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Bicycles and Biscuits

Christmas past and this year's plans with Jill Foulston.

 

What is your favourite Christmas memory?

When I was about 7 or 8 my parents shuffled me outside to the garage for my next present. There in all its sparkly purple glory was a new Schwinn bicycle. I was thrilled because it was completely unexpected -- my little brother got one too.

What is the worst present you’ve ever given or received?

Don't ask me why, but one year I gave a very close friend a tin of biscuits. That's it. Admittedly, they were a speciality from Yorkshire and not Tesco, but I still can't believe I did that. She definitely deserved more!

What are your plans for this Christmas?

Every year I force my family to eat an 18th-century Italian monastery cake from The British Museum Cookbook, full of pinenuts, crystallised ginger and slivers of bitter chocolate. Other than that, I'm with Elizabeth David, who looked forward to cooking very little on Christmas Day itself (see The Joy of Eating: The Virago Book of Food, p. 100).

Are you giving any books this Christmas?

I've bought four copies of Frances Bissell's lovely Scented Kitchen to give away and my mother's getting Oliver Sacks's Musicophilia.

What book would you most like to receive this Christmas?

At Large and at Small, Anne Fadiman's collection of essays on coffee, ice cream, the Romantics and butterflies -- and (I know two is cheating, but...) Denis Cotter's Wild Garlic, Gooseberries...and Me.

Any tips for surviving the festive period?

Plan, like Mrs Miniver, to start your shopping early -- or else give the 'utterly pointless Taste-of-Others exam' deplored by Bridget Jones a miss! (The Virago Book of The Joy of Shopping, p. 89) Don't forget Self while shopping for others: stock up on chocolate, wine, marzipan and clementines. And books, of course.

 

 

Posted 24/11/2007 10:27:50 by Jill Foulston with 0 comments.

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