I'm showing a 2015 purchase here, but it took several tries for me to get a halfway decent picture of this coin. Nothing fancy here, just a Thracian provincial with a wonderful portrait of our favorite philosopher-king as a handsome young man. The reverse is a plain Apollo standing type, and unfortunately a little flat in the centre, but it has some really nice third dimensional depth in the smaller details like the phiale and bow. MARCUS AURELIUS AE Diassarion 10.44g, 26mm THRACE, Philippopolis, circa AD 139-161 Varbanov 805 O: Μ ΑVΡΗΛΙΟC ΟVΗΡΟC ΚΑΙCΑΡ, bare head of Marcus Aurelius to right, with neat beard. R: ΦΙΛΙΠΠΟΠΟΛΕΙΤΩΝ, Apollo, nude, standing left, holding a phiale in his right hand and his bow in his left. Now for the bread baking bit - my wife started reading Marcus Aurelius's Meditations recently, and yesterday showed me a passage which resonated strongly with her: "We ought to observe also that even the things which follow after the things which are produced according to nature contain something pleasing and attractive. For instance, when bread is baked some parts are split at the surface, and these parts which thus open, and have a certain fashion contrary to the purpose of the baker's art, are beautiful in a manner, and in a peculiar way excite a desire for eating..." She's a serious bread baker, and much better at it than I am at coin collecting, so I'm happy to show off one of her loaves that illustrates what Aurelius was talking about. He didn't know it as Wabi Sabi, but he was clearly familiar with the idea. I suppose he could just as well have used coins to make his point, but then my wife wouldn't be thinking he was quite so cool .
Wow Z-Bro => your wife rocks!! Great lookin' loaf, my friend ... gawd, it makes me wanna go buy a fricken coin!!
Impressive portrait, impressive bread! I much prefer the youthful busts of Marcus Aurelius and your new coin is a fantastic example. Your wife's bread is fabulous-- such a perfect loaf! I've made "no knead bread" a several times and have been very pleased with the crust, texture, and flavor. Shaping the loaf wasn't possible (very wet dough) but it tastes great. Not quite as pretty as hers
That looks tasty! My wife says that she never felt she made really good bread until she discovered Ken Forkish, whose method she calls "no knead with just a few more steps thrown in". As far as I'm concerned, she's been making excellent bread for years now, including the no knead ones, but she seems to be on some kind of eternal bread quest. She's only satisfied with her latest loaf until it's time to make the next one. I've seen some strange bread come out of our oven .
Very cool! I used to think our hobbies had very little in common, then one day I saw her peering very intently at her computer screen, which was full of pictures showing the internal crumb structure of various slices of bread. I don't think I look very different when I'm staring at the reticulation, wear patterns, flow lines, and cracks of my coins .
You know, I can eat one of those sourdough loaves solo, but my wife finds them boring - no creative input, just churn them out. She also makes artisan breads as a pastime, so we've also had some strange but wonderful things come out of the oven. Any variation of focaccia is fine by me! She's also great with other stuff. Here's a Fraisier... The innards of a Sacher Torte... And a chocolate sculpture. You can't eat it because it's sculpting chocolate - well, you could eat it I suppose, but you wouldn't like it. More like a table centerpiece...
Wow, you guys are good!! Holy smokes JA => your wife cooks-up stuff kinda like the wicked witch in Hansel & Gretel (just sayin' ... don't fall for that oven-trick) ... *rats* ... my effort pales in comparison, eh? Yah, I made my sweet wife a cake for her 40th Birthday Party (ummm, it also doubled as a theme-cake for our regular Monday Night Football party-gang!!) ... the event fell on the same night (she is on the forty yard line ... get it?) Oh, and before you acuse me of getting hammered and spelling Denise incorrectly, her name is actually "Daisy" (but it's spelled/spelt Deise ... damn Portuguese!!) Wow, now that I look at it again, it really does look like a lump of something, eh? Side-note => the party was a total success!!
You know, for people trying to take off a few pounds from the holidays these images might as well be like falling on your gladius.
I am starving after reading this, I have some clementines in the fruit bowl, I feel a clementine cake coming on......
