Promptvent - Day 22
25 days of winter prompts to thaw your writers (ice)block - and this year it's all about being Cozy.
Hello and welcome to day 22 of Promptvent!
If you’d like some wintry musical inspiration whilst you write, why not try listening to ‘Dream Kitchen’ from ‘The Holiday’ by Hans Zimmer on Spotify.
Listen to me read the guided invitation via audio below or if you prefer to read the transcript, that is also available for you underneath the audio.
Welcome back to our Promptvent village advent calendar where you find yourself standing once again before the cozy Christmas window.
Bundled up in your warm woolen mittens and thick scarf, you are eager to to know what wintry word of the day awaits you. What world will you step into and discover today? You lean closer, and can feel the eagerness in your fingers as you pull off your mittens and reach for the iron latch on the window, lifting it with care.
Inside the advent window is a homely kitchen brimming with the smells of bread, pastries, sweet treats and Christmas pudding. It smells like your childhood kitchen used to smell like when you were young. It is nearing Christmas now and there are family and friends due, it would be the perfect time to put some love into the recipes that you are famous for and this kitchen seems like the perfect place.
All of a sudden the red wreathed door to your left slowly opens, inviting you further. You step through the door, stamp the snow off of your boots and hang your winter coat up on a golden brass hook. The warmth of the room is very welcome to your rosy cheeks and cold nose.
You are greeted by two little helpers that you are delighted to see, each in white aprons and a little hat - they hand you a white apron and a hat too, grinning with excitement. Then the fun begins. You go to a large cupboard door and reveal every staple for baking and cooking a person could ever need, and you know what you are looking for - the ingredients that you reply on every year to give some tradition and nostalgia to the holidays.
Before you know it, the little helpers are set to work, cracking eggs, mixing flour and sugar. Faces white with flour and rosy with joy. You all indulge in licking the bowl before putting the various concoctions into the huge oven. You set about preparing the trimmings and decorations, gathering plates and Christmas tins whilst everything cooks to perfection.
You think of how special it was to learn and to re-create recipes passed down through generations, and to allow yourself to get messy and not worry about the cleaning up until after you’d had your first bite of your creations. You think of recipes you absolutely loved as a child, that all remind you of this time of year.
The goodies in the oven are all baked and you each taste test them all while they are still warm, flaky, gooey, golden and delicious. Your loved ones are going to adore these. The two little helpers are so happy with the goods you gave them, they insist on doing the washing up, so you can put your feet up and rest.
They hand you a notebook and pen and run away giggling towards the sink. You open the notebook and see one word in large cursive script written at the top of the page.
It reads: BAKE
You smile and think about all of the ways in which we taste Christmas, how the scents and spices and foods allow us to relive memories of magic over and over again, year after year. Then you pick up the pen - and you write.
PromptVent Day 22
To Bake a Poem
Use only the best ingredients
the worthiest of words
a scintillating simile
a mesmerising metaphor
the right rhythm and rhyme
and a sprinkle of magic
Leave it to bake a while
then serve it to the world
with love
Promptvent22
Bake.
I am not a baker . Having to watch my weight for the whole of my life . I have given cakes , biscuits and pastries a very wide berth .However I do have happy memories . I have made lovely lemon meringue tarts from scratch , the citrus fumes of lemon wafting is stimulating . Scones thick and firm on the edges with soft insides waiting for jam and butter . Or even thick clotted cream . Chocolate cakes made moist with oil or much healthier grated courgettes with a hint of ground coffee to accentuate the flavour . Quiche Lorraine a savoury treat with plenty of eggs , cheese and bacon , or creamed spinach and other fine vegetables complimenting cheese . Coconut macaroons made with my child which I shared with my neighbours . Other baking efforts have been rock cakes, a firm favourite my Nanny Nell made regularly .
I learnt to make pastry when imperial measurements were all we ever used . Liquid was measured in pints . A pound of flour was 16 ounces , half a pound of butter was 8 ounces . Baking was simple mathematics in action. We used proportions and remembered simple equations . 6,4 and 2 ounces . for crumble , flour , fat and sugar . Half fat to flour for pastry and half the fat was a mixture of lard and margarine . The former giving lightness , the latter giving colour . With experience the scales were abandoned . Flour was sifted with baking powder and hands ready to gently rub fat into flour until the mixture resembled fine breadcrumbs . Tepid water and sometimes egg mixture added and then rolled out using a rolling pin with a flour dredger to keep the stickiness at bay . Some people had wooden rolling boards . The pastry was rolled out and set on to the pie dish , pricked with a fork and sometimes baked blind before any filling was added . Some pastry consisted of suet , maybe for meat pies . There was grades of short crust pastry for pies . Courser for pies standing still on their own and more fat , often butter , added for mouthwatering pastry belonging to fruit . Baking needed space and time but this was accommodated in a style of life very different than today .
Pastry can be bought in rolls that is kept optimal in a fridge or even frozen . All presented in neat packages . The same with cake mixtures with only a need for an egg added before being mixed up and added to a baking tin. Fruit preserves or frozen batches for pies are readily available too . Albeit with added preservatives and often inferior ingredients used .
Personally , I prefer to make things myself as I know where the ingredients came from . I don’t like additives . Baking can be fun and I went through a stage in lockdown 3 when I would get up and make scones and give them to a neighbour . Once I made an oreo cake , but was the point in home baking with commercial biscuits ? Home baking gives off a delicious welcoming aroma . Ingredients meld together in the heat wafting in our nostrils . Vegetables softened in the oven rather than boiling on a pan Today I made sweet potatoes in spices , sprayed with oil and made more delicious coated in chilli with a few herbs to accompany . I took time and care to prepare . The hot oven did the rest.
No more baking for me today . Maybe tomorrow a jacket potato . Buttery insides and crisp skin or mash potato crisped up as a topping , so much better than plain mash just spooned over .
There is a magic in baking , textures added to good food and lots of intoxicating aromas tempting the appetite and exciting hungry bellies .