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...is that you get all the leftovers.

My festive First-Day-of-Spring breakfast:

• Steamed asparagus
• Toasted sesame egg bread
• Fresh farmer's cheese with garden chives
• Ostara eggs with hot sauce
• Fresh strawberries

One way to connect with an ancient culture like the Minoans is to learn about their daily life: what they did for a living, what their houses looked like, and especially what they ate. Food is a powerful way to connect with other cultures, and that includes those of the ancient world.

A while back I wrote about how the Minoans cooked - what their kitchens and cookpots were like, how they used braziers or outdoor cookfires instead of hearths. Today I'm going to talk about what they cooked. Most of this information comes from an appendix in my book Labrys and Horns.

One way we can connect with ancient cultures is by exploring their daily lives: how they cooked, dressed, worked, played, and so on. These are things we all do, things we in the modern world can relate to and that can help make ancient people more real to us. And this, in turn, can help us connect with their spirituality.

So how about the Minoans? Let's explore their food a little bit so we can get a taste (ahem) of what their life was like.

One time during the time period when I was learning how to follow the Goddess Diet to honor the goddess Sif, I was preparing for a potluck, and I went to the grocery store. I saw some corn on the cob. I thought, “That would be great to bbq. But I don't know whether it's GMO or not.”

Then I remembered that the GMO corn is a yellow corn. If the corn is some other color then it's not GMO. So I checked it and it was white corn, so I bought some. At the checkout, I was thinking, "I really hope I'm right and that I did this right for Sif."

Concerns rise about oxygen depletion in the world's oceans. A mysterious and weird animal from the distant past is identified. And what exactly does "natural food" mean? It's Earthy Thursday, our weekly segment on science and Earth-related news! All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

It wasn't intentional but very nearly all of our stories today involve food. Read about the revolution of "cutting meat," the development of the modern Japanese diet, and more in today's Earthy Thursday, our weekly segment on science and Earth-related news! All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

Why would a Pagan want to talk about pancakes? Pancake day heralds the Christian Lenten fast. Where exactly Lent starts depends on when Easter is going to fall, which in turn depends on the moon because the date comes to us from the traditional Jewish calendar, which is lunar. Granted, most modern Pagans are always up for a bit of seasonal feasting, and pancake day is the kind of tradition we cheerfully borrow. But there is more to the pancake than meets the eye and it’s worth poking about in the whys and wherefores of this little feast, because it has much to tell us about our ancestors who lived closer to the land.

I was at the allotment yesterday. There were leeks to harvest, the last of the Jerusalem artichokes, and there’s still some kale. We’ll be planting potatoes soon. It’s been a mild winter so there’s more growing than usual. The grain harvest was months ago, the fruit you stored at the start of winter will run out, the root vegetables you stored will be running out. Even if you’re freezing and pickling and using all the modern storage methods, the last harvest is diminishing and there’s no sign of any decent new crops yet.