My New Etsy Shop!

Ok, a while in the making, and it's still early days, I only opened yesterday, but all the same I've opened my shop. There was a lot to learn , and undoubtedly heaps more to learn, but it's been a cool process of figuring things out.



http://www.etsy.com/shop/ArtnWhimsy

Two great Quotes and a Cute Word!

Here are two quotes, and a cute word that I’ve just recently found.

 The first quote is from a novel called Hallowe’en Party, by Agatha Christie. The quote is from a character called Mrs. Butler: she is talking about children!

“They acquire puppy fat and look like well-fattened pigs sometimes.”

The second quote is from the programme, Rosemary and Thyme; two professional gardeners who also help solve crimes, but there’s nothing Miss Marple-esque or dithering about them.

This quote is from an episode called Agua Cadaver. Rosemary and Laura have gone to Spain to work on the garden of a married, ex-boyfriend of Rosemary’s who still likes her, and has asked her to go and live with him in Spain.

Says Rosemary, to Laura’s question about whether or not she will shack up with him: “He’s got a wife, and I’ve got a life.”

I love that quote. As I say, these are not your dithering female sleuths, at all.

And finally, a cute word, which I hadn’t met before, and found in a story called The A.B.C. Murders, again by the doyenne of the cozy murder genre, Ms. Christie.

Here’s the word, "snuggery”, and even better, here’s the quote to give it context.

A man named Mr. Barnard is inviting detectives, and police into his and his wife’s “minute bungalow.”

They introduce themselves to him, and then he says  to the group, “Come into the snuggery…”

If the word was at all unclear, the narrator, Captain Hastings, gives clarity to it by saying: “..we were ensconced in the livingroom..”, but it’s so much cuter to say snuggery, rather than living room with mean little adjectives in front.

All about Ravioli

So I had a yen, the other day, to make ravioli. It's not too, hard, but I don't have a pasta machine or anything, so it was very "labour intensive", as it were.

First step, make the dough, (flour, water, olive oil, eggs, salt)

Knead dough. Then roll it into a ball, and wrap it in wax paper, or cling film,  and leave it in the fridge for an hour.

In the meantime, get working on your stuffing. Mine was caramelized red onions, with dried porcini mushrooms, that I had let soak in boiling water, along with some spinach, cranberry goat’s cheese, and crushed whole hazelnuts. I also added fresh lime juice. In a word: yum!

Then, for me, until I found a youtube video of chef Mario Battali on Martha Stewart, making ravioli, I was really having a difficult time figuring out how to stuff/ tuck everything in. My first batch looked like a cross between wontons, and little monster explosions. My ensuing batches looked better, thanks to ol’ Mario who had a pretty nifty trick for getting the top layer and bottom layer of dough to stick together.

First, he laid out his two sheets of dough, and instead of slabbing on his filling, as I had done first, he just put down a few wee dollops , then added the top sheet, and made partitions with his hand. Then he started to stick the dough together, with his fingers. Then, this is the cool part, he took a cookie cutter, and just pushed it into the top sheet of dough, over his covered dollop of filling, and worked it through until he had a totally contained, round raviolo!

Easy!

After that, here are the rest of the steps:

1)   Place a few ravioli, like 5-6, depending on how big, or little you make them, in a pot of boiling water. Let them cook for a few minutes.

2)   Then, strain then, I forgot to drain them with cold water, and put them in a container and add your sauce.

3)   Buon' appetito!

The raw ravioli. Notice the scary little one on the right,my first batch, before Mario.

The boiling of the ravioli.

Almost done; all cooked, dressed and undressed ravioli co-mingling.

A fancy close-up!

Yum!

Do you believe?

Here's some graffiti I saw the other day on the sidewalk nearing Kensington; like a beautiful omen, there was the word " Unicorns".

We all need more unicorns in our lives. 
The rest of the message said "Time and Space"
I think  "Unicorns" was at the beginning. I was walking north, and the message was written starting north going south, down the bend of the street :)

Shameful Things

I found this photo online, I can't remember the site I got it from. I'm using it because  a) I think it's awesome, and b) Shame on Uganda, indeed!

 Uganda is hoping that the world turns a blind eye to its evil of making being queer a crime punishable by death.

Nigeria too wants to criminalize being queer, including ending funding to queer rights organizations, so that queer people will be even more marginalized in that region of the world.

Now, on to Israel. So, Hamas, a militant, anti-Israel hate group and the State of Israel have agreed to an imposed cease-fire. Ok, fine. Though, here are the facts. Hamas has launched over 420 missiles into Israel, 420!! Israel has a kick-ass defense system and has stopped many of the missiles from entering the rest of the country.

Apart from Palestinians feeling justified in their vicious hate, with Hamas heading it all, the whole fucking world is totally biased against the state of Israel.

Two things: 1) Palestine is not a country. This fact has been recognized by the UN.

                     2) Anti-Jewish hate continues to frighteningly rise around the world. Organizations that sound legit, such as The World Social Forum, which I had to look up, and learned about in the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal newsletter, will be all about helping Palestine , at the event being hosted by Brazil, this year. What’s more, my idiot country is sending a rep. to the Forum from the postal worker's union. Why? What the hell do postal workers have to do with hate -based politics?! Moreover, postal workers are federal agents, ergo, our government is surreptitiously saying that it, in fact, doesn't support Israel, though, outwardly it says it does.

Ok three things: Israel not only has every right to defend itself, it is the ONLY country in that entire region of the world where queer rights exist.
  
This article outlines the politics of queer rights in Israel.
http://yulr.org/homosexual-rights-in-israel-balancing-the-religious-and-the-secular/ 

Israel, unlike all of its Muslim neighbouring countries, and area=Palestine, is very supportive of women's rights, and women's equality (the political Hasidim notwithstanding).

Here's an article written by a woman living in Israel working for the US-based National Council for Jewish Women, about women's reproductive rights in Israel.

 http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/07/09/3100216/op-ed-dont-set-back-reproductive-rights-for-israeli-women

This past year Israel created a law banning underweight models from working. This made headlines, no other country has followed suit..yet?

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/03/21/israel-bans-underweight-models/

Israel also rallies for the rights of non-human animals.

Last year, Israel outlawed the declawing of cats! Canada, among many countries, has yet to follow.

http://www.care2.com/causes/israel-bans-cat-declawing-will-u-s-follow.html

Here’s an article about the woman who founded the Israeli SPCA http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/anglo-file/a-pioneer-of-animal-rights-in-israel.premium-1.478223

That Israel fights back is a given. Violence and war are horrible realities, made worse by the fact that , in the case of Israel, that country has been having to defend its existence even before it was declared a nation-state. For all the shit that gets talked about that country, Israel unlike all the Muslims in the area is not a medieval throwback of a country where being queer will get you murdered, or where you will get stoned to death for, say, looking at someone you aren't married to.

Here in Toronto we have a hate group called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid that has been marching in Toronto's Gay Pride parade for the past few years.  Friends of Simon Wiesenthal ( FSW) has been denouncing that group as a hate group. Pride receives funding for the parade, and FSW has been asking the city to revoke funding to the parade if it continues to support hate. To date, the group is still being permitted to march in the upcoming parade this Summer. 
 This link  gives clear facts about what has been going on recently in Israel and the Gaza zone.
http://www.friendsofsimonwiesenthalcenter.com/

Ignorance and sheer biased stupidity continue to fuel people's warped realities about Israel. Israel not only has no allies in its region, but, fewer and fewer people and countries and organizations choose to publicly lend their voice in support of the Jewish state and its right to exist, and that's what this is all about. 

I remember once, some years ago, talking about Israel with someone I worked with. I was shocked when he said that Jewish people didn't need Israel, they had Canada or Argentina as places to live. I was livid. He believed that Israel should  belong to the Muslims, or more rightly, the Islamists=Palestinians, and because the Jewish people had displaced them ,they, he felt, should leave. 

Sadly, I think many people similarly to him;that even after all the horrors of the Holocaust, Jewish people still don't belong in Israel. Israel is a Jewish state; it is the only one in the world. There are 50 Muslim states in the world, Palestine is not one of them because it is not a state. Israel has to constantly defend itself  against all the Muslim countries, not just because it exists, but because it exits among so much anti-Jewish hate. We can't say anti- Semitism when so many of those who hate Israel are also Semites.

Congratulations!!!

I knew that Barack Obama would win, though, I'll admit I was getting scared early on last night as the polls started to close, and the grand dragon seemed to be in the lead. Well, not for long! 

 Indeed, Obama is the voice for change and progressive actions for America. He won by more than 80,000 votes, say some analysts, or more than 100 electoral college votes; not counting the states that hadn't finished counting their ballots by the time he went past 270 to sweep to his victory!

Obama has done for America and voter turn out, especially among Black and other non-white voters, what Nelson Mandela did for his people during his election in apartheid stricken South Africa. Both men mobilized the masses, and got people  especially of colour to the polls, in droves. Both encouraged the "forgotten masses" to vote by using tools that are accessible to all. 

In his first term, Obama got people to the polls en masse, by heavily relying on social media as an important communication tool. His campaign was all about creating clear communication, and making himself accessible. It worked, he won. 

In 1994, Mandela got Black people to the polls for the very first time in South Africa's very racist history. Most of the rural people were illiterate, and wouldn't be able to read a ballot card, so the ANC created a ballot card with all the candidates colour photos on it. That was ingenious, and history was created, as South Africa finally had it's first leader of colour!
                      South African ballot card, from 1994

Obama, true to his words, always manages to get people "fired up, ready to go!", to quote him. This time around people knew how life-or-death this election was, and astoundingly waited in line for as long as 6 hours, or more, to cast their ballots. 6 hours! That's unheard of in first world countries, isn't it? But then again, a nation of 300,000,000 people battling issues that are usually reserved for the third world knew what the outcome would be if they didn't choose the only person with a feminist agenda, a socialist agenda, and an agenda of compassion, and direct action.
   
Thankfully, Obama's words fired people  up enough  and created an important impact   because Americans were sure not going to let a sheet wearing dragon called mitten win.

Some friends I made on my trip to Scotland

On my recent trip to Scotland, I made some cute friends; the 

 humans I met weren't nearly as cute.

 

This is a Highland cow, I've forgotten her name but she's 1 and a half. How cute?!

 This little cutie would greet me everyday by running full-tilt at me, which scared the crap out of me at first, until I realized that she was waiting for snacks. She would run, and come right up to me licking her little lips, waiting. Her little friends would stand further afield licking their lips too. She did get snacks from me:)Her friends didn't because they were too shy to really come close, and if I went too close to them they would trot away.

 I love this wee dog, Saffie. She walked me everywhere, showed me her belly, and even protected me from a big, scary biting dog!

How witchy and cute!