Martinmas soup

As we are following the Waldorf system of education we do pay some attention to the Waldorf festival. We like them as they have a basis in paganism as well, so we can make them quite earth friendly.
When we lived in The Netherlands it was celebrated quite widely. On the evening of 11 November all the children would go out with their lanterns and ring at peoples door, sing a Martinmas song and get sweets from the people.

Every year we make a Martinmas soup, as we hollow out a swede or 2 to make a lantern with it. ON the picture above you see the soup.
We always have roasted chestnuts with it as well and some sourdough buns to dip in the soup. In the time that we lived in The Netherlands it was quite a busy day because as soon as it got dark the children we coming round the houses, so there wasn't a lot of time to cook and eat.

Traditionally the soup with burn and chestnuts would be eaten before going out for the singing and bonfires. People would take scrap wood out and make bonfires. While watching the bonfires there would be waffles eaten as well. Just plain waffles, nothing serious. At some point in the future I will post a sourdough waffle recipe and link it here.
We make a little fire in our garden for these days. Where we live now nobody celebrates Martinmas, so we keep it very simple. As the children have already had their sweets at Halloween a few days before we don't give them any either.

Enjoy the soup.

Origin: Western Europe

Difficulty: easy

Time: 15 minutes preparation time & 30 minutes cooking time

Serves: 6

Traditional/GAPS/SCD legal, Primal, Paleo

Equipment:

• pan
• knives

Ingredients:

• 2 small swedes or 1 big swede
• 600 ml broth
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 2 juniper berries
• salt
• pepper
• 1 leek
• 1 carrot
• cream (optional)

Directions:

• Put the broth with the swede, carrot, bay leaf, coriander and juniper berries in a pan and cook for about 20 minutes, until the swede is soft
• Remove the bay leaf and juniper berries.
• Add the leek and let it cook for another 10 minutes.
• Blend with a stick mixer.
• Taste and add salt and pepper to taste

In case you want to prepare the soup partially a day or 2 ahead you can do this by cooking the swede with the carrot and spices. Once the swede is cooked it won't get bitter anymore. Once you have cut it it tends to get a bit bitter when it is laying around for a bit. I try to cook swede as quickly as possible after cutting.

Crochet: Update 2 Dutch blanket

And the blanket is finished. It was a lot of work, but I really loved doing it.
Here are some pictures of the finished blanket.

This last picture is an attempt at a full view of the blanket. I nearly succeeded.

Food Standards Agency Saturated Fat TV ad 2009 40 sec advert

This is really one of the dumbest video's I have ever seen on the topic. It shows "saturated" fat. But my saturated fat is solid in the fridge, my mono unsaturated as well.

Saturated fat i even solid at room temperature.

The stuff used here is clearly the polyunsaturated fat that they tell you is so healthy, unfortunately that stuff is causing inflammation and lots of other problems in the body. I'll elaborate on that in another post at some point in the future.

Martinmas

Last Wednesday, 11 November 2015, it was Martinmas. 

This is the day St. Martin is remembered. St. Martin was a Roman soldier who was station near Gaul. As legend goes St. Martin rode into a town and on the outskirts of the town he ran into a beggar who was only wear rags. He felt pity for the man and cut het cloak in 2 and gave 1 half to the beggar. The next morning when he woke up he found his cloak restored to a full cloak. 

As we are using a Waldorf curriculum for home education, we pay attention to this day.

So we made swede lantarns. We hollowed out the swedes, carved some shapes into the swedes and put a tea light into it, as you can see below. From the insides of the swedes I made swede soup.  I served the swede soup with roasted chestnuts for dinner. This is a traditional dinner for Martinmas.

In some European areas, such as parts of The Netherlands and Germany children go past the houses to sing Martinmas songs and will get sweets. It is very similar to trick or treating at Halloween.
Now that we live in England Halloween is what is happening, so we only do some stuff at home for Martinmas.

Crochet: Circles of the Sun pillow

On 22 September 2015 my yarn for this pillow arrived. I have decided to make both sides with the patterns, so I bought double the amount of yarn than I expect to need for the one side only. It is great looking yarn. It is drops cotton light. It feels very nice, it is 50% cotton and 50% polyester.

On Friday 6 November 2015 I went on a 4 day trip. I wanted to take a project along, but as I only had large projects on the go I couldn't take any of those along. I had already purchased the yarn for this project so I decided to take this one along. I also had to check it in as I couldn't take it along as hand luggage. I didn't want to risk loosing my needles or crochet hook. So in the plane I read. It was only a short flight, less than 1 hour.

On Saturday 7 November 2015  I started making the pillow.

This is the first square that is finished.

And this is the second square.

Plenty more squares the go. There are 9 squares on each side of the pillow. So 16 more to go.
I am working on the third square, but I will do that later, as I want to finish some projects first. I will update when more gets done on this project.

Feel free to leave comments, I welcome them.

Squash from the oven

Last Thursday I made Squash from the oven. In our vegetable and fruit box there was a carnival squash. I had never heard of it, so I looked it up online and read a bit about how it can be cooked. In the oven it goes for 25-30 minutes in an oven preheated to 190C/375F/Gas 5.

This is what my Carnival squash looked like. Quite a nice one.

Here it is cut in half.

Getting it ready for the oven.

Finished.

Difficulty: easy

Time: 45 minutes

Yield: 8 pieces

Traditional/GAPS/SCD legal, Primal

Equipment:

• oven
• oven bowl

Ingredients:

• 1 Carnival squash
• smoked lardons
• Provencal herb mix
• maple syrup
• salt and pepper to taste
• ghee or lard (1)

Directions:

• .Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5.
• Cut the squash in half and take out the seeds and threads.
• Cut up the squash further, until you have 8 pieces.
• Put the pieces with the inside up in an oven safe bowl.
• Top with some salt and pepper, provencal herbs, smoked lards, ghee and maple syrup
• Put in the oven for 25-30 minutes
• Enjoy

Possible substitutions:

1. dairy - coconut