The drop-out

Shocking. These are among my oldest shoes. From the days when I used to wear a suit to work, but hadn't really developed my shoe addiction - or any sort of fashion sense just yet. Long before Trinny & Susannah were born. There is a brand of jeans called "Not Your Daughter's Jeans" (NYDJ). If there was a similar brand for shoes, these shoes would typically be from "Not Your Husband's Shoes" (NYHS). Instead - they are from a Swedish "pretend-to-be-Italian" brand called Don & Donna. A brand that was cool in the nineties. Not so much anymore. I wore a suit to work to mark the occasion. Guess a few believed I was going out for a job interview. Good to keep people on their toes every now and then.

So - it's official. I am a drop-out. For the first time in my life. Well, except for Weight Watchers - that is. French class finally got the best of me. Being the stereo-typical "good girl", I just could not face the teacher when I hadn't done my homework, TWO WEEKS in a row. I am such an awful person. A real slacker. We are now at the stage where we are asked to write blog posts in French as homework. No more playing around with funny words for groceries. But - I am just SO not there yet. It's actually very hard. I can not get my head around conjugating these verbs! There is just no logic to it. Anyway. I have never been one to give up too easily, so I will definitely give it a go again next year. When my life has calmed down a bit. As if it ever will. 

These days I am busy preparing for our annual Christmas Party. Times two. The one at work is on Friday, and I am on the committee. On Saturday, we have a huge party at home. This is really not a Christmas party as such. It is rather an old Nordic pagan tradition called the "Midtvintersblot". In the olden days they used to sacrifice animals, and drink and spill a lot of blood. The only sacrifice we make nowadays is really our own livers. Which can be brutal enough, I'll tell you.

Preparations at home have been going on for a good week now. First major milestone was the start of the gløgg-making. Gløgg is spiced up (in more than sense) mulled wine. I used to buy this ready-made, and based on RED wine. It was really not that good, and FAR to sweet. So I started experimenting with different spices. And - last year I finally took it all to a whole new level and made a version based on white wine. Totally out there, I know. I think it was a success, though. We actually finished the whole batch before dinner, which was a first. Still, my most sincere (but also perhaps rudest) friend said to me last year: "This tastes ok, but it is not BY FAR as good as the white gløgg we got in Copenhagen". Well. This year I contacted the very chef at the very Hotel D'Angleterre in Copenhagen to get the very recipe. He was kind enough to give me the list of the ingredients. Then he suggested "I taste myself to success". Ha. Danish people. They always try to get you drunk.

Since I have a few other things to do than "taste my way to success", I am sticking to last year's recipe. White wine, apple juice, madeira, white port - and calvados. Dried apricots and almonds are chopped and put into the mix at the end. The apricots were prepared today and is now soaking in a dangerous mix of calvados and white port. With a dash of a couple of more secret ingredients from the Danish chef. Most probably, my friend will not approve. He never does. Maybe suggesting adding his nuts instead of chopped almonds next year will teach him some manners.

Or - I will simply stop going through all this hassle and go for the Finnish version I got off Facebook today:

• Add one raisin
• Pour one liter of vodka over the raisin
• Drink
• If the gløgg tastes too sweet, you may skip the raisin

I wonder if anybody could really tell the difference when they get to their second helping.