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Greek was only the beginning.
Now, equally luscious and nuanced artisanal yogurts are coming onto the market here. The success of thick Greek-style yogurt has encouraged small dairies to roll out French, Bulgarian, Icelandic and Russian styles, as well as yogurts made from the milk of small herds of organic cows, sheep, goats, and water buffalo. Yogurt tends to be less labor-intensive and more profitable than cheese, so it has become an important sideline for many small-scale cheesemakers.
What most unites the distinct varieties is that they tend not to contain stabilizers widely used by commercial makers, and are as a result liquid and silky. Most artisans use less sugar for their flavored yogurt than commercial makers, making them healthier but with a shorter shelf life. Longer fermentation yields a tangier flavor and more digestion-aiding probiotic bacteria. The bonus: While artisanal yogurts often taste richer and creamier than commercial varieties, their calories count is on par.
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If you see a fairy ring
In a field of grass,
Very lightly step around,
Tiptoe as you pass;
Last night fairies frolicked there,
And they're sleeping somewhere near.
If you see a tiny fae
Lying fast asleep,
Shut your eyes and run away,
Do not stay or peep;
And be sure you never tell,
Or you'll break a fairy spell.
~Author Unknown
Via
The Dutchess
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The art of journaling.
What do Winston Churchill, Andrew Carnegie, Theodore Roosevelt, and Sir Edmund Hilary have in common? They were all great men, but they also all kept journals. Journaling is a wonderful reflective and therapeutic practice. It allows one to pour out one's emotions and thoughts privately and it also helps one keep a straight head. Not only that, but it's a great record for posterity.
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The imprisonment of Margaret of Anjou. According to historical novelist Susan Higginbotham:
Two records for 1475, Margaret’s last year of captivity, are of interest. Sometime in 1475, Margaret joined the London Skinners’ Fraternity of the Assumption of the Virgin: her membership is commemorated by a miniature (shown above) in the fraternity’s records. Katherine Vaux, Margaret’s faithful lady-in-waiting, also joined the fraternity that year and may be depicted alongside Margaret in the miniature. It may well be, then, that Margaret was residing in London at this time, and that her imprisonment was not rigorous. She certainly had the ability to petition for a papal dispensation, for on November 18, 1475, she was granted one.
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Woven into the fabric of the Church.
Imagine a first-time-ever, five-week museum exhibition with a subject as familiar as Raphael (1483-1520). That's what London's Victoria & Albert Museum is serving up, displaying four of the master's Sistine Chapel tapestries alongside the museum's own cartoons (i.e., immense drawings created as models) for those grand woven works. Even Raphael never got to see his paintings, depicting scenes from the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul, next to the finished tapestries.
Commissioned by Lorenzo de'Medici's son, Pope Leo X , in 1515, the tapestries followed the earlier Sistine Chapel decorations, including Michelangelo's renowned ceiling frescoes, commissioned by Leo X's predecessor, Julius II. Seven of the woven works were unveiled in the Sistine Chapel with great ceremony in 1519, and due to the tapestries' fragility the Vatican's entire set of 10 is displayed only on special occasions.
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La vie en rose.
"Pink at dawn, red at midday, mauve at twilight" — so goes an old saying describing Toulouse, an architectural marvel of rose — pink brick on the banks of the Garonne River. Just five hours from Paris by TGV high-speed train, France's vibrant Ville Rose is a sunny Southern belle of a city, famous for its gaiety, gastronomy and cosmopolitan charm.
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St. Louis IX saw himself as a father to his people, a duty which he took very seriously.( He had zero tolerance for blasphemy or lewd speech, it seems).
Jean Sieur de Joinville relates:
...THE King loved God and His sweet Mother so well that if anybody within his reach used any foul language or lewd oath about God or His Mother, the King caused them to be very severely punished. For this I saw him cause a goldsmith at Cesarea to be put on a ladder in his shirt and breeches, with the entrails of a pig hung round his neck, right up to his ears. I heard say, after I returned from over-seas that he had a burgher of Paris seared through the nose and lips for the same offence, but I did not see it. And the holy King said, " I would gladly be branded with a hot iron, on condition that all lewd oaths were done away with out of my kingdom."
I was about twenty-two years in his company; and never heard him swear by God, nor by His Mother nor by His Saints; but whenever he wanted to affirm anything, he used to say, " Truly it was thus," or " Truly it shall be thus."
Never did I hear him name the devil, unless it were in some book where the name came in, or in the life of the Saints of whom the book was speaking. And a great disgrace it is to the realm of France, and to the King who allows it, that a man can hardly open his lips without saying " Deuce take it!" and a great abuse it is of language to devote to the devil a man or woman who was given to God at baptism. In the household of Joinville, whoever uses such an expression, pays for it with a buffet or a slap, and such bad language has been almost entirely put down.
Before he went to bed, he used to send for his children, and would tell them stories of the deeds of good kings and emperors; and he used to tell them that they must take example by people such as these. He would tell them too, about the deeds of wicked rich men, who by their lechery and their rapine and their avarice, had lost their kingdoms. "And these things," he used to say, " I tell you as a warning to avoid them, lest you incur the anger of God."
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