maeve.mossin Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Galway ·
MemoryStudding oranges with cloves at my gran's
Here's a thing. It's lashing on the bog road and I passed a crate of oranges outside the shop and I was straight back in my gran's kitchen in Oughterard, a basin of oranges on the table and a saucer of cloves and the two of us pushing them in until our thumbs were sore. The cloves smelled hot and almost like carnations going in, and the orange rounded them off once they were in. She hung them in the wardrobe for the winter, so she did.
The club's page on clove and its carnation side says an orange studded with cloves made a pomander, a Victorian token of affection. Gran never said affection, she said moths. It was the first note of Christmas every year, before the band had even tuned.
4 comments
kit.clove
Cloves are half my username and I still had to look up pomander. Lovely memory.
rafa_azahar
Hello friends, my grandmother did this too in Seville, with oranges from the street trees. For me the clove is the smell of Christmas, more than the tree. Un abrazo.
mags.lavender
My nan tied hers with ribbon round the middle, and the wardrobe smelled of it for a lot of the winter. Lovely thread, Maeve.
maeve.moss
Mags, the red ribbon! I'd forgotten that, and now I have the whole kitchen back and the radio on the dresser too.