Birthday with Rangda

Image after Matt Wyatt

Wednesday was my birthday, and Patricia Telesco's "365 Goddess" gives the Balinese witch Goddess Rangda as the Goddess of my 19th of April. It suits me very well :-)

Wikipedia tells this about Rangda:

"Rangda is the demon queen of the leyaks in Bali, according to traditional Balinese mythology. Terrifying to behold, the child-eating Rangda leads an army of evil witches against the leader of the forces of good - Barong.

It is suggested that Rangda may be derived from the 11th century Javan queen Manendradatta who was exiled by the king, Dharmodayana, for allegedly practising witchcraft against his second wife. The tale surrounding this is that she proceeded to take her revenge by killing off half the kingdom, which by then belonged to her and Dharmodayana's son Erlangga, with plague before being overcome by a holy man. The name Rangda means "widow".

Rangda is important in Balinese culture, and performances depicting her struggles with Barong or with Erlangga in that tale are popular tourist attractions as well as tradition. She is depicted as a scantily clad woman, with long and unkempt hair, and claws. Her face is traditionally a horrifying fanged and goggle-eyed mask."

She sounds like a combination of Lilith, Hel, Kali and Medea, all my favorites :-)

The thing with Demon Queens is that people usually don't understand what it is all about. People don't like things like getting consequences for their actions - that Lilith was hunting men who were being nasty to women, or rescued children getting abused or neglected, that's a little detail often ignored. People just talk about how the children vanished and what horrible things happened to the men. If someone even cares to ask "why?" the answer is immediate: "Because Lilith is an evil bitch!" It's like with Lorena and John Bobbitt... he is an abusive asshole, but when he gets what's coming to him, she gets charged and the police goes out immediately to find the cut off penis - which they don't do when a child or a dog has been thrown from a car... Interesting priorities the society has... :-D

Well... as long as the society has these values, as long will the Goddesses like Rangda, Kali, Lilith and Hel be needed.

Now, the dinner with Rangda... is for witches and bitches, of course. No men are allowed. Have a round, red dinner, decorated with yellow flowers.
As this is a birthday dinner, the desert will be a cake, and I love chocolate, so it will be a red velvet cake with chocolate frosting. Not with white frosting. It might be good, but this is not Christmas. You can also make Devil's Food Cake (with chocolate frosting, of course).

To begin the dinner we'll have watermelon balls with ham... ;-) Usually a cantaloupe or honey melon is used, as they are not as juicy and sweet as watermelon, but watermelon has the same melon taste, and is very good with ham too. You can also use any smoked, salty meat, like turkey or... uh, now I have forgotten what the salty, dried beef thing is... it's not prosciutto, but it reminds it a lot. :-)

And as main course... Spaghetti with a lot of fricadellis :-D Do it by your favorite recipe, and make the meatballs just as you like them, and have a good tomatosauce with it, and eat as piggy as you wish. (You can try to make it Balinese by making this tomato sambal and making the meatballs with lamb and spicing with garlic, chili, ginger and coconut...;-))

Here's some other Indonesian recipes:
http://www.indo.com/restaurants/recipe.html
http://www.baliguide.com/balifood/basic_recipes.html
http://www.99bali.com/food/recipes/