#bloglammas

Summer Crossquarter {Lughnasadh} Fantasy Feast

I have come out of hiding to post this on time!! Have been on the ride of my life outside of tumblr, but still dedicated to fulfilling my self imposed duty this year to upgrade all of my 2016 fantasy feasts. It brings me joy each year seeing people reblog my old feasts especially as those posts did help me to visualize and manifest incredible magical celebrations with friends. However as time goes on my standards unfortunately get higher and my tastes more elaborate so I felt it was time to redo my Summer Crossquarter vision. I hope this post with included recipes below help you get grounded in the summer harvest mood!

Here are the previous feasts this year: Winter Crossquarter,Spring Equinox,Spring Crossquarter,Summer Solstice (And here was Lughnasadh 2016)

In the read more there are the recipe links and additional explanations on personal symbolism and of course the image credits! I also always plan my feasts to be vegan inclusive for those with dietary restrictions but also aim for all the food to be somewhat local which matters in these seasonal feasts since it’s celebrating local nature. Anyway there is something for everyone here.

1: Starters
This time of year marks the pinnacle of summer, when the woodlands are deep and emerald and the fruit starts to ripen. I would ideally imagine a lush summer dinner in a garden celebrating the season’s harvest of summer’s fruits and herbs. The starters here would be a spread of fresh bread and a selection of garden herbs infused with oil and pesto from the summer’s basil. As it’s also the potato harvest, a great addition to the spreads and dips would be fresh fries with herbs and in celebration of the zucchini explosion most face this time of year, a side of fritters will be served.

Crispy Oven Fries with Hummus Recipe
Zucchini Fritters Source (Easiest Vegan Zucchini Fritters)
Olive oil sauces

2: Sides
For each feast I always have 1 choice of bread rolls, yet as Lughnasadh celebrates the abundance of grains and wheat there was too much selection for my Libra self to decide. I guess the main roll of choice would be a bread roll with grains and oats to bring in that symbolism. Another choice would be served also as a starter would be a braided bread roll with summer herbs and pesto. Lastly if there was no time to make your own bread but you wanted to purchase one, I would definitely get an artisanal bread loaf with the wheat decorations. If I was actually skilled with bread making I would maybe create my own with sigils of blessings but my bread skills are no where near this level yet.
Other sides would include roasted potatoes with thyme and heirloom tomato salad as we will see the tomato harvest around this time.

Swirled Garlic Pesto Herbed Bread Recipe
Crispy Rosemary Butter Roasted Potato Recipe
Hierloom Tomato
Seeded Oat Bread Recipe

3: Mains
The main feature dish would be grilled fish with lemon and herb to symbolize success by securing the catch of the day. The plant based option would be ratatouille as it is a colorful festive plate featuring all of the summer vegetables that are in season from the colorful squash to the ripened tomatoes.

Ratatouille Recipe
Roasted Fish

Honorable mention for tablescape:
This beautiful evening garden set up

4: Desserts
This is when the seasonal celebrations start getting very regional. When I was living in NJ the fruits in season were peaches and melons so this celebration was all about peaches for me. Since I have moved to England it’s been mostly about bramble and berries since this is what comes to season this time of year. If you walk anywhere where there’s Bramble in London you will start to see some blackberries and raspberries emerge.
For each sabbat dessert I have a tart of choice, a cake of choice and a special dish. The tart for Summer Crossquarter is a blueberry tart. The cake would be a simple honey angel cake with a hint of lavender. Alternatives would be a zucchini pound cake but there was enough zucchini present this whole feast so I thought to omit it. Lastly the special dessert dish would be a bramble crumble with icecream.

Almond Flour Blueberry Tart Recipe
Bramble Crumble
Honey Pound Cake

Honorable Mentions:
Peach Cobbler (if you are in an area where Peach is the local fruit)
Grilled Peaches
Zucchini Loaf Cake

5: Drinks
This is the ONE time of year where I will drink beer on purpose. Of course a fitting beverage to celebrate the grains harvest would be all the summer ales. For non-beer drinkers there are a lot of fruity summery ciders released this time as well. Other selections would be Mead which is delicious honey wine especially with dessert. Non alcoholic options would be fresh mint tea and bramble ice tea.

Mead source
Beer Flight
Mint Tea
Bramble Iced Tea

6: Treats
Final part!! Since I am a very sensory person, one thing that made celebrations and holidays memorable as a kid were always the treats you walked away with. The little candies, snacks and tokens. If I were to have a celebration with a whole community including kids I would include some of these.
If you did not want to get anything store brought, some ideal treats would be making a set of pate a fruits with the local fruit of choice. It’s a delectable fruit gummy coated in sugar that is best enjoyed after food with tea or coffee. Otherwise some snacks I would put away in a treat bag would be home made potato crisps, honey sticks, fruit gummies and chocolate coins to represent wealth, abundance and success.

Blackberry Pate A Fruits
Potato chips
Summer Honey Sticks
Chocolate Coins
Fruit Gummies

________________________________

If you made it this far thank you so much for reading it all!! Hope I put you on a visual sensory experience for the First Harvest. I would love to hear what dishes and foods you associate with the summer crossquarter or harvest time in general.

You can check my lughnasadh tag for more ideas or my correspondence list for why I associate certain things with this time of year.

________________________________

Image Credits:
Lughnasadh Art by Julia Nikitina
Kitchen Scenery
Lanterns
Wild Swimming
Tent Dinner
Plating
Forest Path

Hierloom Tomatoes 1/2
Honeycomb
Lammas candle with sunflowers
Lammas candle with wheat and gold flowers
Wheat and Cauldron
Seeded Brown Candle
Deer in Woods
Round Candle with seeds