In the still of the night

and an invitation to try black as Solstice night Mesöst cheesecake

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

In the middle of what often feels like the longest month, there’s a moment of particular stillness, a hush that feels charged, if we but listen for it.

A day tucked into the calendar, seemingly like any other, one more day of time running out and errands to run, promises to keep, and miles to go before you sleep.

Yet, wait. The shift has started below our feet, imperceptible, sending the tiniest of vibrations through the deadened ground and sleeping bulbs. Magic passageways become visible in the swiftly falling darkening, signs that children see in their dreams and that we have forgotten to notice.

On the shortest day of the year, nothing looks different…yet everything has already turned.

Is it any wonder that the Winter Solstice is my favourite day of the year?

“Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.”

Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons (1964)

It’s no accident that my love affair with the cycles of the sun began just two short years ago. It was then that I moved to an aerie in the sky—low enough to feel connected to the earth, high enough to absorb the full choreography of the horizon: every sunrise and sunset, every full moon, every whisper of a new crescent.

When you sit perched at eye level with the clouds, you are a conspirator in their dance, anticipating their next move, applauding their graceful ebbs and flows.

And as the sun dips below the horizon with a dramatic burst of wintertime sunset in deep December, you also become acutely aware of the ever-shortening of the day, the long dark descent into winter night and stillness.

These glorious sunsets remind me that there are brighter longer days ahead…that the garden is simply sleeping under a fairy coverlet of snow.

Last week’s surreal Toronto sunset

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

— Rumi, adapted by Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi

I used to hate the dark days, the 4 p.m. shadows, the creeping sense that the cold was expanding to envelop the darkness. But the promise of the winter solstice is not just an escape from darkness, but the assurance that the turning has begun. Even at the longest night, the light is already finding its way back.

This understanding is embedded in Yalda, the ancient Persian observance of the winter solstice. The word Yalda derives from a Syriac term meaning “birth,” referring to the rebirth of the sun and the gradual lengthening of daylight after the solstice. In pre-Islamic Iranian cosmology, this night symbolized the turning point between darkness and light, when the forces of light begin to prevail.¹

But, if we go beyond Nature’s movements, this may not simply be a return of light; more deeply, it can become a moment when something magical begins, even if it can’t yet be seen. With every inch of daylight that we gain, there is a corresponding trembling below our feet. Growth is happening underground, and, if we let it, our most deeply buried intentions can begin to sprout too.

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

To Know the Dark, Wendell Barry

I don’t know that I will stay up all night long, eating pomegranates and reading poetry as the Persians might, or telling stories, using only candlelight to illuminate my surroundings. But on this Solstice, I might pause and listen for the darkness to sing, to sense the blooming under my feet, to look at that night sky with reverence, not just for its longest passage, but also for its gift of profound quiet.

A Yalda solstice treat

And in that quiet, I might just consider this the true beginning of the new year…alive with possibility, a moment’s throw before that next wave of festivities and eating and indulging too much and distraction.

I might just begin to lay down my intentions tonight, reverently before the deep night shadow, before the sun wakes up and starts a longer day, with dreams of crocuses and tender green shoots of possibility twirling around my head.

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Black as Solstice night cheesecake (aka Mesöst cheesecake)

The Recovering Line Cook, Will Readie

serves 10

Black as night Mesöst cheesecake

If an e-book called How to Win the Nordic Bun Wars catches your eye, you’re my kind of people. Just released by Wil Readie, one of my favourite Substackers, it has ten iconic Nordic recipes — a few of which I freely admit I’d not heard of before. I also admit that the cinnamon/cardamom bun recipe would have been enough to persuade me to download it, but there’s so much more to discover.

Take this twist on the classic Basque cheesecake, this one with a Nordic flavour provided by brunost cheese. As Wil describes it, brunost has a base aroma of caramel, dulce de leche and toffee; it also has a distinct umami profile that is buttery and almost meaty.

Brunost, inexplicably called Ski Queen

Rather than share Wil’s recipe here, I hope you’ve been inspired by these photos and visit his Substack to learn more (and read his wonderful diary series How to Fail at Being Finnish). And if you’re still stumped about what to get your favourite foodie for Christmas, Wil also offers online cooking classes that can be customised to your liking, or you may choose one of his existing classes.

However you are celebrating this shortest of nights, may it be filled with dear ones, the joy of spring’s distant promise and something delicious to eat.

1. Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “Čella / Yaldā”; Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (Routledge, 1979); UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage documentation on Yalda.