Fairy Tale Friday--La Petite Tout-Belle (Brittany 1900)

Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.

I had been trying to go in roughly chronological order on these versions of Snow White, but found this tale from 1900 and it was too good to miss. The story of La Petite Toute-Belle (Little All-Beautiful) is a Breton fairy tale published in 1900 by Paul Sébillot in Contes Des Landes et des Grèves which according to Google translate means Tales of the Moors and Strikes. The Strikes part confuses me, so if any of my readers are fluent in French and can shed some light on it for me, I would appreciate it. According to my source, this tale was told by Jeanne-Marie Kernevivaine, from Médréac.

According to Wikipedia:

Paul Sébillot was a French folklorist, painter, and writer. Many of his works are about his native province, Brittany.  In 1881 he initiated with Charles Leclerc the publication Collection des Littératures populaires de toutes les nations (Collection of the Popular Literatures of all Nations), to which he contributed La littérature orale de la Haute-Bretagne (Oral Literature of Upper Brittany). In 1882, came the creation of the Société des Traditions populaires, which organized the Dîners de ma Mère l'Oye,(Dinners of my Mother Goose)  meetings of folklorists which gave rise to the journal of the same name.

Our tale begins not only with a jealous mother, but also with a spiteful servant. Both have taken against our protagonist--the mother for her beauty and the servant for the fact that All-Beautiful is about to snitch to her mother about the maid’s stealing. Together they conspire to kill the girl by pushing her in a well. As in tales like Mother Holle, a fall down a well might not drown you but rather land you with a magical benefactor. In this case, three dragons who love her for her beauty.

When the maid discovers that All-Beautiful is living comfortably at the bottom of a well a “nasty” fairy is employed to dispatch her. I love the word nasty here. I don’t know if that is just the translation, but it cracked me up. Anyway, as the colour red seems to be associated with death our heroine is nearly killed by red sugared almonds but falls for the old “try on this red dress sent by your mother” trick.

The dragons give her a burial at sea and her body floats away like the chest with Danae and Perseus. She is picked up by a young king who feels that her body is too rosy and fresh to be dead and tries to warm her by the fire. His mother and a servant take off the red dress to try to warm her better and she awakens. She remembers being dead and not being able to cry out and comfort the dragons who were so kind to her. I like this young king for several reasons—he does not secretly strip her naked and get a good look (and feel) of her dead  naked body. He, in the company of others, try to revive her. Then he says the most wonderful thing that he could possibly say: “All-Beautiful will be my wife, if she wants to.” If she wants to is a very progressive phrase for 1900. I cannot think of another tale where our protagonist has a choice in the matter as it is just assumed that of course she will want to marry the man who fondled her dead body.

This tale ends with the dragons being rewarded for their kindness and the mother and the maid executed for their wickedness.

source

Little All-Beautiful source

 Once upon a time there was a little girl who was so pretty that she was called All-Beautiful, and her mother was jealous of her beauty. She had a maid, a thief like a magpie, who hated her too because she was going to tell her mother everything she took from her. The wicked maid told her mistress that All-Beautiful was a liar, that she was the one who stole from her, and she repeated it so many times that she ended up making her mother believe it.

One day the lady, from whom jewellery had been taken, believed that it was All-Beautiful who had stolen it from her; she entered into a great anger and exclaimed that she would gladly give something to the person who would rid her of All-Beautiful; the maid said to her:

“All-Beautiful comes every day with me to the well; I will make her believe that a beautiful flower is seen at the bottom; as she is very curious, she will bend over to look, and I will push her into the well. Everyone will believe that she fell there while bending over.”

Her mother replied that she wanted to. The next day the maid went to the well, and when she was about to drop her bucket there, she cried out that a beautiful flower was seen. All-Belle wanted to see her, and while she was bent over, her maid pushed her and made her fall. But instead of drowning, Tout-Belle found herself in a pretty room. Soon she saw three dragons enter it and asked her how she got there. She told them, and the dragons told her they found her so pretty that they kept her to stay with them.

The next day, when the maid came to the well to draw water, Tout-Belle appeared and said to her:

“ Hello, my good servant; say hello to my mother.”

When the maid heard it, she almost fell backwards, in surprise; she ran with all her strength to the house and told her mistress that the little girl was not dead and that she had spoken to her.

So the mother went to find a nasty fairy and asked her how to kill All-Belle. The fairy gave her red sugared almonds and told her that All-Beautiful would die as soon as she had eaten them.

The next morning, when the maid went to the well, Tout-Belle attracted herself again and said to her:

“ Hello, my good servant; say hello to my mother.”

“ Hello, All-Beautiful,” replied the maid, “here are some pretty red sugared almonds that your maman is sending you.”

Tout-Belle picked up the sugared almonds and carried them to her room, but as she was going to eat them, the dragons arrived and told her that it was poison.

The next day, the maid went to the well; Tout-Belle attracted herself and said to her:

“ Hello, my good servant; say hello to my mother!”

“Hello, All-Beautiful,” replied the maid.

Then she returned home, shouting:

“Ah! Madam, I have seen Tout-Belle again, who is prettier than day.”

“How? or What!” cried the mother. "She's not dead yet! Go get me the fairy.”

When the fairy arrived, she said to her:

 “This is the second time that I have ordered you to kill this child, and she is not yet dead! If this time it escapes, I will kill you.”

“Madame,” replied the fairy, “I regret killing this little girl, because she is the most beautiful in the world; but, since you order it, here is a red dress; as soon as she puts it on, she will die.”

The next day, when the maid went to the well, Tout-Belle attracted herself and said again:

“Hello, my good servant; say hello to my mother.”

“Hello, All-Beautiful; here is a dress that your maman sends you to replace your worn one.”

Tout-Belle took the dress her maid was throwing at her, and she went to her room; it seemed so pretty to her that she wanted to put it on right away, so that the dragons would find it beautiful when they returned. But as soon as she put it on, she fell to the ground without movement.

Upon their return, the dragons saw Tout-Belle lying on the floor. They thought she was dead, and they were very sad because they loved her like their sister.

They had a shrine made where they put Tout-Belle, then they went to deposit it by the sea. When the tide came up, the reliquary was raised and began to float on the water like a boat. As long as the dragons saw it, they remained on the shore crying; but soon it disappeared from their eyes, and they thought it had sunk to the bottom of the water.

The shrine sailed for a long time on the sea; it ends up stopping on rocks near which a castle was built. The young king, who was looking out of his window, saw her and ordered his servant to go get it and bring it to his room.

When she had been transported there, the young man closed his door and opened the shrine. He saw All-Belle, who was as pretty as a day, and seemed to be sleeping. 

"Oh!” he said to himself, “she's too cool, she can't be dead. She can only be asleep.”  He lit a big fire and took the girl on his lap to see if the heat would bring her back to life.

However, the king's mother, who had not seen him for a few days, thought he was sick, and she went up to her son's room. The door was closed, and she ordered one of her maids to look through the keyhole. The servant saw the king who was trying to warm the girl and was holding her on his lap. She said so to the queen, who entered in great anger, and broke down the door. But when she entered, and saw this young girl who seemed dead, she was taken pity, and said to the king:

“Where then, my son, did you find this young person?”

"My mother," he replied, “there she was in this reliquary, which sailed on the water like a boat and stopped at the foot of the castle.”

The servant had approached Tout-Belle, and said to the queen:

 “Madame, this young girl is too pretty and too fresh to be dead; if you want, we can take off her dress to warm her up better.”

As soon as the dress was removed, Tout-Belle opened her eyes and asked, "Where am I?" "

Then the king and queen told her that she was with people who wanted to help her, and they asked her to tell her story. She told them what had happened to her until, having put on the red dress, she had fallen motionless. But, she said, I saw everything that was going on around me; I heard the crying dragons saying goodbye to me, but I couldn't speak or move.

The king sent for the three dragons, who were very happy when they saw that All-Beautiful was alive: the king rewarded them and said:

“All-Beautiful will be my wife, if she wants to; but before I marry her, I want to bring her mother and her maid.”

When they were before the king, he respectfully greeted the mother of Tout-Belle and said to her:

 “Madam, I heard that you had a young girl to marry.”

"No," she replied. “I had one, but she died.”

“What disease?”

 “She died suddenly, and I was very sad.”

“Madam, you are lying: your daughter is alive; Here she is, and she will be queen. For you and your evil maid, you will go up to the stake to be burned alive, because you are not a mother, but a stepmother.”

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week for a tale full of magic and transformation.

 

 

Fairy Tale Friday--Myrsina (Greece, 1970)

Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.

This week we look at a tale from Greece that was collected by George A. Megas in his book Folktales of Greece in 1970. I can find little information about the author except that he was an academician and professor at the University of Athens and he was instrumental in the development of Greek Folklore. I found this tale here on Book of Fables blog. 

What sets this tale apart is that it is not a mother or stepmother who envies our protagonist’s beauty, but rather her two older sisters. This puts me in mine of the Twa Sisters—a murder ballad I spent a year studying on Murder ballad Monday a few years ago where sisterly jealousy turns deadly. We looked at several tales where the moon is used as a magic mirror, but here the sisters ask the sun who is the fairest. Perhaps this is because Greece is such a warm, sunny place that the sun is at the heart of their lives.

This tale becomes more like a Cinderella story in that they force their youngest and most beautiful sister (according to the sun) to wear dirty rags in an effort to diminish her beauty, but the sun sees through all that. Even though they are arrayed in their finest and covered in jewels, Myrsina’s beauty shines through.

Then the story morphs into a version of Hansel and Gretel. The sisters say they need to go rebury their mother whose grave lies over the mountain and then abandon their youngest sister there on the pretence that they forgot to bring a spade to dig up their dead mother and must go home and get one. Then we go back to Cinderella as the trees of the forest act as magical helper like a fairy godmother and help her to find safety in a little house.

We then return to elements of Snow White for the house is not occupied by seven dwarfs but the twelve months. They look after her like a sister until her sisters find out that she is still alive. They bake her a poison pie (was it an apple one? It does not say) and failing in that attempt on her life come back and claim they have a ring of their late mother’s that they need to give to her. I can’t decide about the character of Myrsina. I sometimes think her interactions with her sisters are full of innocence when she asks “Won’t you stay and eat it with me?” and then I read it again I hear a wariness in her voice as she deals with them and takes everything with a grain of salt. But at least she talks in this one, unlike last week.

This one ends much less creepy than other versions. The prince gazes upon her, sees the ring and the red marks on her finger and removes it and so she survives. There is no bringing her dead body home and keeping it secret in a room and stripping her unconscious body naked like in other tales. Then they get married and lived and thrived and did good deeds.

source

Myrsina source

Once upon a time, there lived three sisters who were orphans. The youngest was named Myrsina, or Myrtle.
One day, the two older sisters, who thought themselves great beauties, decided to find out which one was the fairest of the three. So they went outside just as the sun was rising and asked, “Sun, who is the best of us all?”

The sun answered, “One is as good as the other, but the third and youngest is the best.”

When the two older sisters heard that, jealousy came alive in them. The next day, they wore their finest clothes and forced Myrsina to wear her oldest clothes.

“Sun, who is the best of us all?”

The sun answered, “One is as good as the other, but the third and youngest is the best.”

Now, the two older sisters were truly angry. The next morning, they added all of their jewellery to their finery and forced Myrsina to wear dirty old rags.

“Sun, who is the best of us all?”

The sun answered for the third time, “One is as good as the other, but the third and youngest is the best”

That was the last thing the two older sisters could bear to hear. They were eaten up by envy and began to plot how best to be rid of Myrsina.

“Our mother has been dead for so many years,” said the eldest. “We should go and rebury her. ”

“It will take time” said the second sister, “since she is buried far away on the mountain”
Myrsina, who was too young to remember any funeral, agreed to go with her sisters. She took the funeral bread and kollyva—the traditional offering of fruit and grain—with her.
When they had gotten into the mountain forest, the eldest sister said, “Here is the site. But—well, aren’t we fool? We forgot our shovels.”
“We will go back for them” mid the second sister. “Myrsina, you stay here and guard the site”

There was Myrsina left all alone in the forest. She waited, and waited, and finally, when night began to fall, she knew she had been left to die, and burst into tears.
The trees took pity on her. “Do not cry,” whispered a beech tree. “Let that bread you hold roll. Wherever it stops, there you stay, safe and sound.”

So Myrsina set the bread rolling and followed it down and around until it finally stopped in front of a house. She went inside but found no one around and the place in terrible mess. Myrsina rolled up her sleeves and set to work. She soon had straightened everything out and even had started dinner.
Then, the owners of the house came home. They were the twelve months, twelve brothers who shared the house.
“Look at this!” one month cried, “Someone has cleaned up our house!”
“And someone has started dinner.”
“Do not be afraid!” they called out. “If you are a lad, you shall be our younger brother. If you are a maid, you shall be our little sister. We shall never harm you.”
Then, Myrsina came out from where she had hidden herself. She sat down with them and told them how her sisters had abandoned her.
“Then, little sister, you shall have a home with us,” the months decided.

And for a time, they did. Myrsina kept the house clean and the food cooked, and the brothers treated her kindly and laughed and sang with her.

Meanwhile, though, Myrsina’s two sisters found out that she was not dead and cold, but alive and happy. Envy ate them up. They baked a pie with poison in it and set out to visit her.
“Oh Myrsina, we thought you were dead! We have been searching and searching for you!” the two older sisters exclaimed.
“I thought you had abandoned me.” replied Myrsina.
“No, no, we looked everywhere for you. When we learned you were here, we came with a pie for you.”
“Won’t you stay and eat it with me?”
“No, no, we are in a hurry. Good-bye, Myrsina;”
They hurried off.
Myrsina cut a tiny piece of the pie and gave it to the dog. Instantly, the dog fell down dead.
“Poison!” Myrsina cried and went out and buried the pie deeply.

Months passed. The two older sisters heard that Myrsina was alive and again set out to visit her. This time, they brought a poisoned ring. “Sister? Sister? Won’t you let us in?” they implored.
“No, sisters, I will not,” Myrsina replied.
“Please, Myrsina! We have our mother’s ring” said the eldest sister. “On her deathbed, she said, ‘If you do not want my curse, give this to Myrsina  when she grows up.’”
The second sister said, “And now you are all grown up, and we do not want to go to hell from our mother’s curse. So, just open a window a crack, and we will slip the ring in to you.”
So Myrsina opened the window just a crack, and the sisters slipped the ring in for her. No sooner had Myrsina put the ring on her finger than she fell to the floor.

When the months came home and found Myrsina lying lifeless, they mourned so loudly , the mountains rang with the cries. Then, they dressed her in gold and placed her in a golden casket. But they did not have the heart to bury her, so they kept the casket in the house.

A young prince chanced to pass that way. He saw the golden casket and begged for it. “It is such a lovely thing I will keep it in a place of honour.”
“No, you must not. Our poor Myrsina lies dead within.”
They told the prince all about the lovely maiden, and his heart ached with pity. “May I see her, for just a moment?”

So they opened the casket. The prince cried out in anguish. Such a lovely maiden, dead.
But then he saw the ring on her finger, and the red marks around the ring. Carefully, he removed the ring. As soon as he had done so, Myrsina returned to life.

Myrsina found the handsome young prince on his knees before her. And her heart went out to him.
So it happened that they were wed. And the twelve months were guests at the wedding.
As for the two older sisters? No one knows what became of them. But Myrsina and her prince lived and thrived and did good deeds.

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week for a tale with dragons instead of dwarfs.

Fairy Tale Friday--Bella Venezia (Italy)

Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.

This week we look at an Italian tale entitled Bella Venezia which was collected by  Italian journalist and author Italo Calvino in his 1956 book  Italian Folktales.  According to Wikipedia he was the most translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death. Wiki goes on to say:

 He did not compile tales from listeners but made extensive use of the existing work of folklorists; he noted the source of each individual tale but warned that was merely the version he used. He selected Bella Venezia as the Italian variant of Snow White because it featured robbers, rather than the variants containing dwarfs, which he suspected were imported from Germany.

This is an interesting tale, but not the best written. I suspect it is the translation which is rather stilted and with inconsistent punctuation which I have tried to remedy.  We begin with the innkeeper Bella Venezia who knocks the price down if you tell her she is more beautiful that anyone in your country. This work to feed her vanity until one day a traveller tells her that her daughter is better looking. She makes him pay double.

Like Rapunzel, she locks up her daughter (not stepdaughter) in a hut by the sea with only a tiny window and feeds her on bread and water. Her mistake was giving the poor girl a window because other travellers claim that the most beautiful girl is locked up in a hut by the sea.

Our antagonist now tries to seduce the poor kitchen boy with a promise of marriage (and sex) if he will kill her daughter and bring back her eyes and a bottle of blood. Now, I have read that in some old Italian folktales that the bottle of blood should be stoppered with the girl’s toe. Not in this one, but it would have made a nice touch.

The kitchen boy lets her go and slaughters a lamb instead so he can marry the Innkeeper.  Our protagonist--who is never named, though her mother is-- turns up crying in the woods. She happens upon a band of thieves who use a similar phrase to the one used in Aladdin (Open, Desert as opposed to Open, Sesame) and moves in with them after a bit of hiding under the bed and doing the cooking and cleaning like a magic elf when they are out.

The youngest who likes to dress rather flamboyantly and stay at expensive inns shoots his mouth off and alerts the girl’s mother to the fact that she is still living so she bribes an old witch to kill her daughter.

The thieves are broken hearted and bury her in a tree which the King’s son and his hunting dogs dig up. As in other tales, the Prince takes the dead girl back to the palace and wants to marry her dead or alive. She wakes up and they marry. Hoorah and  all that happy ending cliché rot.

Does it bother anyone else that she doesn’t have a name and the only word she ever utters in this tale is “Oh”?

source

Bella Venezia source

There was a mother and a daughter, who kept a noble inn, where the passing King and Princes stopped. The innkeeper was called Bella Venezia, and while the travellers sat at the table she was talking:

 “What country are you from”

“From Milan.”

“And have you seen one more beautiful than me, in Milan?”

“No, beautiful more than you I have not seen any.”

Then they came to terms: "It would be ten scudi, but you give me five," said Bella Venezia, because everyone who told her that he had never seen a prettier than her, made them pay half.

“Where do you come from?”

“From Turin.”

“And is there any one more beautiful than me in Turin?”

“No, I have never seen more beautiful than you.”

 One day, the innkeeper was asking a traveller as usual:  “And have you ever seen her, a more beautiful than me?” - When her daughter passed through the hall. And the traveller replied: "Yes, I have seen it."

Then, when it comes to reckoning:  “it would be six shields, but you give me three.”

“And who is it ?”

“Your daughter, it is.”

 In the evening the mistress called the kitchen boy:  “Go to the seaside, build a hut with only a small, small window, and lock up inside my daughter.”  He did so then looked at the window and saw in the dark that girl's face, the most beautiful he had ever seen. A little afraid, he spurred his horse on and ran away.

So the daughter of Bella Venezia was locked up night and day in that hut by the sea, she heard the sound of the waves but could not see anyone, except the kitchen boy who came every day to bring her bread and water. But while locked up in there, the girl became more beautiful every day.

“Which country are you from?” Asked the innkeeper

“From Rome.”

“Have you ever seen a prettier than me?”

“Yes, I do,” 'said the stranger.

“And where?”

“Closed in a hut by the sea.”

“Here is the bill: it costs ten scudi, but I want thirty from you.”

In the evening, Bella Venezia asked the kitchen boy:  “Listen, will you marry me?

If you want to marry me, you have to take my daughter, take her to the woods and kill her. If you bring back her eyes and a bottle full of her blood, I will marry you.”

The kitchen boy wanted to marry his mistress, but he didn't feel like killing that beautiful and good girl. Then he took the girl into the woods and left her, and to bring her eyes and blood to Bella Venezia, he killed a lamb that is innocent blood. And the master married him.

The girl, alone in the woods, cried, cried, but nobody heard her. Towards evening she saw a small light down there: she approached, heard many people speak, and full of fear she hid behind a tree. It was a rocky and deserted place, and twelve thieves had stopped in front of a white stone. When the thieves had gone away, the girl went to the white stone and said:  “Open, desert!” and the illuminated door opened. Inside there was a table set for twelve, with twelve plates, twelve loaves and twelve bottles of wine. And in the kitchen there was a skewer with twelve chickens to be roasted. The girl cleaned up everywhere, made twelve beds, roasted twelve chickens. And as she was hungry, she ate a wing for each chicken, gnawed a corner of each bread, and drank a finger of wine from each bottle. When she heard the thieves returning, she hid under a bed. The twelve bandits, to find everything clean, the beds made, the roasted chickens, did not know what to think. Then they saw that each chicken lacked a wing, each bread a corner, each bottle a finger of wine, and said:  “Someone must have entered here.” And they decided that one of them would remain on guard the next day.

 “You are good for nothing!” Said the chief, when returning he saw that the house had been visited again and put another on guard. But even this remained outside the door, while the girl was inside, and so, taking the fool every time, all the thieves tried to keep watch for eleven days in a row, and did not discover the girl.

On the twelfth day, the youngest thief wanted to keep the chief on guard; and instead of staying outside, he stayed inside, and saw the girl come out from under the bed. He grabbed her by the arm: "Don't be afraid," he said, "since you are there, detach yourself. We will treat you like a little sister.”

So the girl stayed with the thieves and did all the services, and they brought her jewellery, gold coins, rings and earrings every evening.

The youngest of thieves loved to dress like a great lord to do his robberies and stop at the best inns. So one evening he went to eat at Bella Venezia.

“Where do you come from?” Asked the innkeeper.

“From the bottom of the woods,”  said the thief.

“And have you ever seen a prettier than me?”

“I've seen it,” said the thief.

“And who is it?”

“She is a girl we have with us.”

So Bella Venezia understood that her daughter was still alive.

An old woman came to the inn every day to beg, and this old woman was a witch. Bella Venezia promised her half of her wealth if she could find and kill her daughter. One day the girl, while the robbers were gone, was singing at the window, when an old woman passed by and said: - “I am selling pins! For sale brooches! Beautiful girl, will you let me up? I'll show you a pin for the head which is a marvel.” The old woman, with the air of showing her how a pin was fine in her hair, stuck it in her skull. When the thieves returned and found her dead, they all burst into tears, albeit with the hairy heart they had. They chose a large tree with a hollow trunk and buried it in the trunk.

The King’s son went hunting. He heard the dogs barking, joined them; they were all scratching with their paws on the trunk of a tree. The King's son looked into it and found a beautiful dead girl.

If you were alive, I would marry you, "said the King's son," but even when I'm dead, I can't get away from you. " He blew the horn, gathered his hunters, and had it brought to the royal palace. He made her shut up in a room, without the Queen her mother knowing anything about it, and she spent the day in that room, contemplating the beautiful dead woman. “Dead or undead, I can't live far from her!”

The mother, suspicious, entered the room suddenly.  “Ah! That's why you didn't want to go out! But she is dead! What are you doing with it?”

“At least have her comb it!” Said the Queen, and had the Royal Hairdresser called. The Real Hairdresser began to comb it, and his comb broke. He took another comb and broke that too. So, one after another, he broke seven combs. – “What's wrong with this girl?” Asked the Real Hairdresser. And he touched a pinhead. He pulled slowly, and as he pulled the pin, the young girl took up the colours, and opened her eyes, sighed, breathed, said:  “Oh!” and stood up. The wedding took place. Also tables on the streets. Those who wanted to eat ate and those who did not want did not eat.

Ah Lord!

A hen to every sinner!

To me who am a sinner,

A hen and a chanterelle!

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week for a tale from Greece.

What We Ate Wednesday--Lentil Dahl with Cheatin’ Roast Vegetables

Hello lovelies! Non-essential shops in Wales have reopened and so I am back at work. This means coming home tired and ravenous once again. I am looking for any quick dishes I can make to feed my belly after many hours on my feet.

Spiderman came home from Tesco with these frozen roasted root vegetable oven chips. They have beetroot, carrot and parsnip in a crispy rice flour coating. I was like “I can make a meal out of that.” The bag is 500 grams making it perfect for two meals.

This meal needs little prep—which is great when you are starving and shattered. Would I like to cut up beetroot, carrots and parsnips myself and coat them in GF flour and bake them? Sure. But that would add another 10 minutes of prep time if I was doing it or (let’s be honest here) another hour of prep time if my best beloved was making them.

The only chopping you have to do is one onion and some garlic and that is optional if you are too tired to function. If you choose this option, just start the lentils when the oven chips go in.

Lentil Dahl with Cheatin’ Roast Vegetables

1 red onion, chopped
3-4 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 TB curry paste
 3/4 cup red lentils, rinsed in a sieve
450 ml boiling vegetable stock
1 tin coconut milk (I just used the coconut cream because it was separated)
250g frozen mixed root veg

Preheat your oven to 200C/400F

1. Cook your onion and garlic in a splash of water/vegetable stock until softened. Spread your frozen oven chips in a large roasting tin. When the oven is preheated put your chips in and set timer for 25 minutes.

2. Add curry paste and stir to coat. Add the lentils, boiling stock and coconut milk and bring the boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 25 minutes until lentils are soft and swollen. By this time your oven chips will be done.

3. Serve dahl with roasted veg on top.

 Then collapse in a little heap.

PS Just in case you were wondering, the roasted root oven chips look like this:

Fairy Tale Friday--Blanca Rosa and the Forty Thieves (Chile)

Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.

This week we look at another tale helpfully summarised by CRAFTY MOM. It comes froma book entitled  Folktales of Chile edited by Yolando Pino-Saavedra and translated by Rockwell Gray. 

According to Wikipedia:

 Pino was a scholar, teacher, writer, Chilean folklorist and member of the Chilean Academy of Language . His most outstanding work was the rescue of Chilean folk traditions. From 1948 to 1960  he travelled the length of Chile looking for peasants, humble people who worked the land, but who had a special gift: they were artists of oral narration. A whole tradition of Spanish medieval origin, related by illiterate men and women of the Chilean people. The result of this work is the best-known work of this author: volume I, II and III of Folk Tales of Chile .

This tale begins as many of them do—with the death of our protagonist’s mother. Here, however, the magic mirror is a way to communicate with the spirit of Blanca Rose’s dead mother. I found this interesting because often we just accept that the mirror is magic and have no explanation except the mother/stepmother was an evil sorceress. Perhaps here she was also a sorceress —but a good one. Is this as a case as in Oz of “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”

It is definitely the inevitable stepmother who is the evil antagonist here. She feels her beautiful stepdaughter (who is a dead ringer for her late mother) spends too much time looking in the mirror. She thinks it is vanity not communing with her dead mother and takes the girl’s mirror away. When she asks the mirror who is the most beautiful, the mirror answers with Blanca Rosa. Well she would say that, wouldn’t she? A mother always thinks her daughter is the loveliest.

As in other tales, someone is employed to kill our heroine and bring back body parts as proof of her death. Usually, it is internal organs (heart, liver or lungs) but here we have the unusual request of eyes and tongue. Now, an animal heart and a human heart are similar enough, but eyes are much trickier to match.

Blanca Rosa comes across a den of forty thieves who mistake her for the Virgin Mary because she is so beautiful. Despite her protestations, they shower her with gifts and fine clothes. Her stepmother upon discovering that her stepdaughter is still alive and living in luxury with 40 men hires an evil sorceress to kill her. In the usual way, an old woman disguised as a peddler comes round to entice our heroine with some tat. But here Blanca Rosa is not swayed by cheap trinkets or gifts because the thieves give her everything she desires. She is however swayed to the let the old woman touch her hair and clothes as a blessing (perhaps all this talk of her being the Virgin Mary has gone to her head) because the old woman jabs a pin in her head killing her.

A prince finds her and takes her home. Then it gets creepy. He slowly takes off all her jewellery and clothing trying to find what could have stopped her breathing. Once she is naked, he combs her hair and find the needle. I don’t think he is looking for what stopped her breathing. When he does find and remove the needle, she wakes up terrified because she is naked with a strange man and her 40 protectors who revered her like the Virgin Mary are nowhere in sight. It would be like waking up after Rohypnol and being worried you had been raped because you have no memory of the events that led you to wake up naked with a man you have never met. When she starts screaming, he just sticks the pin back in her head to make her go unconscious again. Later he wakes her and convinces her to marry him. She hesitantly agrees and his horrible sisters steal all of her clothes and jewels and turn her out into the street naked like a common beggar. She is reunited with her prince, the bad sisters are punished (but not her stepmother) and the 40 thieves come to the wedding. They live happily ever after—or as happy as you can with a man who strips you naked and combs your hair while you were unconscious.

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Blanca Rosa and the Forty Thieves source

In this story, the mother has recently died and left her daughter, who looked just like her mother, a magic mirror in which she could still see her mother and converse with her. The daughter's name is Blanca Rosa, which means White Rose. The father remarries and the stepmother thinks she is the most beautiful woman in the world and gets upset that Blanca Rosa spends all her time talking to her mirror. She takes the mirror from her and asks the mirror who is the most beautiful woman in the world. The mirror tells her it is Blanca Rosa. The woman gets very angry and orders servants to kill Blanca Rosa. The men take Blanca Rosa away and abandon her. A little old man helps her. 

The mother asks the mirror again and learns that Blanca Rosa is alive and find the little old man. She demands he kill her and bring her Blanca Rosa's eyes and tongue. The old man has a dog with blue eyes which he kills instead and brings the dog's eyes and tongue on a silver platter to the stepmother, but also sends Blanca Rosa into the woods on her own.

Blanca Rosa has a horrible time surviving until she finds the hideout of forty thieves. She is high in a tree when they leave, and she drops down and discovers all sorts of jewels, treasures, and food. All she cares about is the food. She helps herself and then goes back to the treetop to sleep. The thieves arrive home and wonder who has been through their hideout. The leader has one man stay behind the next day. This man watches as this beautiful woman comes down from heaven and is sure it is the Virgin Mary as he has never seen anyone so beautiful in his life. He is sure she is there to have them repent their sins of stealing. He runs to find the others in his group. They do not believe him and the next day, the leader has five men stay behind. All five have the same story as the first and finally the leader stays behind and meets Blanca Rosa. She tries to tell them she is not the Virgin Mary, but they do not believe her, and they dress her with beautiful gowns and jewels. They give her whatever she wants. 

There is a rumour in the village about a beautiful woman living with forty thieves, but the stepmother refuses to believe it. She decides to ask the mirror though her question again. Again the answer is Blanca Rosa. The stepmother hires a sorceress to kill her stepdaughter once and for all. The sorceress dresses as an old poor woman and tries to give Blanca Rosa a basket of fruit to thank her for past kindness. Blanca Rosa refuses it since the thieves give her whatever her heart contents. The old woman asks to at least be able to touch her dress and hair. Blanca Rosa allows her, and the old woman jabs her with a needle in her hair. The thieves come home to find Blanca Rosa dead or at least they thought she was. The put her in many beautiful clothes and jewels and into a casket made of silver and gold and sent it in the ocean. 

A prince who loves to fish was out fishing and sees the sparkle in the water and asks other fisherman to help him get it. He brings it home. He lives with his two old maid sisters, so he takes it directly to his own room. There he opens the casket to see Blanca Rosa, the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, and she is dressed in such riches. He slowly takes off all her jewellery and clothing trying to find what could have stopped her breathing. Once she is naked, he combs her hair and find the needle. He takes out the needle and immediately Blanca Rosa comes to live and is very confused waking to be naked with a strange man. She asks where her thieves are, and he tries to explain what has happened. She just wants her thieves, so he sticks the needle back in and goes to think about what to do. His sisters are curious as to what he is doing in his room since he does not come out even for meals.

He wakes Blanca Rosa up again and tells her he could not find her thieves, but asks her to stay with him and marry him. He tells her that she does not have to leave her room if she does not want to. She agrees and does not leave the room. One day while the prince was out on business, the sisters break into the room to see what their brother has been up to and they find Blanca Rosa. They strip her of all her jewellery and fine clothes and throw her into the street naked. She wanders until she finds a kind cobbler who takes her in. The prince comes home to find his love gone and he goes and wanders aimlessly looking for her. He finds her and joyfully brought her back and began preparations for their wedding. He punished his sisters with a horrible death. The forty thieves came to the wedding at Blanca Rosa's instance and of course brought her many gifts. Blanca Rosa and the prince lived their lives happily together. 

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week for a tale with less thieves.

 

 

 

What We Ate Wednesday--Pain au Chocolat

Hello lovelies! Do you ever get nom nom nom cravings? Like you dream about food and then wake up RAVENOUS for it? Or is that just me?

I had a dream about pain au chocolat. Which is just posh French for some sweet bread with chocolate in it. I know Jus-Rol makes frozen heat and eat pain au chocolat that is accidentally vegan, but it is not gluten free. It also has about 25 ingredients which includes palm oil so I wouldn't have bought it anyway. I pondered all day about it while my tummy rumbled and that night dreamed of it again (see, i told you I was obsessed!) 

The second night I had a solution.

My flatbread recipe. But pimped with sugar and chocolate and basted in vegan butter.

Nom Non Nom.

This is my go to quick and easy flatbread---you can have it made in about 15 minutes. I normally make it with garlic butter, but have been known to add coconut and cinnamon and raisins and make Peshwari naan out of it. If you just want the savoury version--leave out the sugar and chocolate and add some garlic to the melted butter. 

But this...this was out of this world. But one word of warning. you WILL need to let it cool slightly. You will be tempted to nom nom nom it right away, but let me tell you that chocolate is HOT when it comes out of the oven. Molten. Like chocolate lava. I raised a blister on my thumb when it accidentally brushed some chocolate when i was using the spatula to flip them over so be warned. 

Pain au Chocolat

200g flour (1.5 cups) Regular or works beautifully with GF

3 tsp baking POWDER (not baking soda)

1 tsp xanthan gum if using GF flour

1/2 tsp salt

5 to 7 TB of sugar depending on how sweet you want it

100g chocolate bar chopped into chunks--we used a Lidl bar that is dairy free and fairtrade

1 TB apple cider vinegar

1 cup non dairy milk--we use soya milk as it makes really "chunky" buttermilk

heaping TB vegan butter, melted

1. Preheat your grill/broiler to 220C/425F. Move your oven rack up to the top. Lightly grease some (reusable) parchment and put it in your roasting tin or a large cookie sheet. 

2. Melt your vegan butter and set aside when melted. 

3. Add  1 TB vinegar to a measuring cup and top up with milk until the 1 cup measure is filled. Set aside to make buttermilk.

4. Sift your dry ingredients into a bowl, add your sugar and chocolate. Add the buttermilk and stir to combine.

5. Scoop mixture into 4 even piles on your parchment paper and with wet fingers flatten them out and smooth the tops to make 4 discs. 

6. Brush the tops with melted butter.

7. Put under the grill/broiler for 5 minutes, then remove and carefully flip over. The dough was a little wetter than normal on my flip--but that may have been the melted chocolate. Brush the bottom with the rest of the melted butter and grill/broil for 5 more minutes. By now they should be puffy and cooked. But if they still seem wet, CAREFULLY cut open avoiding molten chocolate and check that it is done all the way. If not 1-2 more minutes under the grill. 

8. Let it cool. I cannot stress this enough. When still warm and gooey (but not straight from the oven hot) you can nom nom nom. 

Fairy Tale Friday--Rimonah of the Flashing Sword (North Africa or Egypt)

Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.

This week we look at a tale called Rimonah of the Flashing Sword. It was adapted by Eric A. Kimmel (author of the Caldecott Honour Book Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins which was illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman.) Kimmel says he came upon the traditional version in Miriam's Tambourine by Howard Schwartz. There is some debate about the origins of this tale-- Kimmel says the tale is from North Africa and Schwartz says it came from Egypt.

This is another too good to pass up tale that I did not have the actual text for, but CRAFTY MOM's blog to the rescue! She summarises the tale in great detail.

This story begins just as Nourie Hadig did last week.  Nourie Hadig’s mother turned against her, but here Rimonah (which also means pomegranate) has the misfortune to have her mother die when she is seven. We learn later that her stepmother had something to do with it. On her deathbed, the mother gives Rimonah a vial with three drops of her blood that will liquify when she is in danger. This reminds me of a folktale I heard once at summer camp told by the great storyteller Lee Knight. I do not recall much of the tale, but a glass of milk left on the table would turn to blood if there was danger.

As in other tales, the wicked stepmother has a magical helper to ask if she is the most beautiful. Here it is a porcelain bowl she fills with water—like a scrying bowl—which lets her know she is less beautiful than her stepdaughter.  As in other tales, our protagonist is sent to be killed and her blood is replaced with the blood of an animal (in this case a gazelle). She escapes and joins a group of Bedouin who oppose the Queen. She learns how to fight and becomes quite skilled with a blade. I really loved this idea, as most fairy tale heroines are passive to the extreme. Her stepmother tracks her down and there is an exciting bit with a scorpion shaped necklace that becomes a real scorpion (another most unusual idea) but her mother’s blood warns her, and she escapes. This time she hides in a cave with not seven dwarfs, but forty thieves. Here we merge into Aladdin and Arabian Nights territory. It turns out the thieves were also all wronged by her stepmother and here she earns the nickname of Rimonah of the Flashing Sword for her weaponry skills. Her stepmother still manages to “kill” her with poison jewellery (not nearly as cool as the scorpion necklace but was made cooler by the fact that like Harry Potter’s mother, her mother's love protected her and made Rimonah sleep and not die) but a passing Prince kisses her awake which is slightly anticlimactic.  But instead of just passively abandoning all her friends and getting married, Rimonah insists that she will not leave without her forty companions. Rimonah’s tears help resurrect her father and together they kill the stepmother (more shades of Aladdin with a flying carpet) and the thieves all go work for the palace as guards. It is a hugely satisfying tale with a strong and fierce heroine, something we surely need more of.

I am sorry it is merely a summary, but that is all I could find.

source

Rimonah of the Flashing Sword source

 This story begins with a queen who is eating a pomegranate. She wishes to have a child with skin is as dark as the pomegranate, eyes as bright as its seeds and voice as sweet as the juice of the pomegranate. Soon she has a daughter with these qualities and she names her Rimonah which means pomegranate. Rimonah grows up in a loving household until her seventh birthday when her mother dies. Upon her deathbed, Rimonah's mother gives her a vial with three drops of her blood to wear around her neck. She tells her if they blood turns red and to liquid (after drying) then Rimonah is in danger. Then the mother dies.

The father who vows not to remarry ever, is married before his first wife is in the grave. The new wife is a sorceress who want to increase her power by becoming queen. She used her magic to kill the first queen and to make the king not have control of his mind. She keeps her special magic tools in a tower that only she is permitted to go in. She has a magic porcelain bowl that when she fills it with water, she can ask it any question and get a truthful answer. She asks if she is the fairest of all. One day it answers that Rimonah is fairer. She gets angry and orders a servant to go kill her.

The servant takes Rimonah out and pulls out his dagger, and Rimonah begs for her life. He tells her to go far away. Rimonah escapes leaving behind her cape which the huntsman uses as proof of her death. He covers it with blood of a gazelle first.

Rimonah finds a group of bedouin. Since they do not follow the rule of the king and queen she is welcomed. She learns to ride and use her sword with them. She becomes well known for her skill with the sword and dagger. One day the queen hears someone discussing Rimonah of the desert's sword skill. The queen is shocked to hear she is not dead. She goes to her bowl to check and learns that she is still alive. She uses a magic cape to dress as a bedouin prince and brings a magical scorpion necklace. It turns into a real scorpion at sunset. She leaves it at Rimonah's tent with the other suitors' gifts. Rimonah gives it to one of her friends but notices the blood in her necklace turn red and liquid. She grabs the necklace from her friend’s neck as the sun sets and kills the scorpion. At this point her friends urge her to leave since she has been found. 

Rimonah leaves and finds a cave with a huge stone blocking the entrance. She hides and sees its inhabitants, 40 thieves, enter using the words, "Open Sesame." She tries it and goes in. She leaves her horse in the stables and discovers a beautiful castle. She finds the forty beds and lies down for a quick rest but falls fast asleep. The thieves find her and want to kill her but bring her to their leader. They think she is a spy for the queen. She tells them how the queen has tried to kill her twice and they allow her to join them. They call her Rimonah of the Flashing Sword after seeing her skill. All of the thieves were honest men who were destroyed by the queen (all of their belongings taken by the queen's servants). 

The queen discovers that Rimonah is still alive and uses her magic to find her. This time she brings a poisonous ring. She convinces Rimonah to put it on after she rolls it under the locked castle door saying the leader of the thieves wanted her to have it. She falls to the ground instantly. However she does not die since her mother's love is protecting her.

The thieves find her and put her in a glass coffin thinking she is dead. One day a prince finds his way into the cave and falls in love with the beautiful woman in the coffin. Even though she is surrounded by forty men asleep with their swords out, he opens the coffin to kiss her. The thieves wake up and threaten to kill him until they hear Rimonah's voice saying to spare him since he is the prince of her dreams. They are so happy to have Rimonah alive, but sad that she and the prince are in love. Rimonah tells the prince she will not be happy without her forty men. He agrees. As they journey to the prince's kingdom, they find a coffin in the desert and the leader of the thieves discovers it is the king. Rimonah wants to see her father once more and asks them to open it for her. She cries at her father's death and her tears awaken her father. He tells them how the queen used her magic to control him and then kill him. They decide Rimonah will not be safe with the queen alive so all of them go to kill her. When her people see them coming, they abandon the queen. The queen having gotten knowledge that her end is near from the magic bowl tries to escape on her magic carpet, but leaves the bowl behind. Rimonah runs to the tower and throws the bowl at the queen. When the bowl hits the carpet and then the ground it breaks, and the carpet unwinds. The queen dies. Everyone is happy. The thieves become the guards of Rimonah and her prince.

That’s all for this week. Stay tuned next week for another tale with forty thieves.

 

What We Ate Wednesday--Savoury Stuff over Polenta

Hello lovelies! We have been eating a lot of polenta recently. It is delicious comfort food that heats up quickly and have just made whatever we have in the fridge on top.

Now I am not a whizz at maths. I make no secret of that. Most of our potato based meals use 400g potatoes. But trying to work out what to do with the last 200 grams of a kilo bag of potatoes is like a word problem. If a kilogram is 1000 grams, then how can Spidergrrl make these into three meals? Answer A: Buy another kilo and mix 200g new potatoes with 200g leftover old potatoes. Answer B Boil up all the leftover bits and bobs in your fridge and chuck them over some polenta. Had enough potato maths or do you want some more? 

This meal was made with those leftover 200g and some other stuff I had like a quarter of  red pepper and half a bag of kale and 6 slightly wilted mushrooms. Yours don't have to be wilted...that's just how I roll to avoid food waste. 

Savoury Stuff over Polenta 

200g potatoes, diced

enough strong vegetable stock to cover them

1 onion, sliced into rainbows

garlic

quarter of a red pepper, diced

6 mushrooms, sliced 

100g of kale (4 good handfuls)

splash tamari or soy sauce

1 cup polenta

4 cups boiling vegetable stock

1/2 cup non dairy milk (we used soya)

1 batch vegan parmesan cheese

Parmesan Cheese

3 TB nutritional yeast flakes

3 TB ground almonds

salt

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1. Boil your potatoes in a pot with some vegetable stock until they can easily be pierced by a fork. Drain but SAVE THAT STOCK!

2. Cook your onion and garlic in a splash of vegetable stock from your boiling potatoes then add the pepper and the mushrooms and cook til softened. Add your splash of tamari or soy sauce and the boiled potatoes. 

3. Make your polenta by boiling your stock and slowly streaming in the polenta and whisking until it thickens then add your milk and parmesan and stir with a spoon.

4. When the polenta is thickened, take off the heat and put the kale and some of the leftover potato stock into the veg pot and cook until kale is wilted and it is as saucy as you like. I started with a half a cup of stock and then added a splash more at the end.

5. Serve the veg and mushroom mix over the polenta. 

6. Go nom nom nom as you eat it.