Smorgasbord, as well as Akvavit, are prominent features of Swedish holidays. You'll find both at Christmas, Easter and Midsummer - subtle differences, but a lot of things are the same. Akvavit and snaps are not the same, despite what some might think. Both are flavored vodka, but akvavit always has dill and/or caraway. Snaps can have any flavor - ranging from herby and medicinal to... anything, really. Dagmar made snaps for our crawfish party in August - those are the bottles you see above - and flavored them with gooseberry, cherry and various other things from her garden.
I'm not really a consumer myself - too strong for my liking! However, it's quite popular, and I got an e-mail from a PR contact working for Reimersholms saying they even had a sommelier doing pairings with akvavit/food. The same PR contact offered me to give away a cookbook to one of my readers, and as it's a really cool cookbook, I'm happy to do it. It's called Swedish Smorgasbord, and it's written by Gert Kl�tzke and Niclas Wahlstr�m. The recipes are all from Fjaderholmarnas krog, where they serve a massive and very good smorgasbord. I was there for Christmas 2008, and blogged about it. If you're interested in Swedish holiday food, this one has it all!
The book is in English and can be shipped anywhere in the world. All you have to do to enter is to leave a comment, and tell me if you've tried snaps or akvavit, and if so, what you think of it! Do you like it?
edit: I'll draw a random winner on Thursday, so comment before then!
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