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Aside from a pact with the Horned One, the secret to good health, long life, and eternal youth is to eat lots and lots of fresh vegetables: hence my decades-long Evil Plot to Get the Pagan Community Eating More Fresh Vegetables.

Not that it's been hard, you understand. Everybody likes good vegetables. In modern paganism's Potluck Culture, the bowl is always empty by the time I bring it home.

I first discovered Purple Pickle years ago while living in the Middle East. Every pickle-seller down at the souk would always have huge, eye-grabbing jars of pickled cabbage and cauliflower that glowed a radioactive neon-purple color.

Gods, I'd think. I don't know what they put in there to make it that color, but I don't think that it's something I want to eat.

More the fool, me. The dye, of course, is all perfectly natural.

Oh, and as for that pact with the Horned: let me recommend it.

Vegetables aside, it sure has worked for me.

Old Warlock's Purple Pickle

An apple a day has many health benefits and tastes good too! As I write this, I can smell the applesauce cooking in my slow cooker. Made from unpeeled, cut apples, and simmered a while with half cider and half water, to cover, my applesauce needs no further seasoning or sweetening. Once cooked, I put it through my trusty food mill—I picked mine up at a yard sale, however they are available both in stores and on the internet. The money you save on canned or otherwise processed applesauce will soon pay for the food mill and your applesauce will be more nutritious.

This is a good recipe for big, horsey, late-season asparagus, served either chilled or at air temperature: just the thing for a Midsummer picnic.

Sesame Asparagus in a Tamari Reduction

1 bunch asparagus

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

¼ cup tamari

¼ cup rice vinegar

1 tablespoon sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

How about a nice tall glass of lemonade on a hot summer day? If you make up some sugar syrup ahead of time, you can make some for yourself any time you wish. Simple syrup in your fridge, fresh lemons close at hand, ice cubes and a tall glass and you're good to go. Mix half to a whole squeezed lemon into a glass or perhaps a frosty mug, add simple syrup you make yourself, to sweeten, stir well and add ice.

 “Let food be your medicine.”

(attributed to Hippokrates of Kos)

I started this batch of pickled garlic back before Yule, and made the mistake of setting it out on the Yule board, well before its time.

Yikes. Each clove of garlic burned in the mouth like a red-hot glede.

Disappointed, I set the pickle aside and, basically, forgot about it.

Thank Goddess.

Last week I came across the jar again and, some five months on, decided to give it another try. “If ever my immune system needed a boost, it's now,” I thought.

Ohmigods.

No longer does the garlic burn: it's now like a kiss. Everything else tastes pallid by comparison.

So here's your chance to make your own. Just be sure to let it ripen well.

Yes, I know, I'm a son of Northern Europe living in Minnesota, and this is an Asian recipe. But you know what they say about warlocks.

We sure do get around.

Old Warlock's Kick-Ass Pickled Garlic

From the garden snacks

Even if you don’t go in for the fruit and veg plot in your garden you can still grow a few herbs or even eat some of the edible flowers and add them to recipes.

       Though I've never had it or made it myself, I remember Goldenrod Eggs--a dish made with hard boiled eggs that my mother served at luncheon parties. The eggs were carefully hard cooked—never boiled as this turns the yolks green. The whites were chopped up and stirred into a white cream sauce. This was spread over toast with the crusts cut off and made into triangles. The yolks were then pressed through a sieve and sprinkled over the top of the creamed whites

          This was a pretty dish yet far too labor intensive for me. Besides, I prefer hard boiled eggs cut up and made into egg salad or stuffed—but not by me. I can't get the whites out of the shells easily. However in the days when I was little there was more time for cooking because life was simpler and less hectic. In addition, women like my mom had luncheons in their homes because her friends were home with their kids too and did not have to go out to work.