l’abondance – mulled wine

Tonight was the night of celebration. I for my adventures in France and Julie and Oliver for booking a flight to England for their 10th anniversary. So what did we do!? We celebrated by making Gluhwein Mit Schuss of course! Neither of them had ever had it so I taught her the general estimations as we went.

6 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
3-4 Cinnamon sticks
Whole Allspice (~5)
Whole Cloves (~15)
1 Star Anise
1 orange cut in quarters (or half and orange, half a lemon)
1 Bottle of wine
4 shot of Sailor Jerry’s rum

Put all the ingredients in a pot and heat on the lowest setting possible until hot. If you cook too fast you risk burning out all the alcohol. If you want to get fancy pierce a few cloves into the rind of one of the quartered oranges. Even better if you have cardamom lying around to put in the mix (I didn’t.) I recommend putting the spices into a tea strainer for ease but whatever works!

So what I was getting to is that we were celebrating. Julie brought out some tasty treats from Benton Brothers Cheese and before long we were indulging in a British Stilton, a British Cheddar and a French Abondance. AMAZING. It was delightful. Fritz and I had banded together to convince the Sperlings to get on over to Europe and it worked! Cheers to 2012!