Ingrid and I went grocery shopping for all the Christmas meals we’ll be having tomorrow. Herring and gravad lax and brussel sprouts and potatoes and all that.

I always mix up the Stora Coop shops near us. I know that one of them has a deli counter that sells their own pickled herrings, but I forget which one it is. (Note to future self: it’s Coop Bromma Blocks.) This year, without a helpful note from past me, we started at Coop Vinsta. While it didn’t have the good herring, it had plenty of parking space and almost no queues, so it was rather nice to get the bulk of the shopping out of the way here. Then we headed to Coop Bromma Blocks for herring. And for julmust, because Coop Vinsta didn’t have the good stuff there, either.

Neither did the other Coop, as we discovered. Usually they all have several brands, sugary and sugar-free, large bottles and multi-packs of small bottles, but this year it was just this single variety, and that was that. We thought we must have walked past them, so we searched, even asked the staff, but no, that was it. Ingrid remembered seeing at least the sugar-free kind (which she prefers) at our local, small Coop, so we ended up going there as well, and finally got the julmust we wanted.

None of the three Coop supermarkets had cranberries, though, and neither did our local ICA. Some years ago I know I bought fresh American cranberries at one of the large Coop supermarkets, and then after that at least there were frozen Swedish ones. (Different species, and they behave differently when cooked, but they taste similar enough.) But I guess there’s not enough demand. We’ll have to make do with some kind of lingonberry-based sauce instead.