Salads for Beltane + Extra Ideas!

It's almost Beltane! This year it's Wednesday 1st May, or Tuesday 30th April (tomorrow), depending on when you celebrate. (Many people consider it to be from sundown on 30th April to sundown on 1st May.) In the past I've written posts with ideas for celebrating the sabbats. While I stopped doing that last year (since I felt I'd covered them all and didn't want to repeat myself), I thought it would be nice to write something when I felt inspired to, so today I'm sharing some salads for Beltane (plus some extra ideas). :)  

 

Here are my most recent Beltane posts:

Winter-Spring Update + Beltane Round-up (2021, scroll down for the round-up): https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2021/04/winter-spring-update-beltane-round-up.html

Happy Beltane! (2022): https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2022/04/happy-beltane.html

I also included a Beltane section at the end of last year's winter-spring update (at the bottom after P.S.):

Winter-Spring Update (2023) + Happy Beltane!: https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2023/04/winter-spring-update-2023-happy-beltane.html

 

Note: If you're in the Southern Hemisphere, Samhain is coming! Check out my last few Samhain Celebration posts here:

Samhain/Hallowe'en Round-up (my round-up post from 2021): https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2021/10/samhainhalloween-round-up.html

Happy Samhain/Hallowe'en! (2022)): https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2022/10/happy-samhainhalloween.html

Summer-Autumn Update (2023) + Happy Samhain/Hallowe'en! (section at the bottom): https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2023/10/summer-autumn-update-2023-happy-samhain.html  

My main celebration for the sabbats is having/making food and drink. For Beltane I usually have some kind of salad, since it's a spring festival, moving towards summer. Salads are a lighter food that lots of us feel more like eating in the warmer months. (If you're not into salad though, you can find alternative ideas for food and celebrating in general in my past posts, and also in the Extra Ideas section at the bottom of the post!). 

I normally have my salad with some other foods like chicken, crisps (chips), dips etc., I also like to have some kind of sparkling drink, like elderflower or lemonade.

 

Salads

Chicken Salad

In 2014 I made a chicken salad sandwich. You can see a pic here: https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2014/05/beltane.html

Here is an Asian chicken salad from Julia of Lemon Stripes. I haven't made it but it looks nice: https://lemonstripes.com/recipes/asian-chicken-salad/

 

And here are a few more chicken salads that look good:

BLT chicken salad: https://natalie-mason.com/blt-chicken-salad/

Healthy chicken salad (can be eaten as a salad, wrap and or sandwich: https://www.eatyourselfskinny.com/healthy-chicken-salad

Honey mustard chicken salad with bacon and avocado: https://cafedelites.com/honey-mustard-chicken-salad/

Winter-Spring Update (2024)

For the past few years I've written quarterly updates (from "season to season"). I started out writing monthly updates in 2019 and then "two monthly" (two months at a time) ones in 2020, but found that quarterly was better for me. So I'm continuing that in 2024. :)

You can see my autumn-winter 2023 update here if you like: https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2024/01/christmas-funfetti-sheet-cake-autumn.html

 

I didn't do much in January apart from my usual park walks and going to Happy Café (Action for Happiness meetups). 

In early February I celebrated Imbolg. You can read about my celebrations here: https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2024/02/imbolg-2024.html 

And at the beginning of March it was my birthday. It was actually my 40th which felt a bit strange! I didn't do anything particularly special, just celebrated at home. I'd planned to go out for a meal but haven't got round to that yet, due to various circumstances. 

Also in March, I met up with my belly dance friends at a pub. We don't have classes anymore and it had been ages since I'd seen them, so that was nice. 

Then towards the end of the month it was Oestara/Ostara aka the Spring Equinox You can read my post about it here: https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2024/03/oestara-2024.html

 

Easter was early this year at the end of March (Easter Sunday was the 31st). I baked a Tres Leches cake this time , as a change from the frosted white chocolate Easter cake I've made most often in the past few years. I last made a tres leches cake 9 years ago (for Easter 2015)! You can see a post about it here: https://livingseasonal.blogspot.com/2015/04/easter-cake.html

I didn't take a picture this time but it looked pretty much the same, except I put Cadbury Mini Eggs on top (which I had planed to last time). The sponge didn't cook that well in some places which was a bit disappointing. But otherwise it was ok. I think next year I'll probably go back to the white chocolate cake, lol.

I also had a meal at home (chicken) and got a couple of chocolate eggs! 

Here are a couple of pics that I took at the park:

Buckingham Park, Shoreham- Jan.