Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home. – Edith Sitwell

It’s nice to have a few down days at the hotel, nice to be able to spend time with the staff, get things done in the calm and quiet. My husband and I agreed. We are catching up on chores, those things that are normally done in the low season months at every family-owned and run hotel around the world.

Decorating decisions made, artisans interviewed, estimates scrutinized, we have finally organized the complete renovation of Room #12, a room that hasn’t been in service for a dozen years. We’ve chosen elegant, sophisticated cream with a touch of pale teal and muted golden-green anise. We will be enlarging the bathroom, insulating the walls, making it pretty, cosy and comfortable and ready for the summer season. We then sat down and made a complete list of all renovations to be made – rooms that need to be completely renovated or partially renovated – as well as all equipment that must be bought or replaced and filled in a calendar covering the next five years or so in order of importance, of necessity. It’s odd to look at a timeline of the hotel and making decisions for next year, the year after, five and six years down the line, when I still find it difficult to believe that I own this place. I still walk down the hallways, albeit with much more ownerly confidence, in awe, constantly having to remind myself that it is all mine.

“You know, I have a great idea,” I said to my husband last week. “Why don’t we renovate our own bathroom in our apartment after the bathroom in room #12 has been done but before they seal off the doorway between our bedroom and 12 so we can use the new bathroom while ours is being renovated? That way the job won’t be rushed.” I thought that I was being so clever, so practical. “You know, we have an entire hotel full of bathrooms we can use,” he answered, somewhat amused. “Oh, I forgot about that. But then it won’t be very convenient running from our bedroom to use the bathroom down the hall or upstairs!” He laughed at me. “You do realize that we can sleep in any one of the rooms in the hotel that we want to, right?”

I still find it hard to believe that I own this place.

Winter. I’m back to writing, beginning to help my son who is currently working in Sweden hunt for an apartment in Nantes for his return, cleaning and organizing my apartment (that has woefully been neglected since we moved in one year ago). And making lots and lots of jam with the end of Autumn fruits and vegetables. And turning to winter citrus for the long, harried, assiduous task of orange marmalades. Today, I order the first load of bitter Seville oranges that have just shown up in France.

And I’ve baked. Of course, I baked. Although I made nothing for Hanukkah, and nothing for Christmas, I cannot let an Epiphany go by without galettes des rois.

Lights off, the gray, silent afternoon seeps in through the curtains allowing me just enough illumination to slice and chop the last pears of the season, the slick flesh leaving a sticky glaze on my hands. The unusual spring has finally turned to cold and as the fog settles onto the city’s rooftops, enveloping the church towers in a soft blanket of mystery, graffiti in pink, blue and gold pressing forward in an endless effort to assert itself, I press my hands into the chilled pastry, brush off a cloud of wintry flour and prepare to assemble this year’s Galette. The hours upon hours, weeks into years, I spent long ago watching a chef pound, roll, turn endless mounds, endless squares, endless layers of puff pastry come back to me, his hypnotic movements, the creamy dough against the silver shine of the worktop urging me on. I try and imitate his actions, but lose myself in the sensual pleasure of my every gesture, the clean, bright scent of fresh dough, its smooth, cool softness, the delicate poof of powdery flour that rises around me, making me laugh. And I forget the haunting grayness of this bleak midwinter.

There is no religious symbolism in these galettes in our home, no religious affinity with the day. But there is something emblematic about having a galette or two to kick off the New Year, something comforting about eating warm, crispy, sweet galettes in the dead of winter. Husband waits expectantly, a yearly habit, an annual custom, biding his time with a bakery-bought galette, until I pull out the flours, the rectangles of butter, decide on a filling – or two – until he hears the familiar bang bang bang of the rolling pin on pastry, sees the two white powdery handprints on the back of my skirt where I inadvertently wiped them clean and knows that one of my homemade Galette des Rois is in the making. He finds the box where a dozen or so tiny ceramic figurines, lucky fêves of galettes past lie nestled in a happy heap, sifts through the collection and chooses one that I will push down into the frangipane or the fruit compote or the pastry cream before placing the second round of feuilletée atop and sliding it into the oven.

Add to my husband’s expectations the excitement and curiosity of our staff (who still wonder at my baking skills) and there is no turning back on the promises of galettes I have been making since the first of the year. There was even a loud and heated discussion about the exact date, some confounded by this secular country’s changing the day of the galette to the first Sunday of the month when families could enjoy it together. “But everyone knows,” I stated, “that epiphany is the 6^th day of January, 12 days after Christmas when the Three Kings went to see the baby Jesus! And that is when we eat the galette des rois! Anyway,” I teased, “all who want a slice of galette must wait until the 6^th!”

Happily I baked my galettes, one filled with frangipane, one filled with frangipane and fresh pear purée, the last of the pears picked up from the local orchards and left over from jam, before the door of our ancient oven dropped off, shattering into a million shards of glass all over the kitchen floor.

Ooops.

Clément was here to enjoy this year’s galette before flying back to Senegal and off to India for an architectural project.

Two weeks later, just a few days until we begin our second momentous year at the hotel, Clément is in India, Simon is back home in Nantes, and the renovation of Room #12 is well on its way.

And the oven has finally been replaced.

Pastry, Petitions, and Politics Part II will follow