Help the Scottish Badgers.

The awesome artist and bewylderbeast is seeking to help the Scottish Badgers through the sale of her artwork. I'll gank a section of her wordpress post about it here:

"Scottish Badgers work to preserve Scotland’s badgers, their setts and their habitats, but their valuable work is under threat due to shortages in funding.

To help raise some funds, I am hoping to sell a load of my artwork.

From Wednesday 1st July to Wednesday 8th July, you can make me an offer for any piece of my work that is for sale. Once postage costs and paypal fees have been taken off your payment, the rest of what you give will be donated to Scottish Badgers."

Click here for the awesome artwork officially for sale, and here for the artwork that *may* be for sale or contact her directly at emma@urbanimal.co.uk

And pass it around. :)

Might I add that this is an awesome offer. bewylderbeast does amazing artwork (I own two pieces), and you are buying a piece from someone who, like myself, works very hard to ensure a connection to the animal energy / animal she is working with. It's very cool stuff. Please check it out.

[Art] Baba Yaga.

Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga has been reduced to a folklore figure, but sources strongly suggest that she was originally worshipped as a goddess; and that is certainly how I see her.

Those who have heard of Baba Yaga, know of her often as the antagonist in the story of 'Baba Yaga and Vasilissa the Brave.' They know of her flying around in a mortar, living in a home that spins on chicken legs (or a single leg, depending on the country). It is lesser known that she is associated heavily with animals like the pelican and the snake. As well as cats, geese and black hounds.

Not an easy goddess to work with by a long shot, and never one I would have consciously chosen to work with. But the truths she shows me, while they always make me feel older, enrich my life regardless.

Tolere, Vavale.

And sorry about the quality of the picture, I can't scan pieces this large, and the flash mangled some of the colouring. I'm hoping to get a better quality picture in better lighting tomorrow or the next day. :)





( Under the cut for details. )

Okay.... so god didn't design me to write recipes.

So I made my beef + palm sugar stir fry again, and I'm going to try and replicate the recipe (which is improvised) here since onyxrising expressed an interest:

ingredients:

- approx. 200-350g stir fry beef (or beef cut into strips or cubes, whatever)
- quarter cabbage sliced thinly
- two red or green (or red AND green!) capsicums sliced thinly (you yanks know these as 'peppers,' weird)
- bean sprouts (any, I use about three good handfuls, but whatever works)
- three small brown onions (or two large brown onions) sliced thinly
- two tablespoons grated gula malakka or palm sugar
- four tablespoons kecap manis
- a bunch of oyster sauce to taste (I start with three tablespoons and go up, I like really flavoursome stir fries, can't you tell?)
- teaspoon black pepper (or whatever)
- a good dollop of sweet chilli sauce
- soy sauce (I start with about 4 tablespoons, and I didn't need anymore tonight, really though, I just pour until I think 'whoops,' and that seems to be the perfect amount).
- teaspoon peanut oil
- teaspoon fish sauce
- tablespoon sesame oil
- 2 minute noodles (I used five blocks of dried ramen noodles, the cheapie stuff.)

(You can also use mushrooms, gai lan - chinese broccoli, or bok choy. Be careful of starchy root vegetables which taste like fail in this. Oh, and if you have it, a tablespoon of grated fresh ginger in this is OH SO JOY. But I didn't have any tonight. Alas. Really, you SHOULD have grated ginger in there).

Remember, with all stir fries, you slice everything *before* you cook. Not during. This took me ten minutes to cook. And that was probably too long.

I think that's everything. I have a feeling I'm forgetting something. But meh, you can add things to taste. I personally thicken up the sauce with water + cornflour, to both help the sauce spread through noodles, and to make it a really thick, Wintery type 'stir fry,' as opposed to a lighter, 'fresher' Summer one.

Okay. Stir fry beef in wok over high heat with peanut oil until seared on all sides. Dump out of wok into plate and leave without eating any, even though you may be so hungry that you want to... I understand.

Put palm sugar and onions into same wok and stir until browning. Be careful of having the heat on *too* high for the palm sugar, or it can burn. Which actually doesn't matter, because it still tastes awesome. It's just a disturbing scent. Lol. 'My food is burning, argh!'

Add capsicum (or peppers, for the weird people). Add all the saucey-type things except for the sesame oil / black pepper. You add that right towards the end. With anything else for flavour. You can turn up the heat now if you haven't already. Stir. Stir. Keep stirring. It gets boring, but it's called a stir fry. You must oblige according to the laws of chef-type physics. Oh, and taste the sauce after a while, you should have something quite sweet and pungent. Remember, the sauce will be quite strong, because you're spreading it through noodly, starchy goodness. Yum. If you're going to have it on your own, ditch the noodles and lower the sauce amounts.

Boil water. If you haven't already done so. In a pot, preferrably, because eventually you're gonna have to cook the ramen. It takes two minutes.

Add noodles to boiling water. Add cabbage and bean sprouts (I like mine softish, and not crunchy. If you want really crunchy, add right at end) and sesame oil and anything else I forgot to wok. Stir. Stir. Still stirring? Good. Keep doing it. Get RSI! Make people feel sorry for your stirring efforts.

Stir noodles too. Do what I do, accidentally flip boiling water onto the stovetop so it makes that hissing sound, drop some capsicum under the burner where you can't get to it, and pretend that you're really cool by stirring both things at the same time (which is why you actually dropped all this stuff in the first place).

When noodles are cooked (not overcooked!) drain them, add noodles and beef back into wok. Stir. Stir the sauce through. I hope you're not cooking on a high heat anymore! Keep stirring. And then stop stirring, turn off the heat, and eat it! Or look at it and point and go 'look, there are lots of ingredients but now it looks almost all like noodles. Where'd the food go!' (Imho, this means you didn't stir very well).

And clean the stovetops in about a week, will you?

Oh, and this serves about 4 hungry people, or 8 - 10 dieting ones. And no vegetarians, because of the meat factor.

I've just realised I've become one of those people who regularly cooks with over 15 ingredients...

[News] Three new dinosaurs unearthed in Queensland, including 'velociraptor' type carnivore.

But most importantly, the new dinosaurs have been affectionately named after old-school poets and Waltzing Matilda.

Yup. That's us. Calling a titanosaur 'Matilda.'