Image from https://blog.creationlife.com/unity-in-diversity/ Life Together – Paul’s Challenge to Us. Gal 3:28 - There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. It goes without saying, that this is a very challenging verse. It would have challenged the early church and the people listening to Paul, but it also challenges us. Here we have a verse which is basically saying that there shouldn’t be any barriers between Christians, but there are all sorts of divisions in our society and in our world, and these divisions also have a way of affecting our church life. Paul is challenging the early church and he is challenging to us today to be different. So, what divides us and where are the barriers? A starting place that can help us understand these divisions is our equalities legislation.  The Equality Act 2010 aims to tackle disadvantage and discrimination in the UK. ...

  St Philips Sermon, Sunday 6 th March 2022 Deuteronomy 26: 1-11, Rom 10: 8b – 13, Luke 4: 1-13 In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus faces temptation in the wilderness. We can relate to this because we have all experienced a kind of wilderness during the past two years. It has been a wilderness of Covid, of grief and loss. Things may have improved but the future of this virus is still uncertain. So, we are free in a sense, but cautious as we learn to live with Covid. During the pandemic, we still experienced the familiar difficulties of our world. Our world is always turbulent. Social injustice, war, civil unrest, and environmental challenges are not new, and sometimes the violence and the suffering of the world can feel relentless, and now we have war here in Europe on our doorstep. We learn to live with the difficulties of our world. It is part of the human experience, but this constant turbulence has a way of eroding wellbeing even when the troubles may not affect us d...

I have started watching Anime. I love manga and graphic novels, and anime can be hugely entertaining. The characters are always so vibrant and there are some really great storylines out there. Recently I started watching 'Yuri on Ice'. Released in 2016, this anime tells the story of an unsuccessful Japanese figure skater - Yuri Katsuki - who is badly defeated at the skating Grand Prix final. He leaves the US where he has been training and studying and returns to Japan to lick his wounds and decide what to do next. Yuri loves eating Port Cutlet Bowls other wise known as Katsudon. Yuri has a skating idol who has won five skating World championships and the Grand Prix Final and lots of other stuff. He is the Russian skating god Viktor Nikiforov. Yuri has always idolised Viktor and emulated him from a very young age and he does so again. He learns the same routine that won Viktor the gold medal at same Grand Prix Final at which Yuri w...

I love nuts of all kinds and so I was quite excited to try out Paul Hollywood's Peanut Bread. As you can see from the photos about it urned out ok but it was quite heavy. A bit too heavy for my liking but I still ate it. Despite the heaviness it was nice and tasty, even more so when eaten with peanut butter. So then I decided to make Peanut Butter cookies. This is another Paul Hollywood recipe which I saw him promote on Facebook.  These are lovely. Full of flavour and sugary, with a nice nutty crunch. I have stashed half of them in the freezer for a rainy nutty day.

I decided to make Sausage and Onion pastries which is a recipe from one of the cook books by Mary Berry. In her recipe, Mary uses ordinary sausage meat but I decided to do something different and I used goat 🐐  meat.  A few months ago I saw a program with Paul Hollywood (yes him again) and he visited an organic goat farm and made a really great pie. Paul Hollywood is always making really great pies and puds on TV and actually has a series by that name.  So I decided to order some organic goat meat from the place he visited. https://thegourmetgoatfarmer.co.uk/ Apparently goat meat is becoming very popular and I have come across news articles online which question why we don't eat more goat meat. They also seem to be positioning goat meat as the 'next big thing', saying that eating goat meat could save the planet.  Whatever! Some of us have been eating goat meat for years. I didn't need to buy goat meat on line, because it is actual...

Achieving Lamination! I decided to venture into the world of fussy pastry and make Almond Pastries from 'How to Bake' by the baking maestro Paul Hollywood. I call this fussy pastry because you need to make it the day before, or at least 8 hours before using it. The proper name for this pastry is Danish Pastry. Not only do you need to make the pastry in advance, you also need to laminate the pastry. (Yes that is my measuring tape) Laminated dough according to Wikipedia ..... is a culinary preparation consisting of many thin layers of dough separated by butter, produced by repeated folding and rolling. Such doughs may contain more than eighty layers'..... I don't know if my pastry contains 80 layers but the rolling, folding and chilling the pastry is really tiring.  Maestro Hollywood in his recipe recommends about four times of folding and rolling, and you need to let the pasty rest and chill in the fridge between each roll/fold. Fo...

I decided to try this recipe from Jamie Oliver. I have seen him 'make' this on the Food Network channel several times over, because they love to repeat shows on that channel.  After watching it several times I was very intrigued. The  'recipe' is here.  https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fruit-recipes/frozen-grapes-chocolate-grappa/ I don't drink regularly.  I drink communion wine (obviously) and sometimes a bit of Ginger wine and the occasional Baileys.  I attended a wine tasting session in Australia a couple of years ago. I was there for a conference and someone thought wine tasting would be a nice group activity. Not for me, but it would have been if I drank wine. Anyway it was ok. I wasn't a party pooper but the wine was wasted on me. I normally try different mulled drinks and the occasional alcho pops during Christmas but the reason I like these is simply the sugar. I do not have a discerning palate when it comes to wine and I really don't ...