Celtic new year, Samhain - celebrate the autumn harvest with medieval mulled wine

Its Samhain tonight, which goes under many names: all hallows eve, Halloween, 'all saint's eve', 'the night of the dead', autumn festival and many others.


Samhain is the Pagan Celtic New Year's Eve,  a time to reflect and to remember our ancestors and with the old year ending it is timely to think of new ventures and new beginnings.

The moon is full and her silver light is gracing our celebrations with her light.

Commercial ventures in Australia have us celebrating Samhain, or Halloween, at the same time as the northern hemisphere, on the 31st October, but this is Beltane in the southern hemisphere, a time for lovers and weddings, not a time for remembering our ancestors.

Celebrate the Celtic new year, Samhain, with mulled wine, good food and great friends. Carve out a pumpkin lantern for your entry hall and surrounded it with locally grown apples, nuts and pomegranates, all the bounty of the autumn harvest.

We're having our celebratory Samhain feast tomorrow night with friends,  the feast will be filled with traditional Samhain foods of the autumn harvest; beetroot, turnips, squash, apples, corn, nuts, gingerbread, cider, pomegranates, pumpkin dishes and lots of mulled wine!

Here's an ancient medieval mulled wine recipe, Ypocras, that we make to celebrate Samhain and Yule, make it to salute the autumn harvest and to warm your insides around the fire. We adapt the Gode Cookery website recipe and as they say "Ypocras was a very popular medieval beverage, and many different directions for preparation still exist. Also called Hippocras, the drink is named after the famous physician Hippocrates."

Ypocras or Hippocras

• 1 bottle (750 mll) of good Australian red or white wine
• 1 - 2 cups organic honey
• Two inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
• Two cinnamon sticks 
• Six bruised cardamom pods, 
• Six pepper cloves, lightly crushed
• 4 whole nutmeg cloves
• Good grateing of a fresh nutmeg, use powdered if you don't have whole nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds
• cheesecloth or fine strainer

Bring the wine and honey to a boil; skim off any scum as it rises.

Taste for sweetness; add more honey as necessary.

Remove from heat, add spices and allow the mix to sit covered for 24 hours.

Using a ladle, pass the wine into another container through a strainer lined with 2 or 3 layers of cheesecloth to remove the spices, being careful to leave as much of the spice residue in the pot as possible. Make at least 1 month before serving. The older it is, the better.


Merry met all!

Really celebrate Mother's Day this year

How often has your mother's day gift been a new dressing gown, slippers, some perfume or perhaps a dinner out somewhere?

Life is full of situations where we wished we had said how we felt, this Mother’s Day can provide you with a timely opportunity to actually say them to your mum.

Let this Mother’s Day be the time you tell your mum how much she means to you.

Giving a Mother’s Day ceremony as a gift will be more meaningful than a lunch out, new slippers, or yet another thing that your mother has. A Mother's Day ceremony is a gift of your thoughts and feelings about her. These gifts are timeless and your appreciation can never be said too often. Your mother’s greatest gift to you was life, and a ceremony acknowledges and thanks her for this gift. This special day is good because it can be uncomfortable to say those things just out of the blue, but during a Mother’s Day ceremony you can say them with the help and support of others.

It is a something she will always remember, far longer than the lunch or slippers.

It can be a gift from the whole family and close friends and relatives can attend. The ceremony gives everyone a chance to think about their mother and grandmother; what they have learnt from them, the the gifts of life skills and wisdom their mother's and grandmother's passed onto them.

A Mothers Day ceremony is a way of celebrating that special bond that exists between mother and child - a love that really isn’t like anything else.

What would a ceremony entail? It could contain speeches of love, music, ceremony, performances by grandchildren, giving of symbolic gifts, stories of shared history, remembering those not with you, absent grandmother’s and other family matriarchs.

Contact me to find out more.