Thursday, November 7, 2013

Day 7 of Kitchen Witchery- My Cookbook

As I keep mentioning, I am writing in advance. Right now as I write it is August. I have lots of ideas but my time is limited. Which was the whole point of starting a series of Fall posts early in the year. Sometimes I get a whole post written when I sit down at the computer, but most of the time I get pictures taken, some notes ready, and then whenever I have more non-existent spare time, I actually write. Occasionally, I forget to go back to a post. I took lots of pictures of my cookbook and I thought I was done. I just realized I never wrote anything to go with the pictures. Oops. So here we go, a real Kitchen Witch's cookbook:

Front cover. I intend to have needlepoint Witch on the front one day. For now I've got some wolves who appear to be searching for food, appropriate for a cookbook, I think, and a star sampler. I know most people wouldn't mix needle arts and cooking but I wanted my cook to reflect me and I'd rather sew than cook.
Spine. See how big the binder is? I need lots of room. This needlepoint is actually intended for a kitchen, it's a Joan Elliot pattern and is meant to go on a hand towel. I altered things a bit. I rarely follow patterns to the letter.
On the end of the spine decoration, I have a little dragon charm. I use dragon motifs often in my work. I like to put dragon is hidden places.
Back cover. This is another star sampler. I started off making the fiery star in the top left corner, and when I couldn't figure out what to do with it, I decided to fill up the rest of the canvas with stars. I worked on it for a long time and it was both fun because I didn't follow rules and frustrating because I didn't have a plan. That's a turkey feather on the side. A bird that almost exclusively represents the major food holiday in America has to be good luck for a cookbook.
The inside of the binder is decorated with whatever I think is pretty.
Bookmark I made several years ago when I was just discovering Celtic knots. I photocopied a design to color. These were the borders of the page. I didn't want them with my colored page, but I thought they were too pretty to throw out.
Bookmark back with more left over bits.
Cookbook sections. Besides the regular meat, vegetable, bread, desserts, etc. I also have sections on magick, a section for useful or nifty things like facial scrubs and home made flea repellent, and I have a garden section where I journal about my own garden and plants.
I really like Taste of Home recipes. I save the cards and if I like the recipe I tape it into the cookbook. If it flopped, I throw the card out. Sometimes I realize the card didn't have good directions so I rewrite the recipe. These are recipes I haven't cooked yet.
All recipes AJ gave me. She was very detailed and organized when it came to cooking.
To save space, I layer recipe cards. They are taped on one side so I can easily flip them over.
I don't really like the old fashioned recipe box because cards are never the same size.
More art.
More art and recipes.
I have more dessert recipes than anything else.
Everybody loves pie.
Great-grandmother's cookies written by my mother.
I gather recipes all the time. I place them into the folders until I decide to cook them, compare with others, or rewrite into something more legible.
The magick section. These are all recipes I invented for magickal powders.
I had a creep problem. He's gone now.
The garden section. I used to keep a separate garden journal but I decided it made more sense to have it in the cookbook since I was growing both food and herbs for spells.
When not in use, the cookbook resides in my altar. My cookbook will never be complete. It will always be a work in progress just like my life is always in progress.

1 comment:

FreeDragon said...

Yep, this is the same cookbook featured in the first post on Nov. 1. Sorry. I thought I started this series with a general overview on what was coming. I forgot I posted about my cookbook and because the first post's title doesn't say anything about it, I didn't realize I had already blogged about it. I really thought I took pictures and ran out of time to write.