Indira Ganesan, Filter Coffee at IIC, 2017

This is a snowless, sunny Christmas eve, with the trees bare. Red winterberry peek through the liched-laden branches, though, and sky is a mix of soft grey and blue.  Days like this in Cape Cod make me glad for my pockets of warmth.  On my coat, certainly, for as Coco Channel said, women need pockets, and female clothing hardly included them.  My pockets are also the tiny shops I frequent, for chocolate, for coffee, for a sandwich, and a pastry.  They are scattered throughout the Outer Cape, run by genius chefs and hosts, who remember my name, even if I generally don’t remember theirs. They are like gems in a place that frankly favors fish, and why should it not, being on the coast, a handmade island, but an island hard for a vegetarian to accommodate herself.  Unlike Santa Cruz CA, the chai does not flow on tap, as a friend once put it,  but it is starting to  trickle in, the kind that is strictly made with cardamom, and not pumpkin-flavors.

The December holidays though, make me nostalgic for date-nut bread spread with cream cheese.  I can’t find them at the supermarket, and apparently, neither can anyone else who hankers for a taste of 1970’s packaged, seasonal, sweets.  Thomas, of the muffin fame, made them, but I don’t remember that.  And the internet tells me it wasn’t enough to spread (not, note, “slather,” a lovely if trendy term I see everywhere suggesting to me, at least, English countrysides and lots of money, and not the gas-lines in suburban New York ) a slice with cream cheese; true authenticity demanded an another slice on top, a date-nut bread sandwich.  Again, intriguing, but not my experience.  I just remember moist, nearly black bread. Maybe the cream cheese wasn’t the silver foil-covered block, but the then new container of whipped.

It’s nearly 40 degrees farenheit, and the sun is out.  It must be snowing somewhere.

So where’s it snowing?  Right here, right now.  Go ahead, slather away!

And Happy Holidays!