I remember November

I remember November when I was eight: the sky getting dark earlier every evening, waking up before sunrise and eating breakfast while it was still night. In November, my mother would start making Christmas cake. She would take my sister and me to Nutcracker Sweet, the bulk dry goods store where she would buy candied peels, green and red cherries, Thompson and Sultana raisins and sliced almonds. She used her huge aluminum canning pot, big enough to bathe a toddler in, to hold all of the fruitcake ingredients. I remember her working the mixture with the long handled wooden spoon she would use to mix bread dough. She would turn over the fruits and nuts like she was mixing cement, resting the pot on a dining room chair so she could reach inside. Once they had been baked, I remember wrapping the cakes in aluminum foil, though not before dousing them with rum or brandy. She would put the stacks of cakes in the cold cellar, the small room in the basement that was originally used to store coal, with its hanging lightbulb and cinderblock walls. Mom kept everything she made in the cold cellar: every flavour of jam and jelly you could think of, plus the cakes. I remember my dad coveting the fruitcake once Christmas rolled around: cutting pieces for himself to go with his coffee and balancing the sticky slices on the rim of his mug.

Whew! Extraction complete

I know: It's been a while. Forgive me when I use the old saying, "I've been meaning to write...." As we all know, however, intentions amount to nothing more than a great big pile of guilt when not followed by action.

I've had Willie Nelson's "Shotgun Willie" lyric in my head of late: "You can't make a record if you ain't got nothin' to say." (You said it, Willie.) I think I would sing my song like this: "You can't write your food blog when you're living on frozen dumplings, cold cereal and celery sticks and waiting for winter to be over." Next time, I'd better just write anyway.

What got me going today finally was the blinking red caged submarine light accompanied by the honking "man the battle stations" sirens going off in my head as I calculated the time elapsed from my last post: four months minus two days. Yikes! Two more days and my blog will be officially considered defunct. Fortunately, I've moved out of my winter stasis of late and started cooking again, so I have lots to write about. Stay tuned for my ode to the food processor, a laundry list of considerations for hosting an afternoon tea, a baking primer, and much more.

So, thank you for being patient while I got my head out of my butt. The view is way better now.

KP:)

Hello December

Hurrah! November is finally over. The bookends of winter, November and March, are the hardest months for me. November signals the beginning of the long haul, whereas March feels never-ending, as cold grey winter reluctantly makes its sluggish retreat.

This is a two-season city: warm and cold, or if you prefer, green and grey. This November has been unusually warm, perhaps delaying my acceptance of the inevitable. (I dreamed earlier in the month that it was mid-February and the ground had not yet frozen. I stood in the warm winter sun on green grass regretting that I had pulled out my annuals.) Yesterday, however, I awoke to frost on the grass and one degree weather. The freeze is on its way.

December, at least, has great food to its credit. The flavours of Christmas are my favourite of the year. I ate my first clementine orange yesterday and was reminded of the season. I love watching the oils mist in the air as I remove the peel. I'll be making Nigella's clementine cake again this year and can already taste its moist orange-scented goodness. I'll also try to recall how I made my stovetop Christmas cake, a concoction I threw together last December and of course didn't write down, but resulted in a beautiful, rich and boozy fruitcake that I'll desperately try to recreate for the rest of my life.

I'll also visit Sandra Juto's photo blog to remind myself to notice the beauty of winter. Her daily pictures of Gothenburg, Sweden, where she lives, are always astonishing in their simple aesthetic. Winter, there as here, has a lovely palette of muted, mixed greys, blues, greens and purples all perfectly complemented by the low dim light of the winter sky. This is the perfect backdrop to enjoy white steam rising from a cup of hot chocolate while wrapped in wool and sitting on a park bench.

November is always the hurdle. Now I'm settled in.