Homemade Cranberry Sauce

Since it's the holiday season, I wanted to share one of my favorite holiday recipes: cranberry sauce!  In our family, this is more traditional for Thanksgiving, but this is easily a Yule-season dish too.  And honestly, this is so delicious, I could eat it year-round!  Om nom nom.

I perfected this recipe in 2011, and have brought it to my family's Thanksgiving dinner every year since.  Please note this cranberry sauce uses about half the sugar of most recipes, so it is tart - add more (or less) sugar and/or apples to adjust the sweetness.  

This recipe is super easy, and much healthier than BPA-laden canned sauce.  And, you know, not creepily shaped like a can.  Also, you can easily double, triple, or even quadruple the recipe.  I usually bring a double batch for our 30- to 50-person family Thanksgiving dinner (yes, you read that right.  My extended family is huge!)

Ingredients:

1 bag of fresh cranberries

1/2 cup of sugar

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup orange juice

1/2 apple, peeled and chopped finely

1/4 - 1/2 tsp cloves (you can use ground cloves, but go light)

1-2 tsp. cinnamon, or to taste

1-2 tsp. ginger, or to taste

1/2 tsp. fresh orange zest or valencia orange peel from the spice aisle, or to taste

Instructions:

~ In a pot, bring the water and orange juice to boil, then stir to dissolve the sugar in the water.

~ Turn heat to medium-high, and add the cranberries.  Let them simmer until they start popping (about 10 minutes).

~ Turn the heat down to medium-low.  Add the apple, cinnamon, ginger, and orange zest.

~ Put the cloves in a tea strainer or tie them up in a cheese cloth, and immerse in the sauce.

~ Let this all simmer for about 10-20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the cranberries are falling apart.

~ Mash the cranberries and apples with a fork or potato masher to desired consistency.

~ Move the pot off the heat and let it cool for at least 10-15 minutes before serving or moving to a container for transport.  Make sure to remove the bag of cloves before serving.  I find it's best served at about room temperature or slightly warm, especially if serving over turkey. 

Enjoy!!  I like to eat mine on turkey at Thanksgiving, but it's also good on crackers and fresh bread.

Monday Music Break: Dar Williams

So the world didn't end on Friday like so many people were predicting.  Was anyone else just a little bit disappointed?  I mean, all that hype and hoopla leading up to the 21st, and then nothing happened except the sun rose and set.  What a let down! ;-)

Since today is Christmas Eve and we've just celebrated the Winter Solstice, I decided that today's MMB should be Dar Williams' "The Christians and the Pagans."  It's about family Christmas dinner where both the Christians and the witches learned to get along. 

I'm off to spend a few days with my family for the holiday.  There's going to be the annual Christmas Eve party with my Dad's lifelong friends, and Christmas dinner with my Mom's side of the family.  Then I'll be back home and have the rest of the week off to do as I please.  Bliss!

Sing of the Light

Blessed Yule!  If you're reading this then that means the world hasn't ended ;)

I wanted to share my Winter Solstice chant with you all.  I wrote this chant several years ago as part of a Sabbat series.  While I wrote this chant, I was strongly channeling the Goddess of Reflections, who I also sometimes call the Veiled Goddess.  I had worked with her for my then-coven's Yule ritual, and ended up drawing her down unintentionally during the ritual, so by the time I wrote this chant a week or so later we were on quite familiar terms.

My altar candle for the Veiled Goddess.  It smells like honeysuckle :)

I still don't know her name, and she hasn't been showing up much lately.  Perhaps it was just one of those things where a god or goddess shows up for a while to help fill a void or give you a prod in the right direction.




Sing of the Light

In the darkness hold out your hand
Receive the light, and fan the flame 
Pass it on to your brothers and sisters 
Open your heart and listen to it sing!

It sings of the light in all of it forms 
It sings of the sun, and the moon, and stars 
It sings of their light reflecting 
And it sings with joy of love - the most beautiful light of them all.

Please let me know what you think!

You are free to share my post and use my chants in ritual - and I would love to know that you do!  But please do not record or otherwise reproduce my chants in any other way without permission. 

New camera

Last May, my trusty Olympus subcompact camera went missing at a party - it's likely that someone walked off with it, though it's anyone's guess if it was accidental or intentional. So I asked my parents to help out with the cost of a new, better camera as my birthday and Yule gift.

I tested out my new camera by taking photos of my altar, newly set up for the winter sabbats. The lit candle in the center is my Yule candle from last winter. As you can see from what little is left of it, it's been a rough year.

Yes, my crystals asked to be arranged in the shape of a wave. Perhaps I was channeling the god of radio signals?

Also on my altar are (clockwise from bottom) 2 pieces of sacred jewelry, candles dedicated to the Goddess of Reflections and Mama Cocha, my tools, a stuffed tiger "fetish" of sorts protecting my chant journal and several tarot decks, and a flute gifted to me recently by a coven mate.

Hope everyone is having a good December. The solstice will be here in just a week, and then the days will start getting lighter again - hurray!

Visions of the moon

Last year at my tradition's Yule ritual I had one of the most emotional and powerful ritual experiences of my life. Given the coming dark of the winter, I felt it a good time to share my experiences from this ritual.

In this ritual, we are visited by 3 aspecting priests/priestesses - the Raven of the Void, the White Lady, and the Sun King. The Raven compels us to dig deep and keen out all of the negativity from the past year, releasing it into the void. Then the White Lady and the Sun King help us to find our inner light to carry us through the next year.

The keening had me facing many of my demons. I cried and screamed like I never have before. I found myself experiencing, very powerfully, the vision of my depression - a dark, endless, turbulent pool filled with grasping beings pulling me down. Allowing myself to bring all of my pain to the surface for the keening, while cathartic, made it that much more difficult to free myself from it when it came time to find the light.

I don't even remember what the White Lady or Sun King said. I stood there quietly whimpering, trapped in this vision of drowning. Finally I called out on the astral for help. I saw the moon appear, and its reflection shone down on the water. Then the reflection of the moon solidified into a platform, with a ladder. A goddess' hand reached down from the sky and pulled me up onto the platform, and calmed the waters. I rested on the platform, shaken and battered and worn out, but at peace for the moment.

 

Image by peasap via Flickr

It's a good tool for a quick self-assessment of my emotional state. I bring up that vision and feel out where I am in that scenario - am I underwater? holding on to the platform? On the platform? Sitting here at my desk, I took a quick look with my inner eye and realized I'm actually sitting cross-legged on top of the platform, gazing up at the moon.

And when I'm feeling like I'm drowning, I can use the imagery of the moon platform to calm down and gather myself. Sometimes I can only grasp onto the side, or swim closer. It's even helpful just knowing it's there when I need it.

Related articles

• Sacred Moon (lookingglasspoetry.com)
• Would you light my candle? (heartacheintobeauty.wordpress.com)