Christmas stuff

I find that I miss Swedish food mostly at Christmas, and funnily enough the kinds of things I miss I didn't particulary eat lots of in Sweden anyway. Every year since I moved to England we throw a massive party on my birthday (22nd December). The party is now famous on our road and people have developed their own liking of Swedish Christmas food specialities and at the same time it gives me the excuse to prepare a traditional Swedish Christmas "Julbord". We now make about 4 kg of meatballs every year (the secret is to use a deepfat fryer to cook them!!), Janssons frestelse, beetroot salad among other things I didn't really have at Christmas as a child but now would really miss!

At the same time I get more and more fond of the traditional English things people eat for Christmas that invariably seem to contain huge amounts of raisins and currants. Why all the raisins? They aren't exactly local are they? So why make all these mince pies (For my Swedish readers: little shortcrust pies filled with, guess what! Raisins!), Christmas cakes and Christmas puddings?? Now I actually enjoy them very much (more than John even!) and have taken over the baking of the annual Christmas cake (which should be made well in advance...some people make theirs in January, probably because the raisins are all being sold off cheap!) I baked mine about a month ago and today covered it with marzipan and icing. Now all I have to do is to leave it to gather dust until Christmas before cutting weighty* slices of it to go with a glas of nice port!

***For the Swedish readers: it has the density of solid rock, just imagine I put in about 2 kg of raisins and currants (actually what the difference between raisins and currants is (not even getting the sultanas involved!!) I have no idea!***




Amazing! I've posted twice today and I haven't even mentioned mountain biking more than just in passing! Just wait though, I'll bore you to death with it sooner or later!