is a delightful green escape for a mindful walk.

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Weekly Photo Challenge:(purple)

Posted on July 29, 2012 by greenmackenzie

Bumble Bee Highrise

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Sacred Well

Posted on July 29, 2012 by greenmackenzie

We came across this sacred well on a trip to Applecross, in Rosshire. It was a beautiful sunlit day, with a soft breeze stirring the grass and the waves. Swifts were swooping through the sky doing bombing runs for insects in low sweeps of the ground. I had stopped to watch and listen to the sound of their calls of delight, and the to the oceans waves in the distance. The peace was immense, silence streaching up into the infinite blue sky, and the distant drone of busy bees visiting wild flowers, bringing a smile to my lips.

I became aware of a quiet little sound, lost at first in the imense sweep of this bay, but growing ever more insistant to my ears….the sound of trickling water. Turning to look for its source I saw the stone work of the well, its pale sandstone glittering in the sunlight. As I approached my sense of peace grew, and I was filled with a deep happiness which poured through me. It was such a beautiful and timeless scene. I wondered how many people over the centuries had visited before me.

I scooped a palmful of the sweet clear water into my mouth…deep peace. As though I was transported out of time itself.

A little research tells me that Applecross was founded as a Celtic monastic site by St Maelrubha in 673. It had taken him 2 years to reach this site from Bangor. The name was originally Abercrossan – Bay of the Cross. Maelrubha declared sanctury in a 6 mile radius around his monastery. So our well would have fallen within the Sanctuary.

In fact he wasn’t the first settler, as traces of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers have been found, all along these coasts. A broch has been uncovered along with evidence of earlier settlement….

Until 1975 the only was in and out of the valley and bay by land, was over the Bealach nam Bo – The Pass of the Cattle – and thus the Bealach was a huge guardian of Applecross, keeping it secluded and safe. It still has a wonderful air of seclusion, and its poor phone reception means it offers sanctury from the calls of modernity.

Nigel Pennick in his book Celtic Sacred Landscapes tells us that water from springs and wells comes directly to us from the waters that exsist unseen beneath the earth, from the mysterious chthonic realms of Annwn. We are participants not consumers when we take water from these sources, and we are in personal relationship with its origin. We are drawing water from the source. Its a lovely thought that my palmful of water hadnt seen the light of day until it poured out of the dark earth into my hands and into the sunlight.

From darkness into light….

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Hello world!

Posted on July 26, 2012 by greenmackenzie

Thur 26th July 2012

Okay so I woke up today feeling frustrated at my lack of direction….where am I going with my life? Then I remembered something somebody once quoted to me “Its always darkest just before the dawn”.

…so perhaps we always feel most stuck just before we start to move again. I like this, it gives me hope that this frustrated feeling of stuckness will soon pass, just as everything inevitably does. In the meantime, while waiting to feel less stuck, perhaps mindfulness can help.

Choosing to rest my attention on what I have today, rather than on what I would like tomorrow.
Choosing to come into connection with what I have rather than what I wish I had.
Choosing to become fully aware of right now, this moment.

All of this allows the practice of mindfulness to begin unfolding, and it allows frustration to tumble away, out of my mind, for a little while. Peace at last, if only for a few minutes. The trick is choosing something happening right now to focus on

 Focusing fully on the smallest thing allows everything else to drift away. My mind becomes calm and focused.

 Goethe wrote

One never goes so far as when one doesn’t know where one is going.

So perhaps it’s not only okay to have no clear direction, perhaps it will end up taking me further than I ever imagined. Perhaps I can just be content with where I am today. With this thought in mind I am launching Breath of Green Air, with no clear idea where I am going……..wish me luck…..

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