Basic (Or Maybe Not) Canning Tips

Things that I have picked up in the last year or so:

-Hold onto your old lids, but mark them as old. You can use them for dry storage or if you loose a lid.

-Put a sticker with the date that you opened a jar on the lid. That way you know how old the jar is when it gets lost the back of your fridge. Masking tape works well (and then when you wash it you know not to put it in with your fresh lids).

-Your tongs are much more important than your jar lifter, but both will make your life that much easier.

-If you don’t want a canner because of space issues or want a multiuse  pot, look for the largest stockpot you can find.

-Keep really good notes with what you’re doing. Part of my current Wordless Wednesday series is to track projects. I also use a Google Doc with what I’ve made, what changes I made, how many jars, the source of the recipe, and if I gave away any jars.

-Make little stickers (or have them made) asking for your jars back (put them on the lid). Most people are happy to give you your jars back when they’re done, it keeps the glass out of the landfill, and it keeps your canning costs down. See this post at Food in Jars on the etiquette of canning jars.

-Macerate your fruit before you jam it. Put half (or all, for a small batch) of the sugar a bowl with the fruit for several hours before cooking. It helps pull the juices out. I throw in the peppers when I’m doing a hot batch as well.

-Use your freezer to your advantage. Frozen fruit works well for jams, and saves time.

-If you have something that needs to set for a long period of time, it frees up a lot of my time to let it sit overnight and then cook it in the morning.

-I really do suggest learning how to make jam without pectin. It’s slightly longer and slightly more variable, but it uses much less sugar and you can adjust your batch to pretty much any size you want.

-When you’re actually canning, putting your tools in a long, low dish like a pyrex on a cookie sheet helps to make clean up that much faster.

-Keep track of what you’re using and how much of it at a time. It can be a mental list, but having an idea of the speed you go through things will keep you from canning pints of hot sauce when what you really need are quarter pints (not that I did that last summer or anything…)

-This is fairly trivial, but start a collection of jars that you really like and a collection of jars that you would be okay with never seeing again. That way, when you gift them you don’t have to worry about never seeing them again.

The Forbidden

The Forbidden

In the Flesh

Clive Barker

The tulpa is my absolutely favorite horror theme, hands down. I adore it. I’m not sure what my stance on Slenderman’s take over of the idea; I mean, if Slendy keeps it in the public eye more power to him I guess.

I have a confession to make though; I much prefer the film adaptation of this piece. I’m not sure why, I found the original to be compelling enough. It had that definite Barker weirdness that I adore so much (which is why I keep reading him). The idea of the thoughtform, that which we pump so much energy into that it becomes a reality, is dealt with in a much more direct format-it has to be, if it’s going to do in 30 or 40 pages of read time that an anthology presents as opposed to the several hours of screen time.

Eventually this piece would go on and become a movie called Candyman-which seems to have spawned one of those villains that everyone who has seen him remembers for years after. You have admit, Barker does villains with a certain dark grace. The Forbidden tells the story of Helen, a grad student who sets out to record graffiti for her project on urban legends. She stumbles across odd examples in a labyrinth of decaying apartment buildings.

One of the things that stands out to her is the way that the nonsensical repeats itself throughout these examples, and she comes to realize that there’s more going on than just street art. However, further examination may be dangerous to the entire community as well as herself.

This short stands out to me for several reasons. First, like I’ve already said I’m pretty much going to like anything that involves a thoughtform. A villain literally thought into existence? It appeals to the quasi-postmodernist in me. It’s the hyperreality come to life. Literally. Second, Helen’s struggles with her research ring true to me. It’s not as though everyone in academics act like her colleagues, but research can sometimes be brutal for reasons other than just complexity. I know that’s true for every field, but I did find myself sympathetic towards a fellow sociologist/social scientist.

Lastly, the funeral scene at the end is just creepy as all get out. Barker has taken a tendency that everyone has whether they really want to admit it and shoved it right under our faces. If the mother seems to be enjoying herself a little too much, it’s because she probably is. It’s a detail that seems to get overlooked (probably deliberately) throughout fiction, but people like to be the center of attention. It’s probably the only time this woman will ever be noticed by her community. It makes for a freakish and surreal scene enhanced by the realization that she’s probably just being more honest than a great many other people.

An Awfully Honest Babble

(image from Pinterest, where it’s cited as being from http://www.thefabweb.com)

That moment when you realize that people are trying to bond with you, not show you up. I have a lot of confidence issues (yes, I know that you never saw that one coming…) and I’ve been going through a weird period. It’s not that I don’t think that I’m capable. It’s that I don’t think that I’m capable enough.

One of the other big sticking points for me lately is that I’ve turned everything into a dichotomy. You’re going to notice that there’s going to be a slight spike in body confidence material on the blog. Not a huge one, I’m not going to turn into a body blogger. Mainly because I don’t want to. Anyway, I’ve discovered at least part of where my issues lie. Part of my personal history has led me to being a fairly competitive person.

This is where that statement is relevant: I am actually getting better about learning to accept a compliment. And I’m getting better about forcing myself through that weird haze that body dysmorphia gives a person so I have a better understanding what I actually look like. The problem is that when someone acknowledges that another person is pretty, I go on the defensive. Which is a problem.

It goes something like this: I seem to have developed the mindset that attractiveness is a finite resource. If someone else is pretty, I can’t be pretty too because they’ve eaten all the pretty. It’s like having two pieces of cake but telling the third person that they’re eating cake. No, they’re not, and everyone ‘knows’ it. I’m not going to invoke the big F again but yes I’m fully aware that ‘pretty’ isn’t the saving grace that the media wants it to be but I also hate the current third wave mentality that you should just reject the idea entirely. I’m sorry, unless there’s been some sort of sociological revolution no one told me about I’m still stuck in this body and working with the feedback I get from social interaction.

So then the question is what to do about this. Part of it is going to be time. I’m dealing with 28 years worth of training, it’s not going to be something I fix overnight. If I’m going to be honest I’m not sure I’m ever going to undo it entirely. Part of it is just awareness that this is a thought pattern I fall into and I’m going to have to do literally stop the thought process and rework it. It’s not like I want everyone to think that I’m some sort of goddess, I just want to stop beating myself up on the rare occasions that I decide to go out at night.

Horrific Knit’s Infernal Playlist, Volume 6

How about some shorts for this playlist?

I saw the ending coming, but it’s vague enough to still be intriguing.

Listen. I was that kid growing up.

Inspired Weekends #23

Hello!

I hope that your week has been better than mine. I try not to complain too much, but I spent a chunk of this week hoping that my bathroom ceiling wouldn’t collapse. Again. I don’t have a lot of problems with this apartment, but that bathroom ceiling causes me a lot of stress for whatever reason. The week had good points, but it’s felt very long. So you’ll have to forgive me for this going up late, and this week’s feature going up with the next round.

Inspired Weekends #23

This is a free for all style link up-there are no rules! The only guideline is that each entry should be your own content-but feel free to link up round ups, link parties, giveaways, diy, recipes, tutorials, favorite entries from your archives, anything that you would like to share!

Click on the button that looks like a blue frog at the bottom of the page to view the collection.

Please link to entries, and not your blog main page.

Click around the list and leave a few comments or pin a few projects! Please try to at least stop by the last entry on the list.

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Rings

They say that hanging iron over your doors keeps the Fair Ones from getting into your house and raising Cain. I wonder if all the stainless canning rings I have hanging around everywhere is accomplishing the same task, or if I’m just confusing them.

Gender and Master Lists

If you follow the horror blogsphere, the newest master list that Horror-movies.ca released recently has created something of a frenzy. The reason, when ‘master lists’-lists of the top genre directors-are released all the time without this much controversy, is that all 1o of these up and coming genre masters, are male.

It’s not like horror doesn’t have its female members (raises hand). In fact, it could be solidly argued that some of the major, definitive tropes in  the genre, center around the feminine. There are a lot of female voices on the review sites; many of the most respected commentators in the genre are female (and in a response that’s slightly more profane and slightly less sociological-thought not by much-than this one, see All Things Horror’s breakdown of the comments left regarding this issue. Fair warning, there’s a fair bit of ragey-ness and profanity-in other words, they wrote what the inside of my head actually sounds like on this subject). So why aren’t women making these lists?

What Does Horror Say About Gender?

So what is the relevance of gender in horror? What does the genre even have to say about women? A lot, actually-which is a topic that I’ve touched on before.  The feminine does very much tend to fall into the ‘Other’ category- all those things that are different, alien, and therefore dangerous. However, as it’s been show before, the act of othering can sometimes open up some interesting paths to discussion.

For example, what does it mean that in so many slasher films, the strongest lead character-and the one that makes it out alive in so many films- is female? What does this imply in a societal environment where women are supposed to shun violence, let alone engage in it to save her Self? What exactly would have happened had Jamie Lee Curtis had been male and Michael Meyers was chasing after his brother? I think it would have been a much weaker franchise, personally.

But the Gendering is Negative

Is it? Or I guess the better question is, is the gendering of characters in horror any less damaging than the gendering of characters in say, a rom-com? I’m not certain that the implication that your life cycle has to include ‘romance’ (which is such a turbulent topic that you could probably write an entire blog just on that idea alone), ‘marriage’ (again, which never looks like reality), and ‘family’ (….you get the point) is much better than fake blood and a chainsaw-wielding monstrosity ala The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Actually, Massacre is a good place to look at this concept. On both sides of the hero/villain divide we have characters acting out what are essentially the same gendered motives-the protection and the success of the family unit-and turning them on their head. I think if anything, horror is an environment wherein the exploration of the full range of gender is possible; when a character is pushed to their breaking point, what happens to the patterns that they’re ‘supposed’ to fall into? What happens, for example, when Rosemary discovers that her dream wasn’t a dream and who exactly fathered her child? In the world of say, the rom-com (you’ll notice I hate rom-coms for a number of reasons), the family unit would be perfect, healthy and beautiful.

How many perfect, healthy, beautiful rom-com style families do you actually know?

What Does Feminism Require?

So we’ve agreed (or I’ve agreed for you, I guess) that since horror is a valid local to start looking at gender and its expectations-what are the societal obligations for the idea of genre ‘masters’?

More specifically, in order to be a ‘feminist’ reader, viewer, or critic, what do you have to ‘do’? I suppose that you can argue that you ‘have’ to be equal in all things; your 10 item list better be more or less split between men and women. Otherwise, you’re ‘silencing’ women, right?

Keep in mind I consider myself a feminist theorist.

…But What If the Voices Aren’t There?

I’m not claiming that this is true, but for argument’s sake let’s say that the top 10 directors in genre really are male. Let’s just say that the best of the best truly are men.

What happens then? Does feminism require that we discredit their voices and gaze because, patriarchy?

Not so fast. It’s pretty well established and accepted in Third Wave theory that the destruction of the masculine does nothing but destroy men, not lift up women. Tearing down the things that men have done does not inherently make room for women.

There are female directors out there. Pet Semetary was directed by Mary Lambert. American Mary is making the rounds as one of the best new indie pieces and was directed by the Soska twins. (For some reason I got it in my head that Ridley Scott was female for like two days but we won’t go there…) And…

Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Where are the other female directors?

So Where Are They?

What happens when women just don’t want to director horror, or just haven’t been at it long enough to have reached ‘master’ status? It’s not enough to just be making horror, you have to actually be good at it. I’m not suggesting that women aren’t capable of directing it-that’s just not true.

But just as a thought experiment, is it any better to start pressuring women into the director’s chair because it’s a man’s game? It is possible that they just don’t want to take on the role? It is possible that we’re actually silencing the experience of women in horror by spending too much time criticizing what they’re not doing and not examining what they are doing.

(I need to point out All Thing Horror’s entry again here-there’s an entire paragraph full of female directors listed. However, I think that the point regarding the apparent invisibility of female directors is still valid.)

Again, Where are They?

Maybe part of the problem is that we’re looking at the wrong area of genre. If you’re looking only at Hollywood, you’re missing out on a huge amount of territory.

The Indie scene is massive right now with the rise of the crowdfunding movement, the Internet, blogging, and other unconventional techniques. And, a lot of that material is being generated by women. As stated above, the Soska twins are on fire right now. Perhaps, interestingly enough, our norms regarding the freak-out about gendered norming is actually keeping us from finding the areas of society where the norms are being torn down (oh say it ain’t so, the same problems that we always have with seeing change are at play here? You mean counterculture…runs counter to the main culture?)

Finally, keep in mind as well that there’s no reason that a- men can’t be feminist and b-just because they are the empowered actors men don’t have anything worthy to say about women. It’s been suggested that one of the best ways to read Alien is to see it as the masculine fear of childbirth. That can have some really interesting implications on the role of women in society; maybe it’s not entirely a positive implication, but it’s still worth examining what both genders think about themselves and each other.