This morning, when awakening to my morning prayers and meditation, the eastern window I was facing greeted me with a wonderland of white. Our first big snow of the season.
The weather is really frigid out there. It has come early for December this year.
Normally the season turns bitter cold a week before the Solstice, and our first son's birthday. He was born 30 years ago a day before "the worst Great Plains blizzard for 50 years."

Some climatologist, scientists, and esoteric teachers believe that we are entering another mini ice age based on our present Solar Cycle.
This year saw the least amount of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean since 1945. And hurricane activity is based on solar flares, just as solar flares are the creators of our Earth weather. (Other than when someone is tinkering with and manipulating HAARP for governmental control of the world.)
And our global weather has become rather bizarre.

The last "mini ice age" was from 1550-1700. The European Renaissance occurred during this time, as well as the great time of global exploration, and global and cultural expansionism: A glorious time of flowering Art and Literature, conceptualism and idea! And incredible leaps in science, health care, and understanding of the natural world.

I wonder if this is what awaits us in the coming quiet Solar Cycle. A new "renaissance" of some kind.

When our children were still quite small, during a morning meditation, Spirit told me that our children were "Renaissance Children".  Not, "they would be Renaissance Children", but that they were "Renaissance Children."
Perhaps this is what was being conveyed to me at that time: that our children were born for just such a time as our perhaps difficult, and yet socially, intellectually, and peace challenged coming future.

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What to do think?

Here's what I have been doing the past few weeks!

Mixed Media Collage backgrounds:

 This was made with watercolor, acrylic, gesso and vintage book pages. Unfinished.

 I call this one "Sea Dragons". Watercolor, acrylic, tissue paper, gesso. Unfinished.



Wonderfully expressive fabric!

 Isn't this gorgeous!! I found this while buying fabric for the tied comforter I made for our grandson.
The first pic of the fabric is a closeup of a section of it.
The bottom pic is the pattern of the fabric itself.
Doesn't it look like one is looking upward and seeing the blue sky through the branches, boughs, and leaves of a lovely tree.
I just love this! Would have bought the whole bolt if I could have afforded it.

Honey-Garlic Syrup

This recipe comes from Susun Weed, another revered herbalist, teacher, and Wise Woman.
Please look for her on the Web and you will not be disappointed at the knowledge you will gain just by reading her blogs, the herbal and Wise Women information she posts online in the form of wisewomantradition on You Tube, her mentor/apprenticships through Wise Woman University, and  her many books and audiobooks.

Honey-Garlic Syrup

 First, use organic or homegrown garlic, and peel each clove.
 

Susun Weed also states that the cloves do not need to be peeled, so either way is fine.
I have tried this syrup  both ways and prefer to have the cloves peeled.
It can be a tedious job to peel many little cloves, the papery husk sticking to your fingers from the juice of the previous clove. So be warned and prepared to spend some time doing this if you decide to peel your garlic.  But it is so worth it!!!

Next, chop the garlic into small piece.  Again, Susun claims that the garlic can be left whole.
I have tried it chopped and whole, and do prefer the cloves to be chopped.
The garlic does not seem to be so intense when consuming smaller piece.
But if you are a bonafide whole garlic aficionado, then go for it!

 Garlic chopped and ready to put into a sterilized jar.

 The jar full of garlicy yumminess and waiting for the organic honey.

SLOWLY  pour your organic honey into the jar and over the garlic.  Do this slowly!
My honey is very thick and it takes some time for it the run down through the garlic pieces.
Haste does make waste as I have discovered from personal experience in pouring the honey into the jar too fast:  Thick honey overflows the top of the jar! You think it is going to settle quickly, but no!
Fill to within 1/4 inch of the top.
Surprisingly, during the next few hours, the mixture will decrease slightly as the garlic begins to absorb the honey.  Susun delightfully claims that the fairies take their share, and that is why the mixture decreases.  I believe this to be so!

Once the honey has settled around each piece of garlic, use a wooden chopstick or ka-bob stick and poke it down into and around the garlic and honey.  This helps to release the air bubbles that have formed from the honey displacing the air in the jar.

All air bubbles gone and ready to be capped.
Wipe honey from the rim with a clean cloth, and lightly screw on the jar cap.  You will be opening the jar once more before setting it away to work its magic.
Place the honey-garlic syrup in a dark, dry, cool place overnight or for at least 12 hours.
The next day, top off the mixture with more honey.
Using your clean chopstick, once more poke it down into the mixture to release the air bubbles. Wipe excess honey from the rim of the the jar.
Then place your sterilized cap onto the jar, sealing it tightly with only hand turning.
But not too tightly! You don't want to have to break your lid or jar to get into the syrup later.
All that garlic peeling would be for naught!

Place your jar in a cool, dark, dry place for six weeks. Mark it on your calendar.
The honey will begin to extrude all the goodness from the garlic, mixing it with the honey properties.
Honey will sink and show a layer on the bottom as more juice is pulled from the garlic,  and this is OK.  At least that is what my mixture does.

At the end of six weeks in the dark, your Honey-Garlic Syrup will be ready to use.
Take at least once a day;  and during illness and recovery from flu or illness, take at three times a day, and once at bedtime.

To Your Health!

Honey-Onion Syrup

This is a recipe of Rosemary Gladstar's, the Queen of Herbs in my estimation. 
She is a knowledgeable and revered herbalist and Wise Woman.
Take some time to search for her on the Web.
I could extol the wonderful and healing benefits of honey and onion, but I am not a trained nor certified herbalist, and that sort of information is best left for you to explore and learn for yourself.

The Honey-Onion Syrup is a delightful medicinal and preventative syrup for long cold winters.  Actually, one can use this year round.
Stored in the refrigerator, I take a tablespoon every morning, and use the onions on sandwiches when I make them.  Oddly enough, I can eat the honeyed onions with little gastric problems, whereas raw and cooked onions sometime disagree with me.

For a 3/4 quart of syrup, I peeled two whole sweet white onions. For a whole quart, use three onions.

 Next slice each onion into 1/4 inch slices.

 Place onion slices in a stainless steel sauce pot.  If you are using more than three onions, you will need to use a larger pan.

Cover onion slices with organic honey and let simmer slowly for several hours until slices are soft.
Rosemary Gladstar relates how she kept a pot of honey-onion syrup on the back of her woodstove all winter, adding onions and honey as she used them during the long cold months. This mixture of course slowly stewed and the onions were simmering all the time.
Unfortunately, we don't use a woodstove, so once my mixture was ready and cooled, I poured it into a sterilized mason jar where it sits in my refrigerator ready for use.
The jar will last about two weeks, and then I create a new batch.

 The final results!  A beautiful jar of medicinal honey!

Enjoy!

Hello friends and family!
Here I am finally, ready to get serious about doing this blog on a regular basis.

Winter Solstice is not too far in the future.
The Earth will be in deep sleep then, but will soon begin to slowing awaken as the weather progresses into Spring!

This Spring, I am hoping to plan for a hoop house for our garden, and by next fall, will have completed a cold frame to start early seed a year from this coming Spring.
I think the state and climate of the economy necessitates such preparedness.

The Moon is waxing by one day, and I plan to make sauerkraut today or tomorrow.  There is mixed opinion of whether to start sauerkraut on the waxing or the waning on the Moon.

And, I made jerky this morning, and it is drying nicely in the dehydrator. I will give a recipe and explanation on how to make your own yummy jerky in a future blog.

I have closed my Artfire shop for now. Perhaps in the future I will reopen it.  And I hope to create a readable and pleasant blog here, plus offering my crafts and arts for sale, and offering my Wise Woman knowledge for free!

We have been so busy this fall: birthdays, Thanksgiving, holidays in the mountains (any time spent in the mountains is a holiday for me), traveling, caning and freezing food stuff of the winter, and of course crafting.
The next few blogs will show the crochet and crafting I have completed, and crocheted items I am almost done with except for the finishing.
So come along and I will share my adventures with you!

TO A FAR OFF DAY

Written in the 'Epic of Gilgamesh' by a scribe of Uruk in ancient Sumeria:

Through the shifting sands of time, the ancient cities and wall are covered by the sands and winds. Many thousands of years have passed.

"To a far off day
On a far off night
In a far off time...............

Gilgamesh what you seek you will never find
For when the Gods created man, they let death be his lot.
Eternal life they withheld.

Let your every day be full of joy
With the child that holds your hand.
Let your wife delight in your embrace,
Fore these alone are the concerns of humanity"

Homemade Marmite/Vegemite

For all you vegemite and marmite lovers out there, here is a homemade recipe for you.

(In case you wonder why these wonderful products are not sold in the US, it is because some higher-up in our government has decided that they should be a controlled vitamin supplement substance.  And therefore can no longer be imported.  Go figure......

I discovered the demise of these wonderful cooking products in the US when I tried to bring Vegemite in to the States after visiting Australia several years ago.

Also a military friend tried to slip it past customs in Hawaii when returning from Australia.

Both times, the product was confiscated.

One day soon, I shall have a discussion on the importation and exportation of food products between the US and our world.  Please join in!

I discovered the recipe in one of those serendipity moments when I wasn't even looking for it.

It comes from an old Seventh Day Adventist vegetarian recipe book called Nature's Harvest, printed by the Walla Walla General Hospital Auxiliary.

On a side note,  SDA vegetarianism needs to evolve to include the wonderful world of spices and herbs. (But that is just my opinion.)

There is an untapped incredible amount of healing properties in herbs and spices, as I have been discovering for the last 20 years!

-----VEGEX - page 44 in the yellow section of Dressings & Spreads & Vegetables----

-----And here is my own recipe that evolved from the VEGEX recipe:
(In general, I seldom write down the amount of the ingredients when I tweek a recipe, but add and mix until I like the taste.  So, this is your moment to create your own!
Ingredients:
*Nutritional yeast - Bragg is the best I have used; Red Star produces a good yeast but it may not be organic.  Haven't checked since I am able to use Bragg.
*Instant Postum, Pero, etc.  (Postum is no longer produced in the States. Sad, sad.)
*Sea salt
*Amino Acids - Bragg brand is the best I have used.
*celery seed, ground - I have a little coffee grinder only used for herbs and spices
*butter
*onion powder

If you are going to attempt to make this, it is assumed that you are familiar with the consistency and taste of vegemite and/or marmite, and therefore will be able to create a palatable substance.

***This is an amendment to the original post in that I have tweaked the recipes here and there: melting ghee or butter in a pan and then adding the ingredients, or a combination of ingredients from both recipes, makes a very savory, warming, creamy paste that is very spreadable warm.  Although the butter separates from the yeast (mystery to me as to why), it will stir up. The bit that doesn't, I pour in with the "golden paste" that sits on the back of my stove.   Of course, the butter hardens in the fridge, so take out the portion you want to use and let it warm up before spreading.

Enjoy!

Have a wonderful and magical day!