Tag: women

Food, Living, Mexico

5 Ways you will Benefit from a Retreat in Huatulco

Jane Bauer
  1. Heat! Huatulco has sun 300 days a year. This means you will get your dose of Vitamin D which helps regulate the amount of calcium and phosphate in the body. These nutrients are needed to keep bones, teeth, and muscles healthy. The warm climate will also help relieve arthritis!

2. Healthy Food! An abundance of local fresh fruits and vegetables. Huatulco’s clean ocean also means fresh locally-caught fish!

3. Nature. Even just looking at the ocean or a light walk through the jungle will lower your blood pressure and stress levels. We will be surrounded by marina life, waterfalls, and birds.

4. Movement- Our retreat includes daily yoga and meditation adjusted to your level and needs. Reconnecting with your body is an amazing tool to heal your mind.

5. Cleansing- Our itinerary will lead you through a series of activities to bring flow into your life both physically and emotionally.

We Are Water Retreat: Unlock your inner strength and learn to flow
March 20th-25th, 2023

Huatulco, Mexico is the perfect backdrop to reconnect with yourself.

Join Jane Bauer and Kary Vannice for an oceanfront 5-night women’s retreat in paradise. This retreat includes daily yoga and meditation, gourmet healthy meals, excursions into nature for all fitness levels. Facilitated workshops and connection with other participants will help you come closer to your true purpose and allow you to embrace more joy.
You’ll return home feeling relaxed, restored and ready to move forward.

Jane Bauer has been teaching yoga since 2006. She is a restaurant owner and cooking school instructor.

Kary Vannice helps women with personal transformation, a positive mindset, and self-acceptance at Get Your Vibe Right.

Cost 1400 USD
(300 USD to reserve your spot)
Includes: 5 nights accommodation
All meals, excursions, and activities.

http://www.YogaHuatulcoMexico.com

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Food, Living

The love of good food

Jane Bauer

“The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.”  

E.M. Forster

This is my editorial from the August 2019 issue of the magazine The Eye.

http://www.TheEyeHuatulco.com

It’s our annual food issue! This month our writers explore lesser known ingredients and share their experiences of new food in new places. If you know me in person you know how important food is to me. I embrace the ethos that the best way to learn about a culture is through it’s food. So when I want to learn about people I ask ‘what are you eating?’

I just got back from a foodcation where I baked croissants in Paris and drank Pouilly Fume in the Loire Valley with a vintner whose family has been making wine for generations. I eased into long afternoon lunches of foie gras, leeks and red wine. Instead of post-meal siestas I took my cues from Paris’ best flaneurs and sat by the fountain in the Tuileries Garden people watching and enjoying the spectacle that is Paris.

Next I went to Delhi, India, where the chaos could not have been more different from the refined precision of Paris. I made butter chicken with chef Neha Gupta (www.saffronpalate.com) and while we made rotis we discussed what it is like to be women in business. This was especially interesting as very few women work in restaurants or hotels in India and the chance to interact with women was limited. Later in my journey, in Rishikesh, I was invited to join a home cook, Rashmi, while she prepared a feast of lentils and rice that was mouth-watering. It was an honor to be invited into her home and to participate in her everyday life.

There are many similarities between Indian and Mexican attitudes towards food as well a crossover of ingredients. Both cultures have a welcoming spirit and there is always enough to feed unexpected guests- the more the merrier. Ingredients seem to expand as you cook them and a small bag of groceries miraculously makes enough to feed a crowd.

While you may not be able to coordinate your own foodcation to Paris and India, you can have one right at home. Get together with friends, cook, explore new cuisines and new ingredients- invite the neighbors you never speak to over for paella or curry or tacos. Expand your palate and you will expand your circle of friends and knowledge of other cultures.

Happy eating and cooking!

Jane

Living, Mexico

Good vs. Evil – this month’s editorial from The Eye

Jane Bauer

“The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.” Marcus Tullius Cicero

The biggest villain of our time used his political position to divide the world. He rose to power “through charm, violence and cunning negotiations. He was an excellent speaker and surrounded himself with people who, like him, were not afraid to use violence to fulfill their political objectives.” historyonthenet.com

Once elected, as head of the state, he convinced lawmakers to grant “him temporary “emergency” powers for four years, enabling him to act without the consent of parliament or the country’s constitution.” He then divided his nation by singling out minorities and effected “decrees and regulations on all aspects of their lives. The regulations gradually but systematically took away their rights and property, transforming them from citizens into outcasts.” encyclopedia.ushmm.org

This leader is so despised that I once met a man who confessed that he had his name changed to prevent any associations with the genocidal maniac. A leader who separated families and put children in prisons- their only crime being their birth. When I first heard of this monster at the age of ten, I remember asking my mother ‘why didn’t you do anything?’ She would have barely been out of diapers when he reigned but it made me realize how helpless we can be in the face of such evil. It makes itself known in small increments and we are like lobsters in a pot with the temperature rising. We are unaware of our eroding morality as the bar for what we will tolerate moves further and further away from decency.

We have very conveniently bisected the world into good and evil which allows us to step over to the good side and feel ok about the chaos around us. We rise above the fray in our self-righteousness and we point the finger at the drug dealers, the ring leaders of organized crime, the terrorists, we watch Narcos and we tell ourselves we would never be that bad.

It is the comfort that we are ‘good’ that makes it possible to read the news about children being put in cages or traveling on rafts across dangerous waters to escape violence. Geography is the only thing that separates us from them, yet we see their situation as outside of ourselves. We do our part by sharing a post on social media and then we go about our business, our conscience relatively unscathed.

But if we want to be really good, really humanitarian, don’t we need to step back take ownership of our cog in the wheel?

I recently toured the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. It was haunting to see the rooms where she spent WWII hiding for her life. I cried at the testimonials they showed at the end of the exhibition about what an icon Anne Frank has become and how brave she was. I didn’t cry for Anne. She was an ordinary girl facing horrible adversity- inhumane adversity! I cried for all the ordinary girls currently facing inhumane challenges today and I do nothing. We all do nothing.

We are the villains when we endure leaders who put power above human dignity.

Living, Mexico

Women in Politics

Jane Bauer

The editorial from this month’s The Eye magazine.

“For me, a better democracy is a democracy where women do not only have the right to vote and to elect but to be elected.”—Michelle Bachelet, head of UN Women, former president and defense minister of Chile, in The New York Times

Most people are astounded at the giant leap humanity has taken with regard to technology in the past 100 years. Equally astounding are the small steps we have taken on the status of women. 

Yes, women now have the vote (since 1918 in Canada, 1920 in the US and 1953 in Mexico) and can own property, in North America at least. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent US organization, 

When it comes to property ownership, women are not equal in the eyes of the law. According to the World Bank, close to 40 percent of the world’s economies have at least one legal constraint on women’s rights to property, limiting their ability to own, manage, and inherit land. Thirty-nine countries allow sons to inherit a larger proportion of assets than daughters and thirty-six economies do not have the same inheritance rights for widows as they do for widowers.” 

Even though we vote there is still a great disparity of representation of women in political spheres. It just doesn’t make sense. Women represent half the global population and in several studies it has been shown that women have a higher tendency to make decisions that benefit the community rather than just themselves. This is why organizations that give out small business loans favor women. Making decisions that benefit a community, organization and accountability are all qualities that make me think women are ideal politicians.

In 2019, women are still under-represented on the international political stage. We earn less than men and are at a higher risk for physical assaults and human trafficking. I don’t know how if we have come so far in the past 100 years; tv, cars, the internet, mobile phones, MRIs, ultrasound machines, cardiac defibrillation- with all these inventions to improve our quality of life, how have we lagged so far behind in our humanity? Why is it taking so long for women to be equally represented in politics?

It’s also not as simple as electing women. Why are fewer women running for office? Is it lack of opportunity, poor education, cultures that limit women to staying home and having babies? Is it the tolerance of misogyny from world leaders and super stars or the acceptance that our bodies are branding and marketing tools? I don’t know.

This progress is too slow.

Jane

Living, Mexico

What’s your Spiritual Journey?

Jane Bauer

My editor’s letter from the February 2019 edition of The Eye magazine.

http://www.theeyehuatulco.com

‘Silence is a source of great strength. ‘

Lao Tzu

I am a big fan of quiet. It is why I don’t mind long bus journeys or often prefer to stay home rather than go out and socialize. While I enjoy talking with people, I take great comfort at the end of the day in the quiet of the world. 

Last September I attended a 10-day silent meditation retreat held in Oaxaca City through Vipassana Mexico. I felt slightly daunted about the no talking, no eye contact days that would stretch ahead of me, but I was more worried about forgoing my evening wine and reading (yes, no reading or writing!) than embracing the quiet. The retreat was held in a convent in the center of the city and the sounds of the outside world gave some solace to our otherwise silent days that began at 4:30am with a couple of hours of meditation before our vegan breakfast. 

There were about 50 women attending and 20 men; however, the only non-gender-segregated space was the meditation hall, where women were on one side and men on the other. It was a beautiful experience to be in a woman-only space and not be distracted with small talk or worrying if people like you – I could just be.

There were a few difficult moments but as I felt my heart slow down, my mind followed, allowing me to truly embrace the present moment. During difficult times I would stroll through the gardens of the convent looking at flowers or slip my shoes off and luxuriate in the feeling of the ground underfoot. 

When the 10 days were up I felt completely rejuvenated. 

This month our readers explore spiritual journeys and you can see from the articles that what each of us defines as a spiritual journey is very individual. The word spirituality is connected with the Latin word “spiritus”, meaning breath. In French there is the word “esprit” referring to a person’s joy or vivaciousness. 

What moves you? Beyond the drudgery of the tasks of everyday living, what does your spirit yearn for? Maybe when you read this question the answer leapt into your mind without hesitation. Maybe your mind flitted and you are not sure what could possibly be the spiritual journey for you.

Sit in silence. Listen to your breath. The answer will reveal itself.

Food, Living, Mexico

About the Pig… Happy Chinese New Year!

Jane Bauer

Took a bit of a hiatus on reposting my editor’s letters from our magazine, The Eye, but hoping to catch up in 2019:) Every January we theme the issue based on the upcoming Chinese New Year. For more great articles check out http://www.theeyehuatulco.com

If you love Mexico then you will love our content!

Editor’s Letter January 2019:

“Always remember, a cat looks down on man, a dog looks up to man, but a pig will look man right in the eye and see his equal.”

― Winston S. Churchill

I am really enamored with the idea of raising a pig. I would feed it green apples and then I would make bacon. There was a couple from Texas in my cooking class a few years ago and they told me that it was a rite of passage for their daughters to raise and slaughter a pig. While I love the idea of this I know that when the time came, I would falter and end up with a pet pig rather than pork belly.

Salt, air, time and quality pigs are the secrets to producing mouth-watering jamon serrano. I had heard of a man near San Jose del Pacifico who was curing ham and could not wait to try it. As I made the four-hour drive from Huatulco, I swapped the heat and humidity for crisp air and pine trees, adding layers of clothing as the car climbed from sea level to 10,000 feet to San Mateo Rio Hondo. 

Emiliano, originally from Spain, is making some of the most sought-after cured products in Mexico and he counts several Michelin starred restaurants as his customers. 

The adobe house nestled on a hillside, at the end of a narrow muddy path, is a bit of a trek to find. In the main house is a kitchen with a long table set up with marinated local mushrooms, quality olive oil and thick crusty bread.  A fire burns low in a fireplace, helping to cure the dozen or so hams that hang from the ceiling. 

We started with a tasting of jamon serrano, blood sausages and sobresada. Sobresada is a sausage made of ground pork and paprika that requires certain weather conditions – high humidity and mild cold. The sobresada was served on toast with local honey – it was fantastic and I have thought of it many times since I took that first bite. We washed down these culinary delights with a Spanish vino tinto. 

Out back is a rustic setup of pig pens. There were a couple of pigs in each spacious pen and several different varieties. The pigs came out to say “hi” as they sniffed my fingers, I wondered if they knew I had just been gorging on their cousins. The pigs are slaughtered at about 14 months old after subsisting on a diet of pine cones. They are hung in front of the fireplace to cure for about 18 months. 

Happy Year of the Pig! Make it a good one! Eat, drink, be merry and follow the adventures!

Jane

Living, Mexico

International Women’s Day 2018

Jane Bauer

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

Margaret Atwood

March 8th we will celebrate another International Women’s Day. It is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women and has been observed since the early 1900s. So just how much have we accomplished in the past 100 years?

In 1920, women were granted the right to vote in the United States. In Canada, most provinces had granted the right to vote by 1922, with the exception of Québec, where women were denied the vote until 1940. First Nations women did not earn the right to vote until the 1960s. Today, despite the ‘right’ to vote, many women globally do not have a voice in the politics that affect their lives.

While we have seen more women in politics, corporate positions and earning potential- although women still earn less than men for the same work. There are still armies of women around the globe who are single mothers, carrying the emotional and financial burden for their families. Lack of access to education, birth control and healthcare often make it impossible for low-income women to change their situation.

While in the public sphere there has been a lot of legislation put in place globally to protect women, most women still live with the awareness of physical risk of being a woman. In Canada on average, every six days a woman is killed by her intimate partner. Internationally, “the primary victims of human trafficking are women and girls, the majority of whom are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Traffickers primarily target women because they are disproportionately affected by poverty and discrimination, factors that impede their access to employment, educational opportunities and other resources” http://www.stopvaw.org.

But employment and wealth won’t necessarily protect women from the violent culture we have created, as evidenced by this year’s #metoo campaign.

So, while we are celebrating the past strides we have made, both men and women, to create a better and just world, let’s acknowledge how much still needs to be done and the rough road ahead.

See you next month,

Jane

Food, Living

Cooking Class in Marrakech

Jane Bauer

You may think you have never taken a cooking class but I bet you have. Maybe you didn’t learn to make gnocchi while you traveled through Italy or handmade tortillas in Mexico, but I am sure you have shared kitchen secrets. Your first teacher was likely your mother inviting you to mix the batter as she made oatmeal cookies, your father teaching you to flip a pancake on a Sunday morning and later your college roommate showing you how to make the perfect margarita. Food is the common denominator, a meal shared is the ultimate communication.

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A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of taking a cooking class in Marrakesh at Faim D’Epices. My instructor Ilam, a lovely young woman originally from Meknes (land of olives and wine) led me through the making of a beef, pear and orange tagine (a slow-cooked stew done stovetop in a clay pot), a traditional wheat and semolina bread and msemens (Morocco’s equivalent to flour tortillas).

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The Faim D’Epices Cooking School is located about 30 minutes from the center and after you have traipsed through Marrakesh’s busy Medina (old town) the open landscape is a welcome change with orchards of orange trees and friendly dogs to welcome you.

During the class we were taught how to check the authenticity of saffron- rub a piece on white paper and the color should be yellow, never red. Saffron is the highly prized dried stigma of the crocus flower, it takes over 70000 blossoms to make a pound of saffron, making it the most expensive spice in the world.

We were also taught about argan oil. The argan tree is only found in a small region of southwestern Morocco and has not been successfully transplanted anywhere else. The argan tree has the amazing quality of pulling water from the ground and in the driest areas you will see everything brown except for the green of the argan tree. Because of this, goats have been known to climb the tree and eat the leaves. To check the authenticity of your oil you can put it in the freezer. Different oils freeze at different temperatures so they will separate and you will be able to see if your oil is pure.

18767221_10158757557275243_1599565076_oThe highlight of the class was the opportunity to meet Ilam. When touring Morocco most of the Moroccan people you interact with are men. Most of the waiters, tour guides and even hotel staff tended to be men, so I really appreciated the chance to chat with Ilam over lunch.

Overall a great experience!

 

Cooking classes in Marrakesh: http://www.faimdepices.com/

Cooking Classes with me in Huatulco, Mexico: http://www.huatulcocookingclasses.com/

 

 

Living

On beauty in Madrid…

Jane Bauer

Despite humans wanting to be practical and efficient, we are helplessly drawn to beauty. That’s what I thought as I watched the clusters of people at the museums and botanical garden in Madrid. We have a collective need for creativity that pushes us beyond ‘survival’ being enough in this crazy world.

Museums can be overwhelming. It is almost impossible to take in that much beauty at once. I like to find 2-3 paintings or aspects of the museum that ‘speak’ to me to make the experience more memorable.

The Women of the Thyssen Museum:

  1. salmon wallsCarmen Thyssen, a baroness through her marriage to her third husband Heinrich and Miss Spain in 1961, started collecting art in the 1980s using her husband’s fortune. She amassed a collection that includes Monet, Braque, Hassam, Rubens, Degas and many more. There has been a lot of social scandal concerning her collection since her husband’s death that make her life sound like a telenovela. In the museum, the walls are all salmon pink, it is SO bold and one of the requirements made by Carmen. In 2011, she also opened a museum in Malaga that focuses primarily on 19th century Spanish art.

 

  1. hotel roomThe nameless woman in The Hotel Room by Edward Hopper is a wonderful piece for a solo female traveler to contemplate. Here is what the museum has to say about this extraordinary work:

“The loneliness of the modern city is a central theme in Hopper’s work. In this painting, a woman sits on the edge of a bed in an anonymous hotel room. It is night and she is tired. She has taken off her hat, dress and shoes, and—too exhausted to unpack—she is checking the time of her train the next day. The space is confined by the wall in the foreground and the chest of drawers on the right; while the long diagonal line of the bed directs our gaze to the background, where an open window turns the viewer into a voyeur on what is happening in the room. The female figure, sunk in her own thoughts, contrasts with the coldness of the room, whose sharp lines and bright, flat colours are heightened by strong artificial lighting from above.”

  1. duchessDuchess Millicent Sutherland painted by John Singer Sargent in 1904 was much more than a pretty face. A fierce advocate for social reform and better working conditions despite her social status, she was sometimes called ‘meddlesome Millie’. During WW1 she organized an ambulance unit and was recognized by the Belgium, French and British Red Cross for her work during the war. She was married three times and penned several novels. The 1926 review of her novel ‘That Fool of a Woman’ in The Saturday Review stated: The power of the book lies in an emotional but extremely intelligent style, in an analysis of character which is revealed as much by detail as by words, in a feeling for atmosphere (war-charged Europe is particularly real), but mostly in the fact that the heroine is a sentimental heroine with a brain. Never does she see her mistakes quite in time—but neither is she hopelessly stupid nor a wilful misrepresenter of unflattering fact. Lonely, lovely, sentimental creature that she is, very much too late she sees the wherefore and why of foolish choice and subsequent disaster.

More than a pretty face indeed!

 

 

 

Living

Happy Love Month!

Jane Bauer

february-coverHappy Love Month! This is my editorial from The Eye magazine this month. For those of you who don’t me personally, I am the editor of an English-language magazine in Mexico called The Eye, in addition to owning a restaurant and a cooking school. The magazine really allows me to explore different aspects of life in Mexico and connect with amazing writers and of course our readers. You can check out current and back issues online at http://www.TheEyeHuatulco.com or if you are fortunate enough to be in Oaxaca or Huatulco you can pick up a hard copy.

 

Editor’s Letter | Beach, Village & Urban Living in Oaxaca

“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.”

― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

I am feeling very exhausted. Everywhere people are bubbling over with their opinions, demanding their right to be heard but it seems we are so busy talking that the entire planet has actually stopped listening. All mouths are open and everyone I meet is ready to let me know where they stand on the state of world politics – by this I mean American politics – since WWII, America has prided itself on being the leader of the Free World and the consequence is that much of the world feels totally within its rights to weigh in. Add that to the fact that America has rarely hesitated to weigh in on the politics of other nations – and we all carry our opinions about those actions – layers and layers of ‘I thinks’ and ‘I believes’- each of us holding onto these values, believing that they have come to define us.

Strangely for me, an outspoken feminist, the day of The March did not incite in me the feeling of power it seemed to for the rest of my contemporaries. As I looked through my social media feed and saw photos of many people I respected taking to the streets, I felt sad rather than exhilarated. I felt even sadder when I read comments from those who were against the march. I asked myself… ‘Can I respect people whose opinions are so offensive to me and different from my own?’

Here’s what I realized. The wall has already been built. Without laying a single brick we have completely divided ourselves by allowing our beliefs to define and separate us. None of the issues being presented at the moment are new; access to abortion, equal pay, sexual assault, immigration reform, gay rights, police brutality. These are not just issues concerning the USA – these are issues we need to be concerned about worldwide. Human rights are a problem worldwide. There are many people around the world who do not have the privilege and freedom to attend a march or have access to rant on social media. If you are even reading this, you are most likely a lot ‘freer’ than the rest of the world.

If we really don’t want a wall, we need to stop talking. We need to stop shouting at people to love more. Shhhhhhh. Enjoy the silence. Listen to your heart beating inside your body. Before your gender, your culture, the randomness of the country where you were born, the religious and political beliefs you were raised with- before all that, you were just a beating heart, in the bubble of quiet of your mother’s womb. It was safe. You were most definitely loved.

Can I respect people whose opinions are offensive to me and different from my own? If I really want to be a part of the change I want to see, then I am going to have to learn to.

Happy Valentine’s Day,

Jane