Yuletide greetings to you all!  This year for Yule I was determined to make a wreath for the front door and I did!  It is still on the front doorstep as I can’t bear to dismantle it and scatter the greenery away.

For Yule festival 2011 I organised a wonderful witchy gathering of eight women.  We each made festive food to share and ended up with a lot of yummy preparations!  Before we tucked in however, we gathered in a circle and recognised the time of year and absorbed the special, cosy, spicy and social, bubbly energy Yuletide brings.  We held hands, absorbed each other’s presence and cast a circle around the house, inviting the quarters and God and Goddess.

I spoke a little about Yule meaning and history before asking everyone to get out their tealights I’d asked them to bring.  These were for our Yule log.  Traditionally, each person lights a candle to represent and welcome the coming of the light and to make a wish for the days ahead.  In addition to the wish, I suggested the candle also be a light for those loved ones no longer with us and to share their memories.  This turned out to be a moving session as we each took it in turn to make our wish and honour our departed loved ones.  The Yule log was a beautiful sight at the end, glimmering in the dimmed light of the ceremony room, full of held intentions and shared memories.

Yule wouldn’t be complete without gifts, so we did a secret santa and each received something special.  My lovely material framed mirror is still hanging over my fireplace.

I made Yule incense too – frankincense, myrrh, cinnamon and dried orange peel which I burned to welcome the guests.

So this was my Yule ritual 2011.  Please share how you celebrated yours by commenting below.

There are tonnes of Samhain / Halloween recipes, but of course the main ones involve good old pumpkin.  There’s nothing I love more than cookin’ up a storm in the kitchen!  It’s part of my creative fun, pulling spices out of the cupboard and using herbs from the garden.   And I get to please others in the process by offering them the tasty treats I conjure in the kitchen!

For this year’s Samhain feast I’m going to make pumpkin soup with cream, with courgette and cheese muffins, yum.  For dessert, I’ll make pumpkin pie.  I’ll probably look like a pumpkin after I’ve consumed my fill, but that’s okay on Samhain!

Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients
3 tbsp olive oil
2 onions , finely chopped
1kg pumpkin or squash (butternut is wonderful). Chop into chunks, remove seeds and skin.
750ml vegetable stock (Marigold’s veg bouillon powder is yum) or any veg stock will do
130ml double cream

Method

Heat the oil in a large pan and fry onions for 5 mins until they’re soft.  don’t let them colour.  Add pumpkin chunks and cook gently for another 10 mins.  It will turn a wonderful golden colour and soften a little.

Add the stock and some black pepper (leave out salt as sometime stock is salty enough).  Simmer for 10 mins until soft.  Then add the cream to the pan, bring to the boil and then blend with a stick/hand blender.  Make some croutons to go with it if you like.  Also, it’s nice with toasted, slivered almonds on top.  Serve with garlic bread or crusty granary bread and butter.

Samhain festival wouldn’t be the same without pumpkin pie, so here’s a recipe I love.  Have fun making it!  I like to offer it to the God and Goddess and then offer it to my ancestors.

Sweet Pumpkin Pie

Pastry for a 9-inch pie dish.

1/2 cup plain flour

1/2 cup wholemeal plain flour

1/2 cup butter at room temp

1/2 tsp salt

5 – 7 tblsp cold water

Combine the lot minus 3 tblsp of the water.  Mix with your hands until it resembles breadcrumbs.  Add the rest of the water bit by bit if until you get a ball of pastry.  Wrap in a buttered plastic bag or put in a tub and chill for around 30 mins.  Then make your filling.  After filling is prepared, roll out pastry on a floured surface.  Place in your 9-inch pie dish.

Filling:

1 med size pumpkin or very large butternut squash

1 1/4 cups (310 ml) sweetened condensed milk

2 tblsp cornflour

1 tsp cinnamon powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp freshly ground whole allspice berries

1/2 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

Chop the pumpkin in half crosswise.  Remove seeds and fibres and place cut side down on a lightly greased baking sheet.  Place in a 160 degrees C oven for around 1 hour or until it’s tender when pierced with a knife/

Scrape away pulp from the skin and discard the skin.  Place put in food processor and blend until smooth.  Do this in batches – easier to achieve smooth result.

Force through a sieve and measure 2 cups for the pie and reserve the rest for other purposes.  Combine the measured pumpkin puree with all the other filling ingredients.  Beat with a wire whisk until smooth and creamy.

Assemble and bake

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C.  Pour the filling into the chilled pastry case and smooth it out.  It should be barely 2.5cm deep.  Bake for 40 mins or until the filling is set.  cool and cut into wedges and serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.  Enjoy!

Enjoy!

I have been making incense! Oh, how I love it. I bought all the essential ingredients – the basics like frankincense, myrrh, gum mastic, copal, dragon’s blood resin and various essential oils along with herbs picked from the garden like rosemary, bay and pine. I love grinding them together in the pestle and mortar. Sometimes I follow a recipe, sometimes I make up my own. I think of a person and sense what kind of vibrations they have and what plants would suit them. Then I make up their own blend. My friend in the barn was the first to receive such a blend and I’m pleased to say she liked it. My other friend who lives in a house with a tin roof will be the next recipient! Let’s see what she thinks

My family have colds at the moment and some of them aren’t that good at sneezing into handkerchiefs when they should! So I go around with a censer burning frankincense to purify the air. It really works and kills germs.

on the way to my friends barn last night hehee. I said it was 45 mins away from my house and I have been there before, but in the dark it’s another story. I love Cornwall, so many lanes to get lost in! I was doing well on the more main routes but when the roads got smaller that was me well up the Cornish Rivera with no pasty. Thank god for the modern convenience of mobile phones. Soon I was alighting at the barn sending the doves ascattering and the dogs abarking.

Anyway, my friend loved the incense and we had a wonderful weekend of working, chatting, eating and going out. I am grateful for such good friends.

because she starts something and with the best will in the world intends to keep it up and finish it but then doesn’t. Well, here I am again writing about my experiences. Yuletide has been and gone, the amazing snow we had has been and gone and the new year is here! Happy New Year everyone!

I made some gorgeous incense last night. I have bought some richly smelling ingredients such as juniper berries, sandalwood bits, cedar and spruce shavings (which my dad planed off for me – he’s a classical guitar maker) and various coloured gums and resins like frankincense, myrrh, copal and mastic and zillions of essential oils. I haven’t tried them all yet! There are so many recipes in the book but last night I felt the urge to get my mortar and pestle out and get mixing.

Here is a recipe I would like the share. I totally made it up myself but had in mind a friend I wanted to give it to as a present. she lives in a barn in south west Cornwall, only about 45 minutes from me – a most gorgeous barn I might add! Oh and as I am typing from my cosy bed I can hear Heather the donkey braying away a couple of fields away! I love it here. Okay, back to the incense. I wanted it fresh, fruity, cleansing and alive so I made:

1 tablespoon pine needles
1/2 tablespoon myrrh gum
1/3 tablespoon frankincense gum
5 juniper berries
3 drops of lemon essential oil

Grind the juniper berries first then add the pine needles and grind them until they are all broken up and have somewhat merged together. Then add the lemon oil and grind it in well. Now add the myrrh and frankincense. Depending on how small the pieces are you may not need to grind them, you want them to mix in well with the rest of the ingredients but not to turn into a powder. The largest gum pieces should be no bigger than a ladybird! About 1/2 a centimetre.

That’s it for now! Happy experimenting