God Jul!

Our Christmas preparations started sometime at the end of November this year. Kristina and I don't follow many traditions, but the Christmas lunch is serious business, since we take pride in preparing everything on the table ourselves. A novelty this year was the Polish cooked vegetable salad, which I enjoyed enormously when I had it on Easter 2003. My version of the salad was good for a first attempt, I suppose, but it wasn't quite up to par with the one that Gosia, Michal and Pawel made. We didn't make any Piftie this year, a Romanian meat jelly made from pig's ears and tails, to my great relief. Apart from these changes, we had everything from last year; ham, herring, red cabbage, gravlax, beetroot salad, sarmale, meatballs, sausages... Another tradition is our Christmas photo, taken from the same angle every year. This is this year's version:



After lunch, we watched "Kalle" on TV as all Swedes do, and had a very nice evening. I hadn't noticed how much effort I had put into this day, until the evening came and I literally collapsed in bed. We hope that all of you had a nice Christmas yourselves. God Jul och Gott Nytt År!