A Gaulish Feast and Other Fun Times

So it appears that what I thought was going to be an aberrant, or at least infrequent, weeklong gap in my posting turned out to be . . . well, first of a trend I intend to redirect. I was away over the weekend, and, despite having all sorts of cool things to talk about — a Gaulish feast! a tea party! a priest’s ordination! spring! — I was, well, busy organising/attending/enjoying these things, and, well, part of the point of a blog such as mine is to promote doing cool things, not just to write about them.

So, with some of this week’s (and some of last week’s) goodies from the CSA in the oven — small beets, parsnips, potatoes, onions, garlic, an apple (I thought I’d try it) and a sweet potato left over from before I started getting local root crops, all tossed in olive oil with rosemary and flaky salt — I thought I’d sit down with a cup of tea and write for a bit.

Where shall I start?  The Gaulish feast seems the obvious first thing to take.

Friday was our end-of-term faculty party, and, with a fair amount in the kitty and the desire for a good party, we decided to have a suckling pig —  a decision that immediately made us feel like Asterix and Obelix, even though the trimmings were southern American and not exactly northern-European-at-the-time-of-Julius Caesar.  I did my best with cheese and olives (I was responsible for the non-suckling pig part of the feast), and, of course, we had vast quantities of both wine and beer, which serves all purposes.

It was a great delight, I must say, even though I had to get up at 5:00 the next morning to catch the bus to the airport and then a plane to Toronto, where I went to my friend’s ordination to the priesthood.  This is a friend who started her PhD at the same time as I, and in the time it took me to finish (which, let me hasten to add, was exactly the average for my department) finished not only her PhD in Old English gnomic utterances but also her Master of Divinity.  Welladay.  We aren’t all quite as receptive to the urgings of the Holy Ghost, alas.

I don’t have any pictures of either the feast or the tea party or the springtime glory of Toronto (by far its best season, full this weekend of magnolias and daffodils and green, green grass), but I do have a new camera — so there will be some coming as soon as I’ve worked out its basic functions.  I’ve also been reading a great deal and writing at least a little, so more on both those things — as well as some new points which I hope will be of interest concerning the interior of the Rose and Phoenix Inn.