Bread of Life

The image of Bread in scriptures and holy teaching is prolific.  It is one of those proto-seminal images and is in fact one of the basic foods people share across all cultural boundaries.  I recommend my brother's books - Brother Peter Reinhart - on bread.  He is the expert.

Today I ask you to just simply sit with the image of bread making for a bit.  Think about the idea of yeast, growing and expanding in and throughout the flour that you place it in.  It is worked into the flour by the action of kneading.  Rolling and pressing the yeast into what is becoming dough, gives it a chance to work itself into the whole mix and influence the dough to begin to rise as the gases given off by the yeast's ingestion of sugars takes place.

What is it in your life that permeates into every aspect and fold of the dough and causes growth?  What are you working into your living that has an impact on the very nature of your life and its expansion and growth? This is your yeast, and it produces the quality of the bread of your life.  What is your yeast?

Jesus encouraged us with his words:

"The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough." - Gospel of Saint Matthew, xiii, 33

Ciao!

TJM+

Yetta 'Nother Mountain Pie

We are getting ready to do a training on the "Hill" at camp.  That is our adventure site.  The Boy Scouts are camping up there and we are going to do a dutch oven inservice and then a mountain pie inservice.  We want to give the boys a novelty idea for their camping trip.

Now, the mountain pies they will make will be simple ones with blueberry pie filling between two pieces of buttered bread and then slapped in a mountain pie iron and left to the coals for a minute on each side...and then another minute on each side again.  That is four flips and four minutes.

However, I want you to think higher-end on the pies for a moment.  Using a nice 9 grain bread, olive oil and some fine cheeses and smoked meats can add a nice twist to the simple campfire meal/snack.  Smoked turkey with provolone, asparagus and a basil-garlic-olive-oil-drizzle is sensational.  Smoked salmon, capers, and feta woul make a fine pie.  Of course cheesesteak meat and mozerella, fried onions and mushrooms is a must.  A grilled veggie and feta pie would be good too.

The experience is limited only by your lack of creativity.  Look for some of Brother Peter Reinhart's artisan bread recipes and get a nice heavy grained bread going and use some yummy innards.  There is no reason to make a horror pie in this day and age.  You can regulate what goes in it and produce something nice to go with your Cabernet.

Ciao!

Tom+