"smoking bishop" news and stories

So winter officially greeted us the other day and the cold is here to stay for the next couple of months or so. We all have our own drinks to warm us up in December, January, and February: hot chocolate, coffee, tea, cider, etc. And some people go the booze route (The Booze Route - there's a good name for a band). The folks over at the Guardian books blog have dived into the novels of Charles Dickens and found out he's really the place to go to if we want to get ideas for winter drinks.

Besides recipes for hot punch (from A Christmas Carol), you also get info on how to make Wassail (from The Pickwick Papers), Purl (from The Old Curiosity Shop), and something called Smoking Bishop, which is from A Christmas Carol and features a lot of red wine. God bless us everyone!