Helena Garcia - The Witch-Crafting Handbook: Magical Projects and Recipes for You and Your Home

To my grandmother, the original Flora thank you for your love and dedication.

And to my daughter Flora, my little witch in training.

Cooking note: The recipes in this book were tested in a fan-assisted [convection] oven. If your oven is not fan-assisted, raise the Celsius temperatures given throughout by 20C.

The Fahrenheit temperatures in the book are for regular (non-fan) ovens.

Witches arent they the most fascinating creatures? Whether real or not, witches have always been and still remain a mystery full of ambiguity.

As a child I always chose to play the role of the witch, the villain of the story the most fun character in the play. When I looked into the role of witches, I often felt they were misunderstood. Why were they so feared, I wondered? They seemed like self-sufficient people, deeply connected to nature, knowledgeable and creative yet if you crossed them, they would make you suffer. Well, I sure could relate to that.

Looking back now, I can see that my paternal grandmother had such a significant influence on my upbringing. She would have been described as a kitchen witch if that had been a recognised term back then being inventive in the kitchen, using a combination of homegrown and foraged ingredients, not just for cooking but for other purposes like cleaning, medicine, cosmetics. And keeping an array of furry friends. All I aspired to in life!

Now, I find myself drawn back to the passions of my childhood and eager to share them with those of you who, like me, favoured an afternoon picking twigs and turning them into magic wands.

This witch-crafting handbook is a pretty accurate representation of everything I love to make. I truly believe that those who are crafty in the kitchen can transfer their creative skills to other areas. Fashion and interiors have been a life-long passion for me; the kitchen, however, remains the most important room in the house. Its where true magic is made and make no mistake, transforming simple ingredients into a wholesome meal is a love enchantment.

I use the term witch-crafting to refer to the art of making your own spooky fashion accessories, home decorations, potions and concoctions. Connecting history and folklore to the items we craft gives them a deeper meaning. When possible, introducing a touch of nature also adds significance.

I invite and encourage you to look deeper into tradition; more often than not, simple practices of everyday life will have their roots in some sort of fear of witches or the devil. Its absurd and fascinating in equal measure, yet ancient practices are not to be dismissed, as theres wisdom to be rediscovered.

My main objective, however, will always be to inspire and tempt you to the dark side. It is simply more fun! As the old saying goes: go to Heaven for the climate and Hell for the company.

Theres a lot to be learned from ancient knowledge of medicinal plants, remedies and concoctions. I once read that a thousand-year-old recipe for an eye salve found in an old Anglo-Saxon medical manuscript killed MRSA, when tested in a laboratory, faster than any modern antibiotic. The recipe called for onion, garlic, wine and cows bile to be mashed together and kept in a bronze vessel for nine days and nine nights. Compared to modern medicine this probably sounds like Hocus Pocus, but to me it sounds like something my grandmother would swear by.

My siblings and I spent the summer holidays during our school years with our grandmother in northern Spain. Her house, an old village cottage with exposed beams and wrought-iron stoves, has been in the family for generations and it is very much unchanged from when it was first built in the early 1800s. She grew her own vegetables and kept pigs and chickens. I still remember being sent to the local farm with a metal churn to pick up milk from cows that had just been milked that very morning. Then she would boil it to pasteurise it. I long for those simpler days. Bike rides, mushroom picking and preparing hearty meals with her in the kitchen once, though, hundreds of ants walked into the pot and she let us eat the stew like nothing had happened. We thought they were little burnt bits; she thought it was added protein.

My love of cooking and old-fashioned homemaking can easily be traced back to her. She made all her own clothes and the clothes for her children, and she embroidered, crocheted and had homemade beauty treatments, recipes and useful household suggestions some that definitely worked and others that were slightly more dubious. This little section of the book is based on her tales and the tales of other resourceful wise witches.

As a remedy for a burn, use the slime of a snail