Advent Calendars
Mark writes:
Advent Calendar CakeI was listening to the Today programme podcast the other day and they mentioned their on-line Advent Calendar. It was the first time I'd heard mention of Advent Calendars this year and I realized that I hadn't seen any here anywhere. I don't remember seeing any last year either. A little bit of googling shows that in fact they do exist in America, and a Google Fight makes "Advent Calendars UK" only a narrow winner over "Advent Calendars USA". Perhaps it is just North Carolina, then, or just this corner of North Carolina, but I've not seen a single one.
So how are we coping without an advent calendar? Happily, recent years have seen the steady rise of on-line advent calendars, and this year there is a bumper crop. Wikipedia's article on the topic now makes "Online Advent Calendar" a separate section. The three I am enjoying this year are:
BBC Radio 4 Today Advent Calendar
Today is the news and politics programme that sets the agenda for the day. Millions wake up to it every day (and some of us in the US go to bed to it every night). This advent calendar provides short sound highlights from the last twelve months of the programme.Doctor Who Advent Calendar
This appears on the front of the BBC's official Doctor Who website as part of its countdown to the eagerly awaited Christmas special episode called The Runaway Bride.Mark Kermode Advent Calendar and Quiz
Viola and I have not missed a single Mark Kermode film review podcast in the last year, so it's lots of fun to hear some of his rants on this advent calendar.Also worth a mention is the BBC Sport Advent Calendar.
And the great thing for those of us on a pre-Christmas diet is that none of the above have yet mastered the technology necessary to release a chocolate when we open each door.
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3 comments:
I love the look of the advent cake photo but probably too tempting to resist for whole 24 days! Have you actually made a cake like that?
When I first came here in 2000, there were number of things that I traditionally related to Christmas that I couldn't find but over the years with influx of Uk immigrants to area, things have changed. Now, I can get cream crackers, mushy peas, orange squash, christmas pudding, christmas crackers and pickle onions(not the cocktail ones but real ones) to name but a few items in quite a number of shops. There is even quite a few advent calendars to chose, World Market or Barnes & Nobles both had them.
I haven't made a cake like that. In fact, I haven't made a cake like anything in years. If I need to, I just buy them ready-made.
We too have been able to find quite a few foods if we look hard enough and are willing to pay through the nose for it (e.g. our local Kroger has Marmite at $5.69 for a small jar that costs 75p in my Mum's local Sainsburys). We have a world market near us and if I'm really craving something I'll sometimes go and see if they have it (e.g. Cadbury's Flake).
If I get around to it, I might pop into World Market to see if they have any chocolate advent calendars that I can get for the girls.
I bought an advent quilt a few years back, and i've already hung it up, but I have been so sidetracked I have forgotten to do it. The quilt is just 15 days, so I was supposed to start yesterday.
Thanks for the reminder :-)
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