Lammas Recipes and Altars

[satoaidarkling]

I've looked at the other threads for this topic but none of the recipes seemed to catch my eye. Also I'm just starting off so I don't really know what to do for the altar for anything really. This will be my first Lammas and I want to make it memorable. So here's what I'm asking:

1) What are some of your favorite Lammas recipes?

and

2) How will you decorate your altar this year?

I'm really hoping for some help and I'm the only one in my family that is Wiccan so I can't ask them for help. Help a newbie out?

[childofcrow]

bread, bread, bread.

You can make a loaf a bread that you do not plan on eating as an offering, and add different herbs and spices for different things.

You can make some salt dough statuary.

make corn dollies

as for decor, it's all harvest themed for me.

[cydira]

The things that I would consider are what vegetables and fruits are coming into season at this time, what grains are harvested, and (if applicable and agreeable to you) what kind of animal is permitted for hunting at this time. I don't know if where you live is like where I do and fishing is permitted for one time of year and deer hunting for another.

Aside from this, within mainstream Wicca, I've noticed a fairly strong focus upon the Western European cultures (predominantly of the British Isles) and the folk-culture elements that can be incorporated from them. Here, the focus upon bread and grain is usually seen. Now, in my personal practice, I view Lammas as a holy day of work. (Which right now is particularly amusing because my second child is due right around then, talk about holy labor!) I maintain my focus upon my efforts during the day and meditate upon how I am preparing for the future, be it the coming winter or the coming years.

My mother and aunts (who taught me about Witchcraft and Wicca) did the vast majority of their food preservation around now when I was a kid. You may want to learn how to do something like canning tomatoes or drying and storing herbs. We also incorporated the seasonally abundant foods into our meals. I remember eating a lot of pears and grapes that grew wild on the farm.

The closest we had to an altar most of the time was the kitchen table filled to the point of near collapse (it seemed) with food. There was what Mom was working on canning, in it's various stages, and what we were having for our meals and snacks. Abundance was probably the best word to describe it, as well as a lot of work. When I got out on my own, I did set up a small altar for a while and I would have items on it that represented or reminded me of these things.

I would have a stalk of dried grass (because wheat and other grains we use for food are mainly domesticated grasses), an offering dish with a bit of food in it, a small container of water, and a candle. The water was to remind me that during this time of year, the rain still falls and we still have easy access to water, unlike if it were winter and we had to contend with snow and ice. The candle served as a reminder of the warmth of the season and as a visual focus for meditation. I would also put a vase of flowers that were local and seasonal, such as wild asters and goldenrod (which is just beginning to bloom around this time) on my altar.

Now, I don't have the opportunity really to set up an altar this year. Between having a toddler running around and getting ready for this baby, I just have my stalk of grass in a safe place where I can see it and meditate upon it's meaning. I am hoping to possibly be able to bake some bread and share it with the other pagan folk that live near me, but I don't know if it's going to work out this year for obvious reasons.

Assuming that you are living in a region that is quite warm during this time of year, I would suggest making a quick bread, such as cornbread or a soda-bread. It requires less time and thus heats up your home less. Always a good thing when you think about it! If a quick bread is not an option or you're not dealing with worries about heating up the home (I envy you! :toofless: ), I would suggest a whole grain yeast bread.

If you go with a sourdough yeast bread, it is possible to make up a batch of starter and share that with others as well as the bread. This way you not only get to bake your bread, but you get to share the abundance. It's an idea I've been seriously considering for a few years now. Life has gotten in the way of making sourdough starter and a few other things that I wanted to do (like having a vegetable garden and learning cannning).

I hope this helps!

[Tanya]

Grain!

Bread is great, but as it's high summer... baking can be unpleasent...

I do bruschette with home grown tomatoes and basil...

or a tomato and bread salad

(the recipe is easy, get nice ripe tomatoes, chop with some garlic, a pinch of salt, fresh ground pepper, splash on olive oil. Drizzle with balsamic vinigar and top with ripped up fresh basil leaves. )

For bruschette... toast nice Tuscan bread, throw on some tomato mix with a few curls of parmesean cheese and grill.


for bread salad, GUT a tuscan loaf, chop up the bread, mix with tomatoes, pour it back in the hollowed out loaf and serve immediately.


my family usually incorporated the above into a cook out... we often do a corn roast.... burgers and suasages...

other things we often have at our Lammas feast:

gaspacho

home-made salsa and tortilla chips.

(salsa is easy, use the same basic recipe as above, only substitute lime or lemon juice for the vinegar and substitute chopped cilantro for the basil. Add a few chopped chilis and you are away!)

and lets not forget the greatest grain product yet devised by man... (especially in the summer...) BEER


I gather grasses from our front paddock and bundle it into little sheves to decorate for the season, I use a light brown and yelow altar cloth I embrodered with stalks of wheat and brown candles on the altar.

[MariThorn]

I agree with what everyone has already stated regarding bread and the grasses. I personally take this time to also start switching my mindset to getting ready for wintertime and all the harvesting that is about to start. It is a great time to start stocking your freezer and pantry. (My way of canning as I suck at the real thing) Our altar goes up for all three harvest times, Lammas, Mabon, and Samhain. . . so it incorporates things from all three. It is a coven event and often includes small things to eat that are tied in with the season. As for my meal, Blackberry cobbler is a must and usually a grain fed meat or a pasta based meal. (Pasta is great as it is made of flour) Good luck and enjoy your first Lammas :D Oh yes! Don't forget that this is a time of games too. Incorporate some games with your toddler if you can, and remember this festival was also set up to honor Lugh's foster mom. So, if your little bundle of joy comes along, then I'd say it's apropo too :D congrats!

[cydira]

I agree with what everyone has already stated regarding bread and the grasses. I personally take this time to also start switching my mindset to getting ready for wintertime and all the harvesting that is about to start. It is a great time to start stocking your freezer and pantry. (My way of canning as I suck at the real thing) Our altar goes up for all three harvest times, Lammas, Mabon, and Samhain. . . so it incorporates things from all three. It is a coven event and often includes small things to eat that are tied in with the season. As for my meal, Blackberry cobbler is a must and usually a grain fed meat or a pasta based meal. (Pasta is great as it is made of flour) Good luck and enjoy your first Lammas :D Oh yes! Don't forget that this is a time of games too. Incorporate some games with your toddler if you can, and remember this festival was also set up to honor Lugh's foster mom. So, if your little bundle of joy comes along, then I'd say it's apropo too :D congrats!

How is it that I always forget that??? :confused:

That said... I really shouldn't be reading about food when I'm so hungry! LOL The mention of blackberry cobbler made me go MMMMM! :hahugh:

[MariThorn]

Personally I think that we forget about the Teltaine games because witches, pagans, and druids tend to focus on the nature relations, ie the harvests, solar, and new growth parts of the Calendar. We often forget other reasons associated with our holy days. :) And my husband, who is Italian, has decided he is making a red gray with pork for spaghetti, an antipasto, and then the dessert will now be a berry trifle. :)

[Lunacie]

I combined bread and berries this year in a quick bread.

CHERRY PIE LOAF (or Blueberry)

1 cup veggie oil (or canola or olive)
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 (20 oz) can cherry pie filling (or blueberry)
1 cup chopped pecans (or other nuts)

Beat together eggs, oil and vanilla.
Sift dry ingredients together and add to egg mixture.
Stir in pie filling by hand.
Pour into two greased loaf pans.
Bake at 325 F for one hour.

I didn't have any nuts so I sprinkled a mixture of cinnamon and sugar on the top for a strussel topping, YUM. The family devoured one and the other is going to Lammas ritual.

[Cloaked Raven]

I combined bread and berries this year in a quick bread.

CHERRY PIE LOAF (or Blueberry)

1 cup veggie oil (or canola or olive)
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 (20 oz) can cherry pie filling (or blueberry)
1 cup chopped pecans (or other nuts)

Beat together eggs, oil and vanilla.
Sift dry ingredients together and add to egg mixture.
Stir in pie filling by hand.
Pour into two greased loaf pans.
Bake at 325 F for one hour.

I didn't have any nuts so I sprinkled a mixture of cinnamon and sugar on the top for a strussel topping, YUM. The family devoured one and the other is going to Lammas ritual.
Lunacie, that sounds delicious!! :mmm:

*copies and pastes recipe into her word processor*

[Lunacie]

Lunacie, that sounds delicious!! :mmm:

*copies and pastes recipe into her word processor*

Fortunately we had a cool front come through so it wasn't too hot to have the oven on for more than an hour (preheating and all). I love quick breads (which means using baking soda instead of yeast to make it rise) and was tickled to find this recipe. This was the first time I made it and it's a keeper.

[Cloaked Raven]

Fortunately we had a cool front come through so it wasn't too hot to have the oven on for more than an hour (preheating and all). I love quick breads (which means using baking soda instead of yeast to make it rise) and was tickled to find this recipe. This was the first time I made it and it's a keeper.
Gotta love those quick bread recipes is right. :) They're easy!!

[satoaidarkling]

These all sound great! I can't wait to try some out tomorrow!

[brymble]

When it's too hot to oven-bake, I'll admit I cheat and use a machine. We eat home-baked bread so often (as in, we don't buy bread anymore) that it's most practical to do the daily baking with a machine. (I'm a single mom, and my kids can easily go through a loaf or two a day, especially my son, who is hitting the pre-teen growth spurts and eating everything in sight.)

I do like to hand-bake at Lughnassadh. However, it's been so ridiculously humid lately that even my favorite machine-baked recipes haven't been coming out right. (I'm amazed that there hasn't been flooding on Main Street again.)

One thing you can try, is incorporating wild grains into a loaf of bread. Crabgrass is actually very closely related to wheat, and while it makes very poor quality flour, you can still toast the berries and "crack" them in a blender, and add them to a loaf for texture. Same goes for wild oats. But if you're shy harvesting seeds and grains, a good "beginner" seed is yellow dock, because it's so unmistakeable. It puts up these rust-colored spikes of seeds, very familiar and easy to find in city and country alike. You can put a paper bag around the spike, then run your hand along it to free the seeds from the spikes. Toast them lightly in a cast-iron skillet, and then grind them to flour in your blender, and add a few tablespoons of this per cup of flour to your favorite bread recipe.

If baking yeasted bread is too much, try baking flatbread. Here's a recipe for yellow dock seed crackers:

http://www.natureskills.com/wild_food_recipe.html

This page also has an excellent photo of a dock spike with its familiar brown seeds, to help you identify it.

[Phoenix]

It is far too hot here for baking today, but I am going to try making some magickal goodies like Four Thieves Vinegar, Lammas Powder and Sage Smudges.

[brymble]

I did end up sticking to the machine for Lughnassadh, unfortunately. There was just too much going on, lyme-disease-related aches, and then the tricky humidity, and I wanted to make sure I had a special loaf for our picnic.

Here is the recipe that turned out the best.

For a 1 1/2 lb. loaf:

Sundried Tomato, Olive Oil and Rosemary Bread

2T extra virgin olive oil
2T honey
1 cup + 1-3 T water (depending on humidity and how absorbent your flour is)
1 1/2 t salt (scant)
3 cups whole wheat bread flour (adjust according to humidity if necessary)
dough conditioner:
for each cup of flour add 1 t. lecithin granules, 1/2 t. soy flour, 1 T vital wheat gluten
2 t. active yeast
about 6 sundried tomatoes, chopped
about 1 T dried rosemary, ground with mortar & pestle

Even though it was machine-baked, this bread required a bit of fussing; I think due to the crazy rain & humidity we've been having, any bread would have. Of the different recipes I tried (I baked 3 Lughnassadh loaves) this was the only one that didn't fall in due to too much moisture, probably because it was the last one baked and I knew how to correct for the humidity by then. Regardless, this is a yummy, amazing bread!

Add the ingredients to the pan in the order listed. If you have an older machine, grease the inside of the pan (even if its non-stick) with the oil measure. Use the same tablespoon to measure the honey, and it will just slide right out, instead of sticking to the spoon. In highly humid weather, be conservative with the water and add more water or flour as necessary as the dough mixes. The dough should be mosit but not sticky, hold its shape together in a ball as it mixes, and feel slightly springy and "alive" to the touch. Add the water first, then the salt and honey, and then the flour, scooping out a small hollow in the center for the yeast, but keeping it away from the liquid ingredients. Sprinkle the rosemary around the edges, keeping it away from the yeast. Use the whole wheat setting, light crust (our machine slightly over bakes and so we remove the bread 15 minutes early.) Add the chopped tomatoes a few pieces at a time, as you would raisins. With our machine, I find it distributes them better throughout the dough if you add them a little before the beep, but with my old West Bend the signal was right on, so experiment with your machine and get to know its quirks.

If you like, add about 1/4 cup toasted or raw pine nuts to this recipe! Add them when you put in the tomato, alternating tomato and pignolias a few at a time.

This was a very flavorful bread that made excellent sandwiches with mesclun greens, pesto, fresh mozzarella, and roasted red peppers. (Money-saving hint: I found mesclun was cheaper per pound at my supermarket when purchased from the salad bar instead of from the produce area.) Try as grilled cheese sandwiches, or in the red pepper melts I posted in the food forum. You might want to consider using any leftovers or end pieces of this bread for croutons, might be delicious in a pepper and corn chowder or red pepper-tomato soup. Use the dough setting and make as rolls for amazing eggplant or chicken parmesan sandwiches!

[Nitefalle]

So even though it's a year later, I'm loving this thread because now I'm planning for Lughnassadh!

We are going to try our hands at preserving and canning this year because we are going to go berry picking that morning. I know that many associate this with baking and bread, but I always think of this holiday as the Berry Harvest.

We are also going to play some board games in honor of Taltiu and Lugh and probably make a cold pasta salad with lots of raw veggies & shredded chicken. If anyone wants a recipe, let me know. It's super easy to make and keeps really well in the fridge.

[Avariella]

I combined bread and berries this year in a quick bread.

CHERRY PIE LOAF (or Blueberry)

1 cup veggie oil (or canola or olive)
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 (20 oz) can cherry pie filling (or blueberry)
1 cup chopped pecans (or other nuts)

Beat together eggs, oil and vanilla.
Sift dry ingredients together and add to egg mixture.
Stir in pie filling by hand.
Pour into two greased loaf pans.
Bake at 325 F for one hour.

I didn't have any nuts so I sprinkled a mixture of cinnamon and sugar on the top for a strussel topping, YUM. The family devoured one and the other is going to Lammas ritual.

I just made this bread like 20 minutes ago, and it is wonderful! I did end up substituting apples for cherries because of a family member's preference, but it is still delicious!!!! I'm definitely going to make more for Lammas! Thanks for the recipe! :mmm: