I went out into the garden to take photos, but then I discovered that the gooseberry bush was all tangled up with its net. I’d left the net out over the winter, mostly out of laziness but also thinking that it wouldn’t make much of a difference whether I leave it on or take it off. It made a lot of difference: the new leaves and berries had in many places grown through the net, so they were on the wrong side of it. They were still just small enough that with a lot of fiddling I could mostly poke them back and detach the net from the bush.

Meanwhile Adrian borrowed my camera, and by the time I was done fiddling with the bush, the camera had run out of batteries. So here is a photo of me instead of photos by me.

Adrian got inspired by the work that’s going on in the kitchen, and all the cool tools that the builders have there, and wanted to build things, too. So now he’s making a boat/ferry kind of thing of his own design, with some help from me.

Power tools are cool, and screwdriver bits are cool, so instead of using nails, we’re drilling holes and screwing all the pieces together. Plus it’s probably easier for a kid’s small hands to tighten a screw than to hammer in a nail straight.

This hob is hopeless. The left-hand burner is slow but more or less works; the right-hand one can barely keep water boiling. I tried to make pancakes today and they just never got done on the right-hand burner. The batter turned solid after a while but didn’t get any colour so it was more like drying than frying the batter.

I am so looking forward to being able to use the big stove again.

And another thing. I’ve always known that the floor in the living room has a bit of give to it. The floorboards sag somewhat when someone walk on them. It’s never bothered me, in fact I used to barely notice it. But now that we store all sorts of kitchenware and glassware here, the whole room jangles loudly and irritatingly whenever I move around. It is becoming really annoying.

Now that I know how easy it is to make temaki, we made some for dinner at home today. Making sushi rice wasn’t too complicated either, although it came out a bit too sweet for my taste.

I went to see and hear Philip Glass and his ensemble today. Eric couldn’t come with me because he had some activity planned with his siblings, as a birthday gift.

Imagine my surprise when, as I am sitting in my seat in the concert hall, Eric’s sister suddenly approaches me and says hi. And it turns out that their long-planned activity is this very same concert, and they have seats just a few steps away from mine. And then nobody turns up for the three seats between us, so Eric and the others move, and we end up sitting and enjoying the concert all together.

This concert made me realize just how similar all of Philip Glass’ music is. I got the impression that he has been writing the same thing through his entire career. It hasn’t felt quite this same-ish when I’ve heard it before. Perhaps he just selected pieces of a very similar kind for this evening.

It was very interesting and pleasant at first but towards the end of the concert my head was getting quite tired of it.

More cooking, more scouting, more unsettled weather.

The scouts have their annual two-day spring camp this weekend. It’s taking place at Sandviks gård, like last year, and I’m managing the kitchen crew, like last year.

Doing it the 2nd time around is much easier: I have all my recipes and calculations and spreadsheets from last year, and just have to adjust for the new number of attendees (even higher than last year) and all the allergies.

One thing I learned from last year is that we need a bigger crew than I first thought. This year we have 12 people in the kitchen instead of last year’s 6, and it makes a world of difference. We all have time to take breaks and walk around the camp and see what the kids are doing. Last year I barely had time to eat.

The weather is very changeable – just a few days ago the forecast was for 2 centimetres of rain today, which would have been pretty horrible. We’ve had some showers but nothing as dramatic as that forecast. And in between it’s been sunny enough that some kids even went swimming in the Mälaren.

A new colleague at work is a serious foodie and worked as a chef in a previous life, so he is bringing all kinds of new food ideas to the office. He’s brought us home baked sourdough bread for breakfast, just because. And for today he arranged a potluck temaki lunch. Everyone brought an ingredient, and then we made temaki together.

The chef ninja explained temaki to us as “sushi tacos”. Take a piece of seaweed, spread some rice on it, then pile on whatever you like on top of the rice. Roll it up and you’re done. Restaurant temaki are elegantly cone-shaped, but apparently just sloppily rolling it up before biting into it is perfectly acceptable as well.

I’ve always thought that making sushi at home seems like a lot of bother, so I’ve never tried. All this rolling and shaping… and then someone wants this on their sushi and someone else definitely does NOT want this… But with this approach, sushi becomes quite doable: very flexible, and almost no prep work apart.

More cabinets have appeared. Turn around, though, and the other side of the kitchen still mostly looks like a construction site and doesn’t really have much of a kitchen vibe yet.

Every day after work, we take a look at the kitchen to see the day’s progress. Some days nothing much seems to happen at all. And today all of a sudden, cabinets appeared and the kitchen is visibly starting to turn into a kitchen again.

It took us several attempts before we managed to settle on the right shade of green for the cabinets. And the one we finally chose was none of the swatches but the colour we already had on the walls in the hall and the office. I was a bit worried that it would be too dark and intense for our relatively small kitchen, but it looks great.

The builders commented that the cabinets are all well made, “the right angles are right and the measurements are correct” which also bodes well.