Our December service had a festive flavour as we learnt about ‘Feasts’.

Incredible local freestyle lyricist, ‘Gramski’, got the service off to an up-tempo start with his improvised poem about a feast involving the audience-suggested Gandhi and Marilyn Monroe, on the West Pier discussing Star Wars: pretty impressive stuff (perhaps you had to be there!).

Louise Peskett, guide and teacher at the Royal Pavilion, introduced us to the nineteenth century ‘celebrity chef’, Antoine Careme.  She explained that Careme was responsible for creating the vol-au-vent and creme caramel, and was quite possibly the first person to introduce soup as a starter.  Antoine Careme was abandoned by his parents at a young age and worked his way up ‘from the gutter’, making his mark on the culinary world, and leaving a legacy of over two thousand recipes.  What a great role model: he found something he was good at and stuck to it.

Louise told us of the history of the mince pie, explaining that the recipe for minced-meat pies, spiced with cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, was brought back to the UK by European crusaders from the Middle East. She dispelled the myth that it is illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas Day, the ruling being a remnant of the English civil war when mince pies were considered symbols of Catholic idolatry by the puritan authorities.

Russell ‘the science guy’ Arnott then delighted (or disgusted?) us with a practical demonstration of the digestive process of your festive fayre, involving an inner tube, some mashed cereal and a pair of tights.

Our four (yes, FOUR!) songs for the season of festive feasts were ‘Food, Glorious Food’ (of course!), ‘Winter Wonderland’, and ‘Let it Snow’, but we added a drop of cheerful optimism with ‘Walking on Sunshine’.

We also had many generous donations for our food drive for the Brighton Food Bank. Thank you to all those who contributed.

We look forward to seeing you on 24th January.

Happy new year everyone!

Jo x

 

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