Recipe Mondays: 30 Minute Puja Dinner

Predictably, Monday has rolled around and my exact thought is: Monday . . .fuuuuuuuuuuck . . .recipes . . .fuuuuuuuuuuck. My brain is barely working from Samhain, I'm tired, it's cold. So guess what you're eating? What I'm eating tonight. The first thing to note is that if you want to make Indian food using stuff you can easily get at a grocery store and quickly without much recipe research, you're basically making Olive Garden for the gods. If your gods love you, this will not be a problem. It's double not a problem if you work with Shiva (who generally hangs out in grave yards so He's a little more chillaxed about this stuff) and Parvati (who, if you have a relationship with Her, will be too kind and polite to say anything about your shitty cooking. She has two sons, She knows how to put on Her Mom face and say, awww! You sure did try!). I've noticed that They prefer my shitty Indian cooking over my good Italian cooking because I think at least it's more familiar to them.

Work on making this recipe together with your significant other and then offer it to Shiva and Parvati. Jow is an excellent sous chef and is v. good about taking my lead in the kitchen. I'm a v. shitty sous chef, I don't chop well and I don't take instruction in the kitchen well, but I'm good at coming up with recipes and leading the cooking. As a result, we work v. well together there and our food is ready quickly.

If you want to do a super quick puja (again, I recommend this only if you're doing other stuff with Them too as this is really ghettotastic):

* Tell Ganesha he is a benevolent elephant and he's awesome
* Light a tealight and thank Agni for the fire
* Ring a bell
* Put a tiny ramekin sized bit of food for Them on your altar
* Talk up the food like a waitress (I've said for a while that that's what I want my magical title to be, Divine Waitress)
* Tell Them how awesome both of Them are
* Ask for Them to help you have a good relationship with your significant other (and again, that's only if you work with Them and trust Them in this compacity. I do, They've been good to Jow and I)
* Ring bell again
* Eat dinner


Chicken Lentil Curry: Lazy American Style

Ingredients

1 can or box of lentil soup
2 chicken thighs, cut into pieces. Leave the skin on or take it off, it's your business
2 small onions, chopped
2 teaspoons ghee or butter
2 tablespoons curry (or to taste)
1 tablespoon garam masala
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon tumeric
1 pouch instant rice (take it out of the pouch to put into the soup)

Put butter into the pot and melt it on medium heat. Put the onions and chicken in and brown. Add in the the rest of the ingredients. Let cook for approximately 20 minutes.

Fin!

Shameless Self Promotion

But first, a shameful confession. After much vitriol towards Timothy Ferris, I have realized that I use Etsy Alchemy as my first world sweat shop for stuff I probably could make myself, but am too lazy to. The trick to utilizing this properly (and to max the sliminess) is to set a price you can reasonably pay for something but not crazy below market value. Then you weed through the bids to find the people who are really good seamstresses (judging by their shops), jewelers, etc. but have not yet made many if any sales yet. They are willing to work for a lower price for you so they can start to make their name. The goal is to catch people who are *just* about to make it but haven't yet. I outsourced a capelet for a song made by a Jersey woman who specializes in jersey (fo' real!) and am currently in process outsourcing a set of cocktail party invitations for the party Miss Spice and I are having for our coterie at Arisia and having the designer in question not only make the invitations, but address them and mail them for about $20.

Here is the justification for those of you who need it like me: These people bid of their own free will and it's supporting small businesses/cottage industry and helping people make a name for themselves. So it's good, really!

Some of you may not know this, but handspinning yarn is currently my drug of choice. I'm hoping to graduate to an actual wheel in the next few months. Let's stretch things and say, yarn is magical. It's not really a stretch, actually. The Fates spun and did some bad ass magic with it. Spinning is meditative, one could definitely put intention into yarn. Yarn is often used in "low" magic for binding and making small dolls and tying off mojo bags.

Should you not need a whole skein of yarn but are interested in using yarn in your magic, I will hand dye one ounce of yarn in your color of choice, use 100% wool and can spin it with a general intention (to be approved by me of course) for your use for $8 USD. The transaction will go through Etsy using Paypal. If you're interested, drop me a comment. If you want a private discussion about it, email me at corvaxgirl [at] gmail [dottie] com with the subject line, "Charmed, I'm Sure: Yarn".

For those of you who perhaps crochet or knit or are just curious about my work, here it is:

Etsy sirenecorbeau

You like me, you really do!

So I now have 100 blogger readers in addition to the google readers, lj readers, etc.

Hi everyone! I'm happy you're all here. A little puzzled and nervous, but happy nonetheless.

So, overwhelmingly, many of you wanted to see recipes here. Something to do with this is a kitchen witch blog I suppose.

My recipes will likely fall into the following categories:

* Aspic is Your Friend: I have a total vintage cookbook fetish and no one in my real life will humor me with allowing me to throw an actual Mad Men cocktail party with as much aspic as possible. You all will be subjected to this in their stead.

* Magical Weekday Recipes: Recipes you can make in under an hour (closer to 30 minutes ideally), on a budget, using regular ingredients that have a magical kick to them. This will be a lot of work, so probably seen less.

* Wheel of the Year Turn, Turn, Turn: Sabbat, full moon and other ritual recipes and tips that are appropriate to the season.

I will start posting this weekly on Mondays. We'll call it the completely creative Recipe Mondays.

Hmmmm.

Most kitchen witch blogs have some kind of weekly feature, Wishing Wednesdays, networking days, giveaways . . .

I feel like I should have something, as I want to fit in (albeit I'm generally more surly than my better dispositioned kitchen brethren).

What would you like to see as a weekly feature for my blog?

Bean Nighe

This Samhain is particularly significant to my grove as it will be the last one our Senior Druid is heading. She's headed the last 13 and is ready for a break from that part of Senior Druid'ing at least. She started with The Morrigan her first Samhain that she led and is ending with The Morrigan. In addition to bringing my usual stuffed pumpkin, I have been asked to invoke Nemain, the bean nighe warrior maiden aspect of The Morrigan.

The Morrigan has been explained to me as being similiar to Cernunnos in so far as it's not that The Morrigan is one deity/person or even a triple aspected deity/person, it's a job title. So it's more like a bunch of women who work for MorriganCo. which is a little difficult for me to wrap my head around but makes sense.

There's been a poem/invocation in my head for the last few weeks for the Nemain. Going with the idea of MorriganCo, all of the things "she said" were said to me by different "shes", and the last three paragraphs are what my Nemain faction has said to me. I will be doing a small altar for her as well, she's requested the picture I like of her and warrior port which is simple enough.

Nemain

She appeared to me in a dream
She said
Her face a canvas of wode
She handed me a feather
and told me to give it to you
She said you'd know what it meant

Whenever there is a battlefield
She is there
She said
When you are able to put your hands
into the river of black oozing sorrow
and not fall in
Instead grow a pair of wings
like hers
that will hold you up
when you can't stand
and make your spine a thing
of steel
that's when you've won

I know you said this is the
worst day of your life
since daddy died
She said
But
It got better

Each day a little at a time
She said
Moment by moment
Breath by breath
She said

I'm proud of you
She said

It's impressive
How much you've
Metamorphosized
Became you
But better
Unfettered
She said

Stand your ground
Dig your heels into
the mud slick with blood
and battle
Whispered words do more than
swords most days

Never give up your power
Steal it back
Eat it whole

But don't mistake your power
as freedom from the river
Your wailing and tears
Crimson soaked cloth in hand
Some things can't be forgotten.

Checked off my list . . .

Things done today, post breakfast sandwich:

* Lisa finished the graphic, Dossy is tinkering as I speak. Lisa made me a bad ass mix of stuff that went into the "Charmed, I'm Sure" jar and made sure she had actual Master of the Wood for the jar. I intentionally chose each herb for this blog.

* Opened all the windows in the house to get the energy circulating again because I've noticed that Jow gets grumpy/cranky when the house energy is off.

* I've noticed in Hoodoo everything is in Jesus' name. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not for me. If I'm not doing work for a specific deity, what do I say? I do believe all the little-g gods are connected, like in the same way I believe all humans are connected in a vague quasi-Buddhist way, so after some conversation with Jow, I figured out that I feel okay with doing work in God Herself's name (a la T. Thorn Coyle). So now now I can do work that way.

* Put some Florida water on my magic broom as per Mama Starr's podcast suggestion, swept the house. Also put two lemon halves with salt on them on either side of the door, started a new money drawing spell with water, sugar and quarters and did a cleansing for Jow and vice versa using a Florida water blessed fan and sage, also per Mama Starr.

* Purged my closet, my purse, the bathroom and then had Jow purge his closet as well.

* Changed the salt in our Jhor bowl, cleaned the little skull in it.

* Watered our desert roses

* Lit up our altar and made water offerings.

* Saged the house


It feels much better in here now and I feel much better. My hands have been itching to purge the house for some time so now hopefully I can concentrate on writing! Just started watching Red and J. brought cider donuts, nom!

Stuff and Things and Junk

Back from Rhode Island safe and sound! Did not get taken by an Elder god. The weather was v. Bronte esque which really had me thinking that New England is (duh) the England of the U.S. in terms of brooding moors and whatnot. I am currently marinading on a short romantica story to submit for an anthology that is looking for broody gothity romance. A lot of red wine was drank on the trip. The oysters there are seriously the best I've ever had in my life, I'm currently in withdrawal from them. We got a plate of 12 oysters from 4 local oyster farms, 6 clams and a whole lobster tail for under $40. I felt incredibly posh about it.

Soaking yarn as we speak, getting ready to launch my non-magical based Etsy store. Am going to ask for a spinning wheel for the holidays I think. I really need my wrist/hands/elbows for my work and excessive drop spindling and typing on a laptop has not helped per se. My family is both nonplussed and intrigued by this request. I have my eye on this wheel. When I start working from home, we are going to turn our Spare Oom into an office and we have our eyes on an old school style secretary desk.

Last night, Jow and I bought new coats. For me this is particularly significant as it means I will be donating my sad little matchgirl coat that I bought on a super sale two years ago when my Wasband first left and drained our joint. I had just donated my coat at the time and didn't known I was getting left, so it was a scary and real possibility that I might not have a coat immediately for winter. My new coat is super cute and a little Mad Men like.

In further cutting my fetters, I did a huge hack and slash on my old domain (which was described as "badass" by Dossy because he's cool like that and doing all the heavy lifting on this). I took down the SalonCon site as the con is defunct anyway and it's time (for the curious, info can be found on it on my general website), changed hosts to DreamHost, am moving my general site to be its own domain, streamlining my old Goddess Dollies site into a one page site and am giving my blog here a facelift with the help of Lisa and Dossy.

Last Hallowe'en, we were moving into our condo, it's hard to believe it's only been a year ago. We were too exhausted to do anything as we were moving on the day of. This year I'm sitting on the couch, happily munching on a breakfast sandwich made by Jow, blogging and drinking pumpkin tea. We'll go visit my mom for a little while and hopefully have J. over to watch SyFi's version of little red riding hood (Red! The werewolf hunter!) and Glee's version of Rocky Horror.

This Samhain season finds me wanting to continue to cut old fetters and make room for the new. I want to purge my closet again, clean out my hall closets, give the house a really good cleaning, set up some more small magics, start my Etsy store up, I had been wearing the Ugg slippers I got Wasband a few xmases ago (because they are warm and soft and hardly worn), hopefully I'll get a pair of my own in pink for xmas
and I can toss them. I definately want to start going to the gym and doing yoga again. Samhain is feeling like a Witch's New Year to me this year, for sure. I have the urge to clean like a coked up squirrel who has watched too many episodes of Hoarders.

On our way to and from Rhode Island, Jow and I listened to Mama Starr's Traditional Conjure podcast which is . . .beyond awesome. I love it.

My article that was based on my blog post In Your Hands, Ophelia is now up on WitchVox.