Of Serpents, Groundhogs and Crepes.

And more holidays coming to brighten the dark of Winter! Well, ok, it's sunny today but you know what I mean.
Actually our beautiful weather today might be a sign of some serious weather ahead.

Imbolc (on february 1st) is the day the Cailleac,  the hag of Gaelic tradition, who gathers her firewood for the rest of the winter. Legend has it that if she intends to make the winter last a good while longer, she will make sure the weather on Imbolc is bright and sunny, so she can gather plenty of firewood. Therefore, people are generally relieved if Imbolc is a day of foul weather, as it means the Cailleach is asleep and winter is almost over.

And here is a Gaelic Scottish Poem about the day:
 Thig an nathair as an toll
Là donn Brìde,
Ged robh trì troighean dhen t-sneachd
Air leac an làir.

"The serpent will come from the hole
On the brown Day of Bride,
Though there should be three feet of snow
On the flat surface of the ground."

February 2nd is Groundhog Day in the United states. If the groundhog sees its shadow when he gets out of its burrow (therefore if the weather is sunny) it means that there will be 6 more weeks of winter. Unfortunately or fortunatly, he seems to be right only 39% of the time.

In France it's the bear that will get out of its den to predict the weather. No words on whether he is more accurate than the groundhog however...

But more importantly, on February 2nd is La Chandeleur in France. To celebrate the return of the light people will make crepes. The roundness and color of the crepe symbolizes the sun (and its return). To bring good fortune to your family for the coming year, using your left hand, flip a crepe into the air and catch it again in the pan all the while holding a gold coin in your right hand.
I know that sounds a little hard. A bit. But I promise you can do it. If you don't you'll bring doom to your family.
No pressure.
Ok. What about the recipe for the crepes?

- in between 250-300g of flour ( 1 1/4 cup )
- 4 eggs
- 1 l. milk ( 4 cups )

Put the flour in a bowl, make a well and out in the eggs. While whisking add the milk. Whisk until the batter is smooth. As best you can anyway...Let rest for an hour or two at room temperature or in the fridge overnight. It's not absolutely necessary to let the batter rest. It just makes it thicker a bit. I have done it plenty of times without resting the batter.
Butter a frying pan generously and put a laddle full of batter in the center, tilting the pan to make the crepe very thin. When the underside is golden brown, flip the crepe and cook for another minute or two.
Keep the crepe warm under foil or in a lukewarm oven while you cook them all. the recipe should make around 25 crepes.
Then, at the table, you can fill them with all sorts of fillings.You can have a savory crepe (my favorite is ham, cooked mushrooms and gruyere cheese) or sugary with jam, sugar and lemon, nutella, applesauce....

This is my family recipe. As far as I know there are as many recipes as there are families. I usually double it. It'll keep for a couple of days in the fridge and it freezes very well. It makes the best crepes in the world... naturally.

Are there any traditions about weather or this time of the year in your region?

                                                                                At least we have plenty of Firewood.

Epiphany.

My favorite part of the holidays has always been the food. Well, that and sleeping in but since I now have 3 children the only thing left is the food.
And what I love about the epiphany is the galette des rois, the king's galette. The puff pastry drips with butter and the dense filling smells of almonds and orange flower water. And then there is the feve, a little porcelain figurine that is hidden in the filling. It replaced the dried bean of old. The lucky person to find it is crowned king... or queen for the day.
The youngest person hides under the table and designates the person whom each slice is going to. Traditionally there is only one feve in the cake but nowadays a lot of families will put as many feves in the cake as there are children present.

Some people celebrate the epiphany the first Sunday of January like my sister . Others celebrate it on January 6th. And in France at least, numerous others celebrate it all month long. Like me.

Here is a recipe for the galette. Try it, it's very easy.

Galette des rois:

Enough puff pastry to cut 2 circles into
100g sugar
2 egg yolks
125g almond meal
1 tsp almond extract
1 tbsp orange flower water
75g butter

Mix the sugar and egg yolks until the mix is pale and makes a ribbon. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Spread onto one dough circle leaving 1 inch of space all around. Press the feves or a dried kidney beans slightly into the filling. Cover with the other circle of dough and press the edges together with a fork.
I always glaze my dough with cream or milk because our eggs come from our own chickens and they don't lay much in winter.

New Year's Day.

                                                               Frozen Peas in December 2010

The first month of the year is named after Janus, the two-faced roman god. He was the god of doorways, watching the front entrance with one face and the back door with the other.
Very fitting for a first month!
The Dutch once called January, Lauwmaand: the frosty month. And the Saxons called it Wulf-monath because the hungry wolves would be especially troublesome at this time of year.
4000 years ago the Babylonians already celebrated the new year... on March 1st. In 46 B.C. Julius Caesar changed the date to January 1st to reflect the changes the sun went through. The change was followed by the Egyptians and Celtic people.
The Babylonians also started the tradition of good resolutions by returning items they had borrowed during the year.


The image of Father Time is often used to illustrate the old year and the baby usually shown with him depicts the New Year. Father Time is a personification of time. He is an elderly bearded man, dressed in a robe, carrying a scythe and an hourglass or other timekeeping device. He was adapted from Cronus, the father of Zeus, and he belonged to the people known as the Titans in ancient mythology. Cronus existed before the Greek gods far back in the earliest stages of mythology.
The baby usually wears a diaper and a sash telling which year he represents. The depiction of the New Year as a baby started in Greece in 600 BC.

It is often customary to make a lot of noise for New Year to scare away the evil spirits.
And my French grandmother always gave her (numerous) grandchildren a big fat shiny 50 francs silver coin on January 1st so that we would be lucky all year long.

Another tradition that I find very convenient indeed: do not clean or throw trash away lest good fortune be swept away from you. And don't do the laundry or a family member could be washed away.

 I'll be sure to do none of that. I wouldn't want to harm anybody after all!
And it'll free time to pour over seed catalogs. Now that's a good plan.

A happy, healthy and lucky New Year to you and yours :)