New Celebrants Forum

I have just started a Google+ Community for Celebrants and have invited the people on the course with me and Geraldine to come and join.  It has been a while since I wrote on this blog, and a lot has happened - my writing is selling well, novels are coming along and I have a new grandson called Nathaniel Elliot, who is the most beautiful child, and I am not in the least partial!

Another Recipe - Sweet Pickled Plums

It has been a while since I posted a secret recipe.  It is plum time again and the tree at this house is so full of fruit that the branches are almost trailing on the ground.  I have picked loads and frozen them, with the stones in, waiting until I have time to make some plum jelly, the best jelly in the world.  I will also make some of this beautiful Victorian recipe.

Sunday
7^th October, 2001
Sweet Pickled Plums

'I made these in the summer and forgot to write down the recipe. I haven't tried it yet because the 6 months haven't passed. I gave a jar away and now have a large jar left. (Did try it and it was beautiful with ham and very moorish).

It must have been a short ceremonial meeting, maybe just one day, because here I am writing down this recipe on the Sunday. I remember making this quite clearly when I found this recipe in a book with Victorian preserve recipes. I couldn't believe it would work out well, it looks quite weak and odd when first made, but it was smashing at Christmas – they were eaten like spicy plums!'

I love plums, especially Victoria plums eaten warm on a sunny day in the Summer, sometimes with puppies round my feet. Perfectness. I think I have told you this before!

Ingredients:

2 lb stoned plums

2 lb sugar

1 ½ pints distilled vinegar

1. Put fruit in the saucepan and cover with water, cook until soft and then drain.
2. Put sugar and vinegar in another pan and heat stirring all the time until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil and boil for 30 minutes.
3. Add fruit to the vinegar and boil for 15 minutes and then pour into the preheated jars
4. Cover and seal as usual.
5. Store for 6 months before using.

Four patchwork bags

I have been making bags for the past few weeks to show that patchwork and quilting is not just about big bed quilts.  On the 30th August we will have Enrolment Day for the U3A and I shall take these bags and some quilts to decorate my signup desk!

We went to the Festival of Quilts last Thursday and I bought this pattern.  It is a huge bag with pockets for ruler and cutter and big enough for an A2 mat, perfect for class.  Here are the pockets -

This bag is called a twisted patchwork bag and I learned to make it at a class in Barrington Quilting.  I am waiting for the pattern to turn up.  Luke and Caroline gave me the fabric for mother's day, I love blue and white.

This was supposed to be a small version of the blue and white bag, but I couldn't remember how to make it - no pattern - and it went wrong, so I turned it into a drawstring bag without a lining and put lots of beads inside.  I especially like the Japanese endings of the drawstring!

This is a perfect bag for a child - I made it with five inch charm squares - and put an elephant button on the front for more decoration.  Here is the lining and the elephant button.. 

The pattern for this bag came from the Popular Patchwork magazine and used half a charm square pack.  I am very inclined to cut up some five inch squares from my stash and make another one, they are so easy to make and so attractive, especially for a little girl.
If I make another one, I shall put the stages on this blog.  Please leave a comment if you would like to see step by step instructions for it.

Lilly and Molly

Here are some photos of the dogs playing with Fred this lunchtime.  As you can see Molly has grown like a weed!

Gaia, She is all the life there is.

So here we are again with our world view changed, seeing ourselves back in the centre of the known Universe. We moved from seeing the earth as the centre four hundred years ago, to the earth being a tiny speck on the ocean of the Vastness, and then back again to the centre in one huge fell swoop.

For, according to a mathematician or two, we are likely to be the only, sole unique life force existing anywhere in the terrible cold vastness of space and time. It is apparently full of energy, but not of life. He has worked it out, plotting the variables for life against the numbers of stars and planets. And its just us. So again, we are alone.

Why should it matter? Why should we care in the day to day minutiae of mortgage, bills, work, children, friends, sleep, what difference does it make?

For Buddhists to be born human is they say the most special and fabulous thing. They have this lovely image of a blind turtle swimming in the Pacific Ocean and catching on its head the only golden ring floating in the beauty of that sea. To be born human is as likely, they say, as that turtle catching that ring. How much we should then value our sentient, thinking, beauty appreciating, language adorned life, woven through with love. How we should wonder at new life, especially new human life, for its rarity and its wonder and its self-awareness.

Maybe it is not a turtle and an ocean we need to think of. Maybe, if we listen to that mathematician, it is one planet and one life force in one Universe. Only one, we are the only one.

Without us all, all this teaming life that exists everywhere and in all sorts of difficult places on this beautiful blue globe, the Universe is truly sterile. It is just explosions and gases and elements and rocks - one enormous science lab without anyone to watch its experiments. One terrible cold, linked by terrible heat without anyone to look at and love it.

Let's be careful of nuclear bombs, chemical warfare, biological weapons, global warming, poison on the land, chimera, people made in jars, animals made for experiment, mountains of food and starvation of children. Let's watch out for tsunami, earthquakes, volcanoes, hatred, greed and lies. Let's condemn cruelty and violence of any kind, towards anyone and any form of life.

We must be careful, we are all there is.

Michael's Quilt

I have finished Michael's quilt which was supposed to be for his 60th birthday, only 2 years late!  Anyway, here it is

I am pleased with it as it is very men type colours, I wouldn't have made it for myself!

He wanted ying and yang symbols, which are his favourite, and I had this put on in the all over quilting pattern -

Callum, my nephew, is taking it back with him tomorrow.  I just hope Michael likes it!

Date, Honey and Apricot Slices

Friday

5 October 2001

Date, Honey and Apricot Slices

Here we go again with the tray bakes, this must have been a big meeting with the ceremonial group. Now I cook for the cake sales in St. Mary's church in Glastonbury, and some day I hope for my children in Newcastle.

I wrote -

'I made these as a try out and gave them to Wendy for the boys – they were lovely so I made more to take to the meeting in Glastonbury on Sunday.'

I spent a great deal of time driving up and down the motorway in this year and found lots of different ways of getting to Avalon. The best was the motorway, because you can't get lost, even me, on two straight roads. This was before we had a satnav, now I rarely cry in the car through frustration at being lost again.

Good old Jane, the satnav lady, though she does sometimes send me up very strange roads, better her than myself.

Oven: 400F/200C/Gas 6 for 25-30 mins

Ingredients:

1 pound mixed dates and apricots

7 oz butter

10 oz wholemeal flour

4/5 oz soft brown sugar

5 oz oats

2 tbspoons water

1 tbs honey

Steam dates and apricots for 10 minutes, mash and chop up and mix with the honey.

1. Rub butter into flour and add sugar – it can be good to chop up the butter when it gets sticky.
2. Add coats and mix in lightly
3. Pack half of the oats mixture firmly down into the tin and cover with the date mixture
4. Put remaining oat mixture on top like breadcrumbs.
5. Bake and when done leave to cool, cut into slices in the tin.
   Ice if desired.

World's Greatest Carrot Cake Recipe

Friday
5^th October, 2001.
World's Greatest Carrot Cake Recipe

This is by far the greatest carrot cake recipe of all time and it has its own story.

I used to teach RE in Plymouth at Tamarside School and every breaktime we had this carrot cake being sold in the staffroom and everytime at breaktime I had a square. I asked the school cook on lots of occasions for the recipe and although she was fond of me, she never would let me have it.

Eventually the school was OFSTEDed and we failed. However, being put under special measures the teaching staff managed to get masses of new training and due to this I beat 4 teachers in London for a Head of RE job in Acland Burleigh School in Camden. Beware of what you wish for – I wished I had stayed in Plymouth. Never mind, at least I met my lovely second husband Fred, but that is another story.

On the day I left Tamarside the cook came up to the staffroom and gave me this recipe in an envelope and kissed me goodbye. It is The Best cake recipe ever – if you make nothing else from this blog make this one!

Oven 190/375/Gas 5

Ingredients

12 oz carrots grated

4 eggs

8 oz soft brown sugar

6 fl oz sunflower oil

8 oz wholemeal flour

2 tsp ground spice

4 oz desiccated coconut

4 oz raisins.

1. Grease roasting tin very well – if you want to make a tray bake, which is really what this cake is all about, you will have enough for the tin and maybe some left over for a 1lb loat tin cake.
2. Whisk eggs and sugar until really thick
3. Turn down mixer and whisk in oil very slowly
4. Mix in the other ingredients really well.
5. Pour into the roasting tin, leaving enough room at the top for it to rise.
6. Level the top of the mixture and bake until firm, shrinking from the sides and golden brown.
7. Cool in tin, sprinkle with sugar, cut into squares and serve.
8. Fantastic.

In my book I wrote -

'I made this to take to Glastonbury for a ceremonial meeting. Wendy grated the carrots for me and gave me a hand mixer she never used.'

My sister and I were talking again at this point – we had fallen out for years over nothing at all, and yet over lots of things all bundled into one. How we made friends again, or really for the first time, is also another story. Wasn't it lovely that she gave me a mixer?

The ceremonial meeting was in the third or fourth year of the Goddess Training. Now this is how it went -

1999/2000 Priestess of Avalon training (Millenium Priestesses)

2000/2001 Rituals and Rites of Passage (Still teaching)

2001/2002 Devotional Year (9.11 and beyond)

2002/2003 Goddess Project (Bed and Breakfast)

I remember now that the ceremonial meeting was for the Goddess Conference – I managed to be in the Ceremonial Group – the group of 8 who held the conference together – twice. In the first year I was West – Earth – and had a magnificent costume with a badger head. In the second year I was East – Fire – and was so exhausted after the conference that I had to rest for a good week – I expanded so much energy in prophesy and nearly caught fire in the fire ceremony, another story for another time.

Date and Banana Cake

Ladies in Germany feeding pilgrims

with cake - excellent!  I have lots of aprons just

like this and indeed it could be us outside St. Mary's on a cake sale Sunday, except we do not have such a posh canopy, would be nice!

Unfortunately this entry gives no idea why I didn't just go out and get some eggs.  We were still living in Stoke Road at this time, and maybe my back was too painful, it was a difficult time, though the rest was improving the spasms.

Friday

28^th September 2001

Date and Banana Cake

My information for this cake is -

'I had three very ripe bananas and no eggs and wanted to make a cake for Luke and Claire and found this recipe which I added to.'

Oven: 160 C for 50 minutes

Ingredients;

10 oz SR flour + 1 tsp baking powder

6 oz chopped dates

3 ripe bananas

mixed spiece, ginger and vanilla

½ pint milk

4 oz margarine or butter

poppy and sesame seeds

water icing

1. Put the flour in a bowl and add the chopped dates (I chop with scissors)
2. Mash the bananas with milk and melted margarine or butter.
3. Mix in some seeds for crunch and taste.
4. Then add banana mixture to the flour with a spoonful of mixed spice and one of ginger and some vanilla essence. You can vary the spicey mixture to your taste. Mix everything very well.
5. Bake for up to one hour
6. Cool and water ice (add boiling water to icing sugar until it is spreading consistency and use to ice the cake with a hot knife (dipped in boiling water))
7. This cake is lovely and moist and moorish.

Charm Square and Layer Cake Bag

I went to a class at Barrington Hall and learned to make this bag, which I am now adapting as I think a quilted lining would be better than loose.  Anyway, here it is -

I plan to make one with 10 inch squares instead of 6 inch and a smaller one with 5 inch squares, as examples for the first class of the Improvers Quilting Group.

Plum Opside Down Cake

17^th August 2001

Plum

Opside Down Cake

I had too many plums, so I made this cake. We had a smashing plum tree in Stoke Road, Slough and another in AppleTree House. There is nothing like a Victoria Plum eaten sunwarm from the tree on a lovely day in Somerset, or Buckinghamshire if it comes to that. Everyone needs to grow plums, and damsons. They are fantastic for jellies. Back to the recipe.

Oven: 170 for 50 minutes

Ingredients:

6 plums

Demerara sugar

6 oz Granulated Sugar

6 oz butter

3 eggs

12 oz SR Flour

3 Tablespoons milk

1. Butter the cake tin (7-8”) and sprinkle thickly with Demerara sugar.
2. Lay the halved plums face down into the sugar.
3. Make a sponge – beat the butter and sugar until light, gradually add the beaten eggs and then fold in the milk and the flour.
4. Put over the fruit, smooth the top and cook until it is firm and a knife comes out clean (don't go too far in or you will get to the caramelized plums).
5. Turn out and cool.
6. Serve with custard or cream.

This is especially good as the sugar caramelizes really well on the plums. If you want more flavour you could add 2 oz of ground almonds and leave our 2 oz of the flour.

Vintage Rouge

The garden is nearly finished, well as good as I care to have it really, and so I can go back to writing and quilting, hooray.
I find that writing this blog each morning is helpful for loosening up the brain and today I am going to show you my latest project, well I have two really.  One is called Vintage Rouge and is a block of the month and I am hoping the first block will turn up today.  Here is the finished quilt -

Lovely and pink.  Here is the first block of which I need to make four -

And here it is finished and quilted up -



I think they are the first blocks away from the centre medallion.  I love the fabrics, but of course you can't really tell the colours on the net.

I have found instructions for easier piecing on a lovely website in the States, this started in May 2012 and the blogger is going to put on instructions for each month - it is a 6 month block of the month.

I am also going to make two more twisted bags, as in the day class I attended.  I will take a photo of the almost finished one and put it here.  I woke up this morning thinking how to improve it, and I do think that incorporating the lining into the quilting is the way to go.  Anyway, will give it a go with 10 inch rather than 6 inch squares to make a much bigger bag.  Photo later.  I am looking for a lovely layer cake (40 ten inch squares of co-ordinating fabric that will make two bags) to use for the bigger bag and when I find it I will let you know.

Apricot and Coconut Teabread and 9/11

Monday

23^rd July 2001

Apricot and Coconut Teabread

At this time I was still teaching in London and struggling in every day, spending the weekends and evenings lying on the sofa because my back was so painful due to the accident we had in August 1999.

Oven: 170 Middle shelf for about 1 hour

Ingredients:

12 oz SR Flour

pint salt

4 oz sugar

5 oz chopped (snipped) apricots

2 oz desiccated coconut

zest of 1 lemon(originally I had written rind but I now have a zester and it is better!)

4 eggs

150 ml cream/yoghurt/milk

2 oz melted butter

1. Mix the flour, salt, sugar, coconut, apricots and lemon zest in a bowl.
2. Whisk together eggs, cream and melted butter.
3. Add to the dry ingredients making a soft dropping consistency adding more milk if necessary.
4. Bake in a well greased 2 lb loaf tin.
5. Turn out and drizzle icing over (icing sugar and boiling water mixed to a smooth consistency) and add snipped apricots on top.

This is a lovely cake eaten warm. It is very crumbly and moreish and very good with a cream tea.

This must have been the beginning of the Summer Holidays as I am cooking on a Monday, and probably celebrating the fact that I don't have to hobble into school. Shall I tell you the story of how I left teaching?

It was the 11^th September, 2001, just after this summer holiday. I was teaching in my classroom on the ground floor.

I had insisted that they move my classroom as it was becoming so difficult for me to climb the stairs, and I had also insisted that they let me have a chair for assemblies as I couldn't stand for more than 5 minutes without pain. At this time things were going from bad to worse. Every now and again I would have a muscle spasm in my back that was so painful I would cry, and one day in the supermarket … well never mind. All you need to know is that things were getting worse.

In the afternoon one of my students came into my classroom. Beside teaching, being Head of Humanities and having a form class, I also taught student teachers, he was one and not one of the best. It is best not to have silly hair when you are trying to become a teacher, especially if you put a bag over the braids every day. I am not joking. Only in London – right on chaps!

He said 'Some Arabs have highjacked a plane.'

I said 'Grass is green, sky is blue, Arabs highjack planes. Why are you telling me this?' Now he looked shocked and it is only recently that I have come to realise that there had been precious little highjacking of planes in the 90s, it was a 70s and 80s phenomenon and I was old enough to remember it.

The lesson finished and I went into the office to watch the planes hitting the towers. We all watched in silence, over and over again. I picked up my coat, said goodbye and went home.

I went next day to the doctor who had been telling me for a good while to stop work, as my back was getting worse. He signed me off to Christmas, then to Easter and I finally got my pension at 51. God is good.

The planes that day changed so many lives. I myself realised that life was too short to keep on keeping on at something that was making me worse. I had been spending lots of time dreaming about a bed and breakfast in Glastonbury, planning the rooms, the colours, the names. At the time I had been studying with Kathy Jones – year one was the introductory priestess course (1999-2000) and year two was ceremonies and rituals (2000-2001). After I left the school I began the devotional course, which was wonderful, and then in 2002 the course for bringing imagination into reality – I had already used this for the bed and breakfast. But I had left by Imbolc 2002.

Sometimes I miss the Goddess Movement a lot. I wish I could find a way to bring the strands of my beliefs together, to teach the good stuff from each. What would I have?

Worldwide Faith Cake

Buddhism – concentration, calm and awareness of the present moment

Hinduism – devotion, goddesses for all, non-violence, Gandhi

Goddess – the Divine as Feminine, the Wheel of the Year, women sitting in circle, the land

Sikhism – community, feeding the hungry, courage

Catholicism – mystery, deep scholarship and spirituality,

mysticism, prayer, saints and angels, freely giving teaching, service to all.

All these divisions, it is very sad indeed. I was very happy with the Goddess Movement until I realised that they too were bigoted and lacked peace for all. Shall I tell you that story too? Well I will, but later on.

Gooseberry and Redcurrant Jelly and Cailleach and the Getting of Wisdom

Now we have the recipes and the stories!


Sunday 24^th June 2001
Gooseberry and Redcurrant Jelly


'Today we picked the gooseberries and it was a lovely crop – 5 pounds already from one bush. (Stoke Road)
I froze 4 half pound bags, made a crumble with some and added 2.5 lbs of gooseberries to 1.5lbs of redcurrants with 1.5 pints of water. I boiled it for ½ – ¾ hour and am now straining the juice for jelly though a pillowcase into the big glass bowl. More later.'


'Today (Monday) I boiled the juice (1.75 pints) with 1.75 lbs of sugar and it made 3 pots of jelly. Very wasteful of fruit but a beautiful colour and very clear. Tip: Never squeeze the jelly bag it makes the juice cloudy.'






You will be glad to know that I bought a jelly bag after this, consigning the pillowcases to the beds, or the rubbish bin, and have made good use of it over the years. Sometimes there is a glut of apples, especially here in Avalon, and I made apple jelly and add mint with spiced vinegar, or sage, or other herbs. They are better left for a good three months so that the herbs infuse through the apples.


Shall I tell you my apple story? At one time, when we first came to Glastonbury, I was in the Goddess Movement before I went back to the Church. After we had moved into AppleTree House in Autumn 2002 to run the bed and breakfast we had made some apple nectar with the last of the Bramley apples and I had taken it all to a ceremony for Samhain that year.




I was Cailleach that day, and stirred the apple nectar in a cauldron over a fire. One by one the priestesses came along a line of black veiled and gowned figures who were scrying into the future and speaking prophetically to each woman.


Finally each one came to me, sitting alone behind a screen, to be given apple nectar and Cailleach's words, or not. Sometimes I didn't speak at all to them. Anyway, as I was sitting gowned in my black velvet cloak with my hood up and stirring the cauldron I heard a Voice in my head.



'What do you want?'


This Voice had not been heard so clearly by me for a long, long time. It wasn't asking 'what do you want?' as if you had knocked on a door, but more 'what is it you need – ask for anything and you can have it.'


I knew what the answer to this question should be, I had read my Bible a lot as a girl and I had been an R.E.Teacher. Even so, I kept on thinking – money, health, grandchildren, etc. etc.


Finally the voice spoke again with huge impatience -


'Hurry up.'


This made me laugh a lot inside and I said


'Wisdom',


which of course is always the right answer to this question – see Solomon!


Wisdom is also Sophia, the Female energy principle, the Holy Spirit within Judaism and the place where the Goddess Movement meets the Church, and one day the men in dresses will recognise this!


Within four months I had left Kathy and the priestesses and had been welcomed back into Mother Church. She always welcomes you back, and sighs when you leave again. But She knows you will one day come back for good.



Always ask for wisdom, if you are given the choice, that is my recommendation! As with Solomon, everything else will probably come along with it, eventually anyway, God be praised.

Four Seed Bread - the Staff of Life

My second recipe - I am getting the hang of this.

25^th May 2001

Four Seed Bread

I have made this bread a number of times and it is not consistent. Sometimes it is lovely and other times far too heavy. I think it is a bread that needs to be made very carefully, and definitely needs lots of kneading.

It is beautifully balanced nutritionally, I think at this time I must have been preparing for the end of the world, as I seem to be collecting recipes that are 'all-in-one', or maybe it was a vegetarian part of my life. This bread could be made with some chopped rosemary and onion for eating with soup. Or some sun-dried tomatoes and basil for summer salads – I tried this once and it was delicious. It worked that time!

Oven: Pre heat to maximum and cook for ¼ hour at 425/232/8

then lower to 400/200/6 for 35 minutes

Ingredients:

1.25 pints warm water

2 sachets dried yeast

3 lbs strong organic white flour (brown is too dense for this already dense bread)

2 oz poppy seeds

2 oz sesame seeds

2 oz sunflower seeds

2 oz pumpkin seeds

125 ml sunflower oil

4 tsp salt

1. Put ¾ pint of warm water in a jug with 1 tsp sugar and the 2 yeast sachets. Mix and leave to froth.
2. Add to ½ pint warm water, mix and mix in enough flour to make a batter. Leave for ½ hour covered in a warm place.
3. Add the seeds, salt and oil and mix very well.
4. Then start adding the four to make a good dough.
5. Knead very well for 10 minutes on a floured board and keep adding flour until perfect.
6. Put in bowl and in warm place for 5 hours to double in size. Oil the top and cover with cling film and a cloth.
7. Knock back and shape into 3 loaves, rolls, etc.
8. Leave to prove again for another 2 hours.
9. Put in hot pre-heated oven for 15 minutes then turn down and cook until hollow. Cool on rack.

Coconut and Almond Oatcakes

This is my collection of recipes which I have been trying out and writing down for the last ten years. My recipe book is becoming a bit tatty now and I have decided to type them out.

You will see that most of them involve sugar, and there are very few savoury recipes! I am very fond of sweet things, far too fond my dentist says.

I have put the recipes in order of date, rather than gathering them together under any sensible cataloguing, but I like this as you never know what the next recipe will be. By the way, sometimes the recipes will be Imperial measures and sometimes metric. You need a set of scales that can switch from one to the other.

I hope you enjoy cooking them. Some of them are secret and some of them have a story, as you will see.

Bonne appetite!

25^th May 2001

Coconut and Almond Oatcakes

These are very filling and good for packed lunches, with complete nutrition and a good protein balance. Add to a yoghurt and 2 pieces of fruit and they will keep you going until dinner time. Perfect!

Oven: 350F/177C/Gas Mark 4 for 20-30 minutes

Ingredients

60g rolled oats

90g oatmeal

90g plain brown flour

125g desiccated coconut

100g raisins and chopped apricots

30g sunflower seeds

30g sesame seeds

75ml/5 tablespoons organic sunflower oil

125ml/1/4 pint juice – apple/orange/tropical fruit – take your pick

2 big spoons of honey

1. Put oats, oatmeal, flour coconut, fruit and seeds into a big bowl and mix very well.
2. Add oil and mix very well.
3. Add juice and honey and make a dough, with more flour if necessary (it will be!)
4. Pat it out and knead a bit and then pat down to 1/2” thickness and cut out 12 smallish rounds or 6 big rounds cut in half. Make sure the raisins are inside the dough or they will burn in the oven.
5. Cook for 20-30 minutes and cool on a wire rack.
6. These will freeze beautifully and each one has
   1. 239KCl
   2. 4g protein
   3. 16g fat
   4. 21g carbohydrate
   5. 5g fibre