WTF? Do you, as a witch, eat squirrel?

[windinthemaples]

I don't find many pagan books during my thrift store shopping, so when I do, I tend to buy on sight. This time, for 50 cents, I got Gerina Dunwich's Candlelight Spells: The Modern Witch's Book of Spellcasting, Feasting, and Natural Healing.

There is a recipe, page 37, for the main Lammas feast centerpiece, BAKED SQUIRRELS

Baked squirrels! The first ingredient listed is "13 skinned and washed squirrels". I can't even tell you how ridiculous the directions read. (They begin, "Dredge squirrels in flour mixed with the yellow pollen of cattails collected in early or midsummer...") This is like some fucked up Mad Libs recipe where "squirrels" was the plural noun that my niece picked to be funny.

Now, obviously it is just as gross as if it said, "Baked Chickens", but really--this is feasting for "the modern witch"? The modern witches I know mostly live in urban or suburban settings, shop in grocery stores, and rarely, if ever, have access to 13 dead squirrels.

Eww. Just eww.

I'm going to have to come up with a post-modern witch's Lammas menu.

(I don't have a squirrel icon. Let this chipmunk's look of shock be admonishment enough.)

Comments

[mermaiden.livejournal.com]

I began to sell/give away all of my Gerina Dunwich books when I learned that every single time she moves, she sets her cats free. Like...moving from one city to another, she just opens the door and shoos all of her kitties out into the street, then gets in her little moving van and drives away. It made me sick to think about...she's really not a good representation in any way, shape or form, but that's just sort of the nail in the coffin. ://///////

*HUGS*

[sugarmaplelife.livejournal.com]

Oh, sheesh.

Yeah, flipping through this book, she's got hexes and ye olde love against their will spells that seem not only at odds with my spirituality but also downright irresponsible to be printing in a mass-produced book any newbie witch could pick up. :/

[mermaiden.livejournal.com]

It's like The Craft...with squirrels. XD

But seriously, that's effing ridiculous. What trash. :/

[sugarmaplelife.livejournal.com]

It's like all those bad coven initiation stories our mothers warned us about. ;)

[aerialmelodies.livejournal.com]

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat. That'd be like leaving behind a limb every time you move. I can't imagine. APPALLED.

[atempestcyclone.livejournal.com]

Whoa. That sounds like a book of horror stories more than recipes. ;/

[sugarmaplelife.livejournal.com]

Somewhere, in Redwall, this book is used to scare little wayward woodland creatures onto the straight and narrow path. ;)

[atempestcyclone.livejournal.com]

You know of Redwall? :O That was the book series of my child hood! I wanted to grow up to be Martin! (For real- I did. XD) How much of it have you read? :D

[sugarmaplelife.livejournal.com]

I've been slowly collecting all of them as I find them in thrift stores. I don't have them all, though, and I hate to read series out of order, so I've only read the first six or seven. I want to attend every one of their feasts! :)

[atempestcyclone.livejournal.com]

It's such a lovely series- I love his poems and songs so much. :) Have you ever tried baking some of the food? I'm not exactly sure what's in the mole's Deeper 'n Ever Pie, but I've tried to re-create it often. :)

[sugarmaplelife.livejournal.com]

No! Did I imagine that there's actually a cookbook or something out there?

[atempestcyclone.livejournal.com]

There is! :D I tried to find it online a few years back, but it was ridiculously rare and expensive. :( Searching for fan sites with recipes works pretty well, though- some of them are very savvy when it comes to experimenting Redwallishly. :9

[neva-butterfly.livejournal.com]

Uh, I'm fairly certain that this must be some kind of sick joke. I grew up with a father who hunted and I'm relatively sure that you can't just skin and cook a poor murdered animal, I'm pretty sure there's some other awful stuff involved like gutting and cutting off of various parts...

Just very, very icky.

And who eats cattail pollen?

[mermaiden.livejournal.com]

And who eats cattail pollen?

I know! I was like, is this a delicacy I've always been unaware of?

[sugarmaplelife.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is! :D

http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com/Plants.Folder/Cattails.html

[mermaiden.livejournal.com]

I knew you'd know!! *LOVE* That's freakin' awesome! At least something entirely interesting was learned out of all of this by me. Besides the fact that creepy pagan squirrel eating people exist. o.o

[sugarmaplelife.livejournal.com]

Besides the fact that creepy pagan squirrel eating people exist. o.o

Under your bed! Mwhahahahaha!

[mermaiden.livejournal.com]

:O :O :O

I'm never sleeping AGAIN!!!

[ilea.livejournal.com]

me! one of the better things about living in a swampland area. cattail pollen is extra yummy and even more so is the stems when they haven't formed the brown thing on top they are nice and sweet.

[sugarmaplelife.livejournal.com]

That's true. She did gloss over the evisceration and the parts cutting off. :/ It makes me wonder. Was it included for shock value or to give her some kind of crazy, hardcore witch cred? I was just so shocked, I had to repost.

Though, cattail pollen is a food and has long been used as one. So it isn't entirely out of her ass.

[willow-cabin.livejournal.com]

I agree with the chipmunk. That's crazy! :P

[catnip13.livejournal.com]

Lesssee... ratatouille, grilled polenta, pesto, homemade bread, jam, and blackberry cobbler topped with almond or cashew creme.

[sugarmaplelife.livejournal.com]

Oooh. Cobbler. :D

[ilea.livejournal.com]

I actually have access to squirrel... my local market sells it along with alligator and wild rabbit.

But yano even though I do eat meat (although in very limited quantities now a days)I would never have a meat dish in a spiritual holiday feast. It just goes against my spiritual ethics.

My feasts usually consist of wine/mead, breads, pastas and pastries. Always made with whats in season at the moment, and from my own garden if I can.

Last year my centerpiece dish was stuffed (with cornbread and strawberry stuffing) mirlitons.

[sugarmaplelife.livejournal.com]

Oh, New Orleans. I should have guessed. :D

What are mirlitons?

[ilea.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chayote

If you've never had one you NEED to have one. Preferably stuffed but olive oil and seasoning is good on 'em too.

[artemis112.livejournal.com]

Ew, ew, ewww!!

Okay. Now that's donewith. Maybe the author is Russian? I got a fabulous academic book on magic in Russia for my birthday. The audio drama podcast that I'm writing with hess42 has a lot of Slavic mythology woven into it... so it's a treasure trove of information. But there are some wacky sympathetic magic ideas in there. I described a couple in one of the posts in the podcast blog. (http://perfectreuben.blogspot.com/2009/06/on-bats-and-rhubarb.html) You might get a kick out of it.

Oh... and ew!!

[sugarmaplelife.livejournal.com]

I loved your podcast post. Thanks for the link! Daniel and I have a collection of old occult books that we find entertaining but feel compelled to hide when folks visit. Don't want them to be paranoid about the fennel or sweatsocks they might find in the stew I brew up for them. ;)

[artemis112.livejournal.com]

Okay, the image of sweatsocks in stew made me giggle. (Can you tell it was a long workday?)

Speaking of sweatsocks, you would have gotten in big trouble with the Russian Orthodox church for perspiration magic back in the day, y'know. They go into great detail about it in the book.

Although I love my Slavic ancestors, I'm really glad I'm a deodorant-wearing witch.

[aerialmelodies.livejournal.com]

Is she a real witch? Sounds to me like a commercialized, Hollywood type of "witch." She's probably some other religion writing a book based on stereotypes and cliches to exacerbate the problem of people thinking pagan and witch mean evil. Ugggggh.

[sugarmaplelife.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess I should clarify that she's a witch...and yeah, a real one. Witches, as magical workers, aren't all the same in terms of morals and religious beliefs. That's a very broad term. And while I find cooking and eating squirrels strange and anachronistic in a book for "the modern witch", I don't find it any more "evil" than someone eating chicken or pigs or cows. Unusual though and extra-gross for me as a squirrel-lover. :)

(You have great icons. :D)

[aerialmelodies.livejournal.com]

Haaaa thanks. :)

I guess this is true... but reading she releases her dogs and skins squirrels as a "modern" way to be a pagan just seems so weird. I don't think she's evil myself, but I could see where someone who didn't know any better would pick up the book and think "Yup, that's what a witch is all right." I'm glad to know a different type of witch through my friends - reminders of love, peace, being at one with oneself and nature... those are positive reflections that anyone can relate to.

[sugarmaplelife.livejournal.com]

(can you tell I'm catching up on my commenting? ;) )

I think that pagans and witches, as a minority, can sometimes be inaccessible to the general public. Some of that might be that unusual people develop unusual philosophies and drift outward from the societal norms. Others, I think, find this freedom in being whoever they want because by choosing to be a witch in a society dominated by Judeo-Christian-Islamic thinking, we have already cast our lot in with the outsiders. I, on the other hand, would prefer to have people surprised that I'm pagan. Like, I don't wear the uniform and I try not to fit, outwardly, the stereotype.

Eating squirrels? That's like, playing not to Woodstock-witch stereotype but all the way over to Shakespeare-witch stereotype. Hard to relate and imagine that person living in the modern world, using a flush toilet, and checking their email between squirrel hunts. ;)