Meaningful Mud's Monthly Mu - June 2024
“and I will walk and talk in gardens all wet with rain”
Hey there,
Welcome to Meaningful Mud’s Monthly Mu June edition. Thank you once again for opening up this mail. I remain super grateful to you all for being here!
My past month of May was thankfully filled with a bunch of travel; full of family, friends, work colleagues and strangers.
I was talking this through with a friend a while back (shout out to Yonah), pondering the observation that when going away we tend to pack the best or better version of ourselves. We carefully pick out those select items of clothing that both elevate and calm the spirit: that t-shirt that fits just right and makes our stomach look flatter than it really is; those three pairs of faithful and loyal socks that we know won’t independently decide to take trip of their own and slide off our feet mid-walk (we all own that frustrating pair that brings us absolutely no joy when opening up the drawer - permission to throw them out right now mid read!!).
We change our toothbrushes, clip our toenails, go for a haircut and wipe down our shoes - all tasks we have been meaning to do for the past weeks yet haven’t managed to yet. We have a renewed openness to learning and a curiosity to listen to and meet other peoples’ stories; values which usually take a backseat in our day-to-day encounters with the world.
We proudly place those two cumbersome books in our suitcases, naively believing that we’ll make the time to read them, almost effortlessly archiving the perhaps less desirable and more familiar versions of ourselves - the ones that scroll aimlessly on Instagram watching strangers perform synchronized dances in the kitchen before realizing an hour has passed with our bookmark unmoved.
Why is it that when embarking for holiday we hold ourselves to these high and noble standards that ostensibly do not occupy much of a prioritized position in our routine days and weeks? Why do we tend to save our best selves for these little sojourns when our day-to-day doings are what define the quality, fabric and texture of our time here? How can we ever so gently infuse our routines with a little more generosity, wonder and hospitality, to both ourselves and others?
Brothers and sisters…
Sorry to break it to you - I have no answers.
But at least “we are sitting in the dark together” living the questions.
So all I can do is wish us a month of bringing, being, owning and embodying our best selves, in both our routines and travels; of “shining our lights while we’ve got one,” to misquote my boy Dave Matthews, as we collectively tackle this continual human task!
I thank you again for your presences here and hope you enjoy this June edition.
And lastly, may we always be stuck in Meaningful Mud.
Take great care.
Tyler
“See the world was good and heavy on my shoulders as a child
But I let it all go to my waist…”
Dear Believer, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The menu ain’t the meal but give it a bash anyway
“Mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory … I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy?”
- From Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way
If the recipe below of a Deconstructed Apple Cake can provide you with even a sliver of the sensory world expressed above then I consider my job done.
Ingredients
(Essentially this cake is a moist vanilla cake with an apple crumble mixture)
For the vanilla cake:
2.5 cups all purpose flour, sifted
1 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
A pinch of salt
3 eggs
¾ cup full cream milk (or you can use almond milk or oat milk for a non-dairy version)
¾ cup sunflower oil
Method
Heat oven 180 *
Grease your cake tin (24cm plus minus) - I like to layer with baking paper for ease
Mix your dry ingredients in a bowl, add vanilla and add the eggs, milk and oil, mixing slowly with an electric mixer or hand beater on low speed. If it appears too runny you can add more flour.
Bake for one hour (Gently check with a knife that the center is fully baked through)
For the apple mixture:
Ingredients (accurate measurements are less critical here)
Two tins of unsweetened pie apple or equivalent of freshly sliced apples
Half a cup of brown sugar
Half a cup of apple juice
Half a cup each of sultanas and raisins
Handful of coconut flakes
One lemon
Honey, date honey or syrup
Handful of nuts of your choice and preference
Dried apple pieces or orange slices
Method
Place two tins of unsweetened pie apple (or freshly sliced apples, which just cook a bit longer) in a saucepan
Add the half a cup of brown sugar, apple juice, sultanas and raisins and the handful of coconut flakes. Squeeze the juice of one lemon, add a generous glug of honey, date honey or syrup (I like to add a dash of sweet wine! You can also add a handful of nuts into the mixture for some crunch).
Simmer slowly until the apples are nice and plump and easy to bite through!
Slice the top of the cake off (like a lid) and crumble in your hands
Top with a squish of raspberry syrup (optional), a handful of crushed nuts of your choice, the crumbled bits of cake and decorate with dried apple pieces or even dried orange slices
ENJOY (not optional)
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets
Thank you for reading this edition and for your being here. It is really not taken for granted!
Please also consider forwarding this little offering to a loved one, friend or stranger and feel free to reach out should you wish to share any comments, critiques or suggestions.
Wishing you all a joyful June!