crushedrosewitchcraft

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

#1 When Foraging for ingredients, always make sure you know what you're foraging. It's easy to accidentally pick the wrong plant and oftentimes, that leads to poisoning. You also must make sure the ingredients you are gathering haven't been sprayed by chemicals!

#2 If you are burning things or using candles, incense, simmer pots over a fire, etc, always take time to learn or revisit fire safety! Make sure we aren't reusing candle jars with new wax, leaving candles unattended, or forgetting to completely put out a fire pit. Please be safe!

#3 Consider your doctor's medical advice. I know that there are a lot of people in the witchcraft community who use holistic medicine, and that's ok! But, that doesn't mean we shouldn't take modern medicine seriously, especially when it comes to serious illnesses.

#4 Crystals are collected and used by many witches for a large variety of things. however, under some conditions, crystals can become toxic and dangerous. For example: if you inhale the dust from carving into crystal or polishing it, it could be toxic and or damaging to your lungs. Crystals like actinolite can be especially dangerous, so be safe!

It's so important that while we are doing our spells, rituals, preparation of, and gathering of ingredients for us to do it all safely and for us to revisit safety rules and instructions. please keep in mind that these tips are not complete safety training and shouldn't be treated as such, and as I always try to encourage, please go do your own research as well.

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

You just have to be good at one thing.

Hear me out. This is just an example, but let's just say the one thing I can actually do really well on a magical level is dig a ditch.

It's a super earthy activity. It makes sense to me. Earth stuff just works well for me. The technique I've found to do this magically is really fulfilling to me - maybe I draw lines in trays of salt, or go outside and dig with a trowel. And it works for me.

When I magically dig a ditch, magical ditches are dug.

Someone wants a friendship spell? I dig a friend-shaped ditch around them that friends fall into.

Someone wants money? I dig a sloping ditch that leads from Money to their bank account.

Someone wants protection? I dig a ditch and use that as a foundational barrier, like a moat.

Other stuff might not work. Maybe I can't really raise up a wall. Maybe when I try to work magic with the conceptual energies of money and prosperity in a candle spell, it just fizzles out and falls flat. Maybe I can't conjure a spirit road for shit, unless I'm digging a lazy river for the spirits to float down on.

I enjoy casting a wide net and doing many magical experiments, but lately I've been leaning into magic that just works really well for me. And what I've realized is that I end up doing the same things, over and over again.

Maybe all I can do magically is tie a knot. Maybe all I can do is break a stick. It kind of feels like cheating, like mashing a combo move you know will win every time. Simultaneously, it makes me feel like I'm not as well-rounded as I thought I was. All I'm doing over here is digging ditches.

Anyway, I just wanted to say ~ I think an important avenue of exploration is finding any little thing you can reliably do, and going full hog. After all, life as we know it would collapse without ditches.

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

Reblog for a miracle to happen tonight

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

You don't have to force yourself to bounce back so quickly. I read something recently that said "when you come in from a rainstorm, you don't expect yourself to be dry and warm right away", and it really resonated with me. It's okay to take time to dry off and warm up. Take the time you need to process what happened to you.

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

.......I fucked up so bad.

I've been teaching Belphie not to jump on Pangur, cause she's old and arthritic and doesn't like it. and as part of my "training", I've been giving him a treat every times he stops his evil actions and trots over to me.

I thought I was training him to come when called. in actuality, I've been training him to bite Pangur. so now he'll jump on her, chew her ear, and then make bird-of-prey eye contact with me from across the room. and the worst thing is I'VE ALSO BEEN GIVING PANGUR A TREAT EACH TIME (so she doesn't feel left out). which means that she'll whimper pathetically from Belphie biting her, and then also make intense eye contact with me, because she's been conditioned to expect treats afterward.

I have accidentally made the most fucked up dynamic possible with both of these cats.

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

hey so it’s march now aka the beginning of endometriosis awareness month and i feel obligated to remind you that debilitatingly painful periods are not normal. if you or someone you know is ending up sick or bedridden every month, you are not crazy and deserve medical attention from someone who will take you seriously

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

i'm always a bit unsettled by disdain for intellectual or creative labor in leftist spaces. there's this commonly held belief that academics are a bunch of rich old white men, rather than a wide variety of people who are barely getting by. most lecturers in universities are adjuncts living paycheck to paycheck. authors make very little money as a general rule. most researchers are overworked and underpaid. and yet there's still this idea that academics are overcompensated to sit around and smoke cigars together while making shit up

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

Learning to Cook Like a Witch: Using the Scraps

Cooking can create a lot of waste. From peels and rinds to bones and leaves, people throw away quite a lot of scraps in the kitchen. And witches, as you may know, are experts in the art of the cunning use of whatever we’ve got around.

As a witch who spends a lot of time in the kitchen, I’ve had ample opportunities to get creative in my cooking craft. It helps that I grew up in a household defined by scarcity: not our own, by the time I was conscious enough to remember, but my parents’ poverty. It colored the way I learned to cook, using everything I possibly could, making enough to last, preserving what I didn’t immediately use, and creatively reusing leftovers and scraps.

There are some topics I won’t necessarily cover here. Composting is an option, but there are some bits of food scrap that don’t need to be composted — they can be saved and repurposed for all sorts of things, magic and mundane. Likewise, recycling, buying sustainably, and growing your own food when you can are all great options for reducing household waste in the kitchen.

For the purposes of this post, I want to focus specifically on food scraps. This is an organized list of kitchen scraps that I’ve used in a variety of other dishes and projects. I’m focusing primarily on food waste, not so much on packaging (such as reusing egg cartons, milk containers, boxes, and so forth).

Vegetable Scraps

Freeze leftover vegetable scraps to make stock. This is a fairly common bit of advice — save bits of leftover vegetables to make a vegetable stock or another kind of stock. It’s good advice! I keep a bag in my freezer that I put vegetable scraps in to save until I’m ready to make a new batch of stock. Not all veggies should be saved like this and used for stock! Some make stock bitter or otherwise unpleasant-tasting. Personally, I tend to freeze these for stock:

- The skins, ends, and leftover cuts of onions (just be wary of the skins; too much will make your broth bitter) - The ends of celery (not the leaves — they’re bitter!) - Corn cobs - Garlic skins, ends, tiny cloves that aren’t useful otherwise, and sprouted cloves - The ends of carrots (also not the leaves) - The ends of leeks - Pepper tops/bottoms (not the seeds)

I would recommend against putting things like potatoes, brussels sprouts, cabbage, and leafy greens in there. Potatoes don’t add flavor, sprouts and cabbage make the whole thing taste like those foods, and leafy greens end up bitter. If something has a strong, distinctive flavor (beets, sprouts), I wouldn’t add it to my freezer bag. These scraps often form the veggie portion of my Sick-Be-Gone Chicken Broth spell recipe!

Regrow leeks, green onions, and celery. Pop these in a bit of water and watch them grow back! It’s a fun experiment, and you’ll never have to buy them again.

Plant sprouted garlic. Aside from the fact that you can still cook and eat garlic that’s sprouted, you can plant a sprouted clove in a pot. Care for it well enough, and you’ll end up with a full head of garlic from that one clove!

Fry potato peels. Anytime I make mashed potatoes or peel potatoes for something, I always save the peels. Give them a thorough rinse and shallow-fry them in oil, turning them over until they’re golden and crispy. Toss them in a bit of salt and pepper while they’re still hot, and you’ve got tasty chips to snack on while you cook the rest of your meal! No need to cover them in more oil or anything — the heat will cause the salt to stick right to them.

Save leaves for pesto. Yum, yum, yum. Pesto isn’t just all about basil, you know. Save the leaves from carrots, beets, radishes, and even celery to grind up alongside basil, garlic, salt, and lemon juice for a delicious pesto recipe.

Fruit Scraps

Save citrus peels. Peels from oranges, lemons, grapefruits, and other citrus fruits have a multitude of uses. Candy them for a sweet treat, dry them to add to potpourri or incense, or save them to put into a simmer pot for bright, sunny energy.

Juice the whole fruit. Again, thinking mostly about citrus fruits, when you need the zest from something but not the rest, don’t just throw away the fruit. Squeeze out all the juice you can. Even if you don’t need it right now, you can freeze it to use later in simmer pots, fruity waters, or anything else that needs a touch of juice.

Turn extra fruit and berries into jam or syrup. If you’ve got berries and fruit that are about to go off, or maybe the ends of strawberries, don’t toss them! Look up recipes for jam of the specific fruit you’ve got or make an infused syrup. Syrups in particular can be used for cocktails, teas, and desserts for an extra magical kick.

Pickle watermelon rinds. That’s right. Pickle those suckers. They’re so tasty. I’ve seen people make kimchi with watermelon rinds, too, though I’ve never tried it myself!

Save seeds for abundance work. Seeds in general are great for spells geared toward long-term success, new beginnings, and — when there are a lot of them — wealth. Different fruit seeds have properties that tend to correspond with the fruit they come from, so consider their potential purposes before you just toss them! (Note also that some fruit seeds are toxic; these would be suitable for baneful workings.)

Keep cherry stems for love magic. Have you ever done that thing where you tie a cherry stem with your tongue? If I’m eating cherries, I like to save some of the stems for love workings. Tie them into little knots like you might with string while envisioning ensnaring the love you’re looking for. I wouldn’t do this with a particular person in mind; binding someone to you is almost never a good idea. I’ve used it to attract specific qualities in a person of romantic interest: attentiveness, humor, kindness, and so forth.

Use pits to represent blockages, barriers, and problems. I most often use them in baneful workings, typically jammed into a poppet’s mouth or throat to keep someone from talking shit. It could also represent a sense of dread in that way — a pit in the stomach, uneasy and nauseating. But you could also use them in the sense of removal, ritualistically removing the pit or problem from a given situation.

Herb Scraps

Freeze or dry extra fresh herbs. Different drying techniques are ideal for specific herbs. I’d suggest looking up recommended methods before sticking anything in the microwave. If you’d like to freeze your herbs instead, I typically will lay them on a damp paper towel, wrap them up, place them into a freezer-safe bag, and then put them in the freezer. Most herbs will keep for a couple months this way. When you want to use them, pull them out and let them defrost right on the counter.

Make pesto. Again, pesto isn’t just basil! Experiment with tossing in different scraps of herbs to find out what combination you like best.

Reuse steeped tea. Particularly when I use loose herbal tea, I like to lay out the used tea to dry out. It can be burned similarly to loose incense, though the scent may be somewhat weaker than with herbs that are fresher or unused. I find that it’s fine, since I’m sensitive to smells anyways.

Toss extra herbs into your stock freezer bag. Just like with vegetables, extra herbs make welcome additions to a scrap stock pot. I always make a point to save sage, thyme, marjoram, and ginger. You can add just about anything to a stock pot, but be aware of the flavors you’re adding. Not all herbs will match with all dishes.

Protein Scraps

Dry and crush empty egg shells. This is one most witches will know! I use crushed egg shells for protection magic most often: sprinkled at a doorstep mixed with other herbs, added to jars, and spread around spell candles.

Save shrimp, crab, and lobster shells. They’re a goldmine of flavor. Toss them into water with veggies and herbs, and you’ve got a delicious, easy shellfish stock. Use it to make fishy soups and chowders that much richer.

Don’t discard roasted chicken remains. Use them for stock, just like the shells. I like to get rotisserie chickens on occasion since they’re ready-made and very tasty. Once all the meat has been stripped off the bones, simmer the entire carcass with — you guessed it — veggies and herbs for a tasty chicken stock.

Reuse bacon grease for frying. After cooking bacon, don’t throw away the grease right away. Melt it over low heat, strain the bits of bacon out, and pour it into a jar to put in the fridge. You can use it to fry all sorts of things, but my favorite thing is brussels sprouts. They pick up the delicious, salty, bacony flavor from all that rendered bacon fat. So good.

Other Scraps

Use stale bread for croutons or bread crumbs. When I reach the stale end of a loaf of bread, as long as it isn’t moldy, I like to tear it into pieces and toss it into the oven for a little while. Let it cool and then pulse it in a food processor, and I’ve got delicious bread crumbs! Or, cut it a little more neatly, toss it in oil and seasonings, and then bake, and now I’ve got homemade croutons for salads. You can really hone your herbs for both of these, tuning them to be perfect for whatever spell needs you have.

Small amounts of leftover sugar. I don’t know why, but I always end up with a tiny amount of white and brown sugar in the containers. This can be used in teas, of course, but I like to offer it up to spirits. In particular, my ancestors tend to appreciate a spoonful of brown sugar stirred into a small, warmed cup of milk. You can also look up mug cake or single-serving cookie recipes; often, they’re cooked in the microwave, and they only need a little sugar to make!

Keep vanilla bean pods. Vanilla is fucking expensive. When I have a little extra and want to really splurge for a special occasion, I’ll get a couple pods. And because they’re so expensive, I hate wasting any part of them. They’re good for love magic, sure, but you can also toss the spent pods in a jar full of sugar to make vanilla-infused sugar. I’ll often use the pods to make infused milks, too; warm the milk over low heat, add the pods, and let it steep like tea. It goes great in teas and desserts. For a nice self-love spell, sometimes I’ll melt chocolate into the vanilla milk and make hot cocoa!

Save the rinds from Parmesan and Pecorino Romano cheese. You might not be able to just bite into these, but they’re fabulous additions to a stock pot. They add a rich, umami depth to the flavors. I also like to throw these into pots of tomato sauce to add even more flavor to the sauce.

Used coffee is still coffee. After I make a pot of coffee, I’ll sometimes save the grounds by letting them dry back out. I wouldn’t make another cup of coffee with them, since all the flavor’s gone, but they’ll still have attributes of energy generation and smell great. I like to pack used grounds into sachets to hang in places where I want to encourage more energy and focus, replaced every few days or so. Coffee grounds also have high amounts of nitrogen in them, which can help plants thrive; just be careful about pH values in the soil! You don’t want to hurt your plants with too much acidity.

Final Thoughts

I hope you found these tips helpful! There are a ton more ways to save and reuse kitchen scraps that would otherwise go to waste. Sometimes, tossing stuff into the compost or trash can’t be avoided. But I’ve found that being aware of the possibilities can help diminish the amount that gets wasted.

If you have questions or other suggestions for reusing kitchen scraps, feel free to drop them in my inbox, reblogs, or replies. And if you did enjoy this post, consider tossing a couple dollars in my tip jar! Supporters get early and sometimes exclusive access to my work, and monthly members get bonuses like commission discounts and extras. (:

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

It's a concrete action that doesn't involve picking up a phone!

It's not just removing the 'x' gender marker, it would also change the forms to ask for sex assigned at birth. If you scroll down the pages it details the proposed changes. Here are those links:

Passport Application Comment Form

Passport Renewal Comment Form

Name Change Comment Form

Just click the green "submit a public comment" button. Here's also a link to a reddit post that includes those links and some discussion of how to best phrase your comments. Deadline is March 17th.

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

Katherine May, from Wintering: How I learned to Flourish when Life became Frozen 

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

pick your poison LMAOOO

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

so fuck biddy tarot lol

if you're "holding space" for nazis, you're not holding space for anyone else.

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

the secret to life is always having something to look forward to

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

Alright tell me in the tags, what’s Your Poem? That poem you heard once and it has dwelt within you ever since?

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them. 

Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker and she took one look at it and said “Oh yeah sure that’s a leather burnisher, you use it to close the pores of leather and work oil into the hide to make it waterproof. Mine looks just the same.” 

“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”

“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”

It’s just. 

50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job. 

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

“I am not a woman, but the light that falls on this gate, on this ground. I am the seasons, I think sometimes, January, May, November; the mud, the mist, the dawn.”

— Virginia Woolf, The Waves

[crushedrosewitchcraft]

Hi please ignore this ask and save it for a day when you’re in an emotional space to discuss it. I would wait and send it another time but I know I would forget 💚

How do you navigate being a nonbinary pagan when so many of the sources reinforce a gender binary? Between divine masculine/feminine and different crystals and herbs being assigned masculine or feminine I’ve been struggling with negative feelings surrounding being left out of the set standards and I was wondering if you have any advice!

I have both a funny answer and a serious answer for this.

The serious answer is that I grit my teeth and get through it for whatever scraps of information I can peel with a knife from the body of the text. Every book (or nearly all of them) has something to learn from, even if the work on the whole is garbage. Sometimes you must excise the useful bits and store them somewhere safer, somewhere where they can make sense on their own and develop a clearer meaning when put in the context of your practice. And the thing about carving out the information - whether that be from transcribing, actual cutting and pasting, or something else - is that you can alter the language to be clearer. You can remove the male/female connotations from active/passive. You can add more genders or feelings or remove them entirely. You can say "No, actually, this is not what we're doing here," and then proceed to not do it.

My particular brand of being nonbinary is that of being agender. I joke that I'm "none gender with left boy", but ultimately I have no particular gendered feelings about or in relation to myself. This means that, most of the time, I see nothing in relation to myself, because the type of nonbinary experiences focused on tend to lean more towards genderfluidity or being both man-and-woman-as-one (not to be confused with intersexed folks, that's something else). This is not a bad thing! I am glad that these experiences are being talked about! But with the exception of when I open my big mouth, I don't see a lot that I relate to.

We do get left out. That's part of the problem. And even when others try to include us, well... *glances at some of the queer witchcraft books I own* it doesn't always work out well outside of very particular paths. What I do, and what you are finding you have to do, is crack open the bones and force our way in regardless of whether we are meant to be there or not. Break a window and slip into the abandoned mall, raise a knife and bring it down in the flesh, take off running into the grass and yell at the top of your lungs - no matter how you do it, make room for yourself despite others not wanting you there. We're here, and they can't ignore it.

The funny answer is that I make a game out of getting mad at the lack of feminism in occult texts by men and the borderline-tradwife bullshit in Llewellyn-published witchcraft texts by women.

I don't know if any of this helped, but I hope it gave you something to chew on.

~Jasper