life in the Limousin

The Christmas season is in full swing. I’ve successfully swerved two work Christmas parties as the thought of drunken people talking shop and throwing up on my shoes is not massively appealing.

However, this Thursday I will be attending our staff party in Birmingham though thankfully work commitments on Friday mean I will have an excuse for bailing early and not getting drunk.

Next weekend is my best pals 40^th birthday which is bound to be a boozy affair so I must try and impose some self-restraint over the coming week. Our annual re-discovery of mulled wine occurred last week and we had to work really hard to perfect the recipe over each consecutive evening. By Friday we had got it pretty much spot on, the winning combination being:-

1 Bottle of reasonable quality red wine (reasonable being anything better than tramp juice)

4 Cloves

2 pieces of Orange peel

1 Cinnamon stick

1 Star Anise

2 Tablespoons of Sugar

1 large packet of Rennie (for afterwards)

The pan is heated gently but not boiled and then taken off the heat for 30 minutes to let the flavours infuse. I find it best to have a cheeky brandy at this point as 30 minutes is quite a long time to wait.

We have also discovered that several bottles can be added to the pan over the course of the evening. Another revelation is that by 10pm you won’t give a shit about the combination of spices. By 11pm even a miserable git like me is rendered  ’Chritmasy’ though in my case that amounted to eating the various assortment of chocolates, twiglets and sweets that Mel had stocked up on for the festive season.

Mel and I have been and stocked up on Christmas food and drink twice already but have pretty much cleared it all already so more exercise has been in order to try and balance the equation.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009 at 10:47 pm and is filed under Alan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.