Tag: food magic

Self-parenting and Rose Petal Jam
life

Self-parenting and Rose Petal Jam

J.3 Comments

Hello!

So, as I write this, it’s Mother’s Day in the US. I’ve written in the past about having complicated feelings about this particular holiday, for what I think are pretty valid reasons.

(There isn’t really a long or terribly interesting story there, and it’s one that sadly seems to be all too common: I was tired of being smacked around and humiliated, I knew nobody around me was going to put a stop to it, so I did it myself. Fin.)

Rather than dedicating this post to practices to help heal from damaged or diseased familial relationships, this is for people who have had to come to the realization that they weren’t taught how to thrive and had to re-learn and re-parent themselves. Sometimes, people don’t seem to recognize that they aren’t just keeping little extensions of themselves — they’re raising future adults who will have to function in the world on their own. From seeing how other kids my aged lived, and what their families were like, I learned that things weren’t normal in mine.

Once I was on my own, I had to un-learn and re-learn everything. Nutrition. Cooking. Hygiene. How to relate to people different from me. How to recognize and recover from religious abuse. It was a lot, and I screwed (and still screw) up regularly.

So, if you’re a grown-up kid who’s also had to go back, undo the damage that was done to you, and re-learn how to live in ways that aren’t completely karked, this is for you. Chances are you’ve messed up time and again in the re-learning process, but that’s normal. The important thing is to not give up. No matter how old you are, it’s never too late for you to become the person you’ve always wanted to be.

This is a simple, but very tasty, recipe for rose petal confiture. Don’t be intimidated — it’s really very easy, it just looks and tastes fancy. To be honest, the hardest part is sourcing enough rose petals. (You’ll want ones that aren’t sprayed with anything or treated with systemic pesticides. I grew these myself, picked, and cleaned them right before cooking.)

A piece of bread covered in strawberry and rose petal jam, sitting on a blue-green plate beside a jar of said jam and a butter knife.
Pictured on a slice of fresh-baked einkorn bread.

Roses are an excellent herb for a variety of purposes, but they’re most commonly associated with love in all its forms. Visualize what life could be like if you were able to forgive yourself for whatever mistakes you’ve made in the re-learning process, and parent yourself the way that younger you needed. Infuse the preserves with this self-love as you stir them (clockwise, using your dominant hand). Eat them on bread, ice cream, yogurt, or fresh fruit.

Rose Petal Confiture

Ingredients:

  1. 2 cups of rose petals. Stronger-fragranced roses have a stronger flavor. For this, I used native Virginia rose petals.
  2. 1 cup of water.
  3. 1 cup of sugar.
  4. 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.
  5. A clean jar with a tight-fitting lid.

If you like, you can also add a bit of fruit to the preserves. I had an extra handful of strawberries, so I chopped them up and tossed them in, too.

Directions:

  1. In a medium saucepan, combine sugar, water, and lemon juice. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, until the sugar dissolves.
  2. Add the rose petals. Lower the heat to a simmer.
  3. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the rose petals release their color into the surrounding liquid and turn kind of pale and translucent and the syrup thickens a bit. (This’ll take about 20-30 minutes.)
    It won’t gel the way that fruit jellies or jams do and will maintain a somewhat syrupy consistency. That’s okay!
  4. Remove from heat and immediately pour into the jar. Put the lid on tightly.
  5. Keep the finished preserves in your refrigerator. They’ll keep for about a month but will probably get eaten long before then!

Capers Folklore and Magical Properties
Plants and Herbs · Witchcraft

Capers Folklore and Magical Properties

J.1 Comment

Edible flowers have always intrigued me — I love floral flavors, far more than floral scents. Lavender Italian soda, candied violets, briny capers… Give me all of the flowers. I was eating my favorite breakfast the other day (toasted sesame bagel, veggie cream cheese, sliced tomato, thinly sliced red onion, and capers) when one of the little pickled buds dropped out and rolled onto my plate. It was surprisingly pretty, a deep olive green at the tip, turning to a deeper violet near the base, and it got me thinking.

What are capers good for?
(Besides being delicious.)

I didn’t find many traditional magical uses for these guys in my search, but I did find some very interesting medical uses and folklore than seems to provide the basis for their modern magical properties.

Capers Magical Properties and Folklore

Going down to bone town.

No, really. They’re mostly used as aphrodisiacs.

Even the Christian Bible acknowledges this — in Ecclesiastes, translations dispute whether a certain passage should read as “desire” or “caperberry.” In Hebrew, the word for caperberry, aviyyonah, is linked to the word avah, meaning “desire.” The King James version of Ecclesiastes 12:5 reads, “the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail.” Meanwhile, older translations render the word “desire” as “caperberry.” As a result, some modern translations go for “desire,” while others use “caperberry.” Confusing, huh?

In ancient Greek medicine, capers were used to relieve gas and bloating. This isn’t really tied to any aphrodisiac effect, but it’s probably easier to want to do the do when you aren’t farting like a Clydesdale.

The Witch’s Cottage Garden lists capers as a Mars plant. This is most likely due to the plant’s thorns — plants associated with Mars tend to be prickly — but also fits its use as an aphrodisiac. While Venus plants are associated with love and beauty, Mars energy can be passionate and lustful, in addition to assertive and warlike.

Other sources list as useful in magic for lust and potency, which also suits it’s Mars energy and desire-promoting qualities.

Using Capers

Eat them, but not too much. Capers are preserved, so they’re very high in sodium. (Ironically, if you have sodium-sensitive blood pressure and blood pressure-related sexual dysfunction, they can make it harder to get in the mood.)

I like including them in salads or, as I mentioned before, on a bagel with cream cheese. If you don’t eat cheese, a nondairy alternative or some avocado would work — I find that the salty, lemony bite of capers benefits greatly from something cool and creamy to offset it.

If you want to use capers in your magic without eating them, the mature flowers are very pretty and unusual-looking. While I haven’t seen the flowers for sale (I think most people prefer to pick them when they’re just buds, for culinary purposes), you can find the whole plant for sale and grow them fairly easily if you’ve got a dry climate and plenty of sun.

As a note of caution, the caper spurge (Euphorbia lathyris) is a poisonous plant that is often confused for capers. Eating the buds can cause mouth pain, nausea, cardiac arrhythmia, fainting, and delirium. So, if you going to go try to find capers, maybe stick to garden centers and grocery stores unless you’re really, really good at IDing plants.