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FOOD2GATHER or FOOD2GETHER?
3 thoughts on “FOOD2GATHER or FOOD2GETHER?”
An Easter without Easter. To me leaving abroad, Easter have been often time to og back “home”. Meet the spring, meet the friends, stay with what has left of my Family, eating lamb, artichokes, torta pasqualina and colomba . The corona lock down has of course hindered these plans. Beside longing for my loved ones (sorry zoom: you are not enogh!), I am longing for my Easter! In fact, here in Norway – countrary to Christmas-we have never really developed any tradition, included food traditions. So I miss the smell of garlic and rosmarin and the fatty sauce of the lamb. I miss my aunt’s atichokes, exeptionally good, with their perfect balance of parsley, garlic and crumble bread. I miss the family querrel about where to buy the Easter Colomba: the good backery at the corner of the more fancy one? or whatsover , if “he” (my Norwegian partner) is here , he will not tell the difference anyway. Now when days are all the same, when is a sort of”sunday” everyday I am not in any Easter mood. Still I feel that something has do be done: the spinach pie for the torta pasqualina is in the oven, a pay my tribute to tradition. But it does not smell the same.
In Norway, everybody has been talking about not being able to go to their holiday cabins, and go skiing in the mountains. Everybody has been talking about this Easter being so very different. For my family, the holiday has been more or less exactly the same as all other Easters: staying at home in the city, playing board-games and watching the traditional Easter crime series on TV. We have eaten eggs for Easter morning breakfast, and I have hidden the old porcelain bowls full of egg-shaped chocolate for the children to find. There was no Easter lamb for dinner, since the shops were out, but we made Easter reindeer in stead. All in all, a completely normal Easter, except for the gloom and doom of the news, our worries for older relatives, normal except for no visits, and normal except for sad whatsapp calls with relatives in Denmark and Spain.
In France, containment has been widely enforced since March 16th. The only people allowed to go out and about are professionals involved in health, food production and distribution, deliveries, sanitation workers. Even post has been slowed down to three days a week. We are only allowed to go outdoors in our gardens, or for errands concerning food provisions or health, or 1 hour physical activity per day, provided we fill up and sign a specific paper form that needs to be produced with our ID in case of police control. So I’m very lucky to live in the countryside, because we do not feel that much contained.
Since the beginning, my companion and I have decided to take our lunches with my aged mother who lives by herself in her house just across the field. She had listed our Easter meal menu about 10 days in advance! So on Easter Sunday, the 3 of us gathered at her house at noon to watch the Pope blessing urbi et orbi on TV while sipping our Champagne with a drop of Campari – for my mother says she needs to sweeten the acidity. Then we spread goose foie gras (a tin bought from a producer we know in les Landes) on slices of warm bread (the local baker delivers bread 4 days a week). Then we had a round shaped roast of lamb wrapped in lard and red and green peppers I had bought from the village butcher’s, accompanied by baked tined beans in tomato sauce and flageolets. For dessert, I had prepared pancakes rolled up with sugar that we ate with chocolate Easter eggs, hen, fish and bell, all hand made by our local baker for the occasion. And we didn’t need to look for them since my mother had them displayed a couple of days in advance on her sideboard 😉