Q is for Questionable – Pagan Blog Project 2013

I know, I know, I’m a week late and playing catch-up.
 
So. Gordon, over at Rune Soup, has an old post about – among other things – being a white kid in Australia, doing white-people magic in a space where the (indiginous Australian) Neighbours do NOT want you to be.
 
I’m in a similar colonial boat.
 

Welsh Cakes (my recipe)

So my wife is half English, half Welsh. And she loves-loves-loves Welsh Cakes, which are basically a scone that you cook on a stove top (or, if you’re camping and/or a shepherd in the field, on a piece of metal over a fire) the way you’d cook a pancake.
 
So here’s the recipe I came up with. It’s non-traditional (because it contains vanilla), but you could sub out the vanilla for… creme de cassis, sortilege, or some other sweet dessert liqueur (or even, like, ice cider) if you wanted to, or just add extra milk to make up the liquid.
I’m using dried black currants in this recipe, but dried red currants, raisins, craisins, or diced dried peaches, pears, or apples will also all work – making it a handy way to incorporate preserved (dried) local fruit into your baking. 😀
 
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Full Moon – Thunder Moon Crests

I’m two days late with this one, although I feel I’m making up for that somewhat by writing it during a thunder storm. 😉
You may recall how I mentioned that Thunder Moon is “go season” when it comes to canning.
Well… I may have spoken too soon. I’ve done peach butter and apple butter (courtesy of a friend with an apple tree in her yard) but nothing else since Thunder Moon began. I’ve got 20lbs of tomatoes to buy before I get my sauces started, and that may not happen for a while. I do have soup stock (duck and turkey bones, for the most part) on the make in the slow-cooker, so that’s something, but… I’m feeling like a total slacker on the preserving foods front. (Maybe because I harvested and froze three different kinds of fruit, plus made cucumber pickles, radish pickles, serviceberry chutney, and service berry jam (soooooooooo much serviceberry jam) during Berry Moon, and my limited production in the past two weeks has me feeling slow in comparison.
 

Q is for Queer – Pagan Blog Project 2013

Pride kicks off today, so you’re getting “Q is for Queer”.
 
Once upon a time – and there are a number of different times, in the past forty or so years, if not longer, that one could choose from – “dyke” and “witch” were deeply intertwined. Both in the sense of “feminist lesbian separatism” (cue: women’s land, the we’moon collective, all those lesbians wearing Labrys and/or Goddess pendants in order to flag, a distressing degree of biological reductionism, etc) and in the sense of linguistic terminology meant to police women’s sexual/social behaviour (in which case, you can also throw “ho” – and possibly “spinster/frigid”, into the mix).
 
How does my queerness, my bi-dyke-nicity (if you will), play into my paganism? Other than having a goddess who is a dyke, I mean.

Peach Butter 2013

Happy Friday, folks! 🙂
My local Pride festival kicks off this weekend (this evening, I believe), so my calendar is getting busy. None the less, I’m also knee-deep (well, shin deep…) in fruit that needs to be processed, so today is going to be another cooking and crafting day chez Meliad.
 
A friend of mine lives out in the country, where she has a number of fruit trees (mostly hawthorn and crab apple, but also two sweet apples, a service berry, and the beginnings of a really great black raspberry patch). The apples are getting ripe, so she sent my lovely wife – who was out helping her build a porch roof – home last night with a back pack full of fruit.
She will be getting a thank-you jar of apple butter when this is all done. 😉
 
However, I’m not doing the apple butter just yet. I’ve had a dozen Niagara-area peaches (which were rock hard when I brought them home) sitting in a paper bag on top of the fridge, with an apple thrown in for good measure. I pulled them out today and they were definitely ripe – in a few cases, slightly too far past ripe – and ready to be stewed into peach butter.
So that’s what I’m making right now.
 

P is for Piety – Pagan Blog Project 2013

Well, this couldn’t be easier.
 
Earlier this week, I reblogged a post for a survey of modern pagan and modern polythistic piety (go take part!). For this week’s PBP13 post, I figure that, since the letter’s right, I’ll just blog my answers to the survey questions.
 
In this case, I’m not going to blog all of the answers. There are questions I’ve left out, and questions where I’ve changed (hidden) a little bit of the information in order to protect some privacy.
 
 
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New Moon – Thunder Moon Begins

Hi all!
 
So I’m writing this much earlier than is strictly necessary. Thunder Moon doesn’t actually start for another week [EDIT: It starts today, August 6th, thense my finally getting around to posting it. /EDIT]. None the less, here I am scribbling away. Probably because I’m all excited about creating my first Etsy Coupon. Hint: If you use coupon code ThunderMoon13 between August 6th and September 4th (the duration of Thunder Moon), you get 10% off any purchase of $20 or more at my shop.
 
Anyway. Thunder Moon.

A Survey About Pagan Piety

Hey there, Pagans and Polytheists, want to give your thoughts on piety to this survey? Have a look. 🙂

P is for Practical Magic – Pagan Blog Project 2013

So, I’m sure you’re all familiar with these two:

Magic: It’s Serious Business

The Aunts from the movie version of Practical Magic frequently pop up as something like role models for people like us. Kitchen witchy types. People who are (maybe) less likely to do a spell for world peace or closing a nuclear power plant, and more likely to do one to increase the health, wealth, esteem, and happiness of ourselves, our families, or whoever has hired us to do it.
 

Friday Crafting

I like Fridays.
In my work-from-home routine, they are they day where – provided I’ve got everything else done, and sometimes not even then – I get to blog as much as I like, the day I’m most likely to throw together the kind of dinner that requires a bit of forethought[1], and the day when I do most of my devotional stuff (officially – unofficially, things can wander a bit).
It also means that I’m slightly more likely to actually get to see, and hang out with, my lovely wife – who works multiple jobs, herself, but all outside of the house – for the next couple of days. Which, seriously, I fucking miss my wife. And miss fucking my wife. All of the above.