What can I say?
What can anyone say?  There has been so much said already.  There are so many images.  Images that you never want to have in your head let alone have to live through.  My heart is broken for Japan and for the millions of people who are there right now in shock and mourning and the millions more who are suffering the grief all over our planet.  I will be honest with you, it's very hard right now not to feel powerless.  There really is nothing that I can do at the moment but pray.  I will give my money towards some kind of help but I'm waiting for the dust to settle and to see what kind of organisations move in before I start giving (that sounds bad but really I want to make sure that I'm giving money responsibly... that's all) and in the meantime I send love, in thought and emotion.  Because right now I just do not know what else to do.
My thankfulness for my life here doesn't make it any easier to hear about what's going halfway around the world.  However, I do have a family and a life here that needs to be lived as well.  Times like these should make us even more determined to do all that we can with the time that we are given.  Whether or not you believe in an afterlife is beside the fact.  Every moment of every day gives us an opportunity.  We can live in it, with all the joy, pain, love, disappointment, anticipation, frustration, contentment and so on.  Or we can choose to shut it out and live for some future time - I'll feel better, I'm too tired, it's too late, it's not that important anyway... you know the phrases - that may or may not ever come.
If my world ended today I know that I would find a lot of comfort in knowing that I did as much as I could to make the most of every day, the big things and the little, the close friends and the far, and that I lived my life in a way that truly reflected how I felt about the world around me.
Yeah, I know... Corny... whatever... there it is.
P.S.  I made crepes.  I made them a week late.  I know that shrove Tuesday was last week but last week I was working and this week I'm on March Break.  So we had crepes and sauteed pears and chocolate sauce.  I prefer these without the chocolate and with Maple Syrup instead.  I would also gladly have these crepes with something savoury and yummy in the middle.  Hmmmm...


Crepes with Pears, Apples and Chocolate Sauce
serves 4

1 1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
300 ml milk
1 egg + 1 yolk
dash of vanilla
2 tbsp melted butter

Fruit:
2 small apples, cored and cut into thick slices
2 pears, cored and cut into thick slices
2 tbsp brown sugar
butter for frying

Heat a large caste iron frying pan until it's quite hot and then turn down the heat to just below medium.
Combine the flour and sugar in a large bowl.  Mix and add in the milk, egg, egg yolk, vanilla and melted butter.  Mix just until incorporated.
Add some oil to the pan.
Add about a 1/2 cup of the crepe mixture at a time.  Quickly move the pan around so that the liquid can spread out a bit more.  Cook for just a couple of minutes on each side.  The crepe should be golden brown on each side.  Remove to a warm plate.


In the same hot frying pan (if you wish to use another by all means do).  Add a little butter to the pan and then throw in the fruit.  Do make sure that the pan is quite hot - you don't want to cook the fruit for long otherwise it will turn into applesauce (not a bad thing but rather quite a different thing altogether).  Add in the brown sugar and toss carefully.  Let them cook fast, 2 or 3 minutes should do it and then place them in a bowl.


In a small bowl combine about a half cup of cream, 1 heaping tbsp unsalted butter and about 50 gr. dark chocolate.  Fit the bowl over a pot of lightly simmering water (don't let the water touch the bottom of the bowl).  Heat the chocolate mixture until the chocolate is melted.


To serve:
Place a crepe on your plate.
Place the fruit in the crepe and fold the crepe in half.
Drizzle chocolate sauce (or maple syrup) over the crepe.  If you want to get really extravagant here add an little whipped cream.
Say 'Thank You for life, love and all things fat'