Hi everyone ! Mame Baudet back on the blog after quite a while. Apologies, but I’ve been honestly very, very busy since the Christmas break. We’ve got a new exhibition opening next week at the National Museum of Asian Art here in Paris and I’ve been involved in translating the catalogue and writing the 15 page booklet which will be on sale for visitors who don’t feel like swallowing the whole catalogue.

I emailed Jenifer (web editor) the other day telling her that next door to my doctor’s I’d seen an art gallery which apparently specialises in photography and what did I see in the window… a donkey ! And Jenifer jokingly replied « oh nooooooooo ! not another donkey in a gallery ». The donkey was an Egyptian one by the way.

But let’s get to the point and avoid another donkey in a gallery… though………
Early in Januray, I sent the link to the website and Mame Baudet’s blog to a friend of mine. She had a look at it and told me that years ago, herself and her family used to spend their summer holidays in the West of France and that the lady they stayed with was a donkey addict. Last Sunday, I was invited for dinner by that very same friend and she had a surprise for me - besides a couple of cheese labels with donkeys on it —it so happens that at one stage herself also collected cheese labels!— she handed me a small pack of porcelain donkey-shaped Epiphany trinkets.

I know you Irish people have specific customs on Nollaig Bheagh. Well, in France we also have our own. On Epiphany day, which was held on 6th of Januray before a recent reform moved it to the first Sunday of January, people eat a special cake which is called either "galette des rois" in the North of the country and in Belgium, or "gâteau des rois" in the South. The "galette" is a round flat pastry filled with almond paste or apple compote. A "fève" is hidden inside and baked with the cake and the lucky one who finds it is king or queen for the day… a cardboard crown goes with the cake when you buy it at a bakery. In the past, but I reckon it still happens in many families, a child went under the table and, as the cake was being shared out, said who would get each share.

Originally, the "fève" was a real broad-bean… and "fève" is indeed the French for broad-bean. Some actually claim that in the Middle Ages, people used to put a broad-bean in cakes as they were supposed to ward off evil spirits which could have disturbed the meal. A custom akin to superstition which the Church never really approved of but eventually absorbed by deciding that this cake should be eaten on Epiphany day to commemorate the visit paid to the Child Jesus by the Magi. As long as France remained a monarchy, nobody objected to the cake being called "galette des rois". But during the French revolution, the government put a ban on the custom. Yet people carried on in secret until Napoleon lifted the ban.

The first porcelain "fève" is said to have been made in 1874 in Germany and was shaped as a baby. The range of subjects started to widen in the late 19th and early 20th century and they now reproduce nearly anything from animals or everyday life tools to the heroes of the latest Disney movie. Plastic was used also in the 1960s and metal as well but the later lead to some mishaps (with the growing use of the micro-wave) and porcelain fèves made their come-back in the 1980s.

Still now, when I visit my parents early in January, we eat the galette together, and believe it or not… though I’m now in my late forties, my mum still cheats, checking the cake before the meal starts so that she knows exactly which share to give me for me to be the queen ;-)
But never before did I find a donkey in my cake. So I was delighted last Sunday, to become the proud owner of no less than FIVE porcelain donkeys even if they were not in the cake. You’ve just seen the one I find the cutest with his lovely little hat. He reminds me of Jubilee who could be seen sporting a very elegant pink hat in a group of Sidmouth HQ staff during the Breast Cancer Awareness month last year.