Beltane is celebrated on April 30th and May 1st, halfway between Ostara (the Spring Equinox) and Litha (the Summer Solstice). It is a fertility festival and the promise of spring that we celebrated at Ostara is now fulfilled. Flowers, bright colors, Maypoles, planting for the summer, great food and bonfires are all lovely ways to celebrate Beltane! (For more information on Beltane, click on this link.)
My mom and I made a miniature Maypole:
We bought some plants and left them outside overnight under the full moon before planting them:
We gathered some of the thousands of dandelions in our yard and used them to made delicious vegan dandelion honee!
I used the dandelion honee to make a lavender lemon tea cake:
I also made some oatcakes (crackers) that were fabulous with Violife vegan aged cheddar!
We also made tiny sandwich rolls and used them to make little tomato sandwiches! I used my honee sunflower bread recipe, and shaped the rolls according to the directions on my sandwich roll recipe (except that I made sixteen little rolls instead of eight large ones).
We had a lovely Beltane brunch!
My mom dug up last year’s garden pots, turned over the soil, and planted our new plants:
Here are our rosemary and thyme:
The lavender and sage look good, but our basil plant practically died from the sun exposure the day before.
Our pepper and tomato plants didn’t like the sun much either, but still look viable:
My mom watered them all in and we hope they will all grow well. We still need to get dill, mint, and parsley plants to add to our little garden.
In the evening, my mom made a fire:
It was beautiful!
We waited for the fire to die down, then we cooked some Beyond Meat brats over the fire:
We ate them with pumpernickel rolls, sauerkraut, grilled onions, and spicy mustard, and they were really good! We also had five bean salad, potato salad, and pickles to go with our sandwiches:
We really enjoyed our picnic dinner!
Finally, we made s’mores with my homemade vegan honee grahams, Dandies vegan marshmallows, and some accidentally vegan chocolate from Aldi!
My mom and I had a fabulous vegan Beltane! You don’t have to give up any of your favorite foods to live a cruelty-free lifestyle! Beltane Blessings to all!
Please share the recipe for the lavender lemon tea cake!
I will be doing a post on tea cakes soon! This was my lemon poppy seed muffin recipe (without the poppy seeds and adding a teaspoon of dried lavender instead) baked in a loaf pan instead of a muffin tin. I also used 3 TBS of vegan honee instead of the brown sugar, and baked the loaf for an hour at 350 after the first five minutes at 450. You can find the lemon poppy seed variation in the recipe notes on my muffin post!
It sounds like a wonderful way to celebrate Beltane, your plants look lovely and its true some don’t like too much sun, if they start to wilt a bit place them in a semi shaded area to see if it helps, sometimes just getting into the new pot with more room to grow is all a plant needs. Your dishes all look so tasty and I look forward to trying a recipe or two. Thank you for sharing your celebration and many blessing to you and your mother for a wonderful year ahead.
Thank you! Our pepper and tomato plants did perk up very nicely after being replanted. The basil may not survive, but at least we tried. Blessings!
As always, enticing photography. The food looks delicious.
Thank you!