Posted by Jill Bowen on Fri 31st August 2007 at 03:46 AM, Filed in November
You can’t make an omelette without cracking eggs!!
According to legend when Napoleon and his army were travelling through the south of France they decided to rest for the night near the town of Bresseires. Whilst there Napoleon feasted on an omelette prepared by a local innkeeper that was such a culinary delight he ordered the townspeople to gather all the eggs they could find in the village and to prepare a huge omelette for his army the next day.
From this humble beginning it became a tradition to offer omelettes to the poor at Easter in France. In 1984 three members of the American chamber of commerce visited the omelette Festival in Bessieres, France and returned with a determination to bring the tradition to Abbeville USA and thereby join the other 7 cities who celebrate the omelette (Bessiers and Frejus in France; Dumbea, New Caledonia and Granby in Canada; Malmedy in Belgium and Pigue in Argentina. The cities all invite each other to their own celebrations which have now become a cultural exchange known as Confrerie.
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Posted by Jill Bowen on Mon 14th May 2007 at 03:00 AM, Filed in November
Roll out the barrel…lets have a barrel of fun…. this old song has a special connotation for the folk who live in the Devonshire town of Ottery St Mary. Each year a strange tradition takes place. Not content with such mundane things as fireworks (or just drinking the contents of the barrels) the spectacular festival of the Burning Barrels occurs.
This event evolved in the 17th century allegedly to rid the streets of evil spirits, and is now revived annually as children, then women, followed by the men take turns to run through the roads with the burning barrels on their shoulders!
Each pub in Ottery sponsors a single barrel (their contents having been previously drunk)! In the weeks prior to the event the barrels are soaked with tar. The barrels are then graded by weight as the weight determines who will carry them, and lit (in turn) outside of each of the pubs. When each barrel is alight with flames pouring out it is hoisted onto to a local’s shoulders or back.
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Posted by Jill Bowen on Thu 29th March 2007 at 11:31 PM, Filed in November
Morbid, gruesome, weird – maybe, with our ‘up-tight ’English way of behaving and thinking it could be all of these things. But, celebrating ancestors, for the lives they had and what they gave to us, their love, heritage and their genes that make us who we are.
This Spanish holiday is celebrated in countries worldwide and has been since 1800 BC. In Mixiquic, a small town on the southeast fringe of Mexico’s ‘Distrito Federal’ it starts at midnight on 1st November and lasts 24 hours (until midnight 2nd November). The festival kicks off with the people of Mixiquic welcoming back the spirits of their ancestors. Instead of the sombre, emotional affairs that graveside visits become in other parts of the world, this is a celebration, a joyous fiesta, and a reunion to giving thanks for ancestors.
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