Further pre Thanksgiving Thoughts: mulled wine

This year, in a splendid diversion from the norm, I am starting a pre Thanksgiving tradition. This means that, while we will be creating a square of Georgia in Wiltshire on the day itself (Thanksgiving, by the way, is always the fourth Thursday in November), the night before, folks get to come over and have some untraditional mulled wine. Which will be made thusly:

For each bottle of red wine (you can go cheap here, although I rather have the diktats of Elizabeth Davuid and Keith Floyd in mind here: do not cook with wine that is not goo enough to drink.....), I add about two heaped tablespoons of demerera sugar (you could try soft brown sugar, which gives the wine a bit of a toffee note, I suppose), a sliced orange (scrub it first: oranges are very promiscuous, you know), a small handful of whole cloves, a  shake or two of dried nutmeg (or about four goes against the side of a grater with a whole nutmeg) and three cinnamon quills, or the same of cassia bark. Bring the wine very gently to a high heat and then simmer it gently for a couple of minutes. You must not boil it. Taste and taste again and serve.

As you can see, I like to make a mulled wine which is richly aromatic, but I wouldn't kick you out of bed (see: I'm giddy with Thanksgiving excitement!) if you made it just with a hit of nutmeg and sugar.

CODA

And here I am going all home-made on you to say that, while on Thanksgiving itself we get the US flag and that of Georgia out, my husband says that, this year, I will be allowed to fashion one of his flags into a dress as long as I do no sewing. This will be interesting. Also, that I'll take great pride in festooning the house with candles and tea lights, lighting the fires in two of the fireplaces and putting great jugs of autumn foliage everywhere. Because, you know, I may have a job (or two, really) to do and a family to shout at, but home is where it's at. That's the zeitgeist in the recession, apparently. NO! It's always like that. Derr.!