Halloween and new cuisine

The wintry sky and cold lake, the yellowing leaves, shows summer is really over. The view is from the balcony.

Until about five year’s ago Halloween was unknown in Europe. Whether retailers wanted another selling opportunity or not I don’t know, but its popularity is growing. I was eating in an Ethiopian restaurant October 31st with a writer friend, several little witches swept through waving their broomsticks.

It was a first for me, both the food and the restaurant, which had been partitioned into areas marked with brush fences. We chose the menu du jour, which was served on a tray in wicker basket and flat bread that we used to scoop up the fish (with ginger and rosemary) and chicken. With my Indian friends when we eat at their home, I have mastered this technique, just like I have more or less mastered chopsticks, but there was nothing Halloweenish about the meal.

But the restaurant is a digression for Samhain or Halloween, which is supposed to be the most magical night of the year. Some type of celebration has marked this time across the centuries and across cultures.

The Celts saw Samhain as the end of the old year and the beginning of the new, when the cycle of rest would be followed by rebirth. I always thought of this time of year as the real new year, maybe because it was back to school and the time to start new projects even eating at an Ethiopian restaurant. While looking ahead, I looked back on the summer memories, but am happy to have switched from sandals to fuzzy socks, iced tea to hot. And if the leaves in Switzerland are more yellow and less red than the autumns of my childhood, they are still beautiful.

When we get a sunny day, it too is a celebration for they are rarer, and the wheel of life continues on towards the longest night of the year, bringing dark.