Here’s my harvest, and I got more of them stashed at home, waiting in the fridge.
First part is to wash, clean the leaves, and cut up strawberries! I will never pretend I do these things anywhere but in the bed. I added the wild strawberries on top!
And the rest is also very straightforward, you put them on heat, add lemon juice (a tablespoon per cup of berries), add sugar (¾ of a cup per cup of berries) and you cook for 20 minutes or until you like the consistency and you’re done!
I started cooking these and they turned liquid almost immediately, so I figured I better put them in a bigger pot so they reduce faster. ‘Reducing’ just means the water is evaporating, the flavour intensifies, and you get a thicker consistency. It happens faster if your liquid is stretched thinly over the bottom of a big pot, and if you stir it! I added one frozen cube of lemon juice to all of this, and much less sugar than advised; I don’t like them too sweet or turning into a gel. I already tried canning strawberries with very little sugar and they were still completely fine 10 months later in a sealed jar. This is the consistency I was happy with:
This took about 20 minutes of stirring and reducing, I also mashed the berries with a potato masher to get them all smooth. It’s not the ideal jam consistency, or color, but I’m not looking for a very sweet jam, I only want availability of strawberries thru the winter, and I’m only adding sugar to make sure they don’t go bad.
I don’t know if you can see it but this first jar is filled with boiling hot water, this is quickly poured into a second jar before the first one is filled, so they’re both hot when I’m adding the jam. Afterwards they’re put in a big pot of boiling water, and boiled for 10 minutes so the lids would seal. This made two jars!
Even tho I had a very small percent of wild strawberries, they absolutely dominated the taste and the scent, and it was exactly what I wanted, they’re a complete other level of delicious. Absolutely add wild strawberries to your jams!
This year’s issue of Almost Real: A Speculative Biology Zine is mythology themed, so I wanted the cover critter to be a weird take on an extremely recognizable legendary beast.
The marsupial griffin is my shot at that, a large flying carnivore with a rear-facing pouch like a thylacine. Its unusual front incisors are continuously growing like rodent teeth, but exposed like a beak— nursing young have a gap in between them, but as they wean into sub-adults the gap closes and the teeth grow to a sharp hook for tearing into meat and carrion. Their thumbed hind feet somewhat resemble a primate’s, but with a set of sharp talons for capturing and gripping prey.
Our cover for this volume was illustrated by @ibenkrutt, who really knocked this design out of the park. If you’d like to support our contributing artists and acquire the zine, you can check out the campaign over here!
A Medieval Gay Brawl in the Synagogue On Yom Kippur
Sometimes the finds of the Genizah are so incredible that you have difficulty believing that it’s really there, that you are really peering through this window into the lives of medieval Jews around the Mediterranean. This story caught my attention in a footnote of Goitein’s and I thought I would post it for Yom Kippur… It’s not really magic-related, except that I think there’s a certain magic in recovering and reclaiming the past.
The fragment shown here, T-S 8J22.25 in Cambridge, is a letter from a Jewish pilgrim named Hasan ben Mu’ammal, who had gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the High Holidays, Tishrei 4813 = September 1052 CE. He reports that a certain Daniel had wished to see him but he was unable to, because of “the altercation” that had happened in synagogue. Apparently, on Yom Kippur, many pilgrims had gathered from around the Mediterranean, and “a man from Tiberias and a man from [Tyre] became involved in love, and the Tiberian began fondling [?] the Tyrian in the sight of everyone… and the people from Tiberias and those from Tyre began to fight with one another and went out to […] and they brought the chief of the police to the synagogue and […] until the people calmed down.” Hasan goes on to report that Daniel had told him that “such is the behaviour of these people every day,” and concludes the letter with best wishes to the recipients (his brother Abu Nasr and family). A wild ride from start to finish. Goitein drily observes that the letter indicates that homosexuality was regarded as a “vice rather than a deadly crime… [and] it did not form the object of great social concern.”
Shana tova — welcome to 5777! May all who are fasting have a meaningful, enriching, and affirming day… and hopefully a peaceful one too!
A classic post! This source is now available with a full translation and commentary in my book, A Rainbow Thread. Shana tova, and may all who are observing Yom Kippur have a meaningful holiday!
June 16th is the second annual Let Papyrus Say Fuck day, so feel free to join even if it’s with a shitposty little doodle! Use the tags: Papyrus, Undertale, LetPapyrusSayFuck, and BringBackTheCoolDude. Don’t forget to tag it with swearing if you include swearing in the image. Video transcript under the cut.
happy pride month! here’s a reminder that we won’t have true marriage equality until disabled people are able to get married without losing their benefits. don’t exclude disabled people from your activism!
