Pumpkin and Paneer Stew (by alaric)

Equipment

1. Knife for chopping veg
2. Chopping board
3. Large hob safe cassarole dish or pan or a crock pot. With adaption it can easily be cooked in an over or slow cooker as well.
4. Oven gloves or mitts or heat proof cloth (Sarah here - ok so I also bought us knew halloween/autumn oven gloves but this one is because Jean's university house mates accidently set fire to the pumpkin ones we've had the last five years or so... so this purchase does not count for halloween decor budget ok!)

Ingredients

• One small pumpkin (sold as a "cooking pumpkin")
• Two courgettes
• 2 tins of chopped tomatoes
• 3 vegetable stock cubes
• 3 teaspoons of smoked paprika
• 1 teaspoon of garlic salt (or separate salt and garlic, we just happened to have some nice garlic salt to hand)
• 1 tin of red kidney beans
• 1 tin of chickpeas

(Sarah here - whilst Al did all the cooking I made sure we stayed hydrated with ths lovely Spice Pumpkin Pie Sticky Chai from Bird and Blend made in the pumpkin tea pot that we got several years ago - no it doesn't matter that I am the only one who drinks tea - shhhh!)

The Why

The weather is turning autumnul, and Sarah has been nagging me to buy this pumpkin-shaped cast iron casserole dish that she's heard is in Lidl...

(Sarah here - it is £25!!! for a 3.7L oven and hob enameled metal cassarole dish compared to the Le Creuset one which is like £300 and smaller and though it is not going to be the life time cookware of the Le Creuset it has a 3 yr guarentee and Sainsbury's etc... all have cute pumpkin cassorole dishes but they are ceramic or stone ware and I have not had good luck with seasonal cookware that is ceramic - we have been lucky if it survives two years and cracks much quicker than normal cookware - we may just do a lot of this type of cooking compared to other households. Having said that Sainsbury's one is apparently £15 but I am out of halloween budget sadly! And I had already gotten us a mushroom serving bowl from ASDA for £10 back in August so doesn't count right? It was a different season! Besides I kept waiting till pans and dishes were worn out to get a nice set but Alaric keeps buying replacements so I think getting the pots and pans we like when they are affordable is the way forward rather than getting standins and never getting the nice stuff. On a more serious note I feel that the heavier the pan the more ergonomic the handle needs to be and whilst not perfect the Lidle pan has a better handle for me to grip with my sometimes defunct hands though I do prefer the style of the Creuset ones! Now back to the Alaric:)

So today I bought one, and made a pumpkin stew in it.

The recipe

(Sarah here - ok sorry we promised we would always do no nonsense recipes without the the long life stories before you get to the recipe but... but... I had to defend my honour!)

• One small pumpkin (sold as a "cooking pumpkin")
• Two courgettes

Chop 'em up into cubes of at most 2cm on a side and put them in your cooking pot, with a couple of table spoons of olive oil. Put the top on the pot and put it on a hob at high heat. Stir every few minutes while you work on the next bit:

• 400g of paneer

Chop it into 2cm cubes, and in another pan, fry it with a little oil, turning frequently until it starts to get browned on the sides. Then add 1tsp of ground black pepper, stir, and turn the heat down to minimum.

The veg in the stew pot should be looking browned in places now, and generally soft and mushy, so we can proceed to the next stage.

• 2 tins of chopped tomatoes
• 3 vegetable stock cubes
• 3 teaspoons of smoked paprika
• 1 teaspoon of garlic salt (or separate salt and garlic, we just happened to have some nice garlic salt to hand)
• 1 tin of red kidney beans
• 1 tin of chickpeas

Add all these things to the vegetables, stir to mix it all up, and put the lid back on.

Wait ten minutes.

Add the paneer to the stew, stir, and put the lid back on the stew.

Wait five more minutes (I used this time to heat a gluten free tiger loaf in the oven, at gas mark 4)

Serve!

Oh, and the pumpkin seeds I scraped out of the pumpkin, once manually seperated from the slimy strings and rinsed, were spread on foil on a baking tray and baked at gas mark 4 for about half an hour, making them golden and crispy; they're a snack on their own:

A sensible version of this recipe will appear on Salaric Cooking for you all here.

Boodles and Drawing Challenges (by sarah)

A few years ago I created Boodles - initially as a thing just for us in our extended hell scape of lock down and on going medical emergencies afterwards. Last year I decided I would share them after a friend said they found Inktober and the draw a whole thing every day too intense and another had said how they alwasy wanted to draw some more inovlved than most people did for the prompts but struggled with what to draw.

So the Boodles are too specific a prompt for many and there are only ten of them at a time but I think they work well for those they were designed for! They can also be used as writing prompts and general creative challenges.

Jean helped put them together and we hope you all find them useful - they will have a perminent page over on Salaric Craft incase you want to find them at a glance all year round!

And just incase it was not obvious they are BOO...dles as in ghosty spooky halloween themed doodles

BOOdles 2025

1) Fox Hole

2) Toad Racing like Pin Ball

3) Mountains of the Moon

4) Star Scape

5) Witch's Kitchen

6) Troll Bridge

7) Puss in Boots Salon

8) Apocathery

9) The Devils Disco

10) Wizarding Ways

Be Inspired to draw when you can, how you can and as much as you want!

BOOdles 2024

1) Space Dragon

2) Snake + Skull

3) Space wreck with mushrooms

4) Ghost Tea Party

5) Zombie Titan

6) Hades and Persephone

7) Hellhound

8) Demon Daycare

9) Pirates of Penance

10) Eyeball

Be inspired and draw when you can!

Trying to be Positive – in the Brave New World (by sarah)

Its a weird time out there at the moment and as I think I mentioned before I have found it hard working on The Punk Universe in recent years as the point at which our actual timeline and the fictional timeline were supposed to diverge into a slow multi origin apocalypse/societal collapse was Britian leaving the EU and a despotic badbusiness man getting in as the Predient of the USA... The story line contains plagues and forced isolations, climate change dissastors and nuclear war... so though I am still writing it I am not sharing it in the way I used to and the rate of writing on this project has decreased drastically.

Also a lot more of my real world work is based around community groups and things now and though I had toxic positivity that gas lights you telling you nothing is wrong and to keep smiling, I have started trying to make my corner of the world positive but without the denial - yes things are mad, bad and I am so very sad about the evils that are arising and try as I might there isn't anything I can do about the big picture, but big changes can happen with small changes and to badly not quiet quote one of my favourite fixtional characters Granny Weather Wax from the Terry Pratchett Discworld series -

I will do as much as I can where I can with what I can

One of the big things of late has been how divided and dipolled everyone is - poeple don't just dsagree anymore they almost instantly start calling each other names meaning no real discussion is ever had - this is bad. On top of that I feel that the internet is dead - or at least social media is - it didn't quiet happen in the way I predicted and is still on going (I wrote a horror story on it so we kind of don't want my exact prediction). So where does that leave me? Twitter used to be my main plateform, it was full of academics and authors who because I was there at the beginning actually talked to me - gave me advice and sometimes pep talks. I mean I also suffered from on line stalkers right from the get go with the 2008 incident involving police and what not marking a retreat from fame for me. But not it is kind of ubiquitous hate and scorn that sloshes around - how do you counteract that? And where do I find my new twitter?

I am on Bluesky, Mastadon and Threads as my relatively new ones. Threads is a depressing cesspool that just mimics Facebook and that isn't surprising as it is connected to Facebook and Instagram so most of my posts are just from my Insta account. And I love Instagram but it is a forced positive environment and that is kind of okk because I know that is what it is and I mainly use it to share images of cute things anyway. I was trying to counteract arguments that are demostratly false and though very occassionally this works and someones mind is changed or rather they were actually looking if info to make up their mind - the number of times this happens has dropped drastically this year with the last few months being even worse.

I have also always tried to prevent myself ending up with just an echo chamber as I felt that was dangerous and not helpful for a communicator now however I find myself seeking out curated spaces and have specifically joined a mastadon server that is about creativity and moral support. I have been fallowing groups that like Pawsitive News and find myself looking back across the years away from the social media I so loved and I did love it - it got me through times of being bed bound and gave me a voice when I most needed it - it is also the reason I ended up working at music festivals and got my art displayed at pestigous events globally and got to be part of charity anthologies organised by or next to famous authors I idolised - both of whom have crumbled to either bigotory or scandal since.

So what do I see as I look back across the years? I yearn for discussion forums on specific topics and find myself once more joining and setting up mailing lists for people. What I would love is for the blogosphere to come back but I know it can't ever be like it was in the early naughtes for blogs. But none the less I have kind of kept going with various blogs on and off and I am happy I have done so and occassionaly back blog stuff I wrote on facebook etc...

Bluesky - I forgot Bluesky... and yeah basically I forget Bluesky alot. I don't actually do well tryig to use all this stuff on my phone but no ones websites actually work properlly anymore but I am so sick of having an app for everything... And then there was finding out that the photo editing software I was paying for and using was actually training generalised AIs and being a security leak on my phone... ah yes the AI...

I feel that I may have written too much on the internet and maybe put too much art up as I am now loosing jobs and oppurtinities as people think myself is AI - AI is this instance being specific generational AI that steals art and writing and not the various decades long art projects or medical and educational uses such as read to speach. Did I train the damn things with my spewings? Or I am multiple - we the dyslexics ADHDers who use dashes instead of the appropriate grammer and write reams - yes we are legion and we used to be able to find each other on the internet and not feel so alone but know there are just ghosts.

But... I also love making zines, mainly little hand drawn booklets and you know they exist outside of the internet for the main part and they are made at groups with actual people and yes mainly you have to physcally be able to get there but the neural divergent community are finding ways to stick together digitally too including video calls when someone can not attend a group. The hybrid situation that use disabled people had dreamed off and been told no its too difficult and then...the pandemic came and we were like AT LAST... and then the world kind oftook it away again even though some people were still stuck at home more disabled than ever after brushes with covid induced death and complications.

I wont live the post covid world is full of tech stuff that keeps bamboozling me - I can't even pay for stuff anymore... and nothing is simple - an app for every restuarant - which you know for accessability could be great - social anxiety or speech issues means no problem you can still order independently but only if it is coupled with the option to order by just talking to staff if needed.

Again how do I make this postive? It all sounds depressing right?

Well I have been doing little bits of consultation and running workshops at conferences and so on that specifically look at these elements - mainly in the education and heritage sector but in culture in general including music venues.

Be the Change You Want To See

Arg!!! if I am not careful I will end up making inspirational posters with kittens on.

Anyway I think the upswing of the AI and social media decline - remember the horrible dipoled arguments? Well a lot of that isn't real people it is bots andthis has been a growing ssue for like a decade but ithas accelleranted recently. And it doesn't matter that they aren't real because the affect on our brains when we read it is real and detrimental 🙁 Also it empowers people to spout hate.... the upshot of all of this is that people are moving back towards physical makaing and creating or digital for small commuities - actual networks of people via things like Discord (obviously many still feed the internet at large but again worrying only about the little bit ofthe system you can actually affect).

I am not abandoning the internet but I am trying to be mainly helpful providing information that can help ie where my local warm spaces are and community fridges and sharing writing and art prompts. Obviously I mainly write horror and that isn't going anywhere I am just sharing the more positive and yes cutsie bits because I feel they are a kind of barrier that is needed at the moment and you know the nice and cute is a huge part of who I am as well - for years it was the part everyone expected so the horror and hard scifi were always a bit of a shock! But I think this coupled with the political commentary have kind of hidden this part of me and it would be easy to become and stay bitter about everything.

so the cute is back

I will share the cute and the other stuff will be there but with warnings so people can choose wheather they feel strong enough or want to enter that world. And I will continue to run real world groups and events as Science and Art is for everyone.

Also things that could be seen as negatives or at the very least contradictions actually mean I am in a unique place to build bridges and expain access needs etc... With the current revolation about being deaf my whole life...

I am:

A disabled sports instructor A dyslexic writer A blind visual artist A deaf musician

I have awards for all of these things that were recieved without the disability being taken into account or even at the time known about even by myself!

It is exhuasting but also kind of awesome and now it is time to make the world a better place one little...

act of kindness

at a time...

Back to granny WeatherWax -

Kind aint the same as nice