The Real Witches' Kitchen: Spells, Recipes, Oils, Lotions and Potions from the Witches' Hearth (Paperback)

To start with, the layout of Real Witches' Kitchen is very much like your ordinary cook book, with recipes organised under several common-sense headings, making the book itself very easy to use as a reference text. Each section is started with a little blurb explaining the chapter and its contents in terms of magic and Craftwork as well as giving some helpful tips and pointers for your own experimentations. Practical directions for use, for example how to use oils to anoint candles, are also included in the relevant sections, making the information given applicable to those with little or no Craft experience.

Kate West writes in a casual and easy to follow style somewhat reminiscent of the American writer Silver RavenWolf. Her simple instructions are littered with personal anecdotes, which gives the book a friendly feel which some readers may appreciate.

The first chapter gives some information on Witchcraft itself, which allows this book to be used comfortably by those who are not practising witches. This gives the book a more 'novice' feel, and the general tone is very simple and basic. The amount of specific information given however is beyond that which is normally found in 'beginners guides'. The book manages to avoid the common 'spells on a plate' feel by providing the information to make your tools without accompanying them with strict instructions for their use, and providing useful information for making your own concoctions.

The chapters concerned with the Wheel of the Year do not go into too much depth about the festivals themselves, although brief histories are given. The main focus here is on how to celebrate them, with a list of recipes for a whole meal including drinks and a page of ideas for 'making merry'. This is obviously aimed at people new to the Craft who are unsure about how to go about observing their newly adopted festivals.

The book is entirely non-specific when it comes to talking about religion- which it hardly mentions throughout- making it applicable to anyone interested in kitchen witchery. It contains a large amount of information covering many popular crafty topics, and would be useful for anyone starting to experiment with making their own tools and remedies.

In summary, Real Witches' Kitchen is an easy-to-read book in a pleasant enough style which contains a large amount of practical Craft ideas. It is a good beginners guide to kitchen witchcraft but perhaps lacks depth for those who already know the basics.

However I would recommend this book to any one, the recipes for feast days and incense mixtures are great, it has sections on health and beauty the kitchen witch way and some really fantastic information on all manner of things.

A very worthwhile book to own and extremely difficult to put down once you have started reading it.