A Toast To Ukrainian Christmas: Wild Winter Berry Uzvar

January 6, 2022.Reading time 9 minutes.

I shared this lovely healthy Uzvar recipe with my Gather patrons last year, but I’m sharing it tonight in honor of Ukrainian Christmas and my beloved mother-in-law Rosie who passed away late November 2021. For the many, many years I’ve been married, I loved hearing her remembrances of this holiday, how the house was full […]

Spellbinding Sweet Woodruff Cake: Prosperity Magic

April 20, 2018.Reading time 13 minutes.

In my tiny wildish garden, nestling at the foot of a tall tree, is sweet woodruff. Her glossy leaves and small white blossoms may be hidden by a profusion of taller plants, but it is her scent that perfumes the air. Fresh, her fragrance (like rain, earth, fresh air and green grass all condensed into […]

Reclaiming the Magical Herstory of Food

March 10, 2017.Reading time 20 minutes.

“When we learned to cook is when we became truly human, but we’ve lost touch with how that food got to our plates.” Michael Pollan in Cooked. As is so often the case with history, the “herstory” tends to get left out – and food is no exception. While there are as many books on food […]

Recipes for a Feast of Light: Reviving the Magical Foods of Imbolc

January 20, 2016.Reading time 21 minutes.

I love the ancient feast days that once celebrated the turn of the “wheel of the year”. Marking celestial alignments such as solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days, they followed the old wisdom of “as above, so below”, meaning these ‘holy days’ offered moments of propitious timing during which life-enhancing magic can be worked. And still […]