Life on the edge

Over the past few weeks I have met a number of like minded individuals when it comes to 'extra curricular activities' Most of them involve some kind of danger, be it fire breathing, shooting or knife throwing there is always the adrenaline rush of having survived the latest feat.

For as long as I can remember I have always enjoyed the idea (and also usually the practice) of living dangerously. The base instinct to leap before looking (or to look, see that it's unsafe and then leap anyway) has been with me from childhood and I had the joy of sharing that with two older brothers who to put it bluntly would make me seem rather tame at times.

It may surprise you to discover that this tendency has at times put me in rather tricky situations... As a fearless (or simply misguided) young teenager I was suspended from my school for breaking out of my boarding house in the middle of the night (yes I went to boarding school) in order to climb around on the roofs and see if I could make the infamous 'ML1-ML2 gap!' 

Our Modern languages lessons were taught in prefab temporary huts that were situated a few meters apart from one another and it was qudos to you if you could scale to the roof of ML1 and make the jump to ML2. 

This kind of attitude might sound reckless, fool hardy or even outright insane but I think it's important to make a distinction here.

The desire to live life on the edge is not simply to try and do the most dangerous thing that can be found, such a lifestyle would result in death very quickly. For example skydiving without a parachute is 110% more dangerous that skydiving with a parachute but no one in their right mind would do that.

There is indeed a fine line between outright idiocy and a calculated, well rewarded risk. Now this line is of course down to perspective, something that is key in photography. For example from the perspective given in these pictures it might be inferred that we were essentially being a bunch of idiots, however what the pictures don't show you are the two foam fire extinguishers, the fire blanket, the bucket of water, the nurse and the first aider standing by just in case something went wrong (which it didn't).

When things are in perspective the question changes from 'are you sure that's a good idea?' to 'are you sure that you can't do it bigger?' Just to be clear here I am not advocating senseless risk taking, what I am saying is that if the risk has been removed why oh why are we not pushing this life to it's limits?

How do I remove risk? You get in line with Gods will. Never has there been a more reliable safety net, never has their been a stronger rope or fool proof protection than standing squarely in the will of God. Through the ages there have been some people who have understood this, there perspective has been shaped by God and they can see clearly. To the world looking on they look like fools. When Jesus hung on the cross bleeding out he was openly mocked by the people who passed him by because it looked like he had been a fool. He had played with fire and been burned. What he saw however was something quite different. He saw God's perfect and pleasing will and he understood it to the point of going beyond the grave to stand in it. He trusted that his father would be his ultimate safety, even from beyond the grave and the world stood in awe 3 days later when God did the impossible and rose Jesus back to life. Where were the mocking passers by now? Jesus lived a far more radical life than any of us and he is the one who quite rightly gets the glory. 

As Christians this same power that raised Christ from the dead lives in us. This is such a small well known biblical principal but oh the magnitude of it! How quickly we skim over and how much of life we miss. We are called to live on the edge, to go far beyond the boundaries of the pattern of this world, to live dangerously for Christ, knowing that he has got our back. 

NB. The pictures in this post were not taken by me but two friends from college. Thank you Tim and Andy

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Woodland

Walking under a canopy of green, taking deep refreshing breaths of the pre-autumnal forest air. Meandering along dirt roads, strewn with fallen pines, taking in the familiar smell of the forest that evokes childhood memories of Sunday afternoon walks.

Dappled sunlight breaks through the canopy, dances on spiders webs, casts a rainbow.

The ground littered with life; bugs, fungi, spiders - the longer I look the more I see. Passing patches of ferns the aroma shifts, the next course of the sensory feast is served.

The aged and weathered trees stand firm, gnarled roots stretch deep into the ground, the trunk clothed in lichen and branches draped in Ivy.

The noise of the world outside is dampened, absorbed in all the undergrowth, the serene call of birds is carried through the woodland and the soft scuffling of unseen animals emanates from the road side.

Blackberries on the verges are sparse enough to make it feel like an earned reward while snacking on them through the journey.

A yearning grows, the desire to remain. To rest in the lush, vast green of this sprawling world. The urge to sing, to smile and enjoy the creators handiwork, to revel in its beauty and celebrate its complexity.

After a thoroughly enjoyable perambulation we headed back home for a cuppa. Thanks to you my friends who organised the trip and drove us to the forest of Dean.

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Cider

There are a few avenues that can be used to justify the brewing of cider... The fact that the colleges alcohol ban has just been lifted, I come from the west country so it's almost mandatory, we were given a crate of pairs for free or the fact that brewing alcohol has been a tradition within Christian institutes  for centuries. But the fact that it is just an interesting/amusing thing to do was probably a more significant factor in this evenings activities.

It takes a surprisingly short amount of time to conceptualise, plan and execute the production of cider. From the discovery that a crate of pears was up for grabs to sealed jars of pear juice waiting to ferment was no more than an hour. Tidy work for a Wednesday evening.

While making cider is an art form; developed, tweaked and perfected by professionals (monks) over the years it is actually very simple to make a plain old brew. With a 5 minute google search it is easy to find a recipe that involves less than 3 ingredients (results may vary)

Of course when a whole crate of fruit presents itself, it comes with the opportunity to experiment! For the first batch we decided to go purist - no added yeast, nothing fancy just pear juice and touch of sugar... okay a fist full of sugar.

Things seemed to go our way, we happened upon an old juicer (it required a thorough cleaning) which saved us the curfuffle of pressing the pears by hand. In hindsight it would have probably been a pretty spectacular fail if we hadn't found the juicer.

Juicing pretty much anything tends to leave one in possession of rather a lot of pulp, we have thought about it a bit and a few ideas have been banded about including pear flavored home made sausages, pear jam, pear cake?! Anyway if you have a good idea for what to do with it and better still if you can provide proper instructions/ recipe then maybe we will make it ... maybe.

Until then David is going to have to figure out a green solution for disposing of it.

This is the slightly disgusting-looking result of 'juicing' the pairs... then just to sieve and store it

In other news our South African got bored of waiting and raided our warm dry cupboard full of meat ... the results were rather enjoyable...

So now you can know that the instructions in my previous post do actually result in delicious biltong. We now have room to experiment with some more exotic recipes.

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Biltong

My time in South Africa gave me a taste for a number of different things but among the most treasured flavours lies biltong. South Africa is famed for its love of red meat (something that I get along with just fine) and it is therefore unsurprising that they have managed to produce some of the more creative ways of preparing it. At its invention biltong was purely a practical solution to the problem of storing meat for long periods of time without the ability to freeze it. What it has now become is something of an art form of infusing meat with the richest and most mouth watering flavours. 

For this reason when a friend at college asked me if I would be interested in constructing a 'biltong box' it didn't really require much deliberation. (Yes he is a South African)

While meat in the UK is still WAY more expensive than it is in SA it is still significantly cheaper to make your own biltong than it is to buy it from a south African food dealer - plus it is a lot more fun.

So before term started we decided to get the real work out of the way first and construct ourselves a biltong box and put it to use. As I type 2kgs of beef is gently marinating in the fridge patiently waiting to get strung up and dried out. 

Making biltong is actually very easy and taking inspiration from another friend who likes to blog about her recipes I though I would give you a little run down of how to produce this legendary snack ...

Constructing the box:

• a cardboard box
• some doweling
• some form of hook (we are using paperclips) 
• a fan
• a dry, well ventilated room
• some duct tape (endlessly useful)

The idea is to construct a small structure that allows you to hang pieces of meat that will be able to dangle freely without being contaminated with bugs, dust or any other less tasty substance.

We simply poked doweling through both sides of the cardboard box and taped up all the joins to make it more stable.

Cutting a hole that the fan will blow through to circulate air

Preparing the meat:

Beef is a pretty safe bet and you should probably stick to that, get as much or as little as you want but it is likely that whatever amount you buy you will later regret not getting more.

• Salt (really quite a lot but it depends on the amount of meat you have)
• Spices - this is where it gets fun because you can really do whatever you want, whatever you think will taste good as a marinade then you can use that. A fairly safe bet is to go for black pepper, whole coriander and chili powder but many will also add vinegar sugar and a whole host of other ingredients.

First cut your meat into ribbons, the size will probably depend to the size of your box but a decent steak thickness should be about right. Place the meat into a tray for marinating. Rub the salt evenly into the meat, now take your various spices and rub them in too.
If you do use black pepper it is best to get the actual seeds and crush them with a pestle and mortar rather than using a pepper mill as this will be too fine, the same goes for the whole coriander.

Put the tray into a fridge (cling film it unless you want your fridge to stink of meat) and leave it there for a day or two. Now take it out and hang it in your box and leave it to dry for between 5-10 days depending on how dry you want it.

You can also simply search for others biltong recipes to find one that takes your fancy more than this one - there are a whole host of them out there.



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