 Dear Friends,
As you may have noticed, we’re now hosting the occasional workshop at Garreg Fawr, where Geoff and I are fortunate enough to live and work. These workshops have been providing us with a great opportunity to meet some of you and share with you our beautiful surroundings. At our last Chris Thomas workshop, we made a soup that everyone seemed to enjoy, and someone suggested we put the recipe in The Cygnus Review. That way, you could have a taste of the workshop, too! So here it is. It’s low GL, wheat-free, and vegan.
Cygnus Workshop Soup (serves 4)
2 onions, finely chopped
1 leek, finely chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
3 carrots, thinly sliced
2 sticks celery, diced
1 red pepper, diced
1 green pepper, diced
200g green beans, diced
1 courgette, diced
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp herbes de Provence
1/2 tsp dried rosemary
2 bay leaves
1 vegetable stock cube
2 tins tomatoes, liquidized
1 mug water
sea salt and pepper to taste
1 tin beans (borlotti, cannellini, kidney or butter beans), rinsed
Fry the onion and leek gently in the olive oil and salt until soft. Add all the other ingredients except the stock cube, beans and tomatoes and cook over a gentle heat for 10 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Then add the tomatoes, beans, water and stock cube, bring to the boil and simmer for 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Latest News on the Cygnus 15th Birthday Celebration
We’re looking forward to meeting lots of you at our 15th Birthday Celebration on Friday 11th August. It will be a really special day, with two talks from Diana Cooper, our most popular UK author. Diana will be speaking about life in Atlantis, and about the importance of 2012 – two subjects that seem to be very much on people’s minds at the moment.
We’ll also be joined by Pierre Pradervand, author of The Gentle Art of Blessing which is published in the UK by Cygnus. Pierre will be travelling over from Switzerland especially to be with us. He’s a lovely, spiritual man and we know you’ll feel privileged to see and hear him speak.
Another wonderful experience we’d very much like to share with you is the opportunity to hear our friends Jehanne and Rob Mehta perform their songs and poetry. If anyone understands the power of the voice to heal and awaken, it is Jehanne. Her songs and poems ‘speak to the heart, but hiddenly, awakening a dormant part of ourselves to meaning and joy’. Jehanne and Rob have released several CDs – Green Jack, Emblem and Rose in Deep Water.
During the day, there will also be plenty of opportunity to meet and mingle with each other, and browse among our huge range of bargain books. On the following day, Pierre Pradervand will be giving a workshop at Garreg Fawr. We can supply a list of local accommodation on request, and Plas Taliaris, a local retreat centre and set in acres of beautiful grounds has very kindly offered to provide a weekend’s full-board (vegetarian) accommodation for some of you, starting with the evening meal on Friday 11th and ending with Sunday lunch on the 13th, for just £100 per person (to book, please contact Plas Taliaris on 01558 823590 or office@plastaliaris.org). A lovely Georgian mansion, PlasTaliaris also houses the Cygnus library, with copies of almost all the books we have featured since 1991, so you won’t be short of something to read! We do hope you’ll come.
With much love from Geoff, Ann and all of us at Cygnus
Photographs © Cygnus Books 16-Jun-2006
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