Apple-Blackberry Crumble

So for Mabon i decided on making some small Apple-Blackberry crumble-pies, and they turned out rather scrumptious, so I thought I'd share the recipe with you guys.....

I made 6 small sized pies:

Apple-Blackberry Crumble Pie(s)

Ingredients:

4 apples (i used Pink Lady)
3 tbl. sp. sugar (or equal amount of sugar substitute)
1 tbl. sp. cinnamon
50 g  Marzipan
200 g Butter (I didn't have unsalted, and it tasted fine)
50 g Oatmeal
200 g Cane sugar

How to:

Peel the apples, take out the middel-kernel-part and cut into slices.
Put the slices in a large piedish or 6 small, cover in 3 tbl.sp. sugar and cinnamon.
Grate the marzipan on top and cover the apple/sugar/cinnamon-mixture.
Cut the butter into squares and place in the piedish randomly. (If you do 6 dishes, try to make it about evenly and push down under the apples.) Sprinkle the oatmeal over top and finish off with sprinkling the cane sugar.

Bake for 30 min. on 200 degrees (celcius)
Enjoy it right out of the oven with a splash of whip cream or vanilla ice-cream.

Oh and I had some left-over Blackberries i added as a final touch before setting them in the oven!
Feel free to use other berries - bet it will taste good too!!

Ooooh which one shall i pick?!

YUM!!!

More about Mabon

In danish we have a saying: "A dear child has many names", and so does the season of Mabon.

Thoughout the world it is a child known by many names, names such as:

The Second Harvest Festival, Cornucopia, Winter Finding, Equinozio di Autunno, Alban Elved, Harvest of the First Fruits, Wine Harvest, Feast of Avalon, Festival of Dionysus..

 and there are probably many more local pagan names...
Do you know of any more??

The Druids call this celebration, Mea'n Fo'mhair and honor the Green Man
God of the forest.

Wiccans and other pagans spend this time celebrating the Goddess, as she transitions from Mother to Crone and her partner the God, as he prepares for his death and re-birth.

Unripehamadryad's "Maiden, Mother, Crone II"

There are many tales and legends of Mabon, but one of my absolute favorites is:

Meadowsweet & Myrrh's "The Tale of Mabon" - a bedtime story 

Take the time to read it. It's very imaginative and a good introduction to the myth. A great story to share with your children. 

Mabon is for me a time to look back, not only on the past year, but on your life and plan ahead for the future. The warm autum days are slowly replaced by colder nights as the Sun God returns to the womb of the Goddess, and so we must remember, all things come to an end. 

Celebrate what has been and give thanks to all those who have helped you!

My Mabon

Blessed be everyone, 

The past week has been spent getting the garden autum ready, picking the last black berries, trimming the outer hedge and clearing the summer flowers from my garden pots. 

Also my DH (dear hubby), is undergoing an operation tomorrow. He's having his deviated septum put right and having his tonsils out due to sleep apnea.  He's always snored terribly, but the last couple of years it has gotten worse (due to his quitting smoking and putting on 15 pounds or so), so our doctor recommended these operations. Sadly it means 14 days off work, pain meds and only cold food for the next 7 days,
so the meals I usually make for Mabon, have to be changed, as he can't have any heated foods.....

I still plan on making my chili-pumpkin soup tho - and freeze some for when he's better.

Picture taken from: wonderfullywyckked

This is my favorite time of year. This the season, where the Goddess descends into the underworld, nature declining as she goes, and winters frosty grip emerging. 

One of the most known Harvest tales is "the abduction of Persephone": 

Demeter was the Goddess of the harvest in the ancient greek mythology, and her daughter was Persephone (also known as Kore - the maiden). Persephone was abducted by Hades (the God of the underworld) and carried off to the underworld to be his bride. Demeter, so dispaired by her daughters dissappearence, caused the earths crops to die and go dormant. Zeus stepped in to help Demeter get her daughter back, but because Persephone had tasted the fruit of the underworld (a pomegranate), she was forced to spend half the year with Hades in the underworld, and could only return to earth in the spring, her return marked by the growth and renewal of nature. 

The abduction of Persephone

The talented Sandra on Deviantart's take on Persephone & Hades

Mabon is also the time of the year where the light and darkness is equal, meaning there are as many light houres of the day as there are dark. The warm days of the earth are behind us and the cold days are ahead. Mother nature is retreating and getting ready for her long winter-slumber.

Mabon is the time of the autum equinox, the 2nd. harvest. All the crops have been harvested and are stored for the coming winter. I spend Mabon honoring the changing season, enjoying the last of the summer berries (making preserves for the coming winter or baking pies), baking breads and enjoying deep red wines and dark beers. 

At the moment my absolute favorite dark beer is:

Wonderful ad, don't ya think??

Translated it is a "Beech beer", wonderfully dark and delicious. We have a lot of great microbreweries in Denmark, and this is among one of my favorites - Skovlyst - (which translated means forrestlust hehe great name!) - and at the moment it's actually on sale in Netto (national-grocery shop in Denmark) for 10 crowns (around $2 for a bottle), which is alright for an "occasion"-beer in my eyes, but too expensive to drink too often!

It is also around this time of year i most love to bake and spend time in the kitchen - all those wonderful berries and fruits from the garden, made into scrumptious pies and jams. This year i've got my eye set on some lovely cinnamon-apple pies for work and some "drottinge sylt" - a jam made of half blueberries and half raspberries - DELICIOUS!!

What do you like to make/do to celebrate Mabon and the autum equinox?

Friday the 13th

...also known as "Freya's day" or "Black cat day".

Most people tend to think that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day, where you are prone to get into accidents or horrible things will happen, but for a pagen, friday the 13th is actually a very lucky day!

In numerology the number "12" is the number of wholeness; a perfect and harmonious unit. It is connected to the 12 months of the year, 12 hours on a clock and there are many religious links as well:

12 gods of Olympus

12 signs of the Zodiac

12 apostles of Jesus

(I bet you know of even more!)

The number 13 is, compared to 12, known as the number of change and transition; at odds with the number 12 - trying to undo it's perfection.
For example; the 13 diners of the Last supper with Jesus and his apostles; Jesus tells that one of his beloved friends at the table will denounce and betray him - the 13th guest is noted to be Judas, who betrays Jesus and brings inevitable change and transition, as Jesus is changed from the son of God, to our saviour.

In Nordic mythology, having 13 people seated at the table is considered really unlucky, as it is old superstition, that one of the diners with die before the night is over.
This comes from a story of the Nordic Gods having dinner in Valhalla, when Loki (trickster of the Gods) walks in as an uninvited guest, making 13 for dinner. Loki arranges for Hoder, the blind God of Darkness to shoot Balder (God of light, joy, puriy, beauty, innocence and reconciliation) with a mistletoe-tipped arrow. Once Balder dies, the Earth falls into darkness and mourns his loss.

"Balders Death" by C. Eckersberg 1840

In the fairy tale "Sleeping beauty", only 12 of the 13 fairy godmothers were invited to see the baby, which has dire konsequences, as it is the 13th fairy who puts the sleeping curse on Aurora (sleeping beauty). So in this case, it might have been more lucky if they had seated 13!! hehe

Even today at dinner parties here in Denmark, we will make up a seat for a 14th person, if we will only be 13 for dinner! So the superstition still lives!!

The number 13, is also linked to the perfect number for a witches coven. Nordic mythology tells of the witches of the north gathering under the dark moon, near the entrance to Valhalla. On one of these occasions the Goddess Freya herself came through the doorway and appeared before them. Noticing they were only 12 witches present, she gave them one of her sacret cats to complete the rite, and since a full witches coven has been comprised of 13 members.


The name Friday stems from the Nordic goddesses Frigg and Freya, who were both honored on the 6th day of the week. Freya is often pictured with her cats Bygul and Trjegul, who pull her chariot - hence also the name "Black cat day". The Cat being her sacred animal, was recast as a "witches" familiar and became associated with a consort of evil when Christianity came to the North.

Freya also had many other titles and functions; the leader of the Valkyries where she claimed half of the slain as her own; the Mardoll (moon shinin on the sea), the creatress of the primeval waters; Syr - a seeress and sage, who wise-women, seers, rune-mistresses and healers were closely connected with, as she was the Deity of magick, Witchcraft and love affairs.

Freya's secret magick was known as seidr, which was shamanistic-like, represented by her falconcape, that made her able to turn into a bird, travel to the underworld and bring back prophecies.
Seidr, was a form of magick trance and divination that originated with Freya and was basically a feminine mystical craft.

This "feminine" link between the mystical powers of seidr and "friday" may also be why the christian church, when trying to turn the population from the pagan ways, condemned friday as being unlucky - and friday the 13th as being especially unlucky, as both Friday and 13 were connected with the Great Godess.

Today i celebrate Friday the 13th as a day of femininity with the spirit of Freya in mind, she is after all the Goddess of sex and fertility ;)

Happy Friday all !!

We have lift off!!!....

Heya Everybody,

So this marks the start of a new adventure for me. After a while of reading lots of creative and inspiring blogs from around the world, I've decided to give it a go myself...

The idea bethind this blog is to share some recipes and experiments from my kitchen. I really love to cook and bake!!! Also to share some reflections and creative inputs from my everyday. I've been so inspired by all the wonderful blogs online and thought to myselv... " Hey, I wanna be a part of that too!!"

.... so here goes!

Happy Tuesday to you all :) 

My beautiful Mikki last winter
Gotta love those big brown eyes.... <3