"Here’s where the ego comes in:  Our ego notices others. ​"  -- Dr Wayne Dyer

"This week, try living in bewilderment. Wonder about the stars, be amazed at your life, love each other soul you meet and know they are in their assigned earth suit and ego too."
-- Dr. Chris Baker

Several years ago, as our family stood graveside at the cemetery to say goodbye to Claude’s mother, Trey said, “Granny is gone.  Her earth-suit is in the coffin.”​

An "a-ha moment" for me, it gave me pause between the tears falling on my cheeks. Her earth-suit.  

A new perspective for me - we as souls, come here to take on an earth-suit (our body) and an ego (our human mind) and through these encumbrances, we begin our lessons in this school of life.  

“I came out alone on my way to my tryst. 

But who is this that follows me in the silent dark? 

I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not. 

He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger; 
​
he adds his loud voice to every word that I utter. 

"He is my own little self, my lord, he knows no shame; 
but I am ashamed to come to thy door in his company.”
~ Rabindranath Tagore


"Here’s where the ego comes in:  Our ego notices others.  Our ego judges, criticizes, and condemns.  “If you can remove judgement,  criticism, condemnation, you can live the life of your dreams.”   
~   Dr. Wayne Dyer


“The implication of that is that if you can remove yourself from those three thought forms, you are living more in your divine part than in your ego part.”
~ Eckhart Tolle


This week, try living in bewilderment.  Wonder about the stars, be amazed at your life, love each other soul you meet and know they are in their assigned earth suit and ego too. 

​Meet them at the soul level.

Love,

French Romantic composer Louis-Hector Berlioz (1803-1860) was also a lover of fine food. 

Healthful eating is a great part of living a REAL life. Dr Chris discusses this in her book, REAL. 

Claude and I made this tonight for supper, after he heard on Abu Dhabi Classic Radio,  the story of composer Louis-Hector Berlioz liking this concoction. Berlioz’s chef made it with Duchene mashed potatoes, and we made it with mashed cauliflower.

Berlioz cast himself as a musical revolutionary. He was what was then called a Romantic idealist in a time when artists in other areas, such as painter Claude Monet , challenged the Parisian arts establishment with new innovations.

Successful in his work, Berlioz blazed new artistic trails in the face of the cultural establishment. He was a Romantic, indeed. 

An appropriate tribute to this great composer, Oeufs Berlioz is both  a simple and elegant recipe that uses classic techniques.

I found several descriptions of this dish. Almost all of them call for duck eggs, duchesse potatoes and a mushroom or truffle sauce. 

Here’s how we made it:

Ingredients - Serves 2
2 eggs (chicken) per person

Get your cauliflower boiling
Preheat your oven to 220C

Cauliflower:
• 1/2 medium head of cauliflower, cut into pieces and boiled until soft,   then mashed with butter and cream.
 • Add a good chunk of butter to your taste, and plenty of pepper   and salt.

Start working on the mushroom sauce,
then when the cauliflower is ready...
• Make 2 nice cones on a baking sheet and put into the oven for 20-25 minutes until they have browned crispy edges

Mushroom sauce:
 • 200 gm mushrooms, button, or similar, chopped - I used some large brown buttons from Ireland - yummy
• 2 shallots, finely chopped
• 100 ml beef stock
• 50 ml red or Madeira wine
• 2/3 cup cream
• 2 sprigs of thyme

To Make the Mushroom Sauce:
   •  put chopped shallots in olive oil, cook until soft
   •  add chopped mushrooms and thyme sprigs
   •  allow them to take some color before pouring in the beef stock
    • cook it down and then add the wine.
   •  cook it down til a thimbleful remains
    • add cream and heat through, then keep on the lowest heat possible.

Poach your eggs in water with 1 t vinegar, 4-5 minutes for soft, or soft boil the eggs.
Plate it up.  Arrange the sauce on the plate, and the rest around.

Serve.

Orthodontics treatment is much more complex, different and difficult than what many young patients assume. A doctor dedicated to his or her craft puts much education, study and experience into each orthodontic case he or she treats. 

Dr. Chris Baker's book, "Your Child's Smile" is the best  parent guide for their child's oral health.  It has also been used as a dental school textbook.

Orthodontics is the practice of the realities of moving teeth through bone over a period of time.

This past week, we had two high school students who are interested in dentistry  spend the days with us in internships.  They came in each morning and would spend about half of our office hours with us.

The students  encountered orthodontics from a totally different perspective than what they experienced when they were our patients.  They both agreed, very surely, that orthodontic treatment seemed much more complex, different and difficult than they had assumed when they were patients. 

Isn’t that the way life works? 

Perception varies according to the view through which we see it.  It’s like looking into a room from a window on one side and seeing one part of the room -- and then from the other side, the view through a different window makes the room seem totally different.

What we regard is often limited by what we know and see. 

To a teenager having braces treatment, the experience is one without much visual awareness of what is being done with those braces.  While they're sitting in the dental chair, their minds are full of schoolwork, classmate matters, family matters, athletic and other activities of that evening, and so on. 

The patient's awareness of what we are doing with the “hardware” of orthodontic appliances is minimal.  Once the appointment is completed, they can “get back” to their “real life.”  

But seeing us work with the realities of moving teeth through hard, mineralized bone was a different matter for our high school interns. 

​Think of a bone.  It is miraculous that by placing the right force in the right direction on teeth, we can move teeth through that seemingly impenetrable, dense structure. 

And, amazingly, the bone restructures  and remodels itself to complete its presence around the tooth in the new position.  

Our interns learned that we cannot move one tooth without anchoring somewhere, somehow to other teeth. They found out that it is a challenging, mechanical, engineering process to accomplish a bite that will work and last for almost a hundred years, and  provide a smile that will charm, comfort, engage, and communicate the soul within. 

Our interns were impressed with the time the human body requires to allow teeth to move, and to remodel the bone -- and why it takes the time.  The human body is dynamic - always changing.  It is not static - staying the same. 

Orthodontic changes are not guaranteed; they are not totally predictable;  they are not stable over time without retention, because of the dynamic properties of the muscles, speech, habits, tongue position, tooth clenching or grinding, eating, biting, opening, closing and even wear of the teeth. 

Plus, a growing patient adds the challenge of growth changes to what we are working to do for them.

We were glad to share with two young people who wanted to understand more about what dental care can offer to each person.  

​We look forward to their joining the professionals who provide that care.