Home-made Lentil and Bacon Soup

My Mammy’s recipe for a simple and quick to make tasty soup that kids and adults will love. Personally I prefer using all organic ingredients.

Ingredients

• 1 medium potato, peeled and finely chopped
• 1 onion diced
• 6 table spoons of lentils
• 3 carots, grated
• 2 slices bacon, diced
• 1 ham stock cube
• teaspoon olive oil
• 3 pints Water, boiled will speed things along

Method

1. Add diced onions to the pot with a little oil and heat till softening and turning golden
2. Add the water followed by the rest of the ingredients and bring to the boil.
3. Boil for 10 minutes then turn down and simmer for the next 30mins.
4. Use a hand blender for a smooth textured finish and serve with some crusty bread.

Cinnamon Honey Butter

Ingredients

8oz Room temperature butter
1 cup Powdered sugar
1 cup Honey
2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon

Method

Whip the butter {make sure it’s soft and room temp}.

Add the powdered sugar, honey, and cinnamon.

Whip till well mixed and scrape the sides.
Transfer it into a clean glass Jar.
Spread it on Toast or English Muffins

Can also be used on fruit or Ice Cream
Enjoy

Easy Chocolate Brownies and Blondies

Simple recipe that delivers and is great activity to do with kids.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup chocolate spread of your choice
•  1 cup self raising flour
•   2 Medium eggs
• Chocolate chips (milk, white or dark)

Method

1) Sift the flour into a mixing bowl
2) Add the eggs and chocolate spread
3) Mixto a smooth paste
4) Transfer to a greased, lined baking tin
5) Bake in the oven at 180 for 25 mins
6) Let cool, cut and enjoy

I have used chocolate, chocolate and hazelnut, chocolate orange and white chocolate spreads to create difference flavours. For another interesting twist add chocolate chips.

Serving suggestion: Hot with chocolate or toffee sauce and vanilla ice cream.

Making a Lord or Lady of Winter

As the veil thins and Samhain (pronunced Sow-in)  beckons the cold weather of winter to sets in, one of the activities my family enjoy is making a Lord/Lady of Winter. It is a great interactive and fun activity for children and adults of all age.

In bygone days ancient Celts used to make a Wickerman, the effigy of a man and burn it as a sacrifice to the Gods asking for bounty and good fortune and as Samhain is heavily connected to our ancestors it seems appropriate. There are also many references to decorating your home with natures bounty to help welcome spirits to your home to winter with you and provide blessings.

The idea of a Lord/Lady of Winter is to  welcome these helpful spirits by making a figure out of natural items and bringing it indoors to winter with your family. As Imbolc approaches and spring is in the air the Lord/Lady can be put outside to bring the season blessing and on Beltane can be burnt upon the Bel-fire as a sacrifice to bring about happiness and bounty.

To make a Lord/Lady of Winter:

• Items from nature, twigs, sticks, pine cones, leaves ect
• String
• sage smudge
• offering of food and drink

Take a nature walk collect items from the ground to make the effigy. Once home bind the collected items together with string to make the form then smudge the Lord/Lady with sage and offer food and drink before hanging him/her up in the main room or most used room of the house e.g the family room or kitchen.

An alternative idea is to create a Holly King out of Holly at Litha (Summer Solstice) to bring bounty whilst he rules and burn him at Yule replacing him with an Oak King made out of oak to provide blessing till the wheel turns again. The burning represents their battle and sacrifice to each other enabling the wheel of the year to turn.

They can also be made out of herbs and other plants from your garden and can be as personalised as you feel.

 

Web of Life – Samhain Decoration

A Samhain decoration that I love to make with my children is a Web of Life.

The idea of a web ties well into the ancestor elements of Samhain. A spider, like the Fates, is a spinner and their webs like wise a symbol of the thread of life, your fate line and a direct connection to your ancestral linage.

Spiders have important appearances in mythologies across the word. In Southwestern Native American faiths Grandmother Spider is the creator of the world and threw a dew filled web up into the heaven to create the stars. In the west of Africa Anansi the spider is a trickster God of all knowledge of stories and is one of the most important Gods in West African and Caribbean folklore. Even the interconnected aspects of nature are often referred to as the web of life.

Today spiders are still the stuff of nightmares and a source of fear to those the world over with arachnophobia like myself but they certainly deserve our respect.

To make a Web of Life you will need:

• 3 sticks of roughly equal length and width
• white or cream wool

They are made in much the same way as a brides cross. Secure the three sticks together in the middle with the wool then open them up to form points an equal distance apart. Start at the center and wrap wool around the sticks, over and around in the same pattern and work your way out to the edge of the sticks. Secure with a knot and create a loop to hang your web up with.