Reading and Eating Advent, Week 3
What are your doorways into Christmas? We have talked a bit about this idea, from Janette Winterson’s Christmas Days, about the rituals or traditions that take is into the season. It could be a mince tart and a Christmas carol, it could be watching Love Actually the night you put up the tree. It could be a quiet 10 minutes with a Christmas book. Maybe one of the below?
Welcome to week three of our reading and eating advent.
Day 15, Monday, December 12th
Reading: The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
“I’ve forgotten how cold New York gets. Outside, on the street, the chestnut man is huddled by the warmth of his open stove, roasting fat, gaping nuts on a brazier. The night air smells sweet and delicious.” The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
This unputdownable book about one summer in Elle’s life when she has to choose between two men, also flicks back into the past to help us get an understanding of what lies behind the choice. Christmas pops up a few times but the real question is who does she choose?! We both got it wrong!
Eating - something to make the Australian night air smell sweet and delicious in December
One of the best things about cooking at Christmas is the smells from the kitchens, the spiced puddings and cakes, the golden pastry of the mince tarts, the glazed ham in the oven. They are all such a shortcut to Christmas memories and nostalgia.
There’s something quite lovely about baking once the house is quiet and dark. About putting on some music or an audio book and pottering around your kitchen without bumping into a child, pet etc.
This cherry pie is just the kind of thing you might like to make on such a quiet summer night. It will make the night air smell as sweet and delicious as Cowley Heller’s wintery description of roasting chestnuts. But here we’re cooking cherries and rhubarb down into a puddle of tangy sweet flavour under a lid of golden pastry.
Cherry and rhubarb pie
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