dormant_dragon

I have been doing a bit of experimenting with puddings lately, since finding my mum's recipe for steamed chocolate pudding - the one she used to make on weekends when I was a child, and was divine with thick cream. Experimenting with desserts is a new thing for me - savouries are easy, but sweets require things like measurement and good timing, which aren't really my strong points.

Anyway, I have since had a couple of goes at making a strawberry pudding - using pureed fresh strawberries - which has been pretty good, especially with chantilly cream and raspberry sauce :) Tonight's experiment was definitely worth sharing, though, and will definitely be repeated.

PEAR PUDDING

1 1/3 cups self-raising flour (or, as I used, 1 1/3 cups plain flour with two teaspoons baking powder)
1/2 cup vanilla sugar (raw caster sugar with a cut vanilla pod stored in it is what I used)
85g butter
1/4 cup milk
1 egg
1 pear, peeled, cored and chopped into small chunks

Grease a 1-litre pudding basin
Melt the butter and allow to cool slightly
Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the sugar and pear pieces
Add the milk, then the egg to the butter and whisk until just combined
Add the butter, milk and egg mix to the other ingredients in the bowl and mix - I find a large spatula is good for this; you'll end up with quite a thick mixture.
Place mixture in the pudding basin; cover with a lid (if the basin has one) or foil
Steam the pudding for 2 hours either over gently simmering water on the stove or on high in a preheated slow-cooker.

This makes a beautiful, not-too-sweet fruit pudding which is great with cream or custard. Next time I'll probably add a pinch of cinnamon or nutmeg to the mix :)

I was recently reading some articles in Capitalist Magazine. Odd, I know, for a libertarian socialist, but I like to explore alternative viewpoints every so often, if only to remind myself why I think I'm right!

Although I agree with some of the views they hold - notably those on religion and abortion, it twigged last night what my nagging unease has always been with capitalism as a sociopolitical philosophy. It's the fact that they emphasise rampant, selfish individualism at the expense of community, and cold, sterile reason at the expense of the essential human experience of emotion.

It's a well-known saying (though I forget whence it comes) that no man is an island, and the biggest problem I have with capitalism is that it tends to ignore this notion. We can't ignore our emotional faculties, even if we don't allow them to control us; and none of us - even the least gregarious, amongst which I count myself - exist independently of our community. While freedom - the capitalist's ultimate catch-cry - is a value to be always sought and if necessary, fought for, we are not free to deny the freedom of others. This is the delicate balancing act with which staunch capitalists fail to engage.

Today should have been a happy and productive day.

Instead, due to certain circumstances, it has been neither happy nor particularly productive - at least, not productive in the manner that was intended, and which would have met some rather more pressing needs than the things we actually did.

So now we are at home, having left the party which would have been nice to stay at, had we been in a party mood. Now some of the productive things that should have happened earlier in the day have some chance to happen...only the mood has changed. There is a profound sense of sadness and despondency in the air. This may have something to do with the careless cat we hit on the way home. However, when we stopped to look, we saw no sign of the cat that had gone under the car, so with any luck, it tumbled and kept running. That, as you may imagine, provided a rather bittersweet end to what has been altogether a disappointing day.

I am seeking refuge in beer. This is not a good thing, but at the moment it feels necessary. I am also working on a sewing project, and hopefully as the night wears on, positive feelings may be revived.

*sigh*

First of all, let me say what many of you already know - I'm not a parent, and am never likely to be one. Unless, of course, you count our furry adoptees, but I suspect that is a vastly different kettle of fish. For one thing, I know for a fact that I could never adore a human child the same way I do my beloved pooch. For another, non-human animals are innocent in a way that humans never can be.

Which brings me to the substance of my post. I have just been reading the following article in the Daily Mail - which some have dubbed the "Daily Fail" (and if this article is any indication, that's a fair moniker).

You can find the article at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1149282/I-dont-blame-Janette-Mercer-lying-protect-murderer-son-Id-says-CAROL-SARLER.html

Now, I can understand the desire to defend and protect. I have it, when it comes to my darling husband and to our furry family, and also to the rest of my human family. However, I accept the fact that my parents and I will never agree on some things - religion springs to mind as a big dividing gulf. Nor will my brother and I agree in this regard. Those are the things we choose not to discuss amongst ourselves, because we know it will only end in bitterness and angry lashing out. But I understand where my parents and my brother are coming from, because I used to be a devout Catholic.

However, I also know that my parents and my brother are people of the highest honour and moral standing. They are also - religion aside - extremely caring and compassionate. The major reason I try to stand up for them is I know, regardless of anything else they may be, they are good people. They would never, knowingly nor through neglect, hurt another creature if it could possibly be avoided.

However, my desire to defend and protect only goes so far. I will not voluntarily associate with anyone who deliberately inflicts unjust harm upon another. I cannot see how the mother in the above article could possibly justify her actions. At what point could she have convinced herself that the 11-year-old deserved to die? She may have seen it as protecting her own, but at what cost? And if she really had any understanding of the situation, surely she could have understood that making her son pay for his crime was the best thing for him, too. What's almost worse is that the writer of the above-mentioned article seems to have such a backward view of women - that we exist for the sole purpose of bearing, raising and protecting offspring, even if said offspring are monsters.

If motherhood is something that would make me blind to the basic principles of natural justice, I have two words - fuck that.

As part of my present efforts to ward off the latest attack of the depression demons, I am seriously considering starting an 'Ethical Living' blog (although this is something I've thought about before). The idea would be to combine philosophical reflections with practical and local stuff about where to find organic produce, for example, or things like installing greywater systems, where the good small retailers are to be found around Perth, ideas for bartering opportunities, tips for making one's own stuff, and generally slipping beneath the capitalist radar. Anyone out there who'd be interested in reading such a blog?

My other piece of upcoming interestingness is that I will be holding Saturday Sewing Sessions at the Hidden House on the Hill (our place) from Saturday 23 May to Saturday 18 July. I have a couple of massive sewing projects to complete before my Midwinter Feast of Excess, and having an open-house stitch-and-bitch session every week sounds to me like good incentive to get stuff done. Anyone is welcome to come along and bring craft projects, so long as you don't mind being occasionally accosted by two dogs and two cats :) Sessions will be subject to notice from week to week, but I'm hoping to cram in as many as possible between Fighter Auction and Midwinter. They could also possibly be extended to include pizza and movies in the evenings...

I have jumped on the DreamWidth bandwagon, much as I did with LiveJournal and Facebook.

Thanks to Japester for the invite. :)

Hugh Laurie is a god :)

This one was yoinked from a sketch in the third series of A Bit of Fry & Laurie. The third and fourth seasons are definitely better than the first two, if only for the joy of watching Stephen Fry mixing cocktails at the end of every episode :)

Soupy twist!

Some more thoughts on this issue, from the in-all-other-ways-evil Capitalist Magazine.

So, what do y'all think?

Have been reading a bit about overpopulation recently, from both sides of the debate. An interesting thing I have noticed is that those who are vehemently against population control generally argue from a variety of stances, each - as far as I can see - inherently flawed. I realise I am biased, of course, but arguments in favour of population control are generally more consistent. Here's my review.

First of all, let's dismiss the rabid religious fundies who apparently assume that it's God's plan for the human race to just multiply indefinitely until we overflow onto the moon and maybe Mars. These are also the kinds of people who argue that the entire world's human population would fit into the land area of Texas, therefore there is evidently no such thing as overpopulation. Clearly they are not living in the real world, but a fantasy land that exists only in their minds. Arguing from practicality will never make them abandon their 'ideals'.

Then there are those who take what seems on the surface to be a much more realistic approach, and argue from the perspective of human rights. They maintain that it's every person's right to decide how many children they will have, and therefore attempting to dictate - or even suggest - that they have fewer (or no) children becomes a gross violation. To back this up, they point to examples like China and certain African nations where the governments have employed coercive and sometimes draconian methods to limit population size, from financial constraints to enforced sterilisation. I think there are few who would argue that such measures are truly justified, because they are in fact removing or interfering with people's right to free choice.

As a quick aside, I would never go so far as to call having children an inalienable right, and it infuriates me to hear people referring to "every woman's right to have a child". Being able to choose parenthood as an option is a right, but it's one that comes with so many responsibilities attached that it's extremely dangerous to focus on the right to the neglect of the responsibility. If one can't meet the responsibilities, the right should be withdrawn.

Anyways, the final position adopted by those who don't believe in overpopulation is one based on racism. It's certainly true that there are indeed rednecks and neo-Nazis out there in America, Europe and, sadly, Australia as well, who think that the 'white' races are facing a fertility crisis in the face of increasing immigration by 'undesireables', especially Muslims (who, in the eyes of crackpot white supremacists, have morphed from a religious community into a race - much like the Jews in Nazi Germany, though with even less justification). However, there are also those who use this to their advantage in arguing that anyone who suggests that overpopulation is a problem is inherently racist.

What these and the human-rights alarmists have in common is their failure to understand that those who seriously worry about overpopulation see it as a much greater problem in developed Western nations than anywhere else. The point is that pretty much every person in the West is a rampant resource-consumer, when compared to people in developing nations. One child born in the US will consume more than 10 children born in India, for example. This website puts the case pretty effectively.

The collective vision held by those who really care about population control is of a world where the population has stabilised to levels that allow for sustainable, equitable resource consumption, at a level that will provide every person with access to a decent quality of life. We don't, and probably can't, have that under the present circumstances. Of course, overpopulation is not an isolated problem either. Consumer-driven, growth-obsessed, exploitative economies are also to blame, as is the vastly inequitable distribution of global wealth. But what the blinkered deniers fail to see is these problems are all related. As long as there are more people than the earth's resources can comfortably support, the problems of entrenched corruption, economic exploitation, warfare and resource depletion will always be with us. And that's even if global warming doesn't happen...

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Haven't done one of these Writer's Block things before, but this one caught my interest (me being more than just a bit of a word nerd...) Two of my favourite words are 'flummoxed' and 'gobsmacked', not just because they sound cool, but because they effectively convey that unique sense of bewilderment and surprise that I often feel in my daily interactions with other people.

Many's the time I have longed to quote Blackadder at someone - "I am anaspeptic, phrasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulations."