The winter solstice gathering at Monkey Valley was cancelled due to early snow and overworked snow plowers. I drove out of the valley last Saturday evening, through 7 inches of sparkling, light, fairy-dust snow. I was very proud of the Tracker, in 4WD low and with new winter tires, for driving out of there like a tank, over 12 KM of unplowed roads! It was -15° Celcius, and the snow was still falling. Truly a magical drive, with the roads completely drifted over, and the snow-laden boughs of the pine trees hanging low on either side, giving friendly wishes for my safe journey.

So instead of having a gathering on the land, I will have a small tea party in Vancouver, taking tea with my friends Geoff and Azusa Blake. In honour of the solstice, I am going to bake a pie (instead of the traditional bread). I’ve never baked a pie before, so this is quite momentous! I’ve been inspired by my expert pie-making friend, Devona Snook. And just today my friend Tim Kelly gave me a fantastic book for travelling vegetarians, called Vegan A Go-Go, by Sarah Kramer. I’m going to try her Fudge Pecan Pie. If it works out, I’ll let you know! Though if it doesn’t, I will probably blame it on pie babyhood, not the recipe.

So I invite you to take a moment to notice the deep darkness of the longest night. Feel that brief moment when the earth makes a tiny shift in rotation. Wish her blessings on her journey. And then celebrate with friends, with or without pie. Happy winter solstice.

Basic Flaky Pie Crust

• 1.25 c flour
• .25 t salt
• .5 c vegetable shortening
• 3 T very cold water

Stir together the flour and salt. Cut in the shortening until well mixed, then add the water. Mix until a dough forms. On lightly floured surface, knead for 1-2 minutes, then roll into a ball. Wrap dough in wax paper and chill for 30 minutes. Roll the dough into a pie crust with floured rolling pin.

Fudge Pecan Pie

• .5 c water
• .25 c vegan margarine
• 2 T unsweetened cocoa powder
• .75 c chocolate chips
• .33 c flour
• 1 c sugar
• .175 t salt
• .5 c soy or rice milk
• 1 T vanilla
• 1 c pecan halves
• 1 9″ prepared pie crust (see above)
• 2 t soy or rice milk

Preheat oven to 350° F (175° C). Bring water to a boil in a pot, then remove from heat. Stir in the marg, cocoa, and choc chips and whisk until melted. Add flour, sugar, salt, .5 c milk, and vanilla, and whisk until smooth. Stir in pecan halves and pour into pie crust. Bake for 55-60 minutes, until a toothpick or knife inserted into the middle comes out clean. Brush top with 2 t milk. Let cool to room temperature before serving.

Easy-peasy! (As my old friend Bev Lytton used to say. I hope all’s well with you, Bev.)

The wonderful thing about Saturday mornings is there’s time for indulging such fantasies. So I got out the silver mixing bowls and baking sheet, and the delightful measuring cups and spoons of all different sizes, made of white plastic. These things must conjure up sweet memories from childhood, for I feel happy whenever I see them. I gathered ingredients from their various hiding places: the mouse-proof wood chest in the hallway where I keep dry goods, the top shelf of the cupboard, the fridge.

Now, as a single person usually living alone, if I bake cookies it’s me who’s going to eat them all! I still usually make a full batch, but today I was limited by the Earth Balance Whipped Buttery Spread—I only had about ¼ cup, plus a little extra for greasing the sheet. So there was no option but to make half a batch, and hope they would last long enough!

Here’s the recipe for the full batch; you can see it’s an easy one to cut in half.

Karen’s chocolate brownie cookies (*Adapted from The Joy of Cooking’s quick oatmeal cookies*)

Sift together:

• 1 c sifted whole wheat flour
• ½ t salt
• ½ t baking soda
• ½ t baking powder
• ½ t cinnamon
• 4 T (heaping) cocoa powder

In a separate bowl cream together:

• ½ c Whipped Buttery Spread (or other margarine or butter) + 1 extra T because it’s whipped
• ½ c brown sugar, packed
• ½ c white sugar

When smooth, mix in:

• 1 egg (try to use a small egg if making a ½ batch)
• 1 t vanilla
• 1 T rice milk (or milk or soy milk)

Turn on the oven to 350°. For me anyway, this is plenty soon enough to start preheating the oven!

Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, mixing until smooth. Mix in:

• 1 c quick cooking oats

Mix in:

• ¾ chopped walnuts

Drop the cookie dough onto a well-greased baking sheet, in lumps of about 2 T or a little more. A dozen should fit on most baking sheets.

Bake for 10 minutes. While the cookies are baking, make a cup of coffee, wash up the dishes, and take your vitamins.

Remove from the oven, and let set for 1 minute. Remove to a plate to eat immediately(!) or to cool further. Store in an airtight container to keep the soft chewy texture.

Substitutions:

- icing sugar instead of white sugar; the resulting texture is slightly softer, very good.
- spelt flakes instead of oats; these cook up slightly more chewy than the oats
- omit cocoa and use raisins or dried cherries instead of nuts

Basically, most substitutions will turn out well with this simple, adaptable recipe.

The final step is to take 3 or 4 cookies outside, along with a cup of coffee, and enjoy this incredibly yummy treat in the sunshine on the porch overlooking the creek and meadow.

And that’s exactly what I did!

At the August vision fast at Monkey Valley, the spot where our council circle met had some translucent reddish-orange berries that looked very succulent. I licked one and found it to be very bitter. The faster asked what they were, but I didn’t know, and didn’t even recall seeing this type of berry before. After the faster went out on her two-day quest, I looked up the berries in Roberta Parish, Ray Coupe, and Dennis Lloyd’s Plants of Southern Interior British Columbia. I discovered they are soapberries. I remembered that my friend Pam told me soapberries are the stuff Indian ice cream is made of.

While the faster was out, my co-guide Kim Ashley (a different Kim than my sister, Kim Rempel) and I decided to try making the ice cream. We gathered the berries in the traditional method, by spreading a cloth on the ground and then beating the bush with a stick! (Following the instructions in Nancy Turner’s Food Plants of Interior First Peoples.) But we used electric beaters, not so traditional, to whip the berries with a little water into a beautiful pink foam. We didn’t have the traditional whipping implement—a piece of cedar bark—on hand. The mixture was still quite bitter even with brown sugar and a few wild raspberries added. An unusual but interesting taste. The whipped foamy texture is wonderful—a real treat.

This treat was part of the welcome-back-break-fast feast. It was really neat, to offer the faster some food gathered from the land. It strengthened the feeling that the spirits of this place welcome us doing the old sacred ceremonies here. Ho!

Recipe

Mix 1 cup berries with 1/4 cup water and 4 tablespoons brown sugar, until all the berries have dissolved into a stiff pink foam.