The Only Basket

Blipfoto has reminded us that today is World Kindness Day. These lemons were kindly given us by Padre Luís on Sunday. That man has showed us - and so many others - so much kindness over the years since we met him. We are grateful.

A day putting the house to rights, getting ready for our forthcoming visitors, Mike with his bad knee and me with a painful cut on each hand, making all sorts of things (like this typing) difficult. So, not as done as we'd have liked.

Capon, ch 14, "One Good Turn Deserves Another", about making puff pastry:

If I have persuaded you of the merits of that plain eating to which bread, in its earthy unfussiness, is the greatest single invitation, let me now reverse engines and insist once more on the rightful place of the fussy, the fancy, and the fantastic. Paradox is the only basket large enough to hold the truth: It is the very simplicity of bread which provides the foundation for all the complexities that man has wrought with flour. The violin is an astonishingly plain piece of business, carried beyond itself by craftsmanship: Stradivarius, Guarnerius, and Amati have gone down in history because they went to the inordinate bother of perfecting the ordinary. Unfortunately, we do not know the names of the first cooks who fiddled with the elastic properties of flour long enough to invent pastry, but their care is just as much a monument to the true work of man. We were meant to lift the world with loving eyes and hands; pastry is bread transfigured by concern.