Samhain Pumpkin Pie – Pastai Pwmpen Nos Calan Gaeaf – Summers End – Organic Earth Celebration
……and so here it is, Summers End and Sauin is done, we all survived the gwrachod, Hwch Ddu Gwta and the ladi wen heb ddim pen and all other manner of Y Tylwyth Teg to wake on todays morn again and so here we are……
Harvest’s are all done and though there is still food in the ground we will start winding it down as we go through fall in to Winter. The days are long and the fire is getting stoked. I heard today that the 1st of November is also Global Vegan day, so I logged on to see how they define that in the movement these days and this is what they have to say…
World Vegan Day is celebrated every year on November 1. World Vegan Day, aimed at spreading awareness among people about the advantages of a vegan diet on health and well-being, is celebrated every year on November 1. On this day, vegan organizations promote the environmental and health impacts of the vegan diet.
LINK: https://vegan-day.org/en/
Well I am all in favour of spreading awareness about veganism as a ethical concern, i.e. so that mammals, sea life and crustaceans, insects etc don’t get the chop shop or enslavement on an ethical vegan watch, though all this hyperbole about promoting environmental and health impacts may well be out of step with an RBE ethical Vegan lifestyle, for most of what the “internet” calls vegan is really just monocropping into corporate plant based options “suitable for vegans”, suitable for anyone who doesn’t want other beings to be exploited, but yea suitable for vegans…
Humans that eat animals are not bothered about mold resistant soya crop taking on 5 full round up treatments per cycle when it comes to fattening cows, pigs and the like when it is used as animal feed (which is every meal) in the concentration camps, until of course, you says the word “vegan”, then they are all over it like that just got a PhD in ethics and nutrition..lol
They may well be all over it, but they do nothing in response to it,. so they don’t count. Walk the walk, don’t talk the talk.. everyone’s got lots to say.. its just white noise if it improves nothing..
so on the subject of people having a lot to say, let me carry on, so promoting a monocrop corporate plant based diet cannot really be called healthy or good for environmental pressures, but it does stop the animal holocaust and the consumer new nazi that condemns other species from birth, a life of suffering up to a horrific death in the factory faming camps… perhaps they should just say that, veganism is about not hurting animals, not about pea protein and deforestation drops, because its really the only reason , to basically NOT destroy a mother and thier babies life…
Anyway all that aside,. this year the Global Vegan movement says lets celebrate by baking a pie, something to do with “Holland Pies, a 169 year old pie maker going back further than Sweeny Todd, celebrating world vegan day for the first time”..
Well that’s all nice but what’s’ in everyone’s pies ?
Who Knows ? Khubi Kushi Khabi Gaum….What’s important here is what’s in OUR pie..
Well over here the big event lined up with my Sauin Pumpkin Pie baking day and seeing as it’s a pretty clean pie with some key organic power food ingredients,. I thought to share it step by step to get you folk thinking about getting as many of your ingredients out of the ground rather than off the checkout line..
Not all.. because some you simply can’t really do much with, pastry and flour etc, unless you are a grower and a miller…. the thing is,. its the season for coughs and sneezes, and this recipe shores you up against all that as we go into fall and winter. So here it is.. So what’s in our pie then?
Stuff from the ground: A couple of Pumpkin guts, seed sorted and chopped up, a bowl of bug free nettles, a snail a grub and a load of nettle mites got painstakingly brushed off, some swiss chard
(the seeds you can either dry and keep for replanting, or parboil and then roast in pink salt as snacks)
Stuff from the free food network: (I will do a post at some point about the free food network, donated, recycled, gifted, corporate waste) The spice rack – Tumeric, Madras curry powder, some vegetable gravy granules, black pepper and garlic, A large battered tin of Kidney Beans and a tin of tomato and basil soup
Stuff we bought using that archaic stuff called Money: Himilayan Iodine rock salt, yes it got delivered to this country in a diesel powered hauler ship, but then I don’t have much of an issue with Diesel in itself (WHAT !!!) see previous post on plastic waste reclaim fuel before you shit your pants over that. Oh and ready roll pastry from the house of sin itself “Tesco” because i simply ran out of time to go to the old watermill in Welyn Garden City and pick up organic milled flour to make it myself, though I do recommend looking for a local organic mill yourself if you have time for all that lovely artisan type of stuff.
Enough talk. Time to cook
The easiest way to follow a recipe really comes down to pictures , lots of pictures , step by step, a case of you simply do what i do and you get what i get..
Felly gadewch i ni ddechrau. Mae’r Her ymlaen! Rydyn ni i gyd yn hoffi pasteiod, felly gadewch i ni ddechrau! In the catch phrase of dearly loved and lost FISHINABOX collective member Zainab Sheikh (RIP 13/11/2016) – “Let’s do it yeah !”
Samhain Pumpkin Pie – Pastai Pwmpen Nos Calan Gaeaf
Bit of oil in the pan and cook down your garden gathered organics and spices firstly. People like less salt / more salt, less curry / more curry,, etc etc well you spice to preferred taste and then you will all be happy on making the best pie for you.
Use gloves for the nettles, a nettle sting is actually pretty good for you as it regulates your histamines which means a sting a day keeps all hay fever away, but its miserable when preparing nettles , so yea wear some gloves….
So pan is on, stir stir , get it all on the heat, then add your free food / food bank / corporate waste / whatever bits to the mix.
We try to NOT pay for food, because in an RBE the goal is for all food to be free, along with everything else, and any way you can avoid supporting corporate retail profit margins is a step in the right direction.
So if you kept it hot until the Pumpkin’s soft then next its time to drain it. You need to get as much liquid out of the mix before it goes into the pie pastry or it is water weight. Its good to stir and strain it until it stops dripping as this makes an AMAZING super nutritious Pumpkin Soup 🙂
So you have your Pumpkin Soup, You have your seeds too and now you have your Pumpkin Pie filling
Feeling lazy ?
You can use the Tesco ready roll (vegan) pastry or if you have another 5 minutes to spare, then just make your own pastry and save a little in your purse. The pastry is simply plain flour, vegan margarine (a wooden spoons worth), a bit of vegetable oil and salt.
Mix it , kneed it, then roll it out with a rolling pin. Pictures below show both home made pastry and ready roll, but the result is the same. Either way when pastry is ready, roll it out , stuff it and wrap it for the oven.
You can decorate the pastry in all sorts of ways, using a flat fork leaves a good design at times. I didn’t bother to do anything except pinch the tops. Some pies be fancy, and some be just pies see…
paint the tops with a bit of plant milk then its ready.
Pop it in the oven gas mark 5, have a cup of tea. have another one, read a book maybe write a letter, mother things are getting better, but don’t forget to check the pie and when its browned off on the top and seems and you are also browned off from checking it over and over again then take it out and let it cool..
Keep making them until you run out of mixture.
I managed to get three good long full sized pies from my ingredients in batch one and two more in batch two.
and that’s pretty much all there is too it,. let the pies cool , if not eating at home and need them for travel then wrap them in grease proof paper, tie off with a string and good to go anywhere on your journey with you.
One final point on the Welsh Gaelic for Samhain, So the Brittonic branch of the Celtic languages, Samhain is known as the “calends of winter”. The Brittonic lands of Wales (Cymru), Cornwall, and Brittany hold festivals on 31 October similar to the Northern Gaelic (Scotland and Ireland) ones. In Wales it is called Calan Gaeaf (Nos Kalan Gaeaf) , in Cornwall it is Allantide or Kalan Gwav, and in Brittany it is Kalan Goañv.
The nuances of difference between northern and for want of a better term, southern Gaelic, are actually as a result of interventions from watering down pagan celebrations through unforgiving Christian domination and Norman, Frankish, Anglo Saxon and English social pressure to push out the Brittonic cultures as a means of control, as far as, for extended periods of time, banning the use and speech of the Gaelic language in Wales, which has had an effect on how culturally the ceremonies of the pagan wheel have, in part, changed over time in the southern Gealic regions.
Not to worry though.
not to worry,.
Fe godwn ni eto 😉 …….Enjoy the pies
