Laurel Woodward - Kitchen Witchery: Unlocking the Magick in Everyday Ingredients

Introduction

It starts with knowing and then willing what you know

A kitchen witch is crafty and clever. She sees potential in even the most common ingredient as she applies her very own flavor to this most functional form of magick. Her home is a sacred space, and she plies her craft in the kitchen using everyday items to brew potions, make teas, and cook up tasty treats for those she loves. She is attuned with the tides of the natural world, and she reflects them in seasonal dishes. Her power is in the clearness of her intention, the focus of her energy, and the force of her will as she employs the magickal properties of herbs, spices, vegetables, fruits, roots, and greens to empower her workings. Most of us have a bit of kitchen witch in us.

I embrace kitchen magick in my own nature-centric practice to transform chore into ritual. I may be a busy wife and mother of four, but I have found that when a task is approached mindfully, it shifts from mundane into an intense, meaning-filled moment that makes life magickal. When I integrate mindfulness into my everyday activities, I become engaged, awareness heightens, and I become pointedly conscious of myself right there in that single moment. Perception shifts and suddenly the moment transforms as if I stepped out of time and into another reality in which all sensations are heightened. The light is brighter, the colors richer, time deeper. All that is meaningless falls away until there is only me there in the bubble of that single moment, and as I witness the shift, a delicious lightness shivers across my skin and sinks down into my bones as the moment swells and expands and becomes transformative. It is truly magickal. Whether I am making breakfast, kneading bread, or pulling garden weeds down on my knees, fingers dark with soil, when the task is approached with mindful clarity, it becomes not just a meditation to get the task done, but a ritual to manifest a fully formed act of creation.

This book is a cookbook designed to elevate the way you approach cooking, shifting it from a half-hearted attempt into a powerful, fully conscious action that sets energy in motion to nurture, heal, or compel, to manifest your dreams. It is not tied to any one religion but enriched with the teachings of many. I have included the foundations of spellwork, basic concepts, and examples to help you grasp the techniques and apply them to your practice. For when you approach a task as ritual, it pulls your thoughts from the world and focuses them on the singular moment. It allows you to be there with it, to feel whatever it is that you are feeling. It makes space and expands your horizons, turning what seemed impossible possible.

Chapter 1

Why Food Matters

Not that long ago the act of providing food dominated peoples lives. Each community had to produce their own food. When they did well, their families ate well. When they did poorly, they died. Diets were seasonal. In the spring and summer months, the people ate lots of fresh organic fruits and vegetables. During the colder seasons, they ate meats, nuts, beans, roots, and porridge. Cooking dominated village life. There were no markets, no grocery stores. When a family needed food, they grew it, foraged for it, or hunted it.

Today we have a whole industry telling us what and where to eat. We think its normal to grab a meal at a drive-through and eat it on the go, and when we do shop, we fill our carts with premade products wrapped in glorified packaging proclaiming All Natural and Healthy Choice when most of the things we are selecting are not even classified as food but as foodstuffs that are loaded with sugar and chemicals and hold very little nutritional value.

Unhealthy diets and lack of access to nutritious food are two of the driving factors behind what a new report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems describes as the ballooning costs of health impacts in food systems. Food has changed.