martinmas

The festival of Martinmas is a favorite of mine. It is a festival that celebrates kindness, sharing, and generosity of spirit. Martin, a 4th century soldier in the Roman army stationed in France, came across a beggar one winter day. Impulsively Martin cut his cloak in two and gave half to the cold man. That night he had a vision of Christ saying that Martin had clothed him in his cloak.

Though Martinmas is traditionally celebrated with a lantern walk, we did not walk around the neighborhood singing, mostly because the boys woke up at 6 am yesterday and were just plain exhausted after our dinner. But we did light the lanterns in their room as I read their bedtime stories.

And before that we all enjoyed a piece of Martinmas gingerbread, a cake shared by all.

to become lanterns

We'll be transforming their paintings into lanterns for Martinmas tomorrow.

Head on over to Erin's blog for some fantastic Waldorf posts.

making applesauce

The slow simmer of applesauce, its color changing from white to yellow to pink. The heady aroma enticing us throughout. An easy preparation, even for little ones. Removing only the stem ends, the soft apples like empire and macintosh are easy to cut using a butter knife.

Uneven chunks which cook down into a soft pulpy mass.

Stirred constantly at first, the heat reduce and simmered until reduced to an easy mash. Run through a food mill, chinois, or in our case a colander with a wooden ladle to mash (the borrowed food mill emitting some strange grease quickly banished to the sink).

And though it took a little longer, the end result still looked and tasted as delicious as always.

These jars are unsweetened for later use in cooking, while another bowl was filled then lightly sweetened with sugar and cinnamon for immediate enjoyment.