Busy busy times

Well the last week has seen my littleuns birthday (party was noisy, Pirate themed) His first week at the new school and a whole lot of work at the allotment. And we have loved every minute of it. But it has meant that I haven't a clue what or where I am so you can imagine my surprise when I looked up the date today for some work, eek! where has it all gone? I thought I had days yet to get ready. So this year we are having a slightly scaled back Mabon and what with the Harvest moon to celebrate too the answer has yet again been bake.

Today we made some biscuits for littleun to take into school, the teacher there has read a little of his casefile and found the small word half way down the page that indicates we aren't quite like the others in his class. Fortunately she seems to be very positive and has asked us to provide some things that would show his class mates what we do. And for all my ramblings I found it very hard to do so. Opening up to her our rituals and patterns wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be. Bizarre when you consider that I write it all here for anyone anywhere to see!

However fact sheet, photos and biscuits now done, littleun excited at sharing it all and to top it off a blog entry, finally!

Hope you all have a brilliant Mabon and Full Moon. We will be heading up the allotment for ours, hoping the weather holds, to sit in the glorious moonshine.

Mabon making but Yule drinking...

Apple Schnapps

YAY I hear you cry, not another cake or jam recipe phew. No its one for the adults. Recommended to me by a Scandinavian friend this recipe is for a knock your boots off apple schnapps. Make it now at Mabon with your apples harvested and store for the few months to drink in winter or give as gifts.

Use fresh, fully ripe and aromatic apples. Wild or cultivated. Organic if available. You can use almost any variety. So start with your favourite one, then try some other varieties.

Direction:

Wash and slice 1-2 apples. Leave the skin on.
Put them - and also the cores - in a clean glass jar with tight-fitting lid.
Cover with clear, unflavoured vodka - 40% alcohol content (80 proof).

Let steep for two months or more in a dark place at room temperature, 18-20°C (64-68°F).

Shake lightly and taste it from time to time.

Strain and filter your infusion into a clean glass bottle or jar with tight-fitting lid.

You can serve your apple schnapps after it has settled for a couple of days in a dark place at room temperature. But some storage (aging) will improve the flavours. Taste it from time to time to find out.

Mea'n Fo'mhair/Mabon: Crab Apple Jelly

Ok, well you just knew with all the crops from our allotment/Dads garden this year was going to turn into recipe after recipe. And I hope you don't mind. We are also going to be trying out different crafts too so hopefully some variation for you!

For a recipe based on the crab apples we collected you will need:


Preserving sugar (see method)
1kg/2¼lb crab apples
3 cloves
water (see method)

Method

Preheat the oven to 120c/250f/gas½. Put the preserving sugar into the oven for 15 mins. Wash the apples and cut them in half but do not peel or core. Place the apples and cloves in a large saucepan.

Pour the water to cover. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer until soft. Strain the mixture into a bowl. Measure the juice and ass 450g/1lb/2 cups of sugar for each 600ml/1pint/2½ cups of juice. Pour into a pan and heat gently. Stir until the sugar dissolves, then boil rapidly until the setting point is reached. Pour into warm sterilized jars and seal.

Mea'n Fo'mhair

So having been openly on my Path for almost a year I thought I would look a bit into the names for the various celebrations, find out some more as to how they have come about.

Mea'n Fo'mhair seems to be the Druid name for the Autumn Equinox but when I typed this into the search station I got a lot of hits for sites which all carried the same short explanation. Having trawled through many of them I have decided to cheat and give you the same answer!

The Druids call this celebration, Mea'n Fo'mhair, and honor the The Green Man, the God of the Forest, by offering libations to trees. Offerings of ciders, wines, herbs and fertilizer are appropriate at this time. Wiccans celebrate the aging Goddess as she passes from Mother to Crone, and her consort the God as he prepares for death and re-birth.

And being me, the type of person who never actually completes what I initially started, having wandered off side tracked by something else which caught my eye, I liked the idea of making an offering. We often leave small plant food cubes on our walks so this was something that littleun was used too. I gave him a choice of which areas he wanted to go to as we have many lovely woods nearby when he pointed out something I had overlooked. On our allotment we have a budding oak. It has decided to grow in a rather inconvenient area but all the same is doing well. This as littleun said would be a good tree to offer our thanks too. To protect it, nurture it, give the area around it the food it needs and to watch it grow hopefully for many years to come. So come the equinox you will know where we will be.

To the Rescue...

What a week. September is always busy for us. We have Littleuns birthday, Littleuns Mad Aunt birthday, start of Littleuns new school, Holidays to enjoy oh and the Harvest to continue. Blimey exhausted just reading that little lot!

a few of our apples...

Well the Harvest is normally longer than now but this week we had to do a mad rescue as the allotment got blown down by a rather horrible turn in the weather. Sadly we have been forced to gather in the tomatoes before they have ripened as the wind and rain are starting to cause damage and rot. So look out for green tomato recipes soon as that is what I will have to do with the 3 large bag loads of them we managed to save. As for the cucumbers well they are fighting back, have found another 5 hiding in amongst the damage so more salad any one?! As for apples, well don't get me started, the whole of the kitchen has been covered by them as we have washed and now are drying them off. We have Bramleys, Coxes and Crabs, guess tomorrow includes sugar on the shopping list!

Birthday parties are being planned too, baking and cooking to happen. This year we have gone for a cinema type party, lots of Tom and Jerrys etc think it will be good but I can't believe how much Littleun has grown, seems like only yesterday I brought baby home from hospital. And not long before he starts school. Ooh do I cry now? boohoo!

So a busy month, with Mabon to enjoy as well, ahead.

Getting in the mood…

Sorry for the lack of posts this week but as you’re probably in the same situation you can guess it’s been a little manic. Can’t work out where the time has gone, it only seems like it was September and I was thinking “great a month to go, no problem”!

I have spent this week changing our altar from our Mabon offerings to our Samhain offerings (we like to keep the altar all the time adding things throughout the days as the time changes). We’ll add the last part on Samhain when we have our feast, our friends around us and I’ll post some photos and thoughts on this another time that hopefully you might like.

We’ve also been desperately constructing the props for mums Hallowe’en do. To get some more inspiration (and as an excuse to be a kid again) I took Littleun to a farm in the next county which had laid on all sorts of Hallowe’en treats for general amusement. Immense fun was had running around the maize maze a ghoul, ghost or pumpkin at every turn.

We met several skeletons including Femur who was a “dog hungry for a bone”, strangely the Littleun who is normally scared of dogs (long story that one) sat down and petted this dog!

We also had a right laugh catapulting pumpkins and shooting corn cobs at targets ridiculously far away and getting the backlash or pulp as we realised how useless we were at it.

Think the best part must have been the “scary hayride” which during the day was tempered for the Littleun’s but still spooky enough to get the heart going. A really funny bit was the Christmas shop tucked away in the corner; it had a little Nativity with the barn and animals etc, now I’m used to seeing these all over the place with Crosses or Stars of David over the manger but this was the first time I’ve ever seen one that had the pentagram on it. Strangely enough they didn’t like me trying to take a photo to show you!

Anyway a brilliant day, now I’ve just got to work out how I’m going to carve 23 pumpkins, buy several sacks of compost & a couple bales of straw, make cakes, biscuits and other goodies for mums Hallowe’en thing as well as getting the food prepared for our feast, visit my Grandmothers graves and my time for quietness all in tomorrow!

Seeing if I can load photos, Mabon Altar...

Morning,

I'm testing out what I can do on this blog today. Trying to load photos so not too sure how it'll go! Anyhow the first photo is meant to be one of our Mabon Altar, yes I know it's past that now but it's a pretty altar (well imo) and I kinda wanted to show it off.

The centre candle is something Littleun and I made after one of our woodland walks, we'd collected loads of small pinecone type things and beech cases and after pouring plaster of paris into a cake tray he stuck the items and candles in, not too bad for a 4yr old, though he is quite eager to put everything in, never knows when to stop!

You can see it a little better in this one, hey I'm getting the hang off this. We had a great Mabon, invited friends and family around for the dinner, spent all day baking bread and apple pie, also did a very yummy venison casserole with redcurrants from our nearby farm.

Well got to go as am baking faerie cakes today for a friends party. 25 3-4 yr olds in a soft play gym, gonna need earplugs! Afterwards off for a wander under the chestnut trees, had a lot of wind last night so may have some fallen treasures to find...