The Windesphere Witch

Bewitching words of Wisdom: Clarissa Pinkola Estes

 

 

Clarissa Pinkola Estes'

Her groundbreaking book "Women Who Run With The Wolves" changed my life and brought me to my pack....Hear her in her own voice in the video below entititled "Ode to the Great Mother".

 

       

Happy Mothers Day!

Today I’m thinking about my mother, who died three years ago but is still very present in almost everything I do. I hear her voice when I’m cooking and can’t find the right spices and I cook her specialties regularly. I totally miss her mashed potatoes, a secret that she took with her to the great test kitchen in the sky. She was a really great cook , nothing fancy, just simply gorgeous food and she WAS the Barefoot Contessa long before Ina Garten even thought about picking up a chefs knife. She could throw a party for 50 without a fuss with 24 hours notice. My mom was a working woman but it was her way to have dinner every night at the dinner table, with candles, wine and cloth napkins. By the way did you know that if you want to use cloth napkins but dread ironing them that all you need is a brick? This was one of my mothers best tricks…she kept a brick right by her dryer and when the napkins came out she’d fold them while still warm, stack them and then place the brick on top leaving her with perfectly pressed, ready to use napkins at anytime!

My mother is the reason that I can cook and I loved watching her in the kitchen. She could throw a dinner party on a moments notice because she was always prepared to entertain. She had one part of her freezer and pantry stocked especially for such occasions and always kept her bar ready for drop- in guests. I still do too because you never know who’s coming through the door and for me just like my mother before me, Food= Love. She taught me that entertaining well didn’t have to do with how grand a spread you put out, but everything to do with how welcome you make your guests feel. A wedge of runny Brie with some crackers and a tin of smoked oysters and a bowl of camponata were her staples, she always had them around as well as a loaf of thin white Pepperidge Farm tea sandwich bread. A simple tomato bisque, usually from a can, enriched with a touch of cream, flavored with sherry and served in her mothers demitasse cups, became another great conversation starter. When you have an entire roomful of people who don't really know each other well, talking about the different cup patterns really does work as an ice breaker!

She also always kept a bag of frozen shrimp which she could thaw in an instant. Take those shrimp, mix them up with about 1Ž/2 a cup of Hellmans mayonnaise and a 1Ž/2 a cup of sour cream, add about 5 tablespoons of chopped fresh chives and season with cayenne, Worcestershire sauce and a dash of salt and pepper. Stir and serve with little forks or toothpicks and buttered toast points. Those 5 things, arranged graciously and set on her coffee table with pretty little plates a good bottle of wine or champagne and a vase of flowers were simple, delicious and satisfying. If you don’t have flowers, walk out into the garden , scoop up a few posies that you’ve planted dirt and all and repot them in some pretty tea cups. I promise that they’ll never notice that they’ve been gone for the short time that you’ll have them inside! When I’m teaching people to plan simple parties I always encourage them to have a signature cocktail that they can throw together at the drop of a hat. Mine is a delicious mixture of things that I always have around, lemon soda, Crème de violette (this is succulent heady stuff all you perfumistas!), limoncello, citron vodka, peach bitters and blackberries, fresh when in season, frozen when not! Just take a tall glass, fill with ice and a few of the blackberries. Then pour a jigger of citron vodka into it, and a tablespoon each of the crème de violette and limoncello. Top off with the lemon soda, a dash of the blood orange bitters and garnish with some fresh thai basil. That’s all! A signature drink that you can whip up in an instant kicks off the conversation on a surprise evening beautifully!

I guess that I’m saying all of this because to me it’s more important with whom you’re eating than what you’re eating and I want you to always feel comfortable having people in your home and enjoying their company. My mother had tricks that made it easy to entertain well and she was always prepared to use them. I think that we miss a lot of opportunities for relatedness because we’re so concerned more with what it looks like instead of simply just enjoying ourselves and life’s just too short. The world is spinning faster than ever before and now more than ever we need to sit down , break some bread together, drink some good wine and really talk about what matters. Don’t be intimidated, just try it! Trader Joe's is a great source for appetizers that you can keep in your freezer and serve at a moments notice. Go to TJ Maxx and get a few good glasses, some pretty little plates and some napkins. Keep it all in a special place and don’t touch it except for occasions like these. You’ll thank me, I promise.

Happy Mothers Day to you wherever you are and whomever your with. All of us are mothers to something or someone. If you’ve ever given birth to a great idea, or a project you’re a mother. If you’re gay and you have a child , you’re a mother. If you’ve got a dog, cat or even a chicken you’re a mother. You don’t need a uterus to be celebrated today, just a whole lot of love.

I love you all and hope that you have a wonderful Mothers Day! How are you going to celebrate it? Send me your signature cocktail recipe in the comments and I'll choose my favorite and send the lucky winner a bottle of my favorite blood orange bitters!

This post originally appeared today on my favorite perfume blog  Perfume Smellin Things!

Photo of Crème De Violette from www.thekitchn.com Photo of Camponata from www.wellonwheels.blogspot.com

Photo of Family from source unknown

Bewitching words of Wisdom: Jonas Salk

 

 

"It is relevant and even part of wisdom to ask not only are we being good citizens of the world today, but are we being good ancestors. " Jonas Salk

Jonas Salk was more than the inventor of the polio vaccine. He was a humanitarian and cared deeply about the world and the size and quality of the footprint that he (and all of us) left upon it. The Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation  "is dedicated to preserving and extending the contributions of one of society's great scientists and humanitarians. It will do so by helping to organize and make available the collection of Jonas Salk's papers and historical artifacts, participating in and assisting with educational programs and projects, and exploring continued application of his scientific and philosophical vision towards solution of ongoing problems confronting humanity." Please visit The Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation  and Beyond Polio for more information about how you can participate in this transformational shift towards cooperation , community and inspiration.

Yoga brings me such peace....

I love Yoga, I really do. I discovered my practice a couple of years ago when my son and his girlfriend at the time gave Jim and me several sessions each for Christmas. Since then I've studied with many wonderful teachers, studied several different forms and definitely fallen more in love with the peace and flexibility that it brings me everytime that I practice.

Tonight though , we enjoyed a really extraordinary class. We used to go to one of the many designer studios that are available in Cleveland, but for the last year we've been working out at the local JCC. We love it, we spend an evening on the treadmills and bike, play with the weights and then jump into the whirlpool together and relax after our day. Well, one day Jim looked at the schedule and said "Hey, we should try one of their Yoga classes. " I thought to myself..."yuck...it can't possibly be as good". Boy was I about to be proven wrong.

To be sure, the practice room lacks the spiritual accoutrements of the boutique studios, but that's not where the heart of Yoga is. In walked our Yogi Eleanor, who quietly dimmed the lights and then led us through a series of movements that she designed specifically in honor of Earth Day, using all natural forms like the Tree and the cobra, but for the evening eschewing the bridge and wheel poses...no boat, nothing that wasn't animal ,vegetable or mineral. I was really blown away by the grounding nature of the series that she had designed. By the end of the class I was so grounded and so relaxed I was amazed. She ended of course in the traditional Shavasana, by placing us in corpse pose, which is just so incredibly relaxing, but although I've been practicing for several years now, tonight was the first time that I truly understood the deeper nature of this pose. Corpse pose is practiced by lying on the ground with your hands at your sides and your body literally falling into the deepest repose possible, through simple breathing and gravity.

Tonight though , Eleanor talked about her teacher and how he had always told her that "we practice relaxing into the corpse pose so that when the time comes we can really relax into the corpse pose". I was blown away by the simplicity of this statement. We spend our years and our lives literally running away from death and here someone was sweetly teaching me to prepare for it. I thought of the many "deaths' that we as humans experience throughout our lives and the kicking and screaming and fighting and throashing that we do when we are confronting that in our lives which has ended. I thought of my darling pony Studley, who I will be putting to sleep in several days because his body can no longer support itself and how he will just fall gently to the earth from which he came without even thinking about it. I saw him fall to the earth from his mothers womb, now I will see his life come full circle as he travels back to the mother of us all. I have suffered and agonized over this decision for a week now  and yet in a moment of experiencing that deepest knowing I have realized just how much of a fight it doesn't have to be. Spending an evening practicing movements connected to the most primal life forces brought me closer to my pony in a way that I never thought was possible. I realized in an instant that it was alright, that his death wasn't my failure, but simply the next phase of a very long friendship. When you love someone or something, you will eventually have to let go...there's no avoiding that one pure truth. For a moment I just became him and as I lay melting into my mat and subsequently the earth below I knew in that moment that letting go would be easy for him, that all beings have their place and time to be in the world, that indeed all things have their season and that the Goddess would always hold him in her arms.  My horses have always been my greatest teachers. 

I am grateful....grateful indeed.

Namaste'  

My Favorite Old Woodstove!

Over the years many have asked me about my old woodstove. Here she is in all of her glory! She's a good old fashioned DutchWest cast iron work horse capable of going up past 1000 degrees really quickly once you fire up the catalytic converter!  When we left WIndesphere I couldn't bear to leave her there, so I uninstalled her and she lives now with good friends of ours who enjoy her pleaseures on a regular basis.  I've written about this stove so many times that she's begun to have a life of her own. I loved sharing life with her,  she was the provider of many a fine breakfast, lunch and dinner at Windesphere when the power would go out. Even when it didn't I'd still wake up on a cold morning and cook pancakes and bacon on top of her broad shoulders. The best oatmeal in the world is oatmeal that you've put on the night before in a cast iron pot and allowed to simmer gently though the night.

 These days I'm all about creating as  much self sufficiency in this world as you possibly can, so for me a woodstove is one of the most important tools that you can ever install in your home. When the power goes out and you need drinking water you can boil it, when the power goes out and you need food and warmth guess what? Just fire up the stove and you're as cozy as can be. Everyone should have the experience of cooking with fire at least once, if not for any other reason than to just know that it can be done and besides...there's no better pot of chili in the world then chili cooked slowly on a stove like this one! 

I hadn't seen her in over 8 years but we went out into the country yesterday to have Easter with our old neighbors and there she was, logs ablazing, standing stalwart in the corner heating their home as capably as she'd ever done. It was good to bask in her warmth again and furthered my resolve to have a smaller version of her in place in my home by next winter. 

If you're interested in a stove of your own grab a cup of tea and biscuit with jam and cozy up to Lehman Brothers and have a look around! 

Bewitching words of Wisdom: Dr. Lawrence Wilson

 

 

"One person benefits from an herb, another from a chiropractic treatment, another from an antibiotic, another from a walk in the woods and still another from a religious experience. Many systems and methods of healing serve different levels of consciousness.No single method is superior or appropriate for everyone and if one believes in only one way of doing things one becomes a religious zealot. "

Healing Allergies with Acupuncture

 

 

Dr. John Amaro and his wife Dr. Debra Richel 

I had a fascinating experience today. I'm out in Arizona visiting my brother who is recovering from an awful bout of pneumonia that turned septic and threatened his kidneys. I'm thrilled to say that he's doing really well...a combination of my sister -in- laws incredible commitment to cooking the right foods for him, exercise and a fabulous Chiropractor/ Acupuncturist named John Amaro.  who runs a most amazing clinic in Carefree , Arizona with his wife, Dr. Debra Richel.

Healing Allergies through Acupuncture

I'm a huge fan of accupuncture having witnessed it's miracles firsthand ( one treatment literally dissolved a heel spur) so I was delighted to find that my brother going to see one on a regular basis. He's reporting huge breakthroughs in his energy and stamina and he says that if the Docs didn't keep reminding him of how sick he'd been that he'd never know it. So about two weeks ago his allergies started flaring up on top of everything else that he was dealing with. Dr. Amaro successfully treated him for them and then for his next visit asked him to bring him a clipping of everything that was blooming and/ or greening around his home. So today my brother walked around with garden shears and filled a gallon size bag with all of the clippings. You'll know that I had to go with him to his appointment to see for myself what this Doc was doing! I was amazed....Dr. Amaro sat him down and spread all of the clippings onto a pillow and put my brothers hands on top of them. Then he placed needles strategically in the pattern called "The 4 gates", a pattern used specifically to relieve stress and open the energies outward. It is a technique for healing allergies and disease that he has used many times with pathogens like black mold to the formaldehyde in new carpets and couches. 

It was amazing to watch and even more interesting to talk to Dr. Amaro about it. When I asked how it worked, he said "I can't really give you a mathematical equation for thinking about this" and I laughed and said "It's the energy?" and he smiled and nodded emphatically!  We spent the next 20 minutes sharing stories and experiences and I watched my brother relax and his energy grow even stronger under this competent care. I'm not sure if any other accupuncturist is treating allergies this way , but   I'd fly to Scottsdale in a heartbeat to have a session with this guy if I ever needed one.

Quite frankly, my brother is getting stronger everyday because of the work that he's doing with Dr. Amaro ;   the traditional physicians are only treating the symptoms of an already broken down system. I was reminded again today just how important it is to approach healing from a standpoint of proactiveness and to honor all of the things that we can't see. There's no real language in our culture to explain the success of Dr. Amaro's treatments, but I know from my own experiences that in many other cultures success is judged by how we prevent disease, not treat it once it's there. If you're game enough to enter into your own healing journey by treating your disharmony with unknowable and perhaps even unfathomable modalities then you're opening up the space where healing can really happen. I can leave Arizona knowing in my heart that my brother is walking his healing journey in the most powerful way possible and with the greatest of allies by his side.

You can contact Dr. Amaro at : 

(480) 488-9647

His offices are located at : 7518 East Elbow Bend Road

Carefree, AZ 85377

Picture of Dr. Amaro from the Sonoran News

OCCUPY YOUR KITCHEN! Skinny Sexy Food with Beth Schreibman Gehring

Sláinte...In honor of St. Paddy's Day here's my favorite hunting flask recipe!

 

 

Most know that when I was a wee little girl I fell madly in love with horses. This is a love affair that has trancended many men and many years...and thankfully I found the one man to marry who not only could tolerate playing second fiddle to the 4 legged men in my life but could also cherish them almost as much as I do. When my horse Shimmeree, a delightful gray arabian with a very happy nature snuggled up to him 30 plus years ago I knew that he was the one. That horse was always a fabulous judge of character. 

One of my first trainers when I was a little girl was an Irish woman name Noreen Bailey, who like most Irishmen and women that I've known had a way with horses that was absolutely magical and at times downright infuriating. I spent well over a decade with her and became known for my ability to speak with a bit of a brogue.  I loved and hated her at the same time...I'd be having an issue with one of my ponies and she'd hop on and whisper to him in a bit of gaelic and he'd be eating out of her hands..doing whatever she wanted him to do which was usually exactly what he'd refused to do for me seconds before. Mrs. Bailey taught me many things and was perhaps my first introduction  to natural horsekeeping. She made all of her own linaments and boiled down flaxseed on the stove to make a jelly that is still far superior as a gut and coat remedy to anything that you can buy. She'd toss pine boughs out into the pasture to keep down the worms and at least 3 times a week would fix a bran mash for the horses that you or I would eat happily. Lameness, diabetes, laminitis...all of these things were rare in her barns because she knew how to keep her horses in as natural a state as possible. They were outside morning ,noon and most evenings when it wasn't too buggy. They lived a life unlike most horses that you know today because for the most part they were free.

I used to love to spend the night there before a horse show...her apartments were right on top of the barns so I could fall asleep listening to snorting, snuffling and the occasional wall kick. The warm hay smell would follow me up the steps and I'd settle happily on her couch with a bowl of soup. Sadly her culinary skills did not transfer to humans but I loved her cooking just the same! However she did  make a mean hot toddy which really could cure whatever ailed you. Several times I'd have a cold the night before an important horse show and she'd mix me up this drink. It would go down the hatch easily, I'd fall asleep and in the morning I'd be ready to go! I didn't question her wisdom of giving it to an 8 year old and of course my mother never knew, but to this day I'm grateful and it's what I drink when I'm under the weather. It's also what I put into my flask when I go to hunter trials or foxhunting as it's a perfect sip for a cold fall morning when the leaves are falling, the horses are fresh and the air is sweet and brisk. It's really quite simple....Bushmills, Honey , lemon, cinnamon, butter and raisins  in whatever proportions you like! If you need a toddy, add some hot tea (she used Constant Comment ,a blend which this author still admits to enjoying!) and if you want it for your flask, put it all into a bottle and let it steep overnight , shaking the bottle every now and then. If you don't like lemon and butter you can use Baileys...It's pretty good either way!

Although she's been gone for many years now, I've never forgotten her.Although she could be quite mean, I could never have been the rider that I am today without her. She gave me my seat and she ignited a passion that's lasted a lifetime.  Here's to you Mrs. Bailey wherever you are...Happy St. Patricks Day...I'm hoping that all of your horses are fresh and your men are young and that you know just how much I loved you!

Sláinte!

   

Witchy Alchemy: Old sweaters become adorable new planters!

 

Seriously..How cute are these?

This is a great idea brought to me this fine spring (dare I say it?) morning by one of my favorite websites Green Renaissance! I love the idea of recycling old sweaters this way. Every year I spend a fortune on planters and these are so cute! They didn't say anything about how to make them so I am going to assume by the picture that a sewing machine (or at the very least one of those handheld ones) would be useful in this process as well as strong wire for hanging.  The other thing that I am sure would be needed is wax coated thread as regular thread would wear down pretty quickly.  These are so cute and purposeful  that I don't think that it would matter to anyone if they were only useful for one season, but I am sure that if you wanted to you could line them. I'm so excited...I can't wait to fill these with my herbs so stay tuned for the results!