New ways with frogs

Frog cuisine.

It's not all frogs legs and toad in the hole, you know.

Now, there's:

Apparently it does not contain frogs.

With frog pasta on the scene, frogs with a mince sauce can't be too far away.

Happy days.

PNG - land of culinary delights

Eggs and Jam. 

Deep-fried everything. 

Toasted lettuce.

PNG does have an extraordinary reputation for cuisine. And nowhere more so than the Holiday Inn.

For many years the Inn has been serving up inedible stodge that more than justifies a hardship allowance.

How do I know?  Well, the frog told me, of course.

After carefully perusing the room service menu...

... the frog opts for something simple that has been nowhere near the hotel kitchen.

Cheese and crackers. 

Eat your heart out Grommit!

More plaguey things

Plague 5: Pestilence.

Also known as cattle blight.

Which in knitted form, looks like this:

Me? I would have said that was a blighted horse.

But what would I know.

Plague 6: Boils.

The less said the better really.

But yes, they too can be knitted.

Eeuuwww.

Workshop frogs

Frogs are popping up all over the place.

Last week, they even made their presence felt at a planning workshop for the HIV and AIDS program in Papua New Guinea.

Not content with observing from the front...

...they get in amongst the tables....

...and take part in the discussions.

And for those thinking this was just a blatant plug for the Frogsfordarcy blogspot, they featured in the report write up thus:

On the second day the workshop commenced with an ice-breaker activity in which participants were asked to make an Origami Frog using printed instructions. This manual task was intended to provide a change of pace to help participants refocus their minds on the planning activities rather than ongoing work priorities. The debrief on the activity highlighted some important points about skills transfer and capacity building:



 Participants start from different skills bases

 Written plans aren’t always useful

 Success is more likely with the support of someone who has done it before

 Learning by doing often provides a better outcome

 Early intervention (asking for help at the first opportunity) often produces better results

 Where the pool of expertise is limited, getting access to expertise can be a critical factor for success

The frog was selected as a useful mascot for the Program because:

 They are well adapted to transitions

 They are highly adaptable and can operate effectively in two different environments

 They are also fragile and can be adversely impacted by changes in the environment. For this reason they are often see as an early indicator of change.

You beast!

Still on the plague theme, we present Plague No. 4.

Wild beasts!

Imagine the Egyptian terror as hordes of these come thundering across the desert.

Perhaps they could be deployed in Libya to help out?

One, two, three, Plague, two, three

This blog believes that the lives of its readers will be improved if they have a thorough knowledge of the plagues of Egypt (just quite how this is expected to improve your life is a matter for discussion at another time).

Plague two - the frogs - you know about.

Naturally.

Plague three is special.

Gnats.

Or in some translations: LICE.

Nice.

Here's the knitted version of the plague of lice.

I'm hoping that one of the benefits of being temporarily bald is that there's no chance of being afflicted with this particular plague.

Small mercies - we should be grateful for them.

Knit one, purl one, plague one

First plague: blood.

I wonder if she has a pattern for bone marrow?

The weird bit

Yesterday's frog was actually knitted by Leslie from Philadelphia to represent the plague of frogs.

But that's not all she knit.

Oh no.

Leslie knitted ALL the plagues.

Stay tuned for more exciting plague-knit updates.

Will no one rid me of this plague of ...

At this blog, we know about plagues of frogs.

En masse, they look like this:

Inidividually, they might look more like this:

Or this:

Yep. That's a knitted (and then felted) frog. 

And what's more, it's knitted specifically to look like an Origami frog.

Oh yeah.

But believe me, that's not the weird bit.

Tomorrow: the weird bit.

World of Frogs - PNG (again)

The Frog consultant is still in PNG. 

A land of culinary delights.

Like scrambled eggs with jam.

World of Frogs - Canada

Hmm.

I'm not sure what to make of the Canadians.

Apparently they believe:

 "everybody in the universe deserves the opportunity to enjoy a cold Dead Frog".

Should I tell them?

Dead frogs don't hop.

This post is deemed suitable for persons 18 and over. FrogsforDarcy does not recommend the consupmtion of dead frogs (cold or otherwise) for persons under 18. Even squashed up and put through an IV line.

World of Frogs - PNG

The frog consultant arrives in Papua New Guinea and is delighted to receive the keys to her rental car.

Positively glowing with excitement, she rushes to the vehicle prepared to take on the mean streets of Port Moresby.

But what is this?  "Reverse" is in the top left hand corner. How weird.  

Frog consultant tries to engage reverse gear but to no avail.

She calls on a local frog to help, but he too struggles to make the car do anything other than hop forward.

Ah hah.

Frog spies a radio, and calls back to base for back-up.

"Bravo Delta Bravo 289 calling frog base, over".

Frog base says "you need to find the knob near the gear stick and push down on that. Over."

 The froggy helper tries - but to no avail.

Eventually the frogs determine that the funny ring on the gear stick itself might play a role.

They push and pull it up into position and Frog Consultant is on her way.



And, as all good consultants do, she makes a note of lessons learned:

In PNG, push means pull and knob means ring.

Make of that what you will.

Frogs and vomit - a new angle

I really must give up looking things up on the internet.

Some of the stuff you find goes beyond bizzare.

Apparently frogs don't have a vomit reflex.

Instead of vomiting out the contents of its stomach, a frog can throw up its entire stomach.

Then, having disposed of the bad fly or whatever was making it feel a bit iffy, it re-swallows its internal organs and gets on with being a frog. 

Once more with the Russians

The Frog Went Travelling

 - a Russian Fairytale

As told by Vsevolod Garshin.

Once upon a time there lived a Frog. She lived in a swamp, caught midges and mosquitoes, and in spring croaked loudly together with all the other frogs. She would have lived there happily till the end of her days-if a stork did not eat her up, of course - but something happened one day which upset all her life.


She was squatting on a snag that stuck out of water, enjoying the warm drizzle. "What a lovely, wet day! How wonderful to be alive!" she was thinking. The rain fell on her spotted, shiny back; the drops trickled under her tummy and behind her legs, and it was so pleasant that she all but croaked from delight, but fortunately remembered in time that this was autumn and frogs do not croak in autumn-spring is the season for croaking. So she bit back the croak, and went on enjoying herself in silence.

Suddenly, she heard a thin, whistling, breaking sound high over-head. There is a breed of wild ducks whose wings make a singing, or rather a whistling sound as they cut through the air. They usually fly so high that you can hardly see them, and only know the flock is there from the sound. This time the ducks came lower and, after describing a huge semicircle in the air, alighted on the very swamp where the Frog had her home. "Quack-quack," said one of the ducks. "We've a long way to go, so we'd better have something to eat here."

On hearing this, the Frog quickly hid in the water. She knew that the ducks would not eat her, a big and fat frog, but still it was safer to duck under the snag. But she so wanted to hear where the ducks were going, that after a little thought she ventured to poke her goggle-eyed face out of the water.

"Quack-quack," said another duck. "It's getting cold. We must hurry to the south, we must hurry to the south!" And all the other ducks began to quack in loud approval.

"Forgive me for butting in," the Frog said timidly. "But what is that place where you are hurrying, that south?” The ducks flocked round the Frog. Their first thought was to eat her, but then each of the ducks decided that she was too big and would stick in the throat. And then they all began to scream together, flapping their wings: "It's lovely in the south' It's warm there now. There are such nice, warm swamps. And such fat worms! Oh, it's lovely in the south!"

Their excited screaming almost deafened the Frog. She got them to keep quiet at last, and begged the duck which seemed to have more sense than the others to tell her just what was the south.

And when the duck told her, the Frog thought it truly wonderful, but she was a cautious soul, and so she asked to make sure: "Are there any midges and mosquitoes there?"

"Oh, clouds of them!" replied the duck. The Frog gave a croak, and quickly turned round to see if any of her friends had heard her croaking in the autumn. But she simply could not help croaking, if only once. “Take me with you," she said to the ducks. "The idea!" replied the surprised ducks. "How can we take you along? You've no wings."

"When are you starting?" asked the Frog. "Soon, very soon," cried all the ducks together. "Quack, quack, quack, quack! It's cold here. We must hurry south, south, south!"

"Give me five minutes, will you?" begged the Frog. "I'll be back, I'm sure to think of something."

She flopped into the water from the snag on which she had climbed again, dived into the mud and buried herself in it completely so that nothing should interfere with her thinking. The five minutes passed, the ducks decided to take off, and in that precise moment the Frog popped out of the water near the snag, and her face beamed as brightly as a frog's face can beam.

"I've thought of something! I've found a way," she cried. "Let two of you take a twig in your bills, and I'll hang on it in the middle. You'll fly and carry me. The only thing is you must not quack and I must not croak, then everything will be fine."

Although carrying even a light frog for thousands of miles and never quacking was not much fun, the ducks were so delighted with the Frog's cleverness that they all agreed to carry her. They would change every two hours, and since there were so many of them and just one frog, their turn would not come too often. They found a good, strong twig, two of the ducks took the ends in their bills while the Frog hung by her mouth in the middle, and the whole flock took wing.

The Frog's breath caught from the terrible height to which the ducks raised her; besides, they did not keep in line properly and jerked the twig. The poor Frog swung in the air like a paper clown, clenching her jaws with all her might for fear of loosening her hold and dashing on the ground far below. Even so, she soon became used to this strange position and began to take a look round her. Hanging from the twig she could not very well see the fields, meadows, rivers and hills which flickered past very quickly, but still she could look up and see behind her a bit, so she was proud and happy just the same. "Aren't I clever to think of this!" she said to herself.

In the meantime, the ducks flying behind the front pair that carried her, praised her with loud cries."Isn't our frog brainy," they said. "There aren't many as brainy even among the ducks." The Frog wanted to thank them, but remembering in time that if she opened her mouth she'd fall from that terrible height, she clenched her jaws all the harder and kept quiet. She swung like that all day; the ducks changed in flight, smartly passing the twig to the next pair, but it was terribly frightening, and the Frog almost croaked from fear, but she had to be brave and brave she was.

In the evening, the flock stopped for the night in a strange swamp. At dawn, they were off again, but this time the Frog faced front, and not back as before, the better to see what was below. The ducks flew over reaped fields, yellow forests, and villages where the harvest was stacked in ricks. They could hear people talking and the sound of the flails with which they threshed the rye. The people craned their necks to see the flock and, noticing something strange about it, pointed with their hands. The Frog terribly wanted to fly lower over the ground, to let the people see her and to hear what they said about her. At the next halt she said to the ducks: "Couldn't we fly a bit lower? The height makes me dizzy and I'm afraid I'll fall if I suddenly feel bad." The kind ducks promised not to fly so high. And the following day they flew so low that they could make out what people said on the ground.

"Look, look," the children cried in one of the villages. "Look, the ducks are carrying a frog!" The Frog heard them, and her heart leapt.

"Look, look," the grown-ups shouted in the next village. "You've never seen the like!" Could they know that it was her idea and not the ducks', the Frog wondered.

"Look, look," the children cried in the third village they flew over. "Who on earth could have thought of such a clever thing!" This was too much for the Frog and, forgetting caution, she screamed at the top of her voice: "I did! It was my idea, mine!"

And, with this scream, she went hurtling down to the ground. The ducks cried in alarm; one of them tried to catch the frog in flight, and missed. The Frog, with all her four paws jerking, fell quickly, but as the ducks had been flying very quickly too, she fell not on the hard road, above which she started screaming, but further on, at the edge of the village, flopping luckily into a large, dirty pond.

She popped out of the water at once, and screamed excitedly at the top of her voice: "It was my idea, mine!"

But there was no one to hear her. The local frogs had hidden in the water, frightened by the sudden splash. They now began to appear from the water one by one, and all stared in dismay at the stranger. The Frog told them how she had been thinking all her life and had at last invented a new, extraordinary manner of travelling. She had her own ducks, she told the frogs, who carried her wherever she wanted to go. She had been to the south where it was so lovely, where the swamps were so beautiful and warm, and where there were clouds of midges and all kinds of other delicious insects. "I just dropped in to see how you were," she said. "I'll stay with you till spring until my ducks come back for me. I let them off, you see."

But the ducks never came back. They thought the Frog had crashed on the hard road, and were very sorry for her.

The end.

(There's got to be a moral in there somewhere. Any suggestions?)

More crazy Russians

The internet is a strange place. 

But then again, so is Russia.

Put the two together and you get this:

Russian frog fat smugglers get derailed

A recent anti-smuggling operation by the Russian Far Eastern Customs mobile unit resulted in the confiscation of more than 500 squirrel and weasel skins and 24 kg of grass frog fat. The illegal wildlife products were found in the possession of Russian locomotive crew on the regular Russia-China route.

Apparently frog fat has become popular in recent years.

Those with strong stomachs can follow the link in the heading to find out more....

Somewhat less weird is this:

Authentic Russian nesting frog dolls.

The fly is a nice touch.

According to the product description they are "painted as they are actually found in nature".

So I may have to return to my earlier assertion. Russia, like the internet, is a strange place.

World of Frogs - Russia

When it comes to Russia and Frogs there is really only one thing to say.

And that is: "Those crazy Russians..."

A flying Frog.

More of which can be found here.

Honestly - you could not make this stuff up.

Iron Frog #1 - the Randwick Challenger

Whose cuisine reigns supreme?

At last, the Randwick Challenger pits his dish against those from Port Moresby and Waramanga. Will he win the people's ovation and fame forever? Or better still, be crowned Iron Frog?

Working from a humble kitchen, the Challenger begins by mixing a deep yellow batter enriched by the freshest of farm laid eggs.

(Sources tell me it was very yellow despite the pale appearance here).

Lamb and rosemary flavoured 'toads' were first browned...

And then turned into manageable chunks before meeting their respective ponds.Meanwhile, the challenger and his mum also whip up a great looking salad. With fennel for that extra crunch.

But back to the stove... and now you can really see the influence of those eggs in the golden batter that emerges.

The dish is plated by the Challenger and the frogs gather admiringly around the plate.

Like the Warmanga Challenger, young Darcy cleans as he goes and so the mess is ... barely there. But perhaps an eco-point or two can be deducted for that disposable tray.

Turns out the dish is a first for the Gilmour family who have no previous exposure to Toads (how's that for innovation?). But it is declared a winner and there are plans to repeat the experience.

Score

Flavour

The Toad Novices (Mum, Darcy and Hugh) were all very impressed. Apparently toads fed on lamb and rosemary taste pretty fine when wrapped in golden batter. So good that Hugh took the leftovers to work the next day for lunch.

5/5

Presentation

A well greased pan meant that the Toads slipped easily onto the plate and were flanked by a salad so fresh it could have walked in out of the garden if they had one at Ronald Macdonald House. However, the winning touch was in the wine match. As Mum Megan reported, "Toad in the Hole is not complete without Inigo".

4/5

Innovation

Although a new dish for the Gilmours, the question remains, was there anything innovative about the Randwick Challenger's approach? Darcy reports the choice of BBQ sauce over tomato, and of course the addition of fennel to the salad should be taken into account.

(I also like the innovation of the frog with reversible hips able to hang over the side of the bowl. Nice one - although I don't know you get any points for it.)

2.5/5

Mess

The Challenger used the minimal amount of dishes and cleared as he went (a la Waramanga rules) as well as doing all the washing up. Should the jar of chutney smashed by mum be taken into account? Or does it not count as the smashing happened post-toad? And what about that disposable tray?

4/5

Total

15.5/20

Ladies and Gentlemen, it appears that in round one of Iron Frog, Darcy's cuisine reigns supreme.

Stay tuned for next month's challenge.

What will it be?

Fruit and Nut Bog Frogs?

Welsh Ribbit?

Spawn Cocktail?

World of Frogs - Germany

Ah - Germany.

A land with a long association with frogs.

It seems frog-vomiting is a bit of a thing in Germany. Who knew?

Theodorus Döderlein vomits frogs and newts.

(From Georg Abraham Mercklin's De Incantamentis, 1715
as shown on Dr Cliff Pickhover's extraordinary website.)

 

And another tale from Dr Pickhover:

In 1642, Mrs. Catharina Geisslerin was widely known as "the toad-vomiting woman of Germany." She told people that she had swallowed tadpoles in swamp water, and that frogs were thriving in her intestinal tract. Whenever she drank milk, the frogs would hop about madly. Despite initial skepticism, she convinced physicians that amphibians were in her digestive system -- especially after she vomited fully-grown frogs (sometimes living) for two years in front of famous professors and medical consultants!

When Dr. Thomas Rheinesius, a great physician from Saxony, decided to study Catharina's case, she seemed to stop vomiting frogs. He wanted to examine her further, and for three months gave her various foul solutions to encourage her to vomit and have diarrhea. But no frogs came forth. Next, Professor Michaelis from Leipzig came to give Catharina more powerful agents to encourage vomiting -- which caused her to vomit a frog leg.

In 1648, after the physicians had left, Catharina again began vomiting amphibians with a passion.

World of Frogs - Scotland

We begin out tour of the world's frogs in Scotland - home of the brave.

And the thistle.

In Scotland the frog is seen as an item of luck. Households often keep stone frogs in their gardens and they are often given as house warming presents. The associations are believed to date back to Pictish times.

And if you think Pict, you think Blue, right?

Nah.

This one is South American.

Up, up and ...?

Frog is inspired.

And decides on a new career as a ballooonist.

If only ...

... she can ...

catch one.

Up, up and away...

A frog jumped out of his pond one day...

And found himself...

... at the balloon festival



What's not to love?