Beltane with The Great White

Bealtaine, the Bright Fire, the Feast of White Goddess.
Beltaine is the last of the three spring fertility feasts and the last day of spring, and the first day of summer.

Here's a French site about Beltaine :-)

In Finland mild mead is made a week or two before Beltaine, and then doughnuts are fried on the evening of Mayday, which is called Vappu in Finnish.

It is a nice idea to eat food with flowers and fresh herbs.

Got Mead's mead recipes

Finnish recipe for Mayday fritters (dropbread) and mead (sima)

Mayday rolls à la Tallyrand

About Mayday celebrations in Germanic countries and a recipe of maywine :-)

Beltane Cakes - notice where the recipe is... ;-)

About Beltane and a recipe of Beltane chicken

Goat cheese and spinach turnovers
Asparagus with chives and blossoms

Creme brulee :-)

Cream pie

Beltane Marigold Custard

Flowers as Food
Flowers for Food
Edible flowers and recipes
working with flowers and food

Birthday with Rangda

Image after Matt Wyatt

Wednesday was my birthday, and Patricia Telesco's "365 Goddess" gives the Balinese witch Goddess Rangda as the Goddess of my 19th of April. It suits me very well :-)

Wikipedia tells this about Rangda:

"Rangda is the demon queen of the leyaks in Bali, according to traditional Balinese mythology. Terrifying to behold, the child-eating Rangda leads an army of evil witches against the leader of the forces of good - Barong.

It is suggested that Rangda may be derived from the 11th century Javan queen Manendradatta who was exiled by the king, Dharmodayana, for allegedly practising witchcraft against his second wife. The tale surrounding this is that she proceeded to take her revenge by killing off half the kingdom, which by then belonged to her and Dharmodayana's son Erlangga, with plague before being overcome by a holy man. The name Rangda means "widow".

Rangda is important in Balinese culture, and performances depicting her struggles with Barong or with Erlangga in that tale are popular tourist attractions as well as tradition. She is depicted as a scantily clad woman, with long and unkempt hair, and claws. Her face is traditionally a horrifying fanged and goggle-eyed mask."

She sounds like a combination of Lilith, Hel, Kali and Medea, all my favorites :-)

The thing with Demon Queens is that people usually don't understand what it is all about. People don't like things like getting consequences for their actions - that Lilith was hunting men who were being nasty to women, or rescued children getting abused or neglected, that's a little detail often ignored. People just talk about how the children vanished and what horrible things happened to the men. If someone even cares to ask "why?" the answer is immediate: "Because Lilith is an evil bitch!" It's like with Lorena and John Bobbitt... he is an abusive asshole, but when he gets what's coming to him, she gets charged and the police goes out immediately to find the cut off penis - which they don't do when a child or a dog has been thrown from a car... Interesting priorities the society has... :-D

Well... as long as the society has these values, as long will the Goddesses like Rangda, Kali, Lilith and Hel be needed.

Now, the dinner with Rangda... is for witches and bitches, of course. No men are allowed. Have a round, red dinner, decorated with yellow flowers.
As this is a birthday dinner, the desert will be a cake, and I love chocolate, so it will be a red velvet cake with chocolate frosting. Not with white frosting. It might be good, but this is not Christmas. You can also make Devil's Food Cake (with chocolate frosting, of course).

To begin the dinner we'll have watermelon balls with ham... ;-) Usually a cantaloupe or honey melon is used, as they are not as juicy and sweet as watermelon, but watermelon has the same melon taste, and is very good with ham too. You can also use any smoked, salty meat, like turkey or... uh, now I have forgotten what the salty, dried beef thing is... it's not prosciutto, but it reminds it a lot. :-)

And as main course... Spaghetti with a lot of fricadellis :-D Do it by your favorite recipe, and make the meatballs just as you like them, and have a good tomatosauce with it, and eat as piggy as you wish. (You can try to make it Balinese by making this tomato sambal and making the meatballs with lamb and spicing with garlic, chili, ginger and coconut...;-))

Here's some other Indonesian recipes:
http://www.indo.com/restaurants/recipe.html
http://www.baliguide.com/balifood/basic_recipes.html
http://www.99bali.com/food/recipes/

Find a rainbow day with Iris

Iris is the Goddess of rainbows and has given name to the rainbow within us all - the iris of the eye.

This picture of Iris is by Josephine Wall. I like her art very much.

Iris is there to remind us all of that all colors matter, not only those on the rainbow, but also the gray clouds, without whom the rainbow would be rather dull indeed... So - try to remember that the sad moments of our life are there to make the happy moments mean more.

There's quite a lot written about the colors, color therapy, chakras and colors' influence in our lives.

Foodways color has been found to be rather important - if you eat all the colors of the rainbow, you can be certain of that you get all the necessary vitamines and minerals your body needs. Also, the human physiology is so created that we eat more when there are all kinds of colors on the plate - our body tries to get to all the vitamines and minerals there are by wanting to eat all the colors.

Eat red tomatoes and sweet pepper, yellow corn, greens, blueberries and grapes, purple aubergine, brown bread and potatoes, white milk... look at the colors of the food you eat. The more colors the better. (Just as long as they are natural colors LOL)

Think about it a little... why is there so little true blue food?


Eat Your Colors
- a scientific answer to the question "isn't the color food idea just pseudo science?"

5 A Day The Color Way
- more practical site - with examples of all the color groups and with recipes and menus

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Crostini with goat cheese and red and yellow tomatoes

Curried Chicken and Vegetables with yoghurt sauce

Colorful fruit soups to dessert



© What's your Inner Goddess Color?? © Jen