The Kitchen Witch: Spaghetti and Meat Balls The big holiday in March is Saint Patrick’s Day on March 17 and while some pagans refuse to celebrate it, I almost always cook up a pile of corned beef and cabbage, with carrots and potatoes and onions, and maybe turnips and parsnips as well. Or perhaps a big bowl of Irish stew, made with either lamb or beef, and some Irish Soda Bread for dipping. I may revere the Goddess in all Her forms but I do love to cook and any excuse works for me. A lesser-known holiday is Saint Joseph’s Day on March 19. Again, not a Pagan holiday but still…

divination with runes   Runes are something in which I have just recently been gaining an interest. Recently – as in, the last six months. Before that time, I was busy with other forms of divination – mostly the Tarot – and number-based divinatory systems. Systems that basically worked together. When I first started learning about women’s spirituality, wicca, witchcraft, and goddess religions in the late 1980’s, I naturally read books about divination. I read everything I could! I received my first deck of Tarot cards in 1988 – as a gift from a friend – and took to the Tarot right away. Although I was interested in other forms…

The Best Oatmeal Bars in the World!!!!!   I love oatmeal cookies. I do confess though – I do not particularly like oatmeal-raisin cookies. Raisins are OK but I would rather use dried cranberries or cherries. Right now, I am totally and completely in love with dried cherries. An herbalist friend of mine suggested that I eat them to help ease my arthritis and a month ago, I happened to get a big bag of them at one of Lowell’s very generous food pantries. So naturally, I decided I would put them into some cookies. Well – if you’re going to have cherries, you just have to have chocolate, don’t…

The Magic of Bread Pudding One of my favorite cookbooks is A Kitchen Witch’s Cookbook, by Patricia Telesco, originally published in 1994 and currently in its sixth printing and also available on Kindle. I bought it brand-new when it first came out when I was living in Cleveland Heights, Ohio at a wonderful bookstore called “Gifts of Athena” – I think it’s still there, on Lee Road. Fabulous store – if you are ever in the Cleveland area, check it out. There’s three parts to the cookbook. The first part talks of the magic of the pantry and the basic kitchen witchery. The second part has all the recipes –…

Holiday Hash and Eggs It’s the holidays and you have lots of holiday leftovers! So let’s make something fun for brunch! One of my favorites is hash and eggs. Of course, the easy way is to simply open a can of Mary Kitchen Corned Beef Hash and heat it in a pan and cook some eggs with it – which is always really good! But hash is really quite easy to make. Whether you have leftover corned beef, turkey, ham, roast beef or venison, mixing up a quick version of hash is easy and fun. I made this particular hash out of the leftovers of a turkey dinner but you…

Maintaining a Book of Shadows This is not the article that I was going to write. I was going to write about Runes. I was going to do a review of the book, Runes for Beginners, by Alexandra Chauran, and write about the history of runes in general. While researching the subject, I looked through the notebooks that comprise my Book of Shadows, sure that I had something about runes. I most certainly did – coincidentally, it was a print-out of a page that I had on my computer screen at that very moment! I had received it in an email from a Yahoo group I was a member of…

Super Quick California Cream Soup.   With the coming of the holidays and all the shopping and partying and everything that must-be-done, isn’t it nice to have a quick soup to make up when you come home all tired out and want something that’s thick and filling but still nutritious and yummy good? “Super Quick California Cream Soup” is perfect for these kinds of days. I love canned cream soups – Cream of Mushroom, Cream of Onion, Cream of Celery and all the others – for casseroles and quick gravies. This soup uses Cream of Potato soup. I’m not even sure where I picked this can of soup up –…

The Celtic Cross Samhain is traditionally a time of divination. Some methods – such an apple and tossing the peel over your shoulder and seeing the design of the peel – have gone down in history as “folk love magic”, since the apple peel, left overnight on the hearth, will set into the letter of your true-love. We did this as children. In my own Samhain rituals, I always use tarot cards – tarot cards have always been my first and favorite form of divination. I first picked up a deck in 1988 – a Rider-Waite deck – and I have never stopped loving the feel and the ease of…

  Salmon with Apples and Maple Syrup The fall season is filled with fabulous fruits and vegetables – various squashes, including pumpkin, which seems to be everywhere nowadays – heirloom tomatoes, many different kinds of beans, pears and plums and peaches – and my personal favorite – apples. Every year, I look forward to the fall season for the apple crop. This year in the Northeast, we have been plagued by a very harsh drought so the local apples are much smaller than usual but are they ever sweet and juicy! Like Jo March in Little Women, I can think of nothing better than to sit in a comfortable place…

  Cooking in a Small Area   I just moved into a new apartment. I am not quite where I want to be, nor is the apartment what I really wanted. But it’s okay for now. I like the city in which I am living – Lowell, Massachusetts – which has a lot of beautiful old buildings and historic places to explore and photograph. I eventually want to find a place nearer to the ocean. My main problem with this place is the kitchen – or the lack of a kitchen. The “Kitchen” There are so few cupboards that I didn’t even unpack most of my dishes. And I have…