Blood Bread

Blood Bread, I have heard or known (won’t say which), is sometimes served with a meat “sacrifice” — so that to mean, your best cut of beef/steak, your best bird, your best pork cut, also of course, your best lamb cut. I would suggest I’ve seen this with the best of filet mignon. And the table is quite done up. (But seriously, I forget the rest of the service. I think I eat too much. Or have in the past.) Activities at this table, or just before the table, could be dedicated solemnities, of course, for those we know who have passed, or else, for spiritual matters and matter of heavy conscience. Or also to send some glory into the spiritual world of beasts.

Blood Bread

Quintessentially autumnal: butternut squash jam – Juls’ Kitchen

So you also know and can be sure, that when Halloween gift giving comes around — oh sometime between now and the end of the Day of the Dead celebrations to altars we don’t even see — jams are a perfect gift! I would so love to see this on my Halloween card table. (I’ll bet nobody knows about the traditional gift-giving Halloween card table. Well! It doesn’t have to be an actual card table. It can just be a table of any kind that is set aside for the organization of gifting — you can set it up any way you want you know. It represents an altar … you know, for all the Hallowed … spirits.)

Just getting into the spirit.

Quintessentially autumnal: butternut squash jam – Juls’ Kitchen

10 Unexpected Things to Make with Jam : Food Network | Recipes, Dinners and Easy Meal Ideas | Food Network

10 Unexpected Things to Make with Jam : Food Network

How To Make a Single Jar of Fruit Jam | Kitchn

You see? There’s simply no reason why you can’t get your traditional jam making done on Halloween. (I don’t think that it’s actually a tradition. But it should be.) And this recipe proves there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t get your traditional jam making done on Halloween!

How To Make a Single Jar of Fruit Jam | Kitchn

Best Mixed Berry Jam Recipe – How to Make Homemade Jam – GoodHousekeeping.com

17 Small-Batch Jam Recipes

I know I know. This is the week that everyone with big important kitchens and pantries take time off to make their best jams for the rest of the year!

Tomato Jam

17 Small-Batch Jam Recipes

Olive Oil Visiting Cake

Mashed Potato Patties with Cheese and Onion – XO&So

So! You actually thought you were getting a lot of sweets and candy for Halloween? You actually thought you were getting chocolates and candy for Halloween? You actually thought you were bringing home a sack of candy for Halloween? Well, you didn’t. You brought home a sack of potatoes and a red wagon filled with vegetables. You actually got a lot of potatoes and onions and green beans and canned vegetables and beans of all kinds and dried soups and sacks and sacks of green things that will make you never want to see green again! And no chocolate — except a little bit of baker’s chocolate you can’t even enjoy! And flour and sugar that will make your teeth rot! And rotten cheese — I mean they call it curds!

Happy Halloween!

Mashed Potato Patties with Cheese and Onion – XO&So

Pumpkin in Syrup – A Sweet Offering for the Day of the Dead

My Slice of Mexico

In pre-Hispanic times, the Mexica commemorated the dead during their summer months around July and August; the offerings included elements of Nature, such as fire, flowers, and part of the harvest, which in those regions of Central and Southern Mexico consisted of chili (today known around the world as: chiles, chilli, capsicum, paprika, peppers, guindilla, etc.) as well as corn, beans and squash (the well-known “three sisters” crops, all native to the Americas). Mictēcacihuātl, also known as “The Lady of the Dead”, was the female deity of the Mexica pantheon dedicated to guard the bones of the deceased in the underworld; she was said to come to the dimension of the living during this time. With the arrival of the Catholic church not long after the Spanish conquest, the angst provoked by these ancient rituals was placated with great success – during the native population’s conversion process – when combined…

View original post 779 more words

Pan de Yema – A Day of the Dead Bread from Oaxaca

My Slice of Mexico

In my previous post, I re-published a recipe from last year for a Day of the Dead bread, popular in Mexico City and in contemporary bakeries around the country, citing conflicting versions of how and when this bread was created. This year, I am making a bread from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, which is really baked all year round, but decorated in a very special way for the Day of the Dead (observed on November 2.) All wheat-based bread in Mexico has a clear Spanish or French influence, and this particular one can be traced to Spanish recipes, which some families have been using in Oaxaca for several generations. Pan de yema translates as “yolk bread”, an apt name since a batch contains several eggs and a few extra yolks, giving them their characteristic flaky texture and slightly yellow tone.