"'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring not even a mouse," wrote Clement C. Moore in the first verse of his traditional Christmas poem.

Ha! Ha! – if only it were true. This is the night before Christmas in Sweden as we have our celebrations on the 24th rather than the 25th. Traditionally this is one of the busiest evenings of the year for us. I have been slaving over a hot stove and oven all day making a big variety of vegetarian food for tomorrow's Christmas table. My contributions are:

Saffron couscous with honey roasted vegetables (fennel, red onions, eggplant, zucchini, red and yellow capsicums, sweet potato, leeks)

Vegetable curry with cardamom rice (onion, garlic, ginger, carrot, parsnip, sweet potato, cauliflower, broccoli, red cabbage, green beans)

White beans with saffron and spinach

Red Lentil Salad (lentils, celery, red apple in a dressing of oil, vinegar, french mustard, garlic, tarragon, chopped hazelnuts)

Frittata (onions, potato, blue cheese, black olives, eggs, dill)

Mini leek quiches

Mini vegetarian sausage rolls with a chutney dipping sauce.

This evening will be the wrapping of the rest of the gifts and writing of julrimar or "Christmas rhymes". These are humourous verses that you compose to accompany your gifts. The idea is to give a hint as to what the gift is, so everyone can try and help the recipient guess. I can tell you that it's quite challenging to write them in Swedish, but I'm getting better and better every year. My sister-in-law always has the best ones, though I peeped at the one Lars-Göran wrote to accompany his mum's gift to Lambi and it's pretty good. Mine are a bit amateurish, but everone is really nice about it as they know I'm doing my best.

And just in case you wonder if Santa will remember me, I can assure you that I've been NICE this year. See, I did a test - and it's on the internet, so it MUST be true. Eller hur?