Читать книгу The Kitchen Diaries II - Nigel Slater - Страница 21

After yesterday’s darkness and self-indulgence, I open the kitchen door to find the garden refreshed after the rain. The air is suddenly sweet and clean, you can smell the soil, and the ivy and yew are shining bright. The dead leaves are blown away, the sky clear and white. There is a new energy and I want to cook again.

Today is an important day for those who grow their vegetables bio-dynamically, when the Three Kings preparation – a stir-up containing gold, frankincense and myrrh – is ground for an hour, then made into a paste with rain or pond water and offered to the land. Jane Scotter at Fern Verrow, the Herefordshire farmer from whom I buy the vegetables I cannot grow for myself (for which read most), says it smells ‘like a fine fruity Christmas cake’. ‘We do this to invite elemental life forces to help and guide us for the coming growing season. We ask for good things to happen and give the preparation as an offering to the earth and to give thanks for what the universe provides. It is a lovely thing to do and a chance to walk around the farm on a route not usually taken, holding thoughts of thanks and wishes to the farm on a spiritual level.’

Hippy-dippy hocus-pocus it may sound, but I have far less of a problem believing in this than I do many of the religious ceremonies practised by millions. Actually, much less so.

My energy and curiosity may be renewed but the larder isn’t. There is probably less food in the house than there has ever been. I trudge out to buy a few chicken pieces and a bag of winter greens to make a soup with the spices and noodles I have in the cupboard. What ends up as dinner is clear, bright and life-enhancing. It has vitality (that’s the greens), warmth (ginger, cinnamon) and it is economical and sustaining too. I suddenly feel ready for anything the New Year might throw at me.