Festive cheer

Christmas has become a time when people selling food become ever more inventive in their drive to outflank all the other people at the same game. Some of it arriving in the form of cardboard letters, some of it as inserts in the Guardian and some of it just swilling around the Internet.

To my mind a lot of it is far too complicated and not well suited to my palate at all, more into quantity than sophistication. A tendency which for many years drove my penchant for warm, weak, bitter beer.

I may have moved on a bit, and we will no doubt be indulging in a Christmas pudding - manufactured in our own kitchen - without brandy and without goo-oozing cavities in the middle - but most of the stuff on offer I can well do without. With a sample of three being offered above.

In fairness to Fortnum & Mason (the second snap), I should say that I quite like their pralines, at least when one does not have to fight one's way through a scrum of eager Christmas shoppers to get at them. Not too complicated and not much into the peculiar flavours and textures that have infested the more adventurous corners of the chocolate world.

PS: there seems to be some confusion as to whether the words 'palate' and 'palace' are related, not helped by the word 'palatine' being spelt like the former but with meanings closer to the latter. OED tells me that palace comes from the Roman emperors building their houses on the Palatine Hill, one of the seven hills of Rome. While palate comes from the slightly different word 'palatum'. While the French, ever difficult, use the same word 'palais' for both.

References

Reference 1: https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/. Snap 1 & cardboard.

Reference 2: https://www.fortnumandmason.com/. Snap 2.

Reference 3: https://www.oddbox.co.uk/. Snap 3.