One last Christmas fika at tretton37. Not cheerless, per se, but melancholy and lackluster.

Every time we get together, we can’t help talking about who have left and who will leave, and at some point inevitably someone wonders out loud why we aren’t getting any information about what management is up to and what the company’s situation is like, and then we force ourselves to change topics.

Adrian gets an advent calendar with Christmas toffees. Ingrid has a store-bought Moomin-themed one with tea.

I’ve struggled to find a good place for the calendar in the past, especially with Nysse around. This year, after we’ve moved some furniture, I could hang it high up on the chimney wall. Well out of reach for the cat, well in reach for Adrian.

The chimney has been unfinished since we renovated the house, over ten years ago. Initially we dithered about maybe opening it up again – it’s been bricked up since the 1970s – and installing a fireplace of some sort. Of course if we were to do that then there was no point in wasting time and money on finishing it. We never made a decision, and then it sort of just sat there, mostly forgotten. I guess I should do something about it.

We made gingerbread cookies. Store-bought ones can’t compete, and I realize I need to copy Eric’s recipe because otherwise next Christmas in this household will be a sad affair.

Every year we tell ourselves that we will only bring out the most important cutters and that there is no need to dirty all of them. Our priorities overlap but only partially, and we end up using at least two thirds of all the cutters anyway. I like the traditional shapes, Ingrid wants the ones that are good for decorating, Adrian prefers the small ones that are best at using up the most dough. Eric is happy to just bake whatever we cut.

The dough gets smaller and smaller with each round, but there will be no wastage!

Sortera included consultants in their Christmas party this year. With very short notice, but hey, free party, can’t complain.

I hadn’t realized just how big the company was. There were about 250 people at the Christmas party, out of about 350 employees. In Stockholm only, not even counting Göteborg, Malmö or Örebro! I only see the office staff of Sortera Recycling and some of Sortera Group, so it’s easy to forget about the other businesses. And while I am very aware that all the drivers and facility staff are out there doing the real work, so to say, I lose sight of just how many they are.

Sortera’s customers are mostly in the construction industry, so they follow construction industry hours. Many in the staff start their working day at 7 and hence finish work at 16, so that’s when the pre-pre-mingle at the office started. Then we moved on to the pre-dinner mingle at Färgfabriken at 18. By 21 I had been mingling and socializing for five full hours and was feeling all peopled out, and called it a day.

Look what we found on a shelf, dusty and forgotten – a gingerbread house.

We’re almost at the vernal equinox and some of the city’s Christmas decorations are still here. There’s this reindeer, and also a star-shaped thing on Spånga torg. The reindeer looks a bit lost.

For a month or two so I figured that it just takes them time to get around to all of them. After all, the number of staff is probably more or less constant, and it’s not reasonable to expect them to take down all the Christmas decorations in a week or two.

But… mid-March.

I’m starting to think the city may just have forgotten about these.

Christmas party with the extended Bergheden family.

My brother came for a Christmas visit.

We played board games (Robo Rally),

… made pasta together,

… and crafted mince pies.

Christmas Day may be behind us, but it’s still Christmas, and mince pies are a must-have.

Christmas presents. And Christmas food. Not many photos of things happening because I mostly forgot about my camera.

We used to put Christmas gifts out under the tree the night before, both for the festive feeling and for the kids to go and poke and shake and wonder who would be getting what. With a cat in the house, that is not an option. Shiny paper, dangly ribbons, chewable boxes? Temptations, temptations everywhere. Now we had the gifts hidden away until just before opening time, and when that arrived, we shut Nysse in the bedroom. Adrian was disappointed, but what can you do.

Devilled eggs are our go-to festive lunch food. This time we made them extra festive, with “holly” decorations made of pomegranate seeds and parsley leaves, based on an idea that Ingrid found on TikTok. Served with Eric’s vörtbröd, three kinds of pickled herring (blackcurrant; sesame and wasabi; sour cream and fish roe) and a beetroot salad.

Ingrid was the mind and hands behind the most decorative part of Christmas dinner as well – a Pavlova wreath. Three kinds of cheese with biscuits and marmalade for starters; Hasselback potatoes, black bean “meatballs”, cranberry sauce and brussel sprouts for the main course; Christmas pudding for those who like that kind of thing.

Twice during the cooking and food prep I was caught out by using what seemed like risk-free substitutes.

For the beetroot salad, I bought pre-cooked beets to save time, instead of boiling them at home. Chopped them up, mixed with all the other things and the sour cream dressing – and the salad came out white. For the record, beetroot salad is NOT supposed to be white but violently purple. I don’t know what they did with the pre-cooked beets – peeled them before cooking, maybe – but clearly they lost all their colour. Luckily we had a jar of pickled beets in the fridge, so I used those to top up the salad and give it some colour at least.

For the cranberry sauce, there were no fresh cranberries to be had anywhere, so I bought frozen ones. I suspect the fresh ones that used to be available around Christmastime may have been of the American variety (so maybe they weren’t even sold for Christmas but for Thanksgiving and then afterwards as long as stocks lasted), whereas the frozen ones are definitely of Swedish origin. And clearly they behave differently when cooked. The fresh ones were rich in pectin, so the sauce thickens after cooking and cooling. The frozen ones clearly aren’t, because the sauce remained as runny as anything and I had to thicken it with cornstarch. Tasted delicious, though.

Saffron buns of the lussebulle model have been a thing for the Christmas season in Sweden for as long as I can remember. Recently they’ve been joined by other kinds of saffron-flavoured baked goods. There are saffron muffins, saffron crescents, and saffron biscuits. This year I’m seeing saffron buns with almond paste at every bakery. Or maybe they’ve been around, and it’s just me who hasn’t noticed them? It’s a delicious combination, in any case.