It’s the traiteur stupid, but don’t tell anyone
We already have learnt that it’s perfectly alright to postpone things (see door number 14) and that we mustn’t fret (see door number 5) when we feel a bit overwhelmed, for example with organising Christmas Dinner. Now if you’re planning on a French Christmas Dinner, you really can totally relax now because you actually don’t have to do it all yourself. In fact, it wouldn’t occur to a proper French host even in their wildest dream to think of doing it all on their own, when, after all in France you can get prime stuff from the traiteur. Practically all butchers do traiteur too, and during our road trips through France, being pick-nick aficionados, we’ve never came across less than superb food from the butcher/traiteur. Want to brag with a perfect beef wellington? Super creamy gratin dauphinois? To die for foie gras? He has it all. After all, you should not want to spend Christmas Dinner sweating away in your kitchen, right. And when a guest cautiously admires you managing a prime dinner in that ridiculously splendid gown-and-hair-still-creepily-perfect you may take them into your confidences: It’s the traiteur stupid, but don’t tell anyone.
This is Les Poissonchat’s Wondrous Advent Calendar! Advent calendars are a huge tradition where I come from: you make little gifts for your loved ones every day until Christmas Day, fourandtwenty little surprises. The advent calendars come in beautifully old fashioned prints on cardboard, with extra glitter, and each day there’s a paper door waiting for you to pry open. Others are more elaborate, pretty baskets filled with twenty four numbered parcels, decorated with red velvet ribbons. The one I’m making for you this season is altogether a different one, and, quite obviously, it’s about beloved France, Christmas in France, and after all, what it takes to celebrate a proper French Christmas.
Les Poissonchats 