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Hello, wonderful witches!
Welcome to 2021! I hope you had a great countdown—mine was full of Snoop Dogg (he had a special on that I just couldn’t miss), pickled herring for prosperity and luck, and banging a pot with a wooden spoon outside at midnight to ward away evil for the coming year. I can’t imagine my new year starting any other way; my mom instilled this ritual in me when I was very young, and it’s my favorite thing. Plus the whole evil-be-gone aspect of it really appeals to me.
Did you make any New Year’s resolutions? Mine are typically a simple list of places in the world I want to go during the upcoming year. This year, though, I focused on getting back on track with the things that make me happy—so spellwork (I’m doing a spell a day on social media!), knitting, exercise, and reading. With that last one in mind, today’s article brings us a list of four essential novels for kitchen witches. If you have a reading resolution like me, why not start it off with a little magic? And let me know what other books you’d recommend! I’ll include a secondary list in a future issue.
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Essential Novels for Kitchen Witches
By Laura Wheatman Hill
Even professional cooks (and witches!) take time to sit back and enjoy a good book once in a while. Books can transport readers into the hearts, minds, and kitchens of their characters. These four books will help you believe even more in kitchen witchery.
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel is a truly enchanting novel filled with magical realism and mouthwatering food imagery. The novel is structured like a recipe-of-the-month book with stories to go with each dish. Tita, who begins the book as a teen, lives in Mexico and dreams of true love, freedom, and, occasionally, revenge. She channels her strong passions into her cooking and her feelings tend to get infused in the food. When preparing the cake for the wedding of her sister and Tita’s true love, she cries into the batter. At the wedding, everyone gets violently ill. When feeling lusty while cooking, Tita accidentally inflames her dinner guest’s passions. This book is romantic, heart-breaking, and will make kitchen witches want to whip up something saucy.
Akata Witch and Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor is a young adult fantasy and its sequel. Sunny is a twelve-year-old Nigerian albino who has never fit in at school or with her family. After staring into a candle and seeing the end of the world, she learns that she is a Leopard Person, a witch, who can perform juju magic. Magic in these books comes in many forms, from spoken words, to knife skills, to something similar to mediation, and, yes, to cooking. One amusing spell throughout the series is the preparation of tainted pepper soup, which is based on a traditional Nigerian dish which usually contains both goat (or chicken) and crayfish. In the world of juju, good Leopard People know how to make tainted pepper soup with magical ingredients. One catch, though. If Sunny messes up even one tiny step of the recipe or gets one ingredient just a little wrong, there are dire consequences. Usually, the soup explodes.
Circe by Madeline Miller takes the Greek mythology and stories from The Odyssey and tells them from the perspective of the demigod, Circe, who is often called a witch because of her herb-based spells. Circe learns about pharmaka, the use of herbs for magic, and transforms her lover and enemy into versions of their true selves. The lover turns to a mercurial, fishy god, and the enemy turns into a horrible sea-monster. For her crimes, she is banished to an uninhabited island. She uses the herbs she grows on the island to weave her magic throughout this epic, century-sweeping novel. Men land on the island, including the famous Odysseus and his men, and Circe uses her kitchen witchery to transform the men into animals. The book is full of magic, familiar characters, and delicious Mediterranean delights such as godly nectar, enchanting wine, and fresh fish readers can taste as they read this truly engrossing novel.
Okay, kitchen witches, curl up with a pot of herbal tea by the fire and dive into these witchy books!
Laura Wheatman Hill lives in Portland, Oregon, with her two children. She blogs about parenting, writes about everything, and teaches English and drama when not living in an apocalyptic dystopia. Her work has appeared on Observer, the Submittable Blog, She Knows, Sammiches and Psych Meds, Her View From Home, Scary Mommy, Filter Free Parenting, Motherwell, and Distressed Millennial. You can find her at www.laurawheatmanhill.com and on Twitter and Instagram @lwheatma.
Kitchen Wisdom
Welcome to Kitchen Witch’s (sporadic) advice column! We’re here to answer any questions you’ve got about witchcraft, the kitchen, food, or any combination of those topics.
@Sixsidedring asks: Does alcohol have any magical properties?
This is a BIG question, so before I get into specifics, the simple answer is yes. Absolutely! Alcohol’s many forms reflect its many magical uses, not to mention the magical properties of the ingredients it’s made from and the magical history of the specific type. It can be both an offering and a spell component. For example, if you want to work with Dionysus, a wine offering or spell ingredient would be perfect. To keep this easy, I’m going to break my response into four sections: beer, wine, liquor, and mead. And keep in mind, these are just ways that I use alcohol in my own craft—yours may be totally different, and that’s OK!
BEER: Use beer for spells, offerings, or rituals surrounding the home and family. It can also be used to enhance your dreams (as long as you don’t over-imbibe, then you probably won’t dream at all) and can be mixed into spell jars for a protection boost. If you’re into craft beer, check out this article, about brewers using witchcraft while they make their beer. It’s fascinating!
WINE: The magical properties of wine are actually fairly well reflected in pop culture. It’s a fixture on first dates in movies and shows, and wine is used in magic focused on lust and love. It’s shown in ads and in books where independent people sit down with a glass of wine, and wine is used in magic focused on independence and joy. It’s constantly in the news about how a little bit can be healthy, and wine is used in magic focused on health. The drink basically lives its own magic.
LIQUOR: Liquor is more complicated, and my biggest advice here is to think about the way your particular drink was made or its historical uses—and then reflect those properties in your magic work. Absinthe, for example, is great for astral travel and psychic projection. And gin was originally used as medicine, so it’s good for spells and rituals about health.
MEAD: The most base ingredient of mead is honey—so use the drink any time you want to do a sweetening ritual. Whether that’s making someone else sweeter, feeling more sweetly toward yourself, or even making a situation more enjoyable, mead is a go-to for magical alcohol. And consider also that honey helps soothe a sore throat, so if you have to do any public speaking or have any hard conversations, have a sip to imbue yourself with that quality. (The alcohol content probably won’t hurt either…)
Have any questions tugging at your mind? Ask us on Twitter and we’ll get it into a future issue.
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Coming Up Next Week…
Next week, we’ll learn about our very own doll versions of ourselves: kitchen witch poppets.
See you then!