Make Bread Not War
I’ve not posted much here lately, and I wonder if that might be at least partly due to the state of the World right now.
Actually, posting to my blog, LinkedIn and other social media has seemed a bit of a trivial activity when people are being bombed, shot, starved in new and inventive ways by the worst world leaders I think we might ever have had. However, one small act I have been undertaking is to try to post pictures on Bluesky with a more positive message.
Make Bread Not War and Make Cake Not War have been more regular themes of mine over on that platform (which I use not because I’m popular there, but because it’s as far away from Meta as I can get my social media to be).
The basic message is obviously inspired by John Lennon’s “Make Love Not War” slogan of the early 1970s. In my case I wanted to bring the message to social media, without the risk of upsetting anyone. And who can be upset by pictures of bread and cake?
This exercise is also encouraging me to get better at baking. I’ve been making bread for around 15 years now, but I still make mistakes and can still improve. I usually bake once a week, making enough to get us through to when I can bake again, freezing a surplus which gets defrosted as we go.
Cake baking is a relatively new thing for me, but I enjoy the process and, as with the bread, I LOVE the results!
In the case of bread, I’ve reached the point where I just don’t enjoy shop-bought bread anymore. On the rare occasions that I have to buy supermarket bread, I find even the poshest, most expensive variety is nasty. If I have to eat it for a few days, I just start to feel weird! It’s worth checking out the ingredients on mass-produced bread because all those additives are there to make up for the loss of nutrients and the break-neck speed at which the bread has to be manufactured in order to hit the profit margin the supermarkets want.
So while my little campaign is about reminding us all to be more tolerant and peaceful, it’s also a reminder that we can make simple changes in our lives which will bring us joy, while also ensuring we eat more healthily. Maybe the two are connected, since I understand Trump is a massive fan of McDonalds’ food. I use the term ‘food’ loosely there. Perhaps ‘matter’ is a better term. But maybe it’s eating that rubbish that makes Trump so angry all the time? Who can know.
So while none of my readers (to the best of my knowledge) are engaged in starting wars, it would be excellent to know if any of you bakes bread, cakes or anything else that brings you pleasure and nutrition. Comment or drop me a line if you do!