Christmas – Page 6 – don't confuse the narrator

drinks invitation

The festive card in the photo was on the table at a restaurant where I had lunch the other day, offering a number of ‘drinks bundles’ for diners.

I don’t know much about beer prices, but I do know that if a house wine costs £15, getting four for the price of three does make it a much better deal.

Mind you, four bottles of wine is quite a lot, which is presumably why the restaurant felt it necessary to add the rider:

Enjoy alcohol responsibly

Why they felt it appropriate to display the card on a table clearly designed for a maximum of two people, I’m not sure. Suffice it to say, I did not take them up on their offer.

Christmas: first blood

In a rare fit of truthfulness on the blog, I will admit that I am visiting my elderly mother for Christmas.

Having offered to cook Christmas lunch for whichever of the very limited family choose to attend, I decided that it was about time I stopped complaining about the inadequacies of the maternal kitchen and bought some kitchen knives that suit me.

that time of year

The fact that it’s almost Christmas doesn’t mean I am any less busy, so, having no time to write, here’s a festive photo:

And an old, but seasonal, poem, slightly tinkered with. Well, it was a poem with line breaks, but the page format splits the long lines so awkardly I’ve given up and pretended it’s just prose:
Continue reading “that time of year”

more balls

Doing a bit of checking for yesterday’s piece about silver dragées for confectionery purposes, I came across a couple of things I found interesting.

First of all, in America, at least some of the confectionery suppliers such as shopbakersnook still use the word dragée. (Well, ok, without the accent.) That particular site sells “dragees for cakes and cookies” in a variety of colours, including pink, blue and white. I can see that they might think “blue dragees” sounds better than “blue balls”.
Continue reading “more balls”

the right word

Dr Oetker's silver balls — ballsing up the language

We were talking about traditional British celebratory cakes – proper rich fruit cakes with home-made almond paste, white royal icing and piped rosettes with silver dragées – and I was disappointed to find that confectionery suppliers in the UK are dumbing down: apparently they aren’t ‘dragées’ at all any more, but ‘silver balls’.

Why are we simplifying things when we have perfectly good and accurate words? A ‘silver ball’ could be any size and made of anything. A ‘silver dragée’ is far more precisely defined.
Continue reading “the right word”