Digital Collage: Starry Path
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Cooking in the Dark with a Stick
I have never posted a recipe! Why you may ask?
Well, I’m not the kind of girl who buys fancy kinds of mushrooms or puts mango sauce on my chicken, if you know what I mean.
So for the witch on a limited … everything … here’s dinner:
Purchase one tiny BBQ grill on clearance at the end of the season for under $15.
Purchase small bags of BBQ briquettes from the local small mountain town discount store, seems the local manufacturer is clearing stock.
Get a BBQ pan 3 for a dollar at the Safety Mart (small town grocery store)
Buy a cool looking knobby yam, extra virgin olive oil and basil at the Safety Mart.
Get a nice big grilling steak from local butcher and cut it in half to serve two.
Realize when you get home you don’t have any fire-starter.
To get coals going, build tiny kindling fire in the bottom of newly assembled BBQ grill. Then pile charcoal over the flames. This is best done on one side of the grill, confined fires burn hotter and all.
Once coals are cheerfully glowing through sheer force of will and patience, spread them evenly and attempt to… Continue reading
Some Notes: The Hearthstone
The hearthstone symbolizes the ancient hearth, as well as the very heart of a family or coven, it also helps to connect us with our ancestors and other household spirits. It can be used to symbolize hearth and fire deities as well. Any items to be blessed can be laid upon the hearthstone as you do so. This is a very useful tool indeed.
The most popular places to hide witch bottles used to be under the hearthstone or doorstep. The seventeenth century witch-bellarmines of East Anglia have mostly been found buried beneath the threshold or the hearthstone of old buildings.
It is interesting to note that in old Mexican lore the umbilical cord is to be burned in the hearth to detach the baby from unclean, antisocial prenatal influences. In this lore the hearth symbolizes the unity of those who live together and endows this unity with sacred characteristics.
There is an old Somerset tradition that says you must draw a cross on a new hearthstone before you light the first fire – but not with an elder stave.
It was at the hearth where communication with spirits and ancestors was practiced and it was on the hearthstone where… Continue reading
I Found It!
I love this theme! The Pacific Northwest background, the disorganized note book styling. Oh yes…
A Ramble: We are Just Running the Farm
Everyone knows that scene in Charlotte’s Web when, Pocahontas like, Charlotte throws herself over the body of a young Wilbur about to the get the axe from her father, thus saving his life.
Since time immemorial children have returned home or woken in the morning to discover the runt pig or calf (or what have you) they had been given to raise has been or must be slaughtered. Then likely served on the family table.
When serial killer Robert Pickton was on trial he told such a story as an attempt to gain sympathy from the jury. Farmers and ranchers watching the news coverage laughed bitterly.
I come from a family with a long history of farmers and hunters, complete with many old world values.
My Dad’s side of the family have been raising cattle probably since white people started raising cattle. The fact that the farm in England where my father and his siblings had been born is now a suburb is a family joke.
My Mother’s family arrived in Canada from Scotland some time around the Highland Clearances (The oldest soldier in Prince Charles Edward’s Army at the Battle of Prestonpans in the ’45 was an 80-year-old Ferguson)… Continue reading
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