Bah Humbug. It's December again - 17 Days until Christmas

Bah Humbug, it's 8th December. The start of the second week of Advent, the start of a working week, (and I can hardly open my eyes), seven pieces of chocolate have been consumed - and probably a lot more that had little to do with Advent calendars.

A whole week of Advent, and I have not eaten a mince pie yet. I did make pizza and pizza dough balls for dinner last night, but that doesn't count. That's an Italian tradition. Maybe I should make some pastry later on and finally open the jar of mincemeat that has been sitting in the cupboard?

Mincemeat with no meat. 

That always confused me when I was young. 

Mince pies. Mince pies denote pies made with mince, as in meat that has been put through one of those funny old contraptions with a funnel on the top and a handle that you turn so that the meat going in comes out in stringy munched up chunks. An early version of processed meat.

The mince pies today are not filled with meat. 

They were originally. 

Crusaders brought them back from the Middle East in 13th Century. Pies filled with chopped meat, fruit and spices. And that is how they were eaten for a long time at Christmas, normally containing 13 different ingredients to represent Christ and the 12 disciples.

As usual, we have the Victorians to blame with their strange eating habits for the sweet version, (they sort of invented jelly, but that isn't Christmassy so I shall not be writing about it here). They made the pies smaller and sweeter and the meat sort of disappeared. The ingredients were prepared months in advance (they planned things out, just like preparing the Christmas pudding), and stored it in jars, ready for the December pies. 

I'm not Victorian, well, at least I don't think I am, but I remember as a child waiting excitedly for the first mince pies of the season. Now you can buy mince meat and mince pies just about all year round, rather like Hot Cross Buns (that's another tradition that I could write about, but shall not as it has nothing to do with Christmas - that's Easter).

There are many stories about it being illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas Day. I don't think that's true as I have eaten many in my time. If it is, then I am probably living on borrowed time. Rather I think, we should make it illegal to throw away so many of these little treats that make a wonderful mid-morning snack with a cup of tea or an espresso. Unilever claimed in 2012 that 74 million pies are thrown away every year. That is a lot of landfill!

On that note, I shall leave you with a wonderful article that appeared yesterday in the British newspaper: The Independent, Sweet delight: A brief history of the mince pie

I suppose the Brits really do love their pies.

BAH HUMBUG

Now where is that jar of mince meat?