French Toast


Is a wonderful way to start a day of artistic adventures! This is how Sophie serves them in her romantic house in Conneticut: Cut crunchy italian white bread in thick slices, place them in a baking dish and soak with a mixture of 2 eggs, stirred in milk and a bit of Orange juice. Spice with a pinch of salt and some vanilla and crumble some butter on top. When the bread has absorbed the liquid, bake in the oven until lightly brown. Serve with maple-sirup and fresh fruit, hmmmm.

Beauty heals

From the New Scientist In pain? Take one masterpiece, three times a day

The power of art to heal emotional wounds is well known, but could contemplating a beautiful painting have the same effect on physical pain?

To investigate, Marina de Tommaso and a team from the University of Bari in Italy asked 12 men and women to pick the 20 paintings they considered most ugly and most beautiful from a selection of 300 works by artists such as da Vinci and Botticelli.
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The subjects rated the pain as being a third less intense while they were viewing the beautiful paintings, compared with contemplating the ugly paintings or the blank panel. Electrodes measuring the brain's electrical activity suggested a reduced response to the pain when the subject looked at beautiful paintings

from: www.estatevaults.com, painting: Sandro Boticelli