A few snapshots from the Bergheden family Christmas party. Food (potluck style), conversations, and presents for the kids.

I made the brandy sauce for the Christmas pudding based on BBC Food’s recipe and it’s almost like a jelly in texture. I could probably cut it into shapes. You’d think the BBC would be a reliable source for a recipe like that! When my mum saw the sauce, she immediately guessed that it was the BBC recipe – “that’s the one with 55 grams of everything” – because she’s had the same experience. So it really is the recipe that’s strange, not me mis-measuring anything.

But if you can get past the odd looks, it’s rather practical. The sauce stays where you put it on the plate, and you can take precisely as much as you want.

It’s Christmas Eve!

Knowing Nysse and his habit of attacking wrapped-up gifts, with all their play-friendly paper and ribbons and shiny bits, we didn’t leave the gifts out overnight. But when he’d had his breakfast and gone out, we put the gifts under the tree. He managed to attack one of them – luckily the one where the inner layer was a sturdy cardboard tube, and thus hard to damage and easy to re-wrap – but after that I kept my eye on him all the time and chased him away twice, after which he was almost afraid of even going near the tree, so there was no more damage.

Lunch was devilled eggs, pickled herring of three kinds (flavoured with blackcurrant, apple and curry, and mustard, respectively) and a citrus and gravad lax salad. Plus potatoes and vörtbröd, a Swedish Christmas bread.

Ingrid piped and decorated the eggs, and folded the napkins.

The citrus and salmon salad was a new entry on the menu. Tasted good!

Then it was time for presents. With everybody so grown-up, there’s a lot less cheering and jumping up and down than there used to be!

Nysse, when he woke up, attacked the rolled-up Santa hats as if they were fluffy little animals, and for some reason really enjoyed licking the little olive wood bowl that I gave to Eric.

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.

A Christmas day with my brother.

I picked him up by car in Uppsala as usual. What was not as usual was the thick slush coming down from the sky. I also hadn’t accounted for today being the first day of Christmas break and thus large crowds heading out of town to their cabins in the woods or wherever. The roads were slippery and full of snow and a lot more traffic than usual for 7:30 on a Saturday morning. The drive there and back usually takes me an hour and a half, but took two and a half today. For a good chunk of the way, we were all driving at 40 km/h behind a pair of snow ploughs.

Anyway, I managed to not become a statistic (and we saw no cars on the side of the road and no cars with sirens on) so all is good.

Then we baked. More lussebullar in all sorts of shapes, because after a while we all become bored with the traditional ones. There were lusse croissants and doodles and swirls and twists, and even a lusse snow lantern.

And then we made a batch of mince pies, too, because those are delicious and everyone should have access to mince pies at Christmas.

Christmas gifts all bought! Online shopping + one trip to IKEA. (If you’re one of the people hoping to receive a gift, don’t worry, there’s more outside the frame.)

We brought home a Christmas tree this weekend, and immediately it feels like Christmas is actually near.

As usual, the tree looks lovelier in real life than in a photo. When I am in the same room with it, it has just the right amount of glitter and bling on it – but in a photo, it still looks somewhat bare. Probably because I’m unconsciously comparing the photo to the over-decorated trees in stock photos, whereas the tree on its own has no such expectations to live up to.

It’s secured against tipping by climbing cats, as usual, and has no fragile ornaments on the lowest boughs. Nevertheless Nysse managed to knock down and break a plastic bauble on the first day.

I’ve complained about the cost of international postage before, and it just keeps getting worse. In the five years since 2019, the price has increase by 70% – and another increase coming up in January will bring it up to over double what it was back then.

This is what you get when essential services are privatized and expected to “compete” on the market. We don’t expect the military to make a profit, or the road network, but somehow the postal service needs to.

Party #1. The old one. Farewell fika at tretton37 for the twelve (!) people who will be leaving the company around the end of the year. And that’s just for the Stockholm office. Someone likened it to a funeral feast. Usually these events have an element of excitement, because the person leaving is going to something, but now we’re all going from something.

My last day isn’t until the 31st, but this feels like an ending.

Party #2. The new one. Christmas party at Active Solution, with a “Wild West” theme. (The symbolism of photographing a pair of doors closing behind me and another pair in front of me was unintentional when taking the photos, but it fits rather well.)

Nice people, relaxed atmosphere, good vibes, decent food. One obvious difference to tretton37 is the higher average age here. At tretton37 I am older than the majority, and I believe there are few who are older than me. Here, I feel that wasn’t the case.

For a “Wild West” theme party, you could get by with just a pair of blue jeans and a plaid shirt, and wouldn’t need to buy anything at all. Assuming you own blue jeans and a plaid shirt, neither of which is present in my wardrobe. I tried on five or six pairs of jeans at a charity shop, and one of them fit me like a second skin, which is a very rare thing with trousers, so I might actually keep these! I don’t wear blue during the cold season, not out of any master plan but because it just happens, but I can see myself using them in the summer. The plaid shirt… eh, maybe. It has weird epaulette-type things that I’m not too fond of, but on the other hand it is very soft. The suede waistcoat will probably go straight back into the circular economy. It’s done its job.

Adrian came home with a gingerbread house from the Spånga Christmas market this Saturday. It collapsed under its own weight.