Neurogender/neuroqueer Pride phage now available!

New phage up on PridePhages! This time around, enjoy the neurogender bacteriophage in all its glory!

I messed up the saturation a bit when mixing the green and purple paints, so this one had a bit more digital post-processing than usual, but I’m happy with the end result — it reflects the colours of the neurogender flag more or less exactly!

I tried to make the legs on this one look like they were in the process of happy-flappy stimming #RespectTheStim

I was a bit hazy on the extent to which this flag covers neuroqueer identities, so I’ve put both terms in the title to be on the safe side; I am open to correction, though — don’t be afraid to speak up if I need to change things!

This phage was the 13th design uploaded to my little Redbubble shop, so (because I’m occasionally superstitious) I put the rainbow ‘Phages of the world, unite!’ design from my shopfront banner up as well! Phages Of The World, Unite! I’d originally intended it to only go on stickers and magnets, but I kept noticing ways to make it work on other products as well; things snowballed a bit and now there are 70+ products to choose from!

First Pride flag phage of 2023 currently planned to be based on the intersex flag — two colours and a non-stripe-based design, so should be an interesting challenge!
I’ll also be bumping up my artist margins on stickers to 50% in the new year, so if you want Pride phage stickers now, get ’em while they’re cheap(er)! Or wait and send more funds to your friendly local queer Autistic bacteriophage artist — whichever you like!

An alternative to traditional Christmas pudding

Ingredients:

• Agar-agar-based vegetarian/vegan jelly crystals (raspberry-flavoured works especially well) (better texture and faster setting than gelatine-based crystals)
• Ginger — crystallized/glace/stem-in-syrup (this is a flexible recipe, and if you go for stem ginger, you can stir the syrup into the liquid for dissolving the jelly crystals)
• Glace cherries
• Dried mixed fruit (currants, raisins, candied peel, what-have-you — you might want to soak them overnight in fruit juice to soften them up a bit, but then again, they’ll be in a fairly liquid environment once they’re mixed into the pudding)
• Tinned pineapple chunks in fruit juice (optional but tasty, and you can add the juice to the jelly-dissolving liquid as well)
• Crystallized angelica if you can get it, but for whatever reason it’s become extremely rare over the past couple of decades

Procedure (to be carried out on Christmas Eve):

1. Put the Festival Of Nine Lessons And Carols from King’s College, Cambridge on the radio.
2. In a bowl large enough to hold all the ingredients, place the ginger, cherries, mixed fruit (drained if soaked), pineapple chunks and angelica (if using), and stir until well mixed.
3. Place the jelly crystals (and the drained-off juice/syrup, if they’re a factor) in a jug and make up the jelly to double or triple strength with hot water.
4. Allow the liquid jelly mixture to cool just enough to not break the bowl from thermal shock, then pour it over the mixed fruity ingredients and stir until well combined — you will have to work very quickly here, because I’m really not joking about how fast agar-agar-based jelly sets!
5. Once everything’s mixed, put the bowl in the fridge and leave to cool and set overnight.
6. Fish it out after the main bit of Christmas dinner and eat with Cornish clotted cream.
7. If there’s any jelly pud left over, it’ll keep covered in the fridge for a couple of weeks (if!).

***

Ok, that’s the recipe out of the way, now for the backstory!

This recipe is a long-standing family tradition — as in, 55+ years and counting. My late paternal grandmother found the recipe in (I believe) the Radio Times when my dad was quite young, and he’s been making it at Christmas ever since. He started making it with the vegetarian jelly crystals (usually strawberry or raspberry flavour, but any flavour should work) when he met my mum (near-lifelong vegetarian), and that aspect of the tradition has been present ever since. I wasn’t really able to appreciate this recipe in years gone by (Autistic taste-related sensitivities are weird and occasionally a pain in the bum), but now I’m firmly of the opinion that it’s not really Christmas without Dad’s jelly pud ^^

This recipe should be a good alternative option for folks who are vegetarian, vegan or who simply don’t like the traditional heavy cake-y Christmas pudding.

Eat hearty, folks! 😀