TURTLE BREAD FOR YOUR CHILDREN

When the rainy days begin and at the weekend you may not want to go out, while the trees are colored in yellow and orange, you can make this bread with your children or grandchildren. I did it with my grandson, some time ago, who loves making cookies and sweets with me.

INGREDIENTS FOR 1 LOAF:

380 gr of gluten-free flour

110 grams of water

80 gr of organic soy milk

20 gr of organic whole cane sugar

25 ml of olive oil

10 gr of salt

12 gr of brewer’s yeast

100 gr of raisins or chocolate chips

1 tablespoon of water

HOW TO PREPARE THE TURTLE BREAD:

In a bowl, combine half the flour with the crumbled yeast and sugar.

Put the oil, then add the milk and water.
Start adding the liquid ingredients to the bowl with the flour and salt and also little by little. Mix everything gently, with your hands. Add the rest of the flour until everything becomes malleable.
Knead the dough for at least ten minutes, until you get a fairly soft, smooth and homogeneous dough.
Form the dough.
Cover the bowl, where you created the dough, with cling film and let it rise for at least 1 hour in the oven off.

Once doubled in volume, divide the dough into 7 parts: 1 piece of 80 g for the head, 4 pieces of 20 grams for the legs and 1 of 10 g for the tail. All the remaining dough you will use for the shell.

The dough is very soft: to give it more strength and make it keep its shape better without losing its softness, before giving shape to each piece, fold it back on itself, making three folds a couple of times. I forgot about it, and that's why my turtle's shell has settled on itself a bit and isn't as rounded as it should have been.

Start from the head, giving the dough a spherical shape.
Form the balls that will be the heads.

Then move on to the legs, forming balls that you will then stretch slightly, so as to give more oval shape.

Form the tail in the same way, giving an oval shape and then create the shell, spherical in shape by placing the chocolate grains inside.
Finally assemble the turtle: position the legs and tail so that they are partially under the shell, and the head immediately attached to the shell.

With 2 raisins resting on the head, create the eyes.

Cover with cling film and let rise again for 1 hour.

When the volume has doubled, brush the turtle with water.
Then, with a sharp-bladed knife, carve a circle all around the shell.

Then also engrave oblique lines to create a diamond grid on the surface of the shell.

Bake the loaf of bread in a preheated convection oven at 200 ° C and bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Let it cool completely on a rack before serving your turtle bread. You will see that it will be nice to discover the melted chocolate inside the shell. your children will lick their fingers.

STORY OF AN ISOLATION

"Grandma, this isolation is destroying me."

"What can't you stand about this time, my child?"

“I had projects to carry out, works to finish, pending commitments that are waiting for me… and now I find myself still. Property. Without being able to do anything. I'm wasting time. "

“You are not wasting time. You're earning it. But you don't realize it. "

"And how can I, grandmother, realize such an absurd thing?"

"Cook. As it once was. Knead the bread and let it rise two long days and two long nights. The time has come for slow leavening. The one that makes you take care of the food you cook. Use your hands, not machines. Use good yeast, not artificial yeast. Let your dough rise for days, not just hours. And in this time of long waiting and caring, even if nothing seems to be happening, in reality an incredible change is taking place. In the dough and inside you. Learn to take care of your daily bread, you will thus learn to take care of what really feeds your soul. And everything will happen. As if by magic."

"Is this the time gained? That of care and waiting? "

"Yup. In this fast paced world we prepare the ingredients quickly and we want the bread to be ready as soon as possible. But do you know the taste and smell of slowly leavened bread? It is a different, genuine, almost sacred flavor. While you wait for your leavening bread you are in connection with your bread: you look at it, you feel it, you care for it. Here: this is the time for slow leavening. You have already prepared the ingredients, you have already kneaded. Now step aside and enjoy the wonderful spectacle of this culinary transformation. Of this transformation that is also happening inside you. "

"Without doing anything, grandmother?"

“Without doing absolutely anything. The smell of bread is already in the air. Trust your bread. And in the great possibilities that are within you. 

RUNAWAY

In short, rich or poor, sooner or later you will be plagued by this uselessness of time. You will be bored by your work, by friends, by husbands, wives, or lovers, by the view from the window of your home, from the furniture or upholstery of your room, from your thoughts, from yourself. Consequently, you will be looking for escape routes. Aside from the tools of self-gratification mentioned above, perhaps you will begin to change jobs, residences, friendships, country, climate; perhaps you will indulge in sexual promiscuity, alcohol, travel, cooking lessons, drugs, psychoanalysis. In fact, you could put all these things together; and for a while the combination could work. Until, of course, you wake up in your room with a new family and a different wallpaper, in another state, in another climate, with a lot of bills to pay to your travel agent or psychoanalyst, yet with the same prohibits the sensation of the daylight that spreads to the window. And you will put on your slippers only to find that those are not the most suitable footwear to escape from what you recognize as familiar. And depending on your temperament or age, you will panic or resign yourself to familiarity with that feeling, or, once more, you will go through the process of change.

MY GREEN FINGERS

After returning from vacation, I went to the garden and found the first tomatoes. Considering how much it rained this year it was a nice surprise not to find everything already destroyed. So I’m glad I had the first tomatoes and today for lunch I made a nice salad with tomatoes, onions, oregano and olive oil.

You know, in my family my mother always made fabulous minestrone. He got up early in the morning and started cutting cabbage, carrots, cabbage, onions, broccoli, potatoes and parsley. Then he cooked separately and legumes, sometimes lentils, sometimes beans or chickpeas, and then he passed them making them creamy and added them to the soup. My mother cared a lot about our diet and wanted us to always eat lots of vegetables, fresh and without pesticides. So my father had garden cultivation as a hobby. aI was not very happy to eat minestrone but I must say that until I was 22 I never had health problems. Then when I went to live away from mine and my mother’s soups, my health deteriorated greatly. So please do a great thing for your children, make them eat fresh vegetables every day.

This is the soup I made two days ago after picking, cleaning and cutting the vegetables from our garden. It’s not my mom’s version but it’ll be fine anyway. Try it too. I put zucchini, cabbage, onion, parsley, cabbage and escarole.

These are some of the vegetables cut into small pieces. It was tiring but smelling the scent of the minestrone brought me back to the past and it was nice to remember everything my mother did for us, to make us grow well.

These are two zucchini from our garden.

This is the freshly picked escarole.

MOM AND DAD STORY

Yesterday Virginia asked me: “Dad, but if you and your mother break up, who is it who has two daughters and who one?” I was in the kitchen slicing onions, the question took me by surprise. “In what sense, Virginia?” I said. “We are three sisters”, she said, “you can’t divide the third sister in half!” I felt like laughing. I was going to answer her: “Don’t worry, love, Mom and I will never break up”, but I didn’t want to lie to her, because I know that every relationship is made up every day, and the biggest wrong you can do to yourself, and to others, it is just that to believe you invincible. “Virginia”, I said, “if by chance my mother and I parted ways one day we would see you all three, a little bit me and a little mom, don’t worry.” “But in Mrs. Doubtfire the dad saw only the children Saturday, ”he said. “Virginia, sometimes when two parents break up things can happen,” I said. “Maybe they didn’t break up well, but arguing. But Mom and I have always agreed that, even if we break up, you will always come first. You have I got it? Always.” He stared at me in silence. “Dad,” he said suddenly. “But can love end?” I thought for a moment before replying. “Love doesn’t end,” I said, “it’s people who change.” “People?” He said. “Virginia,” I said, “adults grow up too, you know? You are now a big girl, seven years ago you were a little girl. It works a little like that for moms and dads too. When I met my mother I was a different person, she was too. The important thing, when two people love each other, is to be able to change together or respect each other’s changes. Parents, with their children, do just that thing there, but sometimes they can’t. It is for this reason that love for children is the only one that never ends. “But you,” she said, “when you met Mom, how did you know it was Mom?” I didn’t understand, “I said. “How did you know you wanted to love her?” He said. “Ah, that,” I said. “I figured it out after about ten minutes. “And from what?” He said. “When we first met, she pulled her hair up behind her neck, over her head, and pulled up a bun without even a rubber band, just knotting it,” I said. “So what?” He said. “And then I realized that she desperately needed a rubber band,” I said. “And I her hair.” “And you had it, the rubber band?” He said. “No,” I said, “but when Mom found out, she already loved me.” “Dad!” She said, “but then you cheated her.” “Maybe a little bit,” I said, “but the point is, Mom was the first one who ever made me want to look for a rubber band, you know what I mean?” He looked at me for a few seconds. “Here daddy,” she told me, pulling off the elastic that was holding up her hair. “So you and mom don’t break up.” She laughed, luckily I was slicing the onions.

HOUSEWORKS

the work that women do at 
home is not valued. 
every woman has to arrange,
 tidy up, do laundry and cook 
for her family, besides the work
 she does outside the home.
 but this work at home is often
 done only by the mother. 
children do not even contribute 
because they study and think 
that this housework should be 
done by their mother. 
the father cares and never 
contributes. we are in 2019 
and in most of the European 
states and in America and in the
 rest of the world women are
L obliged to manage the house 
and do all these things for 
women. so often they have no 
time for themselves and neglect 
their passions. 
become frustrated and unhappy.
 husbands and children don't care
 if a mother is sick.
 they spend all their time on 
social media and don't care if 
their mother is unhappy.
 often women do not even have 
friends or friends and here 
they keep everything inside 
themselves and the disease is
 neglected. until they decide 
to leave suddenly and disappear 
or throw themselves into some risky 
extramarital affair. 
women living in big cities can turn 
to some association that helps them. 
but women living in small towns 
have no help.