Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Caraway seeds

When I was about 8 years old, I was living with my beloved grandmother .We lived in a small town in Dorset on the south coast of England. She had a very good friend (an ancient spinster, called Miss Gilbert) who lived next door. Occasionally we would walk to Miss Gilbert's house for tea. There was always cake!!!
On one fateful afternoon we went to Miss Gilbert's house and she produced a seed cake. Seed cake is (was?!) a popular English cake for serving with afternoon tea. It is essentially a pound cake with caraway seeds mixed into the batter prior to baking.
I had never had one of these before - and it tasted disgusting to me. Of course, being the polite child, I thanked Miss Gilbert for the cake, choked the piece down (after even the dog turned up its nose when I offered it surreptitiously). I must have been too enthusiastic in my thanks. Seed cake was now "Christopher's favourite" and offered every time we went there for tea. These visits became steadily less frequent - at least for me.
Fast forward 40 some years. Madame tells me that she likes nothing better than sauerkraut with caraway seeds - or rye bread with caraway seeds. I think that if I pulverized caraway seeds with the sole of my shoe, she would eat that too.
As soon as the bread had been pronounced a success, I heard, "Honey, you can make me some rye bread with caraway now, can't you?" I'll wait until I have a head cold, wear a face mask, and make sure all the windows are open the vent fan on before that happens

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