Every year we eat pasha for Easter (and a few days after) and mildly grumble that we don’t get to eat it during the rest of the year. My recipe isn’t super sweet, so it almost feels like a snack more than a dessert, and I could eat it if not every day then at least every week.

Spring scrubbing the wooden deck. I borrowed a power washer this year for the first time, and it kind of helped some, but to get the worst parts clean without blasting the wood to pieces, proper manual scrubbing with a soapy brush still seems to be the way to go.

Devilled eggs, herring of various kinds, fake vegetarian herring, and assorted side dishes.

Pasha with raspberry coulis.

Painted Easter eggs. My mum and I manage stylized but recognizable objects, and pretty patterns. Adrian does his own thing. Ingrid is the only one who actually practices painting and therefore makes more and more impressive designs each year, with just 8 crappy colours.

Adrian and I are making pasha. He chops and measures and mixes; I get the technical tasks of creaming butter with sugar, pressing quark through a sieve, and whipping cream.

Masses of spring flowers everywhere

It feels like spring in all ways but nothing is green yet.

We have a pretty sweet office with lovely views and a very central location. But because I’m only there once a week, I have none of my personal equipment in place – everything I want, I carry with me. Computer of course, but also charger, mouse, mouse pad, web cam and speaker. And indoor shoes – I really don’t understand how other people’s feet can cope with 20-degree swings in temperature in the same pair of shoes. And knitting. It’s a fair amount to lug along every time. I could try and make do without some of it, like I make do with whatever cheapo keyboard I find, but I don’t want to.

The neighbours diagonally across the crossing have sold half of their plot, for another house to be built there. Today the new owners started work. Trees are being removed and I guess they’re evening out the ground. The first photo is from two days ago, the second is from today.

The two large oaks are protected, though, and will remain.

There’s not much space there. I’ve seen the drawings from when the whole thing was approved by the municipality and I know that it is technically possible to fit a house there, but they’re going to be very close to their neighbours. I get it – if you can earn a few millions by giving up half your garden, then it’s probably hard to say no. I’m kind of glad that it is impossible to do so with our garden.

Gardens always shrink with time, and houses always grow. Nobody buys their neighbour’s house, only to tear it down and extend their garden. And nobody ever knocks down the extension to their house.

I was today years old when I learned the best way to warm butter to room temperature. Well, not technically today but a few weeks ago, but still, almost.

I’ve always used the microwave, because I never plan far enough ahead to take the butter out a few hours ahead and let it just warm on its own. The microwave method isn’t too bad, but it’s a bit tricky, because if you go even 10 seconds too far then the butter starts melting.

My brother taught me to instead put the butter in a bowl with lukewarm water. 10 minutes later, pour off the water, and you’re done. No tricky timing whatsoever! So much easier.

Today (actually today, for real) I discovered that there’s a bonus effect: if you then start e.g. creaming the butter with sugar in the same bowl, the thin layer of water helps keep the butter from sticking to the bowl, which makes for less butter on the sides of the bowl and more of it where you actually want it.