Recipe for Scandinavian Christmas Vodka

In a complete change of tack from my usual blogging, here is a recipe for a lovely (and definitely alcoholic!) Christmastime drink. I have been making this with enthusiasm for several years around this time of year and consuming it during the Holidays with even greater enthusiasm! I recommend it as an accompaniment to pre-dinner nibbles - I'd choose blini and caviar! Enjoy and go steady - it's pretty potent stuff! Remember breathe OUT after swallowing unless you want, literally, to take your breath away

You will need:
700ml ordinary vodka (no need to buy the fancy stuff here)
2 tablespoons of granulated sugar
2 sticks of cinnamon
12 whole cloves
12 whole cardamon seeds
1 orange (you only need a strip of fresh peel - you can eat the rest!)
An empty one litre bottle or other glass container with a tight-fitting lid- use one with a wide neck it will make life easier later on and be sure it's been thoroughly cleaned
Empty bottles to decant finished liquor later on

Here's what you do:
Put the sugar, cinnamon, cloves and cardamon seeds into the clean container.
Pour the vodka on top of the sugar and spices.
Fasten tightly, shake thoroughly and leave in a cool place, such as a pantry, for two days, during which time you should shake the bottle several times.
At this point cut a long strip of orange zest, drop it into the mixture and leave for another 24 hours.
You can alter the flavour slightly either by infusing the spices for a few days longer or adding the orange zest along with the spices.
Strain the liquor and pour into the other empty bottle(s). Serve very chilled.
Skal!

Raise the song of harvest-home!
WITH food prices marching ever upward, I can’t be the only one whose trips to the supermarket are becoming more considered, these days. Last week I was about to pick up the fancy French conserve that is thrice the price of the budget version. Then it occurred to me that I buy it only because it tastes “homemade”. So did I really need to pay over the odds for something I could easily make myself?.
You see, this is my favourite time of year. The minute it begins to get just that little bit back-endish, I’m off in a flurry of pie baking and soup making. Now, though, it’s also making economic sense.
Nearby, I noticed a huge pile of strawberries, all “reduced to clear”. They may not have been the prettiest, shiniest, shapeliest berries (although experience has taught me that visual perfection has little to do with flavour), but they were fresh enough. What’s more, there were also blackberries. And I hadn’t tasted blackberry jam since childhood.
When I was small, we had ancient wild bramble bushes at the bottom of our garden. Long, late summer days always seemed to end in trips to the brambles, bowl in hand, hunting for the juiciest, ripest berries. Even the necessary thorn pricks and inevitable inky-purple stained fingertips were worth the reward of all things blackberry: pies, crumbles, fools and jam.
Just the sight of them in the supermarket made me yearn for those days and I couldn’t resist. An afternoon in the kitchen filled the pantry with jams and stacked the freezer with fruit pies.
Actually I’m getting scarily domesticated. I’ve even started gardening. Well, growing salad leaves at any rate. I did make several squirrel-spoiled attempts at pumpkins, but this year I was determined to branch out.
I realise that veteran allotment owners out there might not be too impressed by the 122g of short, bendy carrots that I harvested last week, but I thought I did quite well for a first attempt. And mighty nice they tasted too.
Next year, of course, I’ll know that if you want six-inch long carrots, you need to give them at least that much depth of soil … but I’ve seen Gardener’s World; even the experts don’t always get it right.
Even for the newbie veggie grower, it can get pretty competitive. As I patted myself on the back for my carrots, a friend texted me with a picture of her bumper potato crop. Well I couldn’t let that go, so I countered with a snap of my carrots (with nothing to measure their size against, they looked rather impressive) and, for good measure, threw in one of the large, juicy, ripe peach that had unexpectedly sprung up on the patio tree.
Soon, I suppose, I’ll be getting photographs of bountiful beans and tons of tomatoes. But just wait until next year …
While I can’t imagine myself ever knitting my own muesli, or turning the garden into a set for The Good Life, I’m determined to expand, although my loathing of garden creepy crawlies means my family reckon I’m much more a Margot than a Barbara.
Nevertheless, all that sowing and tending, and waiting for the weather and Mother Nature to do their magic, keeps you in touch with the turning seasons in a way that purchasing packaged, out-of-season produce, not to mention processed foods, never can.
Even buying locally grown in-season fruit and veg will do that. And while I won’t claim that it’s going to save the planet, it’s certainly not doing it any harm.
And, you know, I’ve a hunch that, with cost of living skyrocketing, I’m not going to be the only novice veggie grower, or careful shopper, enjoying a sense of self-satisfaction, come next year’s harvest.