Rabanadas tipsy cinnamon bread slices are similar in appearance to egg-bread. While they’re normally served at Christmas time in Portugal, in in her book Piri Piri Starfish Tessa Kiros suggests that they’re ‘also nice to make on a morning when you wake up early and can’t get back to sleep.’ Rabanados or tipsy slices should be made with tightly crumbed Portuguese bread, baguette or ciabatta bread.

Ingredients

You will need the following ingredients to serve two slices of Rabanadas: 1 large egg, a couple of drops of vanilla extract, 2 tablespoons of caster sugar, 125ml of milk, 125ml of cream and 2 slices of slightly stale or day-old bread (use tightly crumbed strong bread —each slice should be 8cm thick).

The syrup requires the following ingredients: 185ml of water, 1 cinnamon stick (1cm in length), 1 long strip each of lemon rind and orange rind, 2 tablespoons of caster sugar and 3 tablespoons of ruby port.

You will also need some butter for the frying (about 2 tablespoons) and some ground cinnamon for dusting.

Prepare

Slice the crusts off the bread. Place the egg, sugar, vanilla extract, cream and milk into a flat bowl. Whisk the ingredients together and then place the bread into the mixture to soak. Spoon the liquid over the bread and allow it to stand for one hour.

Prepare the syrup next by placing the lemon and orange rind into a small pot, together with the cinnamon, sugar and water. Stir the ingredients together over a low heat until the sugar dissolves.

Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for a couple of minutes before adding the port. Keep simmering until the mixture starts to thicken. Remove the pot from the stove as soon as the liquid takes on a syrup-like consistency.

Fry the ‘tipsy slices’

Place the butter in a non-stick frying pan and place over a medium heat. When the butter has melted, shake off the excess liquid from the bread and fry it. Once the bread’s underside turns golden-brown, turn the slice over and cook the other side.

Remove from the pan once both sides of the bread are firm and golden in colour. Fry the second slice in the same way.

Serve

Place the fried bread slices onto a serving plate and drizzle the syrup over the tops. Dust the slices with ground cinnamon and serve immediately.

Does all your jewellery turn brown no matter how expensive it is? Although a lot of people experience discolouration of jewellery or skin with cheap items, certain people also see an effect on their silver or white gold jewellery. The answer to your problems could lie in a number of things, be it the quality of the jewellery you are buying or the chemicals in your skin. Make sure you know why your jewellery starts to tarnish and discover simple ways to fix tarnished jewellery.

Silver

Silver jewellery tends to tarnish, with the rate this happends dependent on the type of silver worn and how frequently you wear the item. Most silver jewellery is coated with rhodium plating, which can chip off and result in dull looking jewellery. As solid silver is very soft it is normally mixed with sterling silver which has a tendency to discolour. Make sure you know exactly what you are getting because silver plated jewellery will discolour quickly. Faux silver jewellery is hard to spruce up while solid silver can be rubbed with some silver polish or homemade remedies like toothpaste.

Gold

White gold also often has a rhodium plating that can chip off and discolour jewellery. To improve the look of your jewellery, you will simply need to get it recoated with rhodium on a regular basis. With gold and white gold rings and jewellery the test is in the quality – make sure you are purchasing high quality items that are not just plated but are pure gold. If, however, you work outside, your jewellery could just be turning brown because it is dirty and so should be cleaned regularly.

Your skin

If you have a real problem with discolouration in your jewellery it could be a chemical imbalance in your skin. Sweaty skin can cause corrosion in silver and gold jewellery, causing them to discolour and so they should be removed when engaging in physical activities. Chemicals such as nitric acid can also cause black stains on your skin and jewellery and if you work with these chemicals make sure you wash your hands regularly. Certain antibiotics and medications can also cause a chemical reaction between your skin and jewellery causing the metal to tarnish. People who have experienced this problem should always opt for jewellery in a higher karat as it contains less metal elements and a greater volume of pure gold or silver.

Imagine having limitless amounts of energy so that you can do all the things you want to do. Some people, like Judith Wills believe that ‘once you finally tap into life as you truly want to live it, you will find that energy really is infinite.’  She says that you don’t have to feel that you have just ‘so much’ energy that will allow you to do just ‘this many’ things and no more. Whatever positively stimulates, motivates or pleases you can energise you, too.

Book ‘me time’

To achieve the life you want, you’ve got to make time for yourself without feeling guilty about it. How can you push back your boundaries if you never have space to feel, think, plan or act on your needs?

Put an hour aside for yourself every day and allow at least three hours of ‘me time’ every week. Try to fit in an entire day of ‘me time’ once a month where you do nothing other than what you want to do.

If at all possible, try to book two weeks of just ‘me time’ a year. This is a total of 47 days a year, which, as Judith Wills points out, is ‘a mere 13 percent of your life!’

Get your energy flowing

The lighter side of life is good for you. Spending time with loved ones, laughing, dancing and having fun brings happiness. Happiness then boosts your immune system, which helps you live longer.

Physical activity improves well-being and gets your energy flowing, too. Whatever it is, get your body moving and energise yourself. Use your senses to really look, feel, smell, taste and touch — so that you savour each moment of whatever you’re doing.

Purpose

Judith Wills says that a sense of purpose to the day is as important to your pleasure as all the transitory senses: ‘For true energy, you need to cultivate the habit of waking each day, knowing what you want to achieve.’

Build think time into your day and work on your purpose. Having a sense of purpose and anticipation can activate your emotional energy. If there’s no sense of excitement, you may end up feeling like your life is meaningless and dull.

Balance your think time between daydreaming, self-searching and planning. With regular think time you’ll feel like you are more in control of your life. Wills advises to get into the habit of thinking about all the input that forms your daily life.

Do it

‘Much of what your brain processes may be rubbish, but if even 10 per cent is life-altering it’s well worth doing,’ says Wills. She advises to make it happen and to start now since energy isn’t finite but your life is.

By exploring your potential and maximising the possibilities of your life, you will boost your energy levels tremendously — and experience a sense of fulfillment, too. Add focus to ambition and purpose and you’re sure to achieve the life you want.

A simplified home environment that is free of clutter is a relaxing home. A minimalist environment is not only more appealing to the eye but it is easier to keep clean, too. Of course there are different extremes to living simply. How one arranges one’s space comes down to one’s personal taste and sense of aesthetics. A few pieces of furniture and a vase of flowers may work well in a room for some people while a near empty room may be preferable to others.

Choose quality over quantity

A quality and classic wardrobe allows one to dress up or down and to easily adapt to different seasons. Choosing good quality pieces for a home can gives one the same sense of endurance and style over time.

Rather spend money on a few long lasting beautiful pieces than waste it on cheaper products that are going to date within a few years. The key is to choose pieces with care, knowing that you’ll still love them over time and that you’ll use them often.

Clear the space

Clear flat surfaces leaving only a few well-chosen pieces rather than a countless number of knick knacks, piles of old magazines or paperbacks. Decorations should act as accents to enhance a room rather than ‘fill it up’. Take a look at some traditional Japanese homes for inspiration: a lamp, a single flower in a vase, a porcelain bowl or a picture is all one may need to brighten up an area.

Room by room

If you’re moving into a new home, you’ll have an easier job creating a minimalist environment than somebody who has a full house to deal with. A cluttered house will be more manageable if it is dealt with one room at a time. Start by creating a sense of order and simplicity in one small area and let that inspire you to go on.

Begin by working with your furniture. Create a sense of calm by removing items that don’t enhance your life or the space. You may decide to stick with a few solid pieces in subdued colours, for example. Once you’re down to the essentials you can add things back to your minimalist environment to create the desired effect, but don’t take it too far.

Phillipe Starck is one of the most prolific designers of our age. His creative insight has touched everything from inflatable products to toothbrushes and motorbikes. Educated in France at the École Camondo, he founded his first design firm in 1968. He became art director of Starck the following year, along with Pierre Cardin. Starck later established yoo in 1998 with John Hitchcox and has since been involved in the design of extraordinary hotel and residential spaces across the globe.

Starck’s design process

In the process of improving our lives, design also offers us evidence of our existence. For Phillipe Starck, the design process, which is enabled by human ingenuity and imagination, begins with an idea and ends with a product. He points out that for him this process is never applied in reverse.

‘First you have intuition, which brings vision, which builds an ethic, which will give birth to a concept, and finally, perhaps, which will make a product,’ he says. He explains that the ‘need to question’ is our intuition and our imagination is our vision. Our culture then becomes our ethic.

Add our concepts, which are ‘our beliefs, values, desires, sensibilities, modes of expressions and behaviour.’ And what are we left with? Starck believes these all bring about the manifestation of the ultimate product: Us.

Beauty

In his interview with Thought Economics, Philippe Starck further explores the fundamentals of design and beauty. He suggests that beauty does not exist: ‘I have no respect for this word ‘beauty’. It is too volatile, which means it’s nothing. You can change, whatever time you like, your opinion of what beauty is, and what is beautiful.’

He suggests that this encourages greed in order to give people reasons to buy more as seen in ‘vanity, cynicism, marketing, business, advertising- and everything like that.’  It is for this reason that he says he cannot accept beauty in it’s current form.

Starck says that we have to take care in these times when a chair can be seen as more important than a human being. Whereas before there were fashion victims, there are now design victims. He says he prefers to speak about coherence, harmony and balance of parameters rather than use the word ‘beauty.’

Don’t kill forests to make chairs

Starck warns that we have to prepare for a post plastic era in thirty to forty years when we run out of oil. ‘Some stupid people will say ‘no problem, we shall have bioplastic — we shall make corn, and make bioplastic. No way!’

He explains that killing forests to make fields of corn to put gas in cars and make new Starck plastic chairs is not the way to go, especially considering pending famines. ‘Every day there is a new bio-plastic, and we have a question they cannot answer. Can you eat the component which made this plastic? es? or no? And mainly — it is yes.’

He adds: ‘if you can eat it, we don’t do it.’

Body massage can bring great physical release and relaxation but it also has other powerful health benefits. Not only does massage help boost one’s immune system but it also lowers blood pressure and stress levels. Without release, muscle can be held in a permanent state of tension, which over a prolonged period can leave one feeling tired and tense. If you don’t like the idea of being massaged by somebody else, there’s always the option of self-massage. Read on for some target areas.

Self-massage your scalp

Sit in a relaxed position in a chair. Use the fingers of both hands to apply small circular strokes just above your forehead. Slowly work your way backwards towards the top section of your neck. Continue to work these circular pressure strokes outwards from your neck towards the back of your ears and then up towards your temples.

Self-massage your face

Place some oil on your hands and then start massaging your face by applying light strokes under your jaw. Massage around your jaw area, around your mouth and up towards your cheeks. Continue to work the oil around your temples and your forehead.

Now, applying more pressure, use a couple of fingers on both hands to press your forehead for a few seconds just above your inner eyebrows. Continue to press this way as you work across either side of your forehead, down your temples and across your cheekbones.

Finish with your fingers on either side of your nose and then place your palms over your eyes, pressing very gently.

Self-massage your neck and shoulders

Relax your shoulders and neck while sitting in a chair. Stroke both sides of your spine in your neck area. Start to apply more pressure as you work your way up towards your skull area and down again. Apply pressure in circular movements in the area where your neck joins your skull.

Place your left hand on your right shoulder and exert pressure on your shoulder with your fingers. Work from the back of your shoulder towards your front. Repeat on the other side, applying extra pressure when you find a knot or a tender area.

Self-massage your feet

Sit in a low chair with clean, bare feet. Bend your left knee outwards and place your left foot on your right thigh so that you are able to see the sole of your foot. Cradle your foot with one hand so that your thumb is free and use the other hand to massage your sole.

Begin massaging by applying pressure to your sole with each thumb for a few seconds at a time. Massage your entire sole area methodically, applying additional pressure in tender areas. Work each toe and then stroke the top of your foot. Repeat the same procedure on your other foot.

Self-massage your stomach

Using your fingertips, apply light pressure in circular motions to massage away tension or knots in your stomach area.

To make your own crackers, you’ve got to be keen to roll up your sleeves, pick up your rolling pin and roll – and then keep on rolling! But first you have to attend to making a large dough which is then left to rest for half an hour. Preheat your oven to 260 degrees Celsius while assembling your baking sheets, cooling racks, pizza cutter and a water sprayer, if you have one. This recipe will give you a good 80 semolina crackers.

Preparation

Measure out the following ingredients: 2 cups of coarse semolina, ¾ teaspoon of salt, ¾ cup of lukewarm water and a tablespoon of olive oil. You’ll need some extra sea salt and some additional semolina for dusting your work surface. Also, be sure to use course semolina rather than semolina flour.

Place an oven rack below the centre of the oven and place another rack above the centre. Preheat your oven to 260 degrees Celsius. Organise several baking sheets (or use pizza pans instead), as well as a rack, your water sprayer and a pizza cutter.

Prepare the dough

Process the semolina and the salt in a food processor until well combined. Keep the processor on while you slowly add half of the water. Slowly pour in the oil next before adding the rest of the water. Once the dough comes together into the shape of a ball, process for half a minute and then turn the dough onto a lightly dusted work surface.

Knead the dough a little until it is elastic and smooth, place it in a bowl and cover it with cling film. Rest it for half an hour to two hours. Divide the dough into six equal sections, place two on a dusted work surface and cover the other four pieces.

Roll and bake

Flatten the dough with your hands and roll each piece into a large circular or rectangular sheet to fit your baking sheets or pizza pans. Work from the centre outwards in firm stokes while rolling lightly. Dust your rolling pin if necessary as you turn the dough around after each roll. When the dough is fairly thin, follow the same procedure on the other piece of dough.

Go back to the first piece and roll it out further to achieve a 14 inch circle or a 14 x 8 inch rectangle. Gently place the sheets onto your sheets or pans and sprinkle with sea salt. Cut parallel lines down the dough and across before spritzing with water.

Bake for three minutes, checking after two and a half minutes. The depth of your crackers will determine the baking time. Remove from your oven when the semolina crackers start to go brown underneath and on top.

Finish

Empty your crackers onto a cooling rack and roll out another two batches of dough. Continue until all your dough is used and your crackers are completely cool and crisp. Store in an airtight container.

Speaking to those who are in the retail forex market, one quickly gets the feeling that a large percentage of traders are losing money. Those ‘five per cent’ who aren’t are either breaking even or profiting. A novice may well realize that they’re entering risky territory. More experienced traders often throw in the towel, saying it’s a no-go zone. But with the right frame of mind, discipline and ongoing patience, one can make a success of forex trading.

Groundwork

If you are deadly serious about becoming a forex trader, you may have to consider changing your life. Unlike the movies, successful traders often pack up the partying and take an ‘early to bed, early to rise’ approach to life. A balanced lifestyle, together with a healthy diet and meditation certainly won’t harm your modus operandi.

To trade forex, you need fortitude. That’s because you’re constantly having to deal with an unpredictable and volatile market. This Zen-like approach will help prevent you from burning out on an emotional and physical level.

As for intoxicants, they will only take you further away from the streamlined focus that is required.

Getting started

If you’re keen to get more knowledgable about the subject, read books or consider learning online. Alternatively, have a look at this site for all things forex.

If you’re sure you want to start trading, consider using a demo account to start with. Aim to do virtual trades for a good three months before you consider trading with real money. Get a metatrader demo from your broker. From there, you should have enough confidence to go for the ‘big time’.

Choose a good broker

There are three important success factors at play in forex trading: you, the system you use and your broker. Be careful of opportunistic operators out there. Use a recommended broker in the UK or, if you’d like to go further afield, try the likes of Oanda.com.

Oanda is one of the biggest US brokers and are known for the good service they deliver. For fine attention to detail, check out the Swiss dukascopy.com.

Once you’ve prepared drawings for a project, you can put together a life-size mock-up using sheet wood or any rough wood. This will involve setting up all your machines and tools and deciding on what wood you’re going to use. From there you can purchase your materials and your wood. Be sure to take your time when choosing your wood. Check the condition, grain, edges and size. From there you can start working on sawing and planning your well considered wood.

Choose flawless planks of wood

Whether you use solid wood, rough-sawn boards or prepared boards and sections, you’ll still have to saw the wood to size. Head to your wood supplier and choose desirable wood that isn’t skew or twisted in any way. Also check for wormholes, diseased edges, twisted grains or too many knots.

Check that your chosen board meets your size requirements. It should be wide and thick enough to allow for planing on all sides.

Saw before you plane

Most carpenters use a table saw or a circular saw today but a large hand ripsaw was traditionally used in the past, where the aim was to cut a parallel line to the grain.

A circular saw, band saw or hand saw can be used to cut a waney edge, once a line has been drawn. When you have one well sawn edge, you can adjust the rip fence of the table saw in order to get it parallel with the blade. The distance between the blade and the fence should be equal to the width of the board. Allow for the width of the saw blade and planing waste.

Planing

Surface planing a board refers to the planing of the face edge and the face side so that they are at right angles to one another, as well as smooth. A power planer or a planer thicknesser can be used to achieve this.

Pass the board across the cutters repeatedly while holding the board down flat. Once the face side is smooth and flat, move the guard out of the way. Hold the face against the fence and pass the wood through.

Ewan Morrison’s vision of the publishing industry as we know it seems bleak. The Guardian presented a summary of his views, as delivered at the Edinburgh international book festival. Morrison believes that paper books as they are today will probably come to an end ‘within 25 years the digital revolution’. But what of the future of authors? Although many may vigorously disagree, Morrison believes that ebooks and e-publishing ‘will mean the end of “the writer” as a profession.’

Ebook statistics

That said, the paper book will probably survive. Morrison remarks that when it comes to the future of paper, the stats vary depending on who you’re listening to. In terms of paper versus ebook sales, Barnes and Noble says it sells three times as many digital books as all physical books put together. Amazon claims that 242 of its ebooks are sold for every 100 hardbacks.

The digital revolution

In order to survive, mainstream publishers are opting for that which is ‘already-established, and away from nurturing talent.’ Agents now talk about 10 K being the new 50 K and The Bookseller reported in 2009 that author advances are being cut by as much as 80 per cent in the UK.

A literary editor was quoted as saying: ‘The days of publishing an author, as opposed to publishing a book, seem to be over.’ The writers of the future will possibly work for very little or even for free: ‘Ebooks, in the future, will be written by first-timers, by teams, by speciality subject enthusiasts and by those who were already established in the era of the paper book.’

As for the emancipation of writers and the opening up of ‘a new era of creativity’, Morrison doesn’t think the digital revolution has much to offer the writer. Put simply, he believes that the profession of writing ‘will cease to exist.’

Earnings

Should authors live by their work? Morrison offers Dickens and Shakespeare as examples of authors who were paid a living wage. He says that to ask whether Philip Roth could have written his novels without advances is like asking if Michelangelo could have worked on the Sistine Chapel without Pope Julius II’s patronage.

Morrison argues that the economic framework that supports artists is as just as important as the art itself. He says that if you remove one from the other then things will start falling apart. Even so, he reckons that the age of author advances will be grinding to a halt.

Many writers have come to the conclusion that there’s no alternative but to leave the mainstream and opt for self e-publishing. But Morrison warns that digital industries are destined to provide decreased earnings for content providers.

And the future?

Paper books, ebooks or no books: writers will continue to write. As The Economist puts it: ‘asking a writer for his thoughts on the future of books seems a bit like asking a pastry chef for his views on the future of cake.’