When it comes to food at Christmas, in addition to the foodstuffs usually eaten – mince pies, turkey, Christmas cake – another traditional feature is the amount of food consumed. We expect to spend more money on food, to have our kitchen cupboards and fridges full to bursting and to eat so much that our New Year’s Resolution yet again has to be to go on a diet and start going to the gym. Continue reading “Christmas feasting”
Category: 20th century literature
Christmas Cake 2020
When I previously posted about Christmas cake it was in relation to Jane Eyre. In Charlotte Bronte’s 1847 novel, Jane’s making of a Christmas cake for her newly discovered family, the Rivers, demonstrates both her new wealth and the fact she has found her identity and at last feels she belongs somewhere. Continue reading “Christmas Cake 2020”
Cooking for the clergy
With Covid-19 raging through nearly every country in the world right now, it would probably be appropriate for me to devote a post to ‘pandemic literature’ (perhaps Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year [1722] or Albert Camus’ The Plague [1947]). However, I suspect that, if food is referenced, it is far from tasty, and I also think that, at times like this, we might need to seek solace in a different type of literature. Continue reading “Cooking for the clergy”
Royal Celebrations
Whilst I’m no fervent royalist, some of my fondest memories as a child are of royal occasions. I was seven on the celebration of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, and I remember the party that took place in the street we lived on in Bristol. The children – and possibly the adults too – dressed in red, white and blue, and my best friend Claire and I wore red, white and blue striped ribbons in our hair. There was music and games, and when evening fell the children were packed off to bed whilst the adults continued partying and dancing in the street until the early hours of the morning. Continue reading “Royal Celebrations”