Surely the best thing about colomba, the Easter equivalent to panettone, is the sugared, toasted almond topping that covers the whole thing and crumbles when you cut it, so you sort of have no choice but just to pick up the crusty sugary bits and eat those on their own. I'd always thought that colomba would make a very good baking project but was somewhat intimated by getting the right shape it's vaguely in the shape of a dove, if you use your imagination and texture wonderfully soft, fluffy, sweet yeasted bread. I had attempted making panettone (this fig, walnut and date panettone) a few years ago with fair results absolutely delicious results, actually, they were just not as fluffy and bouncy as expertly made ones from your favourite pastry shop where panettoni are hung upside-down to maintain their height and airiness. But when I came across the familiar brown and gold paper forms for making colomba at the supermarket, I thought I'm only ever going to get a chance to make this now! Like the panettone, I referred to my favourite baking book for Italian specialties, Carol Field's The Italian Baker. Field recounts a bit of history behind the colomba, which I'm sure is little known to anyone these days. Colomba is a fixture at Easter tables all around Italy (and is often given as presents), even though it comes from the north of Italy, Pavia. It is one of those traditions that are now a given, where a slice of colomba, perhaps eaten with pieces of a cracked chocolate Easter egg and an espresso or a glass of dessert wine, is a welcome end to the meal (or indeed breakfast the next day). But the legend behind it is a medieval one and rather disturbing maybe it was made up to encourage young girls to learn how to bake their own colomba (and make sure it was good) to get themselves out of sticky, undesirable situations. The narrator believes that - Chocolate is a good dish - Colomba is a good dish - not enough information - Panettone is a bad dish
Colomba is a good dish

(Question)
The frenetic lifestyle that many people live today is very harmful. Rushing here and there, being constantly on call, balancing multiple layers of responsibility may give you a sense of accomplishment even make you feel important, but it takes a huge toll on every aspect of life. When you constantly push yourself to take on more and more challenges, it is easy to lose sight of why you wanted to be successful in the first place. For many, the reason was to be able to spend less time working and enjoy life more. A frenetic, high-pressure lifestyle creates exactly the opposite. There is a very dark side to constantly pushing yourself to produce more and more. Unfortunately, it creeps up on you and becomes a serious case of self-negligence. When you are busy and driven every minute of every day and well into the evening, it is easy to neglect important things in life that keep you healthy, happy, and create quality of life. A continual stream of urgent tasks that must be completed will overshadow the not-so-urgent, but important activities that make life worth living. It is not just physical well-being that is neglected mental and emotional well-being also suffer when there is no time for self-care. When your daily schedule is crammed to overflowing one of the first areas of neglect is your diet. Eating regular, nutritious meals become a thing of the past. You are not only too busy to sleep or even take a deep breath now and then, there is no time to prepare decent meals Convenience foods, frozen dinners, take out and fast foods become the norm. It is a steady diet of additive filled, sugar and fat-filled dishes, loaded with empty calories that provide minimal nutrition and damage the body. It is impossible to sustain any level of good health on such a diet. Why do people lead frenetic lifestyles? - Their boss pushes them too hard - not enough information - They have never known any different - They have a rough family life
(Answer)
not enough information

What is creativity? How de we define creativity? Where does creativity come from? How philosophical is the notion of creativity? Is everyone's 'creativity' different? Or is it an ill conceived, simplified term that is used to describe a very specific series of neuronal & bodily reactions to certain stimuli? These are all the questions I've been thinking (and googling, and youtubing) since beginning this Capturing Creativity studio* and I have found some answers or maybe I've just found more questions: Creativity is generally defined as the ability to make new things, or come up with new ideas, it's an ability to think outside the box, to see unique solutions and employ them in inventive ways. In this sense creativity is not always utilised when being 'creative', as to be creative is simply defined as the ability to make or produce something. However I guess that depends on your definition of creative, how different, unique, special, once off, un-influenced does something have to be, to be classified as creative? This is where creativity get's tricky. It's all well and good to be like oh this is what creativity is, so it's easy to investigate it, but what if you don't define that as being creative, maybe that was just following a formula, a somewhat inspired formula, but maybe it is just a formula. Creativity to most people seems to be a random mix of once off genius combined with solid skill and hard work and for us humans these percentages are unique to us. Maybe creativity to you is 90% unique idea, 5% skill and 5% hard work. Maybe creativity to you is 40% unique idea, 50% skill and 10% hard work. Maybe for you creativity doesn't have to involve any hard work at all. For me when it comes to creativity I'm most interested in that unique idea portion; where does that unique idea come from? Is it simply random? Is it a gift from the gods? Is our unique idea just a product of a lot of subconscious effort, only made aware to us in the sense of a 'random' idea? Have we been influenced by something, processed it... What do most people think about creativity? - It does not exist - not enough information - It is difficult to define - It does not mean anything
It is difficult to define