Webs of connection

We have a new reason to celebrate----An in Hanoi sent us a greeting in honor of the Vietnamese Lunar New Year. It's a new holiday for me, one of the many benefits of being part of our little worldwide community. Thanks, An!

Let's celebrate with cake! How about this new one ---- Maria in Georgia sent the recipe for a special treat she created to celebrate eight years with her husband: Maria's Anniversary Cake

Continuing our trip around the world, let's go from Vietnam to Georgia to Germany, where Christel has found a new website, "Cooking with Plants", that has a mailing address in-----Australia!----in Queensland, just east (and south) of Vietnam. So we really have gone around the world this time. Here is Christel's email:
Dear Eve,
due to a recommendation of Amy Mackey ( food-coach at Engine2 ) I found Anja with her wonderful website: http://www.cookingwithplants.com
And here is her facebook-account: https://www.facebook.com/Cookingwithplants
Anja suffered from a severe heart-disease, she searched the internet for help and found information about the China study, then her plant-based-adventure started. Her recipe-videos are carefully made and Anja is gifted in easy-to-grasp-teaching.
Maybe you will enjoy
Christel

Picturing our trip around the globe today reminded me of a movie I saw 30 years ago called The Global Brain. It showed Earth from space, showing the cities and highways looking like neurons in the brain with dendrites reaching in all directions to connect them. It foresaw the Internet, which was just beginning then, and suggested that the interconnections of people everywhere were indeed becoming a global brain with untold possibilities for the evolution of consciousness on our planet. I just checked and the movie still exists--- http://www.peterrussell.com/GB/globalbrain.php ---along with numerous other websites on this topic, including a Global Brain Institute.

While musing about the threads of connection we joyful cooks are adding to the global brain, I looked at an article sent to us by Betsy in California, called "The Ties That Bind: on Mycelia, Dirt, Microbes, Bears, Bees and Remarkably Unfrozen Fish". It's a fascinating article you can read or watch (there's a 26-minute video in the middle of it) that raised my awareness about the wisdom encoded in the mycelial "brain" in the soil under our feet. Mycelium is that thready, webby white material you see in the soil and such places as rotting logs. It's the essence of fungus and it is mostly out of sight but it manifests in all the variety of mushrooms we see above ground. Mycelia can stretch for miles and are fundamental for the growth of all plants, carrying chemical instructions for their wellbeing. And----it turns out --- the well-being of bees! This surprising discovery may be the key to saving our pollinators (and ourselves.) Do take a look:
http://trackernewsdots.tumblr.com/post/110459597464/the-ties-that-bind-o...,

With gratitude for worldwide webs----above and below ground----connecting all beings, one way and another--

Happy cooking,
Eve