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Y’all, It’s Soup Season
I’ve always loved fall — it’s my favorite time of the year, and I know you Summer People are miserable as soon as the temps drop below 70 degrees, but for someone like me who hates to be hot and sweaty, this is the most wonderful season of all. I love crisp cool mornings, watching the leaves turn red and gold on my hillside, seeing my breath in the air, pulling out my hoodie/boots/jeans collection, and the smell of woodsmoke wafting through my forest as bonfires light up. But one of my favorites parts of fall is that it’s soup season. There’s something so magical about soup, and it doesn’t…
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Demeter, Persephone, and the Feel of Fall
Where I live, autumn hasn’t quite rolled in yet – it’s still hot and humid and gross, but the minute September 1st popped onto the calendar, people started acting like it was fall. For me personally, I don’t really start thinking about fall until around my birthday, which is at the end of this month. It’s usually starting to cool down at night by then, there’s a slight crispness to the mornings, and even if the sun is out and the sky is blue, there’s a feeling in the air that everything is about to change. I’ve always loved the story of Persephone and her mother, Demeter, because their story…
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Book Review: The Magick of Food
One of the best things about being an author is that a lot of my friends are also authors, and so when they write new stuff, I’ve got an advantage that many readers don’t have — I know that the person writing them is actually someone who knows their stuff. Such is the case with Gwion Raven’s book, The Magick of Food, which I pre-ordered as soon as I heard about it. Holy cow, y’all. First and foremost, this ain’t just a cookbook. Yes, there are recipes in it, but there’s so much more. It’s chock-full of rituals, spells, and history, all relating to the magic of the relationship that…
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Nutting Day: Make Your Own Nutella!
Around the middle of September, the nut season starts. Hazelnuts ripen in the hedges, and they have long been connected to folklore and legends. Hazel is associated to the Celtic tree month of Coll, from August 5 to September 1, and the very word Coll means “the life force inside you.” Hazelnuts are connected to wisdom and protection, and are often found near sacred wells and magical springs. Hazelnuts can be used in workings related to divination and dowsing – tie a ripe one onto a string and use it as a pendulum! In the British Isles, September 14 was the day when children would forage in the woods to…
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Recipes for Your Beltane Celebrations
Beltane is a time to celebrate the fertility of the earth, and the return of spring blossoms and blooms. It’s a season of fire and passion, and when many of us honor the wild and lusty god of the forests. Beltane is a time for planting and sowing of seeds; again, the fertility theme appears. The buds and flowers of early May bring to mind the endless cycle of birth, growth, death, and rebirth that we see in the earth. Try one of these seven seasonally-appropriate recipes for your Beltane celebrations! Beltane Recipe Ideas
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Apple Butter for Mabon
One of my favorite things to do every August and September is to go to the local apple orchard and pick fruit straight off the tree. Last weekend, my guy and I went and picked peaches, and sometime in the next few weeks, we’ll be returning for apples. LOTS OF APPLES. The great thing about apples is that they’re super easy to pick, and you end up with a ton of them. The downside? YOU END UP WITH A TON OF THEM. I mean, you can only eat so many apples before you’re tired of them, so I like to do a lot of different things with apples, just to…
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Mabon Apple Butter
Ok, I admit that I have a weird obsession with apple picking. Every fall, I go off to the local apple orchard and spent an hour or two finding the ABSOLUTE BESTEST APPLES EVER and dropping them in a basket, and before I know it I have like eight bushels of them and my kids kids are all NO MOM OMG PLEASE NO MORE APPLES. I mean, really, you can only do so much with apples before everyone gets tired of seeing, eating, and smelling them. So, obviously, there’s some mason jar activity involved, but one of the things I love to make is apple butter. I like this because…
