Recipes are like Folktales

Spicy Hot Chocolate (Chocolat Chaud Épicé)

My son Ethan recently graduated from film school in Paris. It's always been a dream to collaborate with him. This is our first of hopefully many to come. His company is Inwind

Hello friends!

I woke before the sun to write to you, shivering with the fireplace barely flickering, with my numb fingertips. December’s Cold Moon shines through the window, showing the curve of Spruce limbs. Yesterday, I spied a mob of baby crow fledglings learning to fly from those branches. The sun shone on their feathers. The wonderfully aromatic scent of oranges, cloves, and cinnamon fills my room because I strung dried orange slices last night watching this excellent Christmas movie.

I once read somewhere that recipes are like folktales, scraps of culture. Grandmothers pass them down each generation, recollecting the tale slightly differently than how they learned it, tweaking one ingredient for another. This often happens if a family has moved to new soil (as in my case, moving from the Gulf Coast near New Orleans to Montana, then to France.) And like any folk tale told around the fire, the recipe adapts depending on the storyteller.