Mincemeat Tarts

"You can have mine."

Wyona offered me a mincemeat tart.

 I took one eagerly, thinking that this year they would taste different – that they would be something I liked. 

Wyona told me to smother the top of the tart with whipping cream and add some dulche de leche on top of that.

None of that was enough.

 That will be my only mincemeat tart of the season. After all of these years, and still I pass.

“I don’t understand it,” Wyona said. “I have these warm memories of mincemeat and Christmas pudding and Christmas cake. Mother would shred the carrots for the pudding and then bottle it. When it was Christmas and she asked someone to run downstairs to the pantry and bring up a bottle for supper, it was me who headed down the stairs on the run. I can still remember that happiness. Later my girls asked me the recipe for the topping. I didn’t know there was a recipe. I just took the butter and icing sugar and began to beat the two together as I had seen my mother do.”

The tastes of Christmas.

Different for everyone.

Arta