Might as well face it, you're addicted to glögg

There are few things I love as much about Sweden as the strong sense of tradition. Even if people rather half-heartedly embrace the meaning behind them, they are at least very aware of the appropriate form of alcohol to consume.

At Christmas time, that form of alcohol is definitely glögg. And I have to admit, I'm completely addicted to it. It now replaces tea as my Sunday afternoon defrost beverage, and with almonds and raisins makes a good replacement for Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk ice-cream (and coming from me, that's saying a lot). I suspect that glögg has health properties we have never dreamt of, including mending broken hearts (fingers crossed on that one... or thumbs held, as they say here) and taking the edge off Christmas shopping.

Of course, there are many other beautiful things that I feel I've always missed - putting seven different flowers under your pillow at Midsomers to dream about your future husband (obviously they didn't take into account the amount of snaps you will no doubt have consumed by then, making sleep more like a coma than a dream-filled vision of a rosy future); putting seven candles in your window to celebrate Christmas (currently accelerating climate change as no-one can be bothered with real candles any more and an electric version can be purchased for 5 bucks at the department store) and surströmming (I thought the Dutch had the jump on horrible ways to eat herring, but I think the Swedes take the cake. Recipe: Step 1. put it whole into a barrel for a year. Step 2. Eat. For more on this horrendous food and handy tips on how to apply surströmming in a highschool prank, check out EscapeArtist.com.)

No seriously, there really are some fascinating things including the use of birch branches in saunas, but that's a whole different story. And at least Santa is nice here, and doesn't have an evil racially-stereotyped sidekick who will take you to Spain in a sack if you're bad, like in Holland (I never really understood that, I can't say I'd have minded packing up my bikinis and leaving the grey skies of Amsterdam and heading for Barcelona).

Anyway, back to the glögg. For my Aussie friends, you might either need to wait until July to really enjoy this - or go to the nearest movie cinema as my sister and I used to do whenever it was too hot. (They sure crank up the aircon at Birch Carroll & Coyle.)

Here's what you'll need. You can get a great recipe here, and an even more delicious one for glögg with vanilla ice cream and caramelised almonds here (in Swedish).

1 cup rum,or vodka or 50/50
1 bottle of a full bodied red wine (ex. Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon)
dried figs
75 ml (0.3 cups) sucanat (or sugar cubes)
blanched almonds
raisins

spices
3 cinnamon sticks
1 teaspoon whole cloves
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 orange peels
5 whole cardamoms
1 small piece of ginger, chopped
20 raisins

p.s. What's the photo? I hear you ask. While trying to get to grips with my camera, I tried to take a photo to illustrate all those candles in the windows of my neighbours. Unfortunately I over-exposed it, but I still like it. And no, I wasn't trying to portray the view with glögg goggles on (or should that be glöggles??)