Birth of Confucius

First holiday of October is Confucius' birthday.  Confucianism is a way of life taught by Confucius in the 6th–5th century BC. Sometimes viewed as a philosophy, sometimes as a religion, Confucianism is perhaps best understood as an all-encompassing humanism.  Confucianism has been followed by the Chinese for more than two millennia. It has deeply influenced spiritual and political life in China; its influence has also extended to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.

Confucius statue.

Confucius stressed integrity and civility, and founded a tradition of erudition in areas of art, literature, music, history, and more.  Confucianism is a system of social and political morality. Whether it is a religion depends on what religion means to you. Confucianism stressed honoring one's ancestors  and it advocated a form of the Golden Rule.  

In China there are celebrations for Confucius's birthday.  If you would like more detailed information on the ceremony for Confucius's birthday you can find it here.  There are 37 choreographed components of the ceremony, so to sum it up- there is a 60 minute ceremony done at various temples throughout China that involves welcoming the spirit of Confucius into the temple and celebrating him, offering a "sacrifice", and recognizing Confucius as the "first" teacher.  The ceremony ends with the gates closing and spectators leaving the temple to observe a feast which features "wisdom cake" which is said to bring special luck with studies.

The boys and I looked up some Confucius quotes.  We had to wade through some false "Confucius say..." sites but we found some that seemed legit.  Some of our favorites that we found here were: 

" He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger."

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."

"Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without."

For our craft we wrote each of the boys names in Chinese.  The site where you can see how to write your name can be found here.  The boys got a kick out of seeing how their names looked in Chinese.  They also wanted their favorite stuffed toy to have his name written in Chinese as well.

Copying down his name in Chinese.

My oldest's name.

We had to do Kirby's too.

My Middle child made me write his.

 I searched all over for a recipe for the rice "wisdom cake" and could not find it.  I decided I would just make a Chinese sponge cake and I found this recipe:

Ingredients we used: 

The ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1 cup water
• 8 eggs (separated) Yep 8 eggs- I never made a cake with so many eggs before- but trust me its yummy!
• 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract (or almond or coconut)

Method:

1. Heat water and dissolve sugar. Let cool. This was a wonderful science experiment about how the sugar dissolves in the water.  
2. Mix yolk into sugar water.
3. Slowly add flour into the mixture.
4. Blend in oil and extract.
5. In a large bowl, beat egg whites until peaks are stiff.  This was the other highlight of baking this cake.  The boys couldn't believe that this is what happens if you whip up egg whites.  They wanted to just eat it up right then.  But 8 egg whites did not seem like a good snack idea to me. 
6. Fold batter from above into egg whites.
7. Pour combined batter into an UNGREASED aluminum cake pan- we had some issues with the cake sticking to the bottom, so I would maybe throw down a cutout circle of parchment paper on the bottom of the pan next time.
8. Bake at 350 degrees for 45-60 minutes until done (when toothpick comes out clean).
9. Turn cake upside down and let cool.  This is where my cake got a little stuck, so wasn't as pretty as I hoped but still quite tasty.

Posing with all the egg shells

If you looked at the original recipe you may notice we did not use cream of tartar.  We didn't have any so I just skipped it and it seemed to turn out fine.

Mixing the sugar and yolk.

Mixing the whites and yolk mixtures.

One of the cakes- fresh from the oven. 

I then decided if we were doing this cake we need to do the whole thing so I added the custard filling and whipped cream frosting.  We found the recipe for that here. 

My sons both decided they were done baking after the cake was done.  So for the best directions I suggest going to the site.  Also I had frosting issues.  We are currently living in Germany and I thought I could tell what whipping cream was- unfortunately for me I was wrong-3 times.  So fourth time was a charm and the cake was finished and got good reviews.

Finished product. Our Chinese sponge cake.

Happy Birthday Confucius!  

Michaelmas or Feast of Michael and All Angels

The final September holiday is the Feast of St Michael and All Angels or Michaelmas and is a Christian holiday. It is not a major holiday and I wasn't really aware of it when I was growing up.   This holiday falls on September 29th and since it falls near the equinox is associated with autumn and the days getting shorter.

The holiday celebrates the Archangel Michael from the Bible who is honored for defeating Lucifer in the war in heaven.  Michael is believed to have hurled Lucifer from heaven for disobeying the Father’s plan. The earthly embodiment is often seen as a knight with a sword standing over the corpse of a dragon. The knight being Michael and of course the dragon being Lucifer. This festival comes just after the autumn equinox as the nights are growing longer and darkness seems to over come us more quickly than it did just a few weeks ago. It is the power of Michael to bring light in dark times, to remind followers of Christ and to help believers keep their faith that tomorrow will come, it will be fresh, it will be a new start. (This excerpt was adapted from here)

The Waldorf schools had so many ideas and so much information for teaching children about Michaelmas if you are interested in exploring this holiday even more I highly recommend checking out a Waldorf school site.  There were many different dragon crafts, poems, and plays to explain the holiday.

The Eastern Orthodox Churches do not observe Michaelmas and the Greek Orthodox honor the archangels on November 8th instead.

For the craft for Michaelmas we made swords out of cardboard.  I drew some sword shapes on an old piece of cardboard we had lying around.  Then took out some aluminum foil and the boys wrapped up the blades so they would be silver.   For finishing touches I let them decorate the rest with roll on paint, washi tape, and glitter glue.  I decorated the baby's sword for him- yeah that's right I said the baby's sword, I mean he needs to fend off his older brothers somehow or else they would make him be the dragon...

Free hand drawing of swords and cut out.

Aluminum wrapping the blade

Decorating is serious business.

Posing with swords.

Action shot. 

There seemed to be several foods associated with Michaelmas including the usual fall harvest foods, as well as goose, and blackberries.  According to an old Irish folk tale, blackberries were supposed to have been harvested and used up by this date, because when Satan was kicked out of Heaven, he landed in a blackberry patch -- and returns each year to curse and spit on the fruits of the plant he landed on, rendering them inedible thereafter.  So we decided to make blackberry crumble. You can find the recipe we worked from here.

For the filling

• 3 large baking apples-should be a little tart (there are 4 in the picture because whenever I am preparing a meal the kids want some of it right away, so one apple was eaten during the chopping)
• 2 1/2 tbsp of butter
• 12 oz blackberries
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 pinch of cinnamon and a  pinch of ground cloves
• about 1/4 cup water

For the crumble

• 1/2 cup of diced refridgerated butter
• 1 cup of flour
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1 sprinkling of brown sugar
• 1 confectioners' sugar (to dust)

Method

1. Peel, core and dice the apples into pieces around ½-inch cubes.
   
2. Now add the water to a saucepan, add butter and the heat until melted; then add the apple chunks and gently saute, add cloves, sugar and the pinch of cinnamon, continuing stirring until apples are soft but not too soft, add the blackberries to the apples and stir very gently.
3. Remove from heat after about three minutes. 
4.  Dice refridgerated butter into cubes about ¼-inch in size.
5. To make the topping, thoroughly mix the flour and sugar, then place the chilled-diced butter into the mix, then using a knife or we used a potato masher, cut/or mash the butter into the mixture until very crumbly. The crumble needs to very fine, similar to breadcrumbs.  The recipe we used said to spoon the fruit into a shallow round or oval oven-proof dish.  We used individual ramekins.
6. Sprinkle crumble mixture over the top of fruit until fruit is covered. Dust over with a very little amount of brown sugar. Place in preheated oven (We did about 350F) and cook on centre shelf for 15-30 minutes or until the crumble is a light golden brown.
7. Dust off the top with confectioners' sugar. Serve with fresh dairy cream or creamy custard.

Cooking the fruit

Potato masher used to achieve our crumble

Berries in bowls.

Eating the leftover crumb topping

Finished single serving of crumble.

Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah

The final Jewish holidays to celebrate in September are Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah.  In Israel and among liberal Jews these two holidays are combined into one holiday on the day after the end of Sukkot.  For more traditional Jews these two holidays are observed separately on two consecutive days.  Shemini Atzeret means the “Eighth Day of Assembly,” while Simchat Torah means “Rejoicing in Torah” or "rejoicing in law."  Simchat Torah seemed the more prominent of the two. This holiday is for celebrating the Torah (which is the Religious text of Judaism) and is a day for all members of the temple to come in contact with and celebrate the Torah and affirm the centrality of Torah in their lives.

 In many synagogues on Simchat Torah, each member of the congregation is called to the Torah for an aliyah (going up, which refers to the honor of ascending the bimah to recite the blessing before and after the Torah is read). Other synagogues may call all children who have not yet reached the age of bar or bat mitzvah to the Torah. Before the entire congregation the children receive a special blessing from the rabbi. 

During these holidays many Jewish families will still take their meals in the Sukkah (more information on Sukkot can be found here)  In addition to celebrating the Torah this festival is also a time for gathering and celebrating the harvest.  

I talked to the boys about Judaism again- there are a lot of Jewish holidays in September!  This time I told them the holiday was to celebrate the holy book that contains all the important information for the religion.  I said it has all the important stories, laws, and customs explained.  For our craft we made our own "Torahs"

Supplies:  Tape, popsicle sticks, construction paper.

We used tape, popsicle sticks and construction paper.  My Middle son helped tape the ends and ran away.  So I rolled his up and put a secret message in it.  Then my older son who said he didn't want to do the craft was intrigued.   So I showed him the secret message and he asked why it looked that way.  I explained this is kind of what the Torah looks like in a Synagogue.   He opened the "Torah"  and decided that his would be a treasure map.  So he enthusiastically made his into a treasure map.

Taping the sticks to the paper.

Holding our "torah"

Turning his into a treasure map.

For our recipe we made "stuffed cigars."  There were many recipes for foods that resembled the torah but this one sounded delicious to me.  They had me at feta.  My middle child loves all food so feta was great for him too.  However my oldest is the picky one of our family so I made him some with cheddar instead of feta and they were pretty decent too.  However some of the cheddar "cigars" exploded while baking.  We had extra phyllo dough so I did a quick dessert of melted butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon and wrapped those up and the boys went crazy for those.

We used the recipe from here.

Our dough casing

8-10 sheets phyllo (filo) dough, about ½ of a 16-oz. package

Potato-feta filling

• 3 medium potatoes, peeled or just scrubbed, and cut into ½-inch cubes 
• 1 Tablespoon butter, olive oil, or margarine 
• 2 large cloves garlic, minced 
• 1/3 cup milk 
• 1 egg, beaten 
• 3 oz. feta cheese (about ½ cup), crumbled 
• Pinch nutmeg 
• Salt to taste 
• ½ stick butter or margarine, melted 

Cheddar potato filling:

• 3 medium potatoes, peeled or just scrubbed, and cut into ½-inch cubes 
• 1 Tablespoon butter, olive oil, or margarine 
• 2 large cloves garlic, minced 
• 1/3 cup milk 
• 1 egg, beaten 
• 3 oz. feta cheese (about ½ cup), crumbled 
• Pinch nutmeg 
• Salt to taste 
• ½ stick butter or margarine, melted

Cinnamon sugar filling: 

• Melted about 2 Tablespoon butter
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• sprinkle of cinnamon

METHOD: 

We made the cigars by first peeling then boiling the potatoes for about 20 minutes. 

After they were soft I removed the potatoes. 

In two different small pots I heated oil and then added crushed garlic cloves.  Immediately after I added the potatoes and cheese and mashed together.  While mashing I added the milk, egg, nutmeg, and salt. 

My oldest has lately been extra silly whenever the camera comes out.  Here he is spreading butter on the dough.

After cooking we got to work by "painting" oil onto the phyllo.  Be sure to cover the phyllo dough that you are not working with because it dries up really fast.  The boys both saturated their sheets and layered them with two layers.  Then we added the filling and rolled up the "cigars" and folded the ends under and placed them on a parchment lined baking sheet.  We then did an egg white wash over the tops of each "cigar"   We cooked the "stuffed cigars" for about 20 min at 350F.  

Middle rolling the "cigars"

I then made the desserts while the boys were off playing.  I melted the butter and stirred in the sugar and cinnamon.  Then I went to work by "painting" the sheets with another dish of melted butter and layered two sheets of phyllo and put the mixture in and rolled them up and topped with an egg white wash- same as the cheesy filled ones.  These only cooked for 8 or 10 min and they were done.  These also exploded a little but that was not a problem for the boys they ate them up anyway.

 

Plate full of cheese "cigars"

Mabon

On September 21st the Autumn equinox will be celebrated in the Northern hemisphere with the Wiccan or Pagan holiday of Mabon (in the Southern hemisphere it is the holiday Ostara).  Since we are in the Northern hemisphere we focused on Mabon.  Mabon is the mid-harvest festival when Pagans and Wiccans honor the changing season and celebrate the second harvest.  This holiday is about giving thanks for crops and other blessings.  This is also a holiday about the balance between light and dark.  Mabon falls on a day when there are equal amounts of day and night and is about celebrating the earth but also accepting that the cold is coming and while there is an abundance of food from the crops they are about to turn brown and dormant.  The warmth of the summer is ending and cold lies ahead.

There are several blessings that may be performed at this time.  Most of them have to do with giving thanks.  There are some Wiccans that pay their respects to the "Dark Mother" or the Crone goddess.  The Crone is death and she controls the natural life cycle. 

This was a fun one to do with the boys.  First of all the whole idea of "real witches" was exciting albeit a bit confusing concept for them.  I assured them that Wiccan witches do not turn children into mice like in the "The Witches"  which we have just recently finished reading.   Once we got over that, it was an easy holiday to explain.  It was also a good time to discuss that the days will be getting shorter as we move towards winter. It was also fun because this holiday celebrates with fall foods and we were happy to warm up some cider to sip on while making our "God's eye."  It was also nice to have another holiday focusing on being thankful for what we have.

The mythology of Demeter and Persephone came up on a few sites while I was researching.  A good recap for those of you who may not be familiar with the story or have forgotten can read about it here.  I read this to the boys because it went with the holiday and I've always been a fan of mythology.

As I mentioned above, for our craft we decided to make a "God's eye."   The original source for the craft can be found here.

Thin colored yarn in Autumn colors

For each "God's eye" you will need two sticks of equal length.  We used popsicle sticks but you can use anything.  The website we found the craft on suggested cinnamon sticks or regular sticks. 

We had 8 different colors of yarn to wrap around the sticks.  The middle color I just kind of wrapped with no real plan except covering the stick.  So I went around the sticks and over the middle. 

When it came time for the next color I was more methodical.  I wrapped the yarn around one of the sticks and then moved diagonal to the nearest clockwise stick.  Did a full wrap around that stick and move diagonally onto the next stick- around and around until I achieved the look I liked and then changed to a new color. 

Two equal length sticks with the middle starting to be wrapped

My 4 year old's wrapping technique

One and a half of the finished products.

My oldest's pose- an eye over an eye.

Our food for Mabon was apple cake.

The recipe we were inspired by can be found here 

Our ingredients for apple cake.

We used:

• 6 apples (I know I only had four above but we snagged two more from the refridgerator)
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 5 tablespoons sugar
• 1 1/2 cups flour, sifted
• 1 1/4 almond flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 1 teaspoons vanilla
• 4 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a bundt pan or tube pan.  Peel, core and chop apples into chunks. Toss with cinnamon and sugar and set aside.

Mixing the apples

Stir together flour, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together oil, orange juice, sugar and vanilla. Mix wet ingredients into the dry ones, then add eggs, one at a time. Scrape down the bowl to ensure all ingredients are incorporated.

Sometimes baby's need to help too.

Pour half of batter into prepared pan. Spread half of apples over it. Pour the remaining batter over the apples and arrange the remaining apples on top. Bake for about 1 1/2 hours, or until a tester comes out clean. 

Pouring apples into the pan

If you clicked on the link that sends you to smittenkitchen.com you see that we switched about half our flour to almond flour-this is pretty much an automatic substitution whenever I bake anything- I like the protein and how moist it makes everything.  If you have a nut allergy just use regular all purpose flour.  I also switched one of the cups of sugar to brown sugar because I'm kind of a brown sugar addict and it was super yummy!

Finished apple cake stuck in the pan.

I had to leave for "back to school night" so final baking was up to my husband.  He and the boys watched the cake and it baked great.  However, he couldn't get it out of the pan.  I told him to snap a pick before it was eaten.  So hopefully you can remove yours from the pan and it will look as good as it tastes.  We devoured the cake in a 24 hour period.  Even my oldest and husband, who often complain about fruit in dessert, ate it in record time and had seconds!  My husband even skipped his ritual of evening ice cream for this cake.  We will be making it again and I hope you do too! 

If you choose to celebrate Mabon, give thanks for the things you have, and take time to reflect on or find balance within your own life.