A Gascon Year: December closes Kate Hill’s series of twelve seasonal cookbooks featuring food and stories as warm and comforting as a hot supper cooked in an old French Farmhouse. Kate Hill, writer, cook and teacher, entices the reader into her life in Southwest France as she shares the regional and delicious recipes of Gascony. AGY: Decembre is a simple approach to the Winter Gascon kitchen. Within this issue, you’ll find some of her favorite recipes and a few stories that paint the picture of December over the years. In her words: "December bright days, as short as they may be, are long enough for a glance over my shoulder to the many other winter months that contribute to this last issue of A Gascon Year. I am always delightfully surprised by what editor, designer, and very good friend Elaine Tin Nyo finds buried in the blog archives that I’ve been writing since 2005—classic winter food like tartiflettes and pumpkins, boudin with truffles, foie gras and the highly personal and quirky like my Italian Grandmother’s lard tender biscotti and chickpea and chocolate cookie filling from Abruzzo. Christmas rolls around with a craving for boiled beef, a few more cookies, and that great Gascon pastry La Croustade Gasconne or le Pastis. A full soup pot and vin cuit cooked over the warming wood stove keep the kitchen toasty and our bellies full as a raucous Christmas past laughs in the face of this quiet continued lockdown holiday. December remains festive no matter how small the crowd is or how gentle your table. After twelve months of sharing the seasonal bounty of this Gascon Year, I trust you have a better idea of how I approach my kitchen and all the good food that flows through it. Enjoy the holidays, the end of one year and the beginning of the next. This year Camont’s Christmas supper will be shared online in a video and the small plates of good food will be savored by the fireside as we tell the stories of Christmas past—roasting chickens over an open fire in the Sahara, truffled risotto with friends from a visit to the Lalbenque marché au truffe, family pizzelles stuffed with chocolate and chickpeas, a fuzzy puppy sleeping at my feet." Each of these monthly cahiers de cuisine or kitchen notebooks is built on seasonal inspiration and instruction with personal essays, recipes, and photographs that are timeless. Easy to follow recipes for aperitifs and soups, main courses, and desserts fill these delectable volumes. A Gascon Year: Decembre introduces the reader to Kate Hill Cooks, the online teaching courses at Kitchen-at-Camont.com and all the good food she creates within its 18th century stone walls for her students around the globe. Included in December's volume are inspirational holiday ideas and over a dozen authentic recipes including: Vin Cuit, Beef Bouillon, Terrine de Foie Gras, Pâté de Canard, Pâté de Poulet, two of her Grandmother's Christmas cookies (Chickpea & Chocolate Italian Christmas Cookie Filling, Biscotti with Lard), Kate's Duckys (Cornmeal and Lard Cookies) and her Piggy Newtons, as well as Le Pastis Gascon or La Croustade Gasconne, Petits Monets, and Tarte aux Poires et Chocolat.