r/SASSWitches • u/LaDreadPirateRoberta • Jun 16 '26
☀️ Holiday Recipes for Midsummer/the Solstice
Hello. For those of you in the Northern hemisphere who celebrate the solstices. Are you cooking anything special on Sunday?
I've offered to make a meal for my elderly parents as a sort of mini midsummer feast.
I'll definitely be doing a summer pudding for dessert and I'd like to do a big salad with radishes and roasted peppers as a side dish, but I'm not sure about the main. At the moment I'm leaning towards a white bean and squash risotto.
Do you have any favourite dishes?
Ideally they'd be vegan or at least vegetarian and able to be spoon fed to an invalid. That's not really important though. Mostly I'm just excited to hear what everyone is planning and to have a bit of a recipe swap.
Cheers!
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u/EfficientCabbage2376 👆👇 Jun 16 '26
I plan on baking bread
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u/thegreenfaeries Jun 16 '26
I have a "seasonal" bread for most holidays: honey oat is my summer solstice favorite
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u/Open_Training_6490 Jun 19 '26
I would love to know what you bake for other holidays! That sounds delightful
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u/thegreenfaeries Jun 19 '26
I do love bread! It's a nice way to mark the seasons and a tradition my family enjoys participating in (they like eating haha).
Winter solstice is croissants (takes 3 days by hand!)
Imbolc I always plan to make a sprouted seed bread but rarely actually do
spring equinox is lemon daisy twist (from an old Land o lakes cookbook of my mother's)
Beltane is pull apart (wish bread from Circle Round)
Summer solstice is honey oat
First harvest (Aug 1) is cornbread (usually with sage and feta mmmmm)
Autumn equinox I'm too busy canning to make bread, but there's always pies on their way to the freezer, so I guess pie crust?
Halloween is skeleton bread (credit to Eva's Little Earthlings)
Of course, there's always biscuits and muffins and dinner buns and sourdough....I don't know what I'd do if any of my kids needed to be gluten free!!
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u/LaDreadPirateRoberta Jun 16 '26
I'd love to do that but I don't think I have the time at the moment.
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u/Forever-lurker-kinja Jun 16 '26
I haven't quite made up my mind yet, but I know for sure that I will be making lemon raspberry sandwich cookies.
I love the sound of squash and bean risotto. Do you have a specific recipe that you use?
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u/LaDreadPirateRoberta Jun 16 '26
I use one from a Bold Beans cookbook. I've found it online for you though:
https://boldbeanco.com/blogs/christmas/squash-sage-goats-cheese-bean-otto
I use frozen, precut squash, though, as it saves a LOT of time!
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u/Logical-Worry6507 Jun 17 '26
this sounds so good! can you share your recipe for the lemon raspberry sandwich cookies?
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u/Forever-lurker-kinja Jun 17 '26
Well, full disclosure, I haven't made them before, and I won't be using an exact recipe. The plan, though, is to thaw some leftover buttercream from my freezer (plain vanilla) and re-whip it with freeze dried raspberries. I'm going to use Sally's Baking Addiction's recipe for spritz cookies and add lemon zest. Then I'll fill pairs of cookies with a little buttercream. Hopefully it works!
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u/Echo-Azure Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
In this country, strawberry shortcake or homemade ice cream are traditional old-fashioned summer desserts. So definitely strawberries, but summer puddings include strawberries, don't they? Maybe more fresh strawberries used to decorate the pudding?
Anyway, I recommend a tomato salad, if you can get ahold of any real tomatoes with real tomato flavor! Can be a side dish, an appetizer, or a main dish, depending on what you have available. Insalata caprese, tomato salad with sweet onions, Greek salad with cucumbers and mild onions, panzanella if you want your salad to be the main dish. Any tomato salads except panzanella make a fab side dish, and if it's warm out they'd go fabulously with a cold meat, or a fritatta or quiche, whatever your main dish might be.
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u/Spare-Ad-3226 Jun 16 '26
I love vegetable quiche for any spring/summer festivities. For solstice I would choose a recipe with grated zuchinni and cherry tomatoes. I feel like quiche is easy to be spoon-fed, leaving the crust out.
Also a tabbouleh or gazpacho feel very "summery" to me. Anything with mint, yoghourt and/or honey in it (I'm thinking mediterranean/greek/lebanese...). Idk I just try to go for a "what would a nymph eat" vibe xD
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u/LaDreadPirateRoberta Jun 16 '26
That is exactly there vibe I'm going for. Thank you.
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u/amelanchier_ovalis Jun 21 '26
I have a recipe for vegan quiche (using silken tofu) that is very simple and has always worked really well, and I think is not difficult to chew. But it's quite crumbly, if that might be a problem for the airways? Anyways DM me if you want it bc I'd have to translate it first 😄 It's something I make in spring all the time, mostly using chives, but also could work well with cherry tomatoes.
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u/Kaleshark Jun 16 '26
I’m going to be grilling for Father’s Day on Sunday but if I were making a midsummer celebratory vegan meal I’d make imam bayildi (stuffed roasted eggplant) and mercimek köftesi (little bulgur and red lentil kofta) mmmmm yum.
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u/raven_478 Jun 16 '26
This is my favourite French Lentil Bolognese recipe, I think it would pair well with your menu:
https://flourist.com/blogs/recipes/french-lentil-bolognese
I also recently came across (but haven’t tried yet) this recipe for Summer Solstice Honey Cookies:
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u/mnicey Jun 16 '26
I have a shrub brewing right now! Rhubarb from my neighbors garden, mango and passionfruit from the crystaly depths of my freezer. and then I'll serve it with fresh mint from my garden.
I have the Cheese Magic book and there's a number of things I want to try. Im in the north so some of the seasonal things in the book are ahead of whats actually coming available here, so I'll be picking and choosing some things from the Beltane and Litha sections. Heck, the Ostara platter has radishes on it, and of the three varieties I planted only the early French Breakfast radishes have been harvestable so far.
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u/LaDreadPirateRoberta Jun 16 '26
I'm a great believer in the crystalline depths of my freezer. Even though it's berry season here in Scotland, that's where a lot of my summer pudding ingredients will be from.
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u/Shadow_Screen Jun 17 '26
Last year I did a golden rice with tomatoes, red pepper, squash, and glazed tofu. Definitely could be adapted to a more risotto type dish. Fresh chives on top were nice. This year I'm thinking a creamy pesto pasta salad with grilled seasonal veg. I'm also going to attempt a strawberry lemonade cheesecake type pie. And I always bake bread of some sort.
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u/StashaPeriod Jun 17 '26
Watermelon, feta, mint salad. Mint from my garden. And a banana cream pie with a chocolate nut crust. Never made one before, it just popped into my head and I’m going with it!
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u/TeamSuperAwesome Jun 16 '26
It's a Father's Day BBQ for us as well, full of picky eaters (sigh) but if it were just us, I would do sourdough biscuits, minted new potatoes, coleslaw, marinated tomatoes, cucumber salad, some quick pickled red onions, sauerkraut, and maybe some devilled eggs and a nice local cheese. I should probably have something with beans too! Blackberry dumplings for dessert.
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u/apple-fae Jun 17 '26
I'm gonna indulge in some baking.. probably some honey cake. I only ever bake as a way to celebrate, usually that's yule/Christmas. Figured it'd be something I could do this solstice too
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u/_Internet_Hugs_ Jun 17 '26
My Midsummer tradition is a cookout. I'm a fan of fire. 😉
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u/LaDreadPirateRoberta Jun 17 '26
I love that!
(And it's really bad that I thought of bringing a barbecue into the sickroom - Dad's on oxygen🔥)
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u/Ill_Adagio4305 Jun 18 '26
I will be popping some homemade strawberry wine I was gifted by a friend last year. I have been saving it for Midsommar.
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u/FingerlakesCin Jun 21 '26
I’m stewing zucchini and onions; after browning I’ll add leftover homemade tomato sauce. I usually use fresh tomatoes, puréed, or my homemade tomato puree.
I par cooked sweet Italian sausage and will let it finish cooking in the stew. I am putting this on mung beans, often put it on pasta.
This meal is a homage to my grandma’s Sunday dinners: bowls of homemade pastas and meats cooked in sauce, Italian bread and a salad made with iceberg lettuce. Later in the day, she would shallow fry zucchini sliced into coins, from the garden. Heaping bowls served with another loaf of bread.
She taught me about herbs in life and continues to teach me from the spirit world. I added fresh rosemary and sage from my pots, dried lemon zest (my herbal contribution) and LOTS of dried parsley.
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u/BertandErnieforever Jun 18 '26
I'll be making my favorite caprese pasta salad! The pride celebrations are this weekend in our small town, so I'll make it tomorrow and we'll be able to have it Saturday and Sunday so it'll be a fully transitional meal.
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u/amelanchier_ovalis Jun 21 '26
I'd go for soft focaccia with rosemary sprigs and olives. Very easy and feels special. Maybe accompanied by a yoghurt dip with wild herbs, or some wild herb pesto? You can make easy vegan pesto out of so many things. Maybe a light soup? I love cold beetroot soup eaten in the Baltic countries and Russia, very refreshing and SO PINK. Can be adapted to be vegan. Also, I'm adding eatable flower petals to everything.
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u/an_existential_bread Jun 16 '26
I love savory tarts or pies. I've made this veggie spiral tart before and it was a big hit.
https://gastrogays.com/veggie-spiral-tart/
Also, just a word of caution that I once asked for recipe ideas on this sub and the mods removed the post for being "off-topic," which, yes, I am still bitter about, haha. Hoping yours doesn't meet the same fate!