Friday 28 November 2014

Food with Thought: No 2 … Brazil … and how the world was divided into two by Papal Treaty in 1494 …



This is my second Food with Thought themed lunch to highlight an area of the world … and as is my wont give a little extra detail i.e. history …

Brazil and our Apperitif fizz

  • Navigation – and the colonisation of Brazil

  • The Borgia Pope

  • How and why South, middle and North America are mainly Spanish speaking


It was with the advances of navigation and a greater understanding of the seas, that the Portuguese became the great explorers of the 1400s …


Lines dividing the non-Christian
world between Castile (modern
Spain) and  Portugal.  The 1494
Tordesillas meridien (purple)
and the 1529  Zaragosa
antimeridien (green)
… sailing down the west side of Africa, round the Cape of Good Hope and on to India … thus bypassing the controlling Turks of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East.




Henry the Navigator, (1394 – 1460), the Portuguese Prince, initiated the exploration down the west coast of Africa and the development of useful tools, such as charts to expedite this desire for knowledge during the 15th Century (1400s).


 
Tordesillas Treaty
The Spanish from 1492 went west and found land in the Caribbean Islands, before setting foot on the North American continent … Brazil was found at much the same time in 1500 but by Pedro Alvares Cabral …


Surprisingly to me anyway! … a Papal Treaty (Treaty of Tordesillas) of 1494 had already divided the world into two … the Spanish Pope, Alexander VI, (1431 – 1503) instigated this bull


… the purpose was to divide trading and colonizing rights for all newly discovered lands in the world between Portugal and Spain to the exclusion of other European nations.


The attractive charismatic Pope:
Alexander VI ... 
The Portuguese being given control over Africa, Asia and the Eastern part of Brazil, while the Spanish received everything west of that line … only later realising their good fortune …


This is complicated and involves the Borgia Pope mentioned above … he is one of the most controversial of the Renaissance popes, because he broke the priestly vow of celibacy and had several legitimately acknowledged children.


Therefore his italianized Valencian surname, Borgia, became a byword for libertinism and nepotism …


Anyway – enough of history … shall we eat?  Come share with me an aperitif to set us on our way to that lunch table …


Our sparkling aperitif was Coco Nova Brut – a blend from the hot area north-east of Rio: the Sao Francisco Valley.  A drier style made from blending Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin and Verdejo grapes – the Verdejo are generally harvested at night – when less oxidation is likely to occur.


Cue in the clues:  This dry sparkling wine fizzes with fresh melon juice, white nectarine flavours, hints of almond, giving an aromatic, often soft, but richer texture of taste.


Salmon and Sea Bass Ceviche
F o o d … we needed food!  This time as our starters we had Salmon and Sea Bass Ceviche with seasoned leaves, decorated with delicate avocado pieces and pickled vegetables … this was positively delicious!


Now I need to go to the left-hand side of the menu to check out the wine … an un-oaked 50:50 blend of Chenin Blanc and Viognier … a good acidity: excellent to serve with fish.


Cue in the clues: This light in colour, with a greenish tinge, wine – had a hint of white flowers on the nose, fresh aromas too of pears and pineapples … soft and supple in the mouth … ‘twas good and tasty!


Where do they get these descriptions?!


Our main course wasChimichurri Chicken en Croute– adapted to our English palates … the chicken was served en croute … while we had a choice of a lighter, simpler chicken sauce or the Chimichurri – that’s what I had!




Chimchurri sauce
Chimichurri, originally from Argentina, is a green sauce used for grilled meat … it is based on finely-chopped parsley, minced garlic, olive oil, oregano and red or white wine vinegar.  This is my style of sauce …


To go with the main course we had a blend from …


Brazil shown within
South America



Cue in the clues:  ruby dark grapes with a hint of white pepper … which should (?) leave us with a clean aftertaste … I cannot remember that part … but …



Rio Sol Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz … comes from the Sertão … the semi-arid region in Northeastern Brazil … a Brazilian historian once referred to colonial life in Brazil as a civilisation of crabs”, as most settlers clung to the shoreline …  


The Sertao ... the semi-arid
north-east 
The director of the Portuguese wine company Dao Sul just adds to this picture … as he advises his workers to watch out for alligators as they sometimes come up from the river and nip the workers’ ankles as they harvest the grapes.  


As introductions go, this advice is a little unusual, even by the standards of eccentric vineyard owners.


Thinking about this I need another drink before I enjoy the dessert!


A Rosé – to go with the dessert – but this has a very descriptive hue … Rio Sol Touriga Nacional Shiraz Rosé evokes an intense fruity flavour …


Cue in more clues: predominantly cherry, strawberry, blueberry and raspberry … giving us a playful after-taste to enjoy our German-Brazilian dessert.



Pudding!  Torta Alemã is a Brazilian dessert, though its name in Portuguese means “German Pie”.  Many Germans settled in Brazil … so various recipes became absorbed into Brazilian food lore.


This was particularly delicious … the chocolate “ganache” in this pie is called brigadeiro de colher, and is a spreadable version of the very popular Brazilian chocolate fudge truffles called ‘brigadiero’ …



Brigaderios
We had Columbian blend filter coffee and brigaderios to follow … I might say we had one older chap on our table who ate all of these – without offering them round … he was remarkably selfish and his conversation was all about himself!!  We were polite and I knew one other lady on the table … so we laughed a lot …


Linda fortunately knew the wine merchant’s representative – her daughters had gone to school and socialised with him and other friends …


Representation of the landing by
Petro Cabal in 1500
… he was the worse for wear, poor chap, as his wife had recently had a difficult birth … but all was well with their daughter … he looked somewhat drained!  But I think was grateful he was sharing the table with us … and ‘felt at home’ with Linda around … and not a load of fuddy duddies!!

Gathered grapes in Brazil

We had this lunch on 21st October and I see I noted that our weather was much the same as in Brazil 19 deg C (66 deg F): cloudy with rain!


I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving, questionable Black Friday … and I’m sparing a thought for Denise in Brisbane after the major vortex storm that ripped their coastline apart on Thanksgiving Day …

Oh by the way .. this was held at the same seafront hotel as the South African lunch ... 

And out of interest our temperature is still so warm ... yesterday the day of posting we had 13.8 deg C - which is 55.84 deg F .. today it's slightly warmer ... 



Hilary Melton-Butcher
Positive Letters Inspirational Stories

Monday 24 November 2014

Oh How I Miss You Blogfest …



My post of two years ago encompasses my thoughts and though there are new bloggers that I’d add to the list … I think we all know who each of us respects and enjoys visiting …




So to surprise her (Tina) up there ... this post will be short!: 
  
Nicholas Roerich: Guests from Overseas (1901)

Who does not miss, could not miss and who will not miss Tina Downey of Viking fame with her Blog “Life is Good” …




I posted about her here … such a dreadful sad loss to her family … and I know many of us miss her as we blog our way along … and come the A-Z in 2015 … it will be very strange without her.

The Sunshine Lad - Lenny


Whom I would miss if he did not blog occasionally, even once amonthjust to let us know he’s still around … that merry soul who is known as Lenny of Lenny’s World … Lenny blog on please!!!  He's my GrandBlogSon ... so named as he calls me his GrandBlogMom ... Sharon is his BlogMom!!


Lenny loves critters - I love Africa ...
not so keen on jigsaws - and this is one apparently!


A note re next week: 4th - 6th December … a reach out – Tina was involved in last year's, and one I know Lenny would support …

Emergency Food Drive -
December 4 - 6


Emergency Food during the festive seasons coming up … and then remembering each and every month thereafter … here are the details … 

Hosted by MJ Joachim and ..... the world .... that's us ... get the word out please ... anyone who does social media ... please tweet, FB et al ... thank you!!   


Here's to this great community ... 

Hilary Melton-Butcher
Positive Letters Inspirational Stories

Wednesday 19 November 2014

Turner, the Tate, Art and Science, "Mr Turner" - the film …



Turner – the tubby man, the genius, the visionary … so many epithets have been used to describe ‘the greatest English painter’, or at least one of … depending on your predeliction …
 
The poster for the film

Turner abounds at the moment … The Late Turner Exhibition at the Tate, more earlier Turners upstairs in the galleries, comparisons with Constable, who also has an Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and then across the tube stations and hoardings for the film, “Mr Turner”, released on Halloween – I wanted to write this post before I saw the film.


Turner: a self-portrait

In recent years I’ve been to see a few Turner Exhibitions – at Greenwich “Turner and the Sea”, down here on the south coast at Brighton … a small intimate Exhibition relative to the development of the early 1800s seaside resort.




I am a casual visitor … who enjoys the experience of learning more, and learning some … obviously I know of Turner … but when I see adjectives describing his colours as brimstone, brick dust, spinachie, eggy, fishy …
 
Fogo, NewFoundland, from Brimstone head

… against Turner’s favourite, but highly toxic, chrome yellow …


…. or his paintings as sublime landscapes, fiery engines, tempestuous seas, disruptive artworks … the painter crossed many boundaries – experimenting and experiencing life in the early 1800s.


Chrome Yellow in the art work
 "Shipwreck - The Minotaur"
 Turner was born in the same year as Jane Austen, though he lived another 44 years – but he was born into the rough and tumble of Covent Garden ... 


... his father was a barber and wigmaker … so Turner would see many faces and characters coming into his father’s shop for a hair shave, faces trimmed, or wigs refurbished … these trades essential in the time of ‘lice’ …
Hogarth's "Five Orders of Periwigs"
1761 


Turner was uneducated, his manners poor and he expressed liberal feelings … however he had a greater vision than his contemporaries …


He was born in the age of sail (1775) and died in the age of steam (1851) … he chronicled the times … the black belching smoke of the tugboat … the fiery furnaces of the new factories …


… the stormy tumultuous seas of the new age of exploration and travel … the fascination with the forces of nature and ‘our’ obsession with these forces …


"The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her
last berth to be broken up" 1839
Turner embraced, investigated, inquired into all things … he travelled extensively and continued to do so into old age … he tested, trialled, created anew, absorbing all the triggers of the age … he was never afraid to try …



The Industrial Revolution had started … and would rush ahead, leaving the Romanticists in its wake … Turner understood the human ingenuity being unleashed into 19th century Britain …

Modern Rare Earth Pigments

He discussed pigments with Michael Faraday – the fiery reds, chrome yellows: the colours of industry;


Turner gave lectures on perspectives … he had always been interested in the geometric rules of art …


Other lecturers were not ignored at Somerset House … the scientific gathering place for both artists and scientists …


Turner's use of the sun and light on landscape

William Herschel in 1801 gave a lecture on “the sun” – Turner listened and then went off and painted a masterpiece “The Festival upon the Opening of the Vintage of Macon” …


Luke Howard, a chemist and amateur meteorologist, gave a lecture in 1802 on clouds and how he categorised them … Turner in due course painted his series of Storm Clouds …


BeaufortHurricane Scale 12
Francis Beaufort, after years at sea … recording his interest in weather charts, also was part of the scientific set … Turner had always had a fascination with the sea … reflected in the names of his paintings: Storm Clouds, Twilight, Trees in a strong Breeze …


… as he had too with the powerful forces of nature or human intervention in the era of the Industrial Revolution …


Royal Institution, Albemarle Street -
where Davy's lectures were given
Humphrey Davy’s lectures gave rise to the first street lights – in 1807 Gas Lamps were lit in Pall Mall to enable the large audience to find their way to Albemarle Street, where the lectures were held.



Charles Babbage, the polymath, who is best remembered for originating the concept of the programmable computer … we can surmise what Turner, Babbage and Steve Jobs might have got up to in the 21st century …

 
Babbage's Difference Engine
What developments – yet Turner travelled all over Europe, always with a sketch book, crayon or paints on hand … to record, note, draft ideas … he never rested, never relaxed … always pondering …


Turner could see the order in the chaos … that was everything to do with the scientific discoveries that were changing our understanding of the forces of nature … the specialisations within science were yet to come …


This difficult, eccentric, flawed in many ways, man … gave us sublime, passionate and spiritual art that entrances us today – as seen in the many exhibitions, tv programmes, and by Olafur Eliasson, the Icelander’s excursion into Turner’s colour palette – so well explained in the adjunct hall at the Tate.


Olafur Eliasson - three of Turner's palettes
see more here



Turner was pugnacious, self-confident … refusing to sell works of art towards the end of his life – determined that they should make a collection for the British nation – now held at the Tate.





However he suffered from Parkinsons and drank to control the tremors … he had diabetes, cataracts, chronic fatigue – possibly caused by scurvy; he gained weight and lost his teeth – as his death mask confirms.


The cataracts probably came from the poisonous substances in the pigments he used … his later paintings overdo the harsh yellow … perhaps because oranges and yellows are the last colours a person with cataracts sees before he goes blind.

"Rain, Steam and Speed - the Great
Western Railway" (1844)

But he never gave up, he persevered … and for that we are grateful … who would think of painting a hare on the railway track in his 1844 “Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway” …



Albert Durer: Young Hare 1502
… to depict speed … a hare can run at 35 mph, a horse: the only known human conveyance, made 4 mph, while here was the train forging out of the distance at a thundering pace of 40 mph and getting faster …


Turner left a huge legacy of works … encompassing many sciences and understandings of the day …


Timothy Spall, portraying the artist, in the new film by Mike Leigh researched and studied all he could to faithfully characterise Turner …


Spall has an A in art A-level from school … but used to spend a great deal of time visiting the Tate … for the film he took art lessons for two years … life drawing, still life, speed drawing, working in ink, watercolour and then oils …


William and his sister
Caroline Herschel
Spall suddenly understood the enormous concentration that was required of the great artists to make such large paintings … Rubens, Remrandt, Pousin, Claude Lorrain – a huge influence on Turner


Turner read books too ... Mary Somerville, the mathematician, and he discussed her publication “On Connexion of the Physical Sciences” (1834), which noted that electric currents would always affect a ship, wherever it was in the ocean.


The effect of iron filings experiments – used to show magnetism and electromagnetic fields … impacted so much on Turner that he painted a visual representation in his “Snow Storm” painting …



Iron filings and magnetic field

 …  in “Snow Storm – Steam Boat off a Harbour’s Edge” by studying it … you can see Turner was on the deck, you can see he went to the top of the mast … you know Turner was there …


 
Turner's "Snow Storm - Steam Boat
off a Harbour's Edge"

Turner manifested this incredible painting that shows the sea as a vast uncontrollable force and yet that underneath the chaos there is real regularity … the waves have a hairy quality, like iron filings in a magnetic field …


Turner had found a new way of painting and had created a visual language to express nature’s hidden forces …



An early Turner (1803)
Calais Pier
Turner chronicled all of these changes … reminding the Georgians and particularly the Victorians that they needed to keep up with the times, to embrace the new … Turner in his use of the maelstrom of paint stood out from the crowd …


With these recent exhibitions, discussions and now the film … will remind us of what a great visionary Turner became, and how his paintings heralded a new world … which we 150 years into that future actually can see today.


on at the Tate until
25 January 2015
 I hope you can all get to see the film, and in time get to other Turner exhibitions wherever you are in the world …


Hilary Melton-Butcher
Positive Letters Inspirational Stories

Saturday 15 November 2014

Blog Sandwich Update 4 - Eastbourne Pier ...



During my trial and tribulation of trips to the Tower – should be easy really … usually they just transport you there!  One of my failed rail journeys when the signalling had gone haywire …

What happened to me?


… I decided instead a walk to the pier on a sunnyish day to ‘inspect’ the damage, have a coffee and see what was happening, which offered more promise than hanging around at the train station.



This is how I'm meant to
 look -  my Victorian lion
embellishment blazing a
trail -  no not that burning one!



The Pier has to an extent re-opened … the burnt shell is cordoned off – but they can work from the underneath – and the walkways let us view the damage ...








Still Fishing!
... while getting to the end of the pier to fish should we wish, to have tea and cakes, visit the nightclub (no thanks), see the Camera Obscura (another day), or do a little gift shopping in the tourist trap are now possible.




Gifts ... I did walk round and found
a couple of cards .. just what I needed!


It is over 4 months since the pier caught fire … they think that it was arson – but are still working on the case … 





30 July 2014


... however on talking to one of the waitresses in the tea-shop … she said it was all very orderly and definitely not dangerous – until the ‘Blue Room’ actually caught fire.





Nuts, fruits, Turkish and Greek treats -
one of the summer kiosks on the sea front



The ‘Blue Room’ was originally a dance hall, before being turned into the amusement arcade – the ‘popular addition’ to piers after the War.







The Ironwork to be dismantled during
November and December


Two enormous cranes, one on each side of the pier, will move into place on the beach towards the end of the month to dismantle the Victorian iron shell, scheduled for completion by Christmas.






Cheerful summer planting
with some baskets from one of the
stall holders - not normally seen at the front
Then, once the promised funding is in place, the new building will be constructed – this may be on two floors, though the façade has to be similar to the original structure – as it was a Grade II* listed building.




So I’ve included some photos from early September and recently at the end of October … next instalment will be when it’s repaired and open again for business …


One of my iphone photos appearing in my tidal
zone post in April ... the Blue Room is hardly visible
here - the Camera Obscura stands out


The carpet gardens are a draw to the seafront, while the promenades offer tarmac walks, or stretches on to our pebbly beach …


This is the lower tidal zone and so is sandy ... higher up it is pebbly protecting the sea-front against the winter storms and high tides ...


You can see our tidal zones and the beach front in my Z post from this year’s A-Z Challenge: Aspects of British …




Hilary Melton-Butcher
Positive Letters Inspirational Stories