Month: March 2011

Guidelines for Crafting Your Own Spells

  1. Identify your goal or desire.

  2. Examine the context of the situation.

  3. Evaluate the repercussions

  4. Refine the specifies of your need or desire

  5. Decide on a time.

  6. Decide on a method.

  7. Choose correspondences and components.

  8. Creat central symbolic action.

  9. Write the text of the spell.

  10. Write the complete list of materials needed.

Herbal Tips for Your Kitchen

Now that Spring is here, we will be having fresh vegetables and herbs shortly. Knowing how to use the herbs properly will give a new taste sensation to your meals. You can use tried and true recipes or make-up your own. Either way when you cook with herbs, you will have a fantastic meal the whole family will enjoy.

Hints for Using Herbs

  • Serving Rule:  Two teaspoons of minced, fresh herbs will flavor four servings One teaspoon dried herbs or seeds serves four. Delicately flavored herbs, like marjoram can be use more liberally.

  • For soups and stews, add fresh herbs during the last twenty minutes.

  • To develop the flavor of freshly dried herbs, soak them for ten minutes in lemon juice, stock or oil before cooking.

  • Before cooking rub fresh herbs between clean hands to release their unique flavor in the volatile oils. This will accelerate flavoring  as your entrée cooks.

  • Firmly press herbs into the flesh of meats, fish, or poultry before cooking to enhance aroma and taste. No sauce or further preparation will be necessary.

  • Flavor salad dressing by soaking herbs in it for thirty minutes to an hour before serving. Use one teaspoon of herbs to one cup of dressing.

  • Microwave: Whenever possible, saute herbal blends in a small amount of liquid, stock, butter or oil before adding to a microwave dish to assure flavor.

  • Sugar can be flavored by layering twelve to fifteen rose geranium or lemon rose geranium leaves on top of one pound of sugar.  Any flavor of geranium leaves will do. Keep it covered until ready to use. Flavored sugar adds a delicate flavor to biscuits, cookies and muffins,

  • A substitute for lemon peel in baked goods is finely chopped lemon balm, lemon thyme or lemon vervain.

Herbal Facial Steam

After the herbal wash, prepare an herbal facial steam and get ready to relax.

8 tablespoons of a combination of any of the following herbs:  mint leaves, chamomile flowers, rose petals, scented geranium leaves, lemon verbena, lemon balm, lemon grass, thyme, sage eucalyptus, bergamot, jasmine, gardenia or honeysuckle flowers.

1  quart boiling water

Simmer herbs in a covered glass quart of water. After 10 minutes, uncover your herbal facial and cover your head with a towel to catch the steam. Steam your face and 5 minutes to remove any impurities.

Elder’s Meditation of the Day – March 21

Elder’s Meditation of the Day – March 21

“Each of us must know in our minds and believe in our hearts that even though we are different, you are like me and I am like you.”

–Larry P. Aitken, CHIPPEWA

One of the definitions of humility is having an awareness of one’s own character defects. To recognize and acknowledge that one has imperfections is being humble. We should never pray for ourselves unless by doing so it would help another person. To have self-importance puts self first and this is not humble. We each have strengths and we each have weaknesses. Both the strengths and weaknesses are sacred. Life is sacred. We learn sacred things from weaknesses also. Therefore, all lives are developed through trial and error, strength and weakness, ups and downs, gains and losses-all of these are part of life and life is sacred.

Great Mystery, let me see and know about the sacredness of life.

March 21 – Daily Feast

March 21 – Daily Feast

It seems there is often too much of one thing and not enough of the other. Balance has a way of disappearing when we need it most. But it is our fault for thinking that once we have things all working together it will stay in balance without our having to do anything else. Nothing is so set that it will never change. We should never give in to challenge that throw us off center. Wait a little while. Something may be working that we don’t know about. Don’t accept everything as it appears. It can change in a moment’s notice and swing our way. Very often the law of nonresistance is at work here. Some of our best decisions are based on standing still until we can get a true picture.

~ When life is easy, complex pattern of life can develop. ~

COOWEESCOOWEE

‘A Cherokee Feast of Days’, by Joyce Sequichie Hifler

Daily Motivator for 3/21 – Pointing the way

Pointing the way

What seems to be standing in your way is not really standing in your way. It’s pointing the way.What looks like it’s holding you back is not really holding you back. It’s building your determination to move forward.

The mountain is steep and treacherous, yet it gives you a pathway to get to the top. The work is challenging and complicated, and yet it gives you a way to create achievement.

Don’t you dare despair when things get tough. Rejoice in knowing that the reason you’re encountering so much resistance is because you’re moving so powerfully ahead.

Look in the direction from where the resistance is coming. That’s where value lives.

Feel your determination as it grows stronger each time you push forward. Now you have what it takes to bring great things to life.

— Ralph Marston