It’s that time of the year again – it’s Christmas time. The time of heating your ovens and cutting out cookies. The time of sweating over what presents to give to each and every relative. The time of cramping into the subway and fighting your way through the stuffed city centers and buying overpriced wood decoration while sipping on lew mulled wine. It’s Christmas market time all over Germany and Europe!!!!
Wild horses couldn’t possibly drag me to one of those Christmas markets anymore – thank you very much. It’s not only the unbelievable lust for consuming ridiculous amounts of money for stupid, useless things, or the watery, overprized hot drinks or even the oh-so-crazy office clerks getting wasted with flashing Christmas hats or reindeer antlers on their heads celebrating their highlight of the year – the Christmas staff party! – that trigger a nervous twitch on my face.
It starts with me feeling more than uncomfortable and getting downright aggressive when walking behind waaaay too slowly trotting masses of people.
Christmas markets are the place where all those people that I try to avoid the whole year gather up. That type of person that stops directly after stepping from the escalator to ponder about whether to look for a nice polar bear sweater or to start at the fifth floor finding a cashmere cardigan for aunt Clara.
Those people that are so slow and indecisive that you can’t avoid stepping onto their feet – and get purses and backpacks smashed into your ribs and face in return – or your Achilles tendon will be smashed by little Eragons pushchair (I’m not kidding you, during my employment at an organic supermarket I met this anti-authoritarianly raised angel named Eragon.)
There’s nothing more contradictory to a peaceful and tranquil Christmas time than Christmas markets. Or simply any inner-city of a typical German city. This is why I’m staying in my own place most of December in order to compensate my grinch-like attitude towards Christmas, Christmas markets and humanity in general with lots of coziyness, food and alcohol 😀
Last year for instance I made a white apple mulled wine with lots of cinnamon in company of a friend of mine, good talks and some series on Netflix. I think there should be quite a lot of different punch and mulled wine recipes following after this recipe because that’s basically my hobby during the winter time – heating up juices and alcohol 😉 (well and in summer we’ll be making punchbowls and iced tea *hihihi*)
You can make this hot winter punch both ways – with and without fun uhm… alcohol – and it’s a very nice base to start experimenting with your favourite fruits and juices. Wether you add apples or pears (you could even compare them this way!!) or pour a whole bottle of red wine in it – just don’t give a f*** and do whatever you like.
I’d still recommend to stick to some Christmassy spices, in this case cinnamon and star anise. And of course you can always add more sweetener of choice.
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