Holy Homemaking.

[Ryna de Liane]

I am grateful to be able to have a job that also allows me to be a full time homemaker, as my work largely keeps me at-home. 

I incorporate past life memories and realities into the current life with art, music, handcrafts, and food. This weekend I'm baking lembas for my beloved's birthday. A hearty and rich food that can fill a grown adult human for days, I make it all too infrequently. It is easy to make, I use the recipe from this site.

http://lotrscrapbook.bookloaf.net/other/recipes.html#lembas

For ease of reference...here is the recipe. 

2 ½ cups of flour (I used bread flour but you can use all purpous flour too) 
1 tablespoon of baking powder 
¼ teaspoon of salt 
½ cup of butter 
1/3 cup of brown sugar 
1 teaspoon of cinnamon 
½ teaspoon honey 
2/3 cup of heavy whipping cream 
½ teaspoon of vanilla 


Preheat oven to 425°F. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl. Add the butter and mix well till fine granules (easiest way is with an electric mixer). Then add the sugar and cinnamon, and mix them thoroughly.  Finally add the cream, honey, and vanilla and stir until a nice, thick dough forms. 

Roll the dough out about 1/2 in thickness. Cut out 3-inch squares and transfer the dough to a cookie sheet.Criss-cross each square from corner-to-corner with a knife, lightly (not cutting through the dough).   Bake for about 12 minutes or more (depending on the thickness of the bread) until it is set and lightly golden. 

Let cool completely before eating, this bread tastes better room temperature and dry. Also for more flavor you can add more cinnamon or other spices.

(I prefer to use 1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour, and 1 cup buckwheat flour, or a 1/2 cup buckwheat and a 1/2 cup rye flours...buckwheat is an ingredient featuring in many bizarre encounters with the Sidhe and otherworldly beings. I also like using interesting or unusual flavours, like dried lavender and violet and rose flowers and food grade oil or extracts. Lavender imparts a pale purplish blue colour to lembas, rose a pale pink, and violet a light bluish hue. Finally if you haven't mallorn leaves--which you won't unless you travel to the Laurisilva forests of Macaronesia and find a big enough laurel leaf to wrap each lembas individually, and I doubt that modernity has left much in the way of the old forests--just put them in an airtight container.)

This is a kind of magick, you might call it manifestation, but in our terms, it is the Second Music of the Ainur. We create, now, we take words and turn them into reality. We are crafters of our own reality, thus...and it's a pretty delicious one.