Karl Klockars

Winter is full of ceremony. The first snowfall of the year is awed at, the falling of the leaves are paired with harvest and reaping ceremonies – see: Halloween, charyou tree, say thankya. Every year I manage to rehash myself enough to the point where I usually blather on about some Seasonal Affective Disorder, Glogg, and bad pop music. Truly, the holidays are a special time.

Since I’ve been spending much of my year writing about food, eating food, and drinking…okay, drinks, I figured I might as well burn off my lone “hey I’m a swede” posts of the year here and now. As the Xmas tree burns into the afternoon with the yearly feast on smelly fish, hefty booze, and excessive amounts of meatballs.

It may seem like the anti-obvious: Swedes really do eat swedish meatballs? Possibly more than Italians eating italian beefs, Mexicans eating “mexican” omelets (just adding chorizo doesn’t make it ethnic, Chez Fool), and even the french eating French Fries. These names, they mean nothing. Hell, I don’t even know what makes them swedish. Are they traditionally made of moose?

The booze is the important part, though. More on that in the near future.

Our Ethnic Touchstone: Those Damned Meatballs

As a kid, every Christmas Eve we’d get all bundled up, hustle into the station wagon and to Grandmother’s house we’d go for a feast of smorgasbord proportions. Cousins would be there, bad television specials would be watched, board games would be played, and somersaults would be done. Don’t ask…it was a family thing.

Every year, the table would be filled with the same spread: Trays of fish, a big bowl of boiled potatoes, plates full of hardtack, a relish tray with olives and carrots, a big dish of that carrot/pea mixture of frozen veggies, other various unremembered foodstuffs, and that huge serving tray of swedish meatballs.

And every year, I wanted to gorge myself on everything at the table. I wanted everything to be appealing to my post-toddler stomach, to join in my heritage as a slayer of bland cuisine, to put away plate after plate of Nordic chow. It is at this point that I would eat one black olive and the whole plan would be shot to hell.

My entire meal then consisted of hardtack, three boiled potatoes, and as many swedish meatballs as I could put away. Oh, and a half a plate of ketchup helped – but you’d be surprised at how poorly boiled potatoes go with anything, including ketchup. Meatball after meatball, year after year, over and over.

As I look back on it now, it’s frighteningly similar to what I imagine prison food being. Hell, back then I didn’t even know that these particular globes of ground beef were particularly swedish. I just figured Farfar* liked meatballs. Who knew?

Fish of Death: Lutefisk

Remember that tray of fish I mentioned above? Things like salmon, smelt and herring usually made of the majority of the seafood experience of my childhood, save for the Lenten fish sticks. The herring smelled bad enough to a kid – a weird fish product stuck in pickling solution for one, for two stuffed in some weird creamy goop? No thanks. Every year, however, it went one step further.

There is a distinct memory stuck in my head of a wooden bucket coming into play around the holidays. It has a thick rope handle, and looks like something Heidi would use to carry milk back from the barn as her pigtails bounce around her head. And inside this bucket was the most noxious, vile, vomitous scent you could imagine.

So bad, that it had to be kept in the garage. The menfolk** would go outside after the meal, huddle around the bucket, and nibble at this odd pile of…stuff. I didn’t know what lutefisk was at the time, other than a vague threat. “You kids be good, or I’m making lutefisk!” “You kids could be eating lutefisk right now – don’t complain!” Or the ever ominous, “Don’t make me get the lutefisk!”

I didn’t know it was fish bathed in lye to preserve it, then rinsed and rinsed and rinsed to remove the chemical, so it doesn’t kill you dead. Now, in a world without proper sanitation and refridgeration techniques, this food makes sense to a filthy ancient swede who goes many moons without bathing. I like to think of lutefisk as analagous to driving goggles: When we developed, we didn’t have the need for ‘em any more.

And yet there they were. Hiding out from the warm, inner sanctum of home, all massed around this stinky bucket. It’s a nice picture, and in a perfect world I’d have one of those entering-adulthood stories where I overcame my childhood fears and ate the lutefisk with the men. But hell no. That stuff stank.

It’ll Kick Your Nordic Ass: Glogg

This mix of wine, more wine, hard booze and fruit must be important to us viking types. My dad sent me an email 9 months ago saying he had read something I’d written about glogg and we should go get some when it’s available. You know…about 9 months from now. Either he was very eager for some father/son time, or the need for a drink that afternoon was overwhelming.

I swear that one of these weekends I’m making it this year. Neighbors be warned, it’s going to get ugly. In a way, this is one of the easiest things to make out of all swedish holiday choices – mix booze, mix spices, heat, enjoy. But science comes into play as well, damn the luck. I think I ruined my brother’s glogg experience a couple weeks ago with this simple mistake: boiling point.

To be slightly specific, glogg is a mulled wine drink that is heated before serving. It, unlike other things on this list, is awesome. And it will kick your ass. Wine with vodka in it usually does, no matter the temperature. And the heating part of the process is where you can completely ruin it.

My brother called me late one night and asked me, What do you need for glogg? Simplest process? Red wine, port, vodka. Cinnamon, allspice, cloves, raisins, almonds. Heat. But not past 212. Got it? Good. See ya. Wrong. Fail. Bad culinarian. I picture my brother and his friends huddled around a burner, pulling the pan from the heat at 200 degrees and drinking this odd-tasting brew and pretending they’re drunk -

Boiling point of alcohol is closer to 175 degrees. It’d be like handing them baby aspirin and telling them it’s vicodin. I hope I didn’t waste their money. Should have read up on this stuff earlier…but I didn’t take the right book out of the library at the right time, I suppose. But at least I’ll know for my batch.

If not, I know where to go. Thankfully, enough of a swedish population still exists (or pretends to exist, those posers) in Andersonville where I can go get a cup of glogg if necessary, as it is from time to time. And come to think of it, it’s probably after 5pm in Sweden. Good enough for me.

*Swede for “Father’s father.” IE Grandpa.
**I was recently informed that it was just my dad and his dad that ate this stuff. My memories lie to me and my uncles are apparently not hardcore.