Forcing myself to take proper long breaks, so as to not lose my mind from working alone for three weeks.

I don’t usually eat breakfast on weekdays, but now I’m taking intentional breakfast breaks a few hours into my workday. Fresh air, fresh berries.

It feels like I’ve been sitting here and staring at my computer screen forever. When there’s nobody to interact with, I just keep hammering away at whatever I’m doing, with few breaks, until I get tunnel vision and start feeling slightly crazy. I am incredibly productive, but also bored. Work is no fun without other people.

I needed to feel less bored and less boring. A photo outing!

When we had our midsummer picnic at Drottningholm, we were intrigued by a so-called “Gothic tower” in the distance. We didn’t have the opportunity to go look at it then. I went back today with the intention of finding out what a Gothic tower is, and also visiting the Chinese pavilion, which I’ve heard about many times but can’t remember having actually visited.

Drottningholm (which, in case you didn’t know, is the palace where the King and Queen of Sweden live) has a large park. Some parts are more French and manicured in style; others are in the English, more romantic style. I had a lovely walk from the parking lot (very empty late on a Tuesday afternoon) along tree-lined avenues and past pretty lakes.

Pretty soon I arrived at the Gothic tower. Which is… very much a tower. On top of a hill. Apparently constructed for King Gustav III in the late 18th century, for him to have something interesting to look at from various viewpoints in the park, and as a potential backgrop for performances such as mock battles.

It is not at all Gothic in style, and Wikipedia even suggests that the name has nothing to do with Gothic style, but with götar, a name for people living in Southern Sweden before Sweden became a unified state.

It is reportedly unfinished inside, and very locked.

I don’t think many visitors make their way here. The stone platform off to one side of the tower was going to weed very prettily, with no tourists’ feet to wear them down.

Now to make my way towards the Chinese pavilion. There were plenty of very pleasant paths, but they were mostly not straight and not signposted, so I had to guess my way forward.

When the path I followed hit the edge of the baroque garden, navigation became easier.

On the way to the Chinese pavilion, there was a smaller but no less exotic building. It looks like another frivolous decoration, but was actually housing for royal guards, although designed to look like a vaguely Mediterranean/Oriental tent. (It seems like it would be dark and unpleasant to stay in, but there are large windows on the other side.) The siding is all painted sheet metal, and the tassels along the edge of the roof are also metal, almost like tin cans.

And here is the Chinese pavilion. The first Chinese pavilion was a secret birthday present for Queen Lovisa Ulrika in the 1750s, built in great haste so as to be a surprise. It wasn’t that sturdy and only lasted ten years, but was so appreciated that a more durable replacement was built.

It’s mostly a rather normal rococo building (as far as anything like that can be said to be normal) with various details and decorations designed to evoke a Chinese ambience.

It’s 28 degrees in the coolest part of the house, and I am suffering.

I’m working from home for three weeks (the rest of the team is on vacation) and I’m not sure whether it’s a good thing or not. On the one hand, I don’t need to commute in this weather. On the other hand, the office might be a bit cooler, even tough the AC there sucks. On the third hand, at home I can take a break and gasp for air whenever I just can’t do it any more.

Cheese buns in the making, 59 to 60 grams each. I find it much easier to weigh each ball of dough than to eyeball it, and then have an odd amount left over in the end.

A sheet cake in the freezer is one of my go-to ways of preserving cherries.

The first one rose nicely and seemed done, but when I took out out of the oven and let it cool for a moment, it collapsed completely. I tried cutting it, and it was like wet gloop. Not at all done. In fact it was so bad that I was going to throw it out without even taking a photo. I can’t recall ever having failed so badly with a cake – and with a familiar recipe, to boot!

Well, that’s a whole lot of fruit wasted. I guess I’ll make another attempt, then, and bake it for longer.

The second cake came out the way it’s supposed to. More or less – the surface has larger pores than some previous versions, for some reason.

I then had the idea of putting the first one back in the oven again. The oven was already hot, the cake was right there, I had nothing to lose. It wouldn’t bake properly, but maybe I could get something biscuit-like out of it? It would be dense and probably dry, but maybe I could use it for some kind of dessert at least.

I was entirely shocked to see the cake start rising again in the oven. I didn’t even think that was possible. The bubbles are supposed to be gone, the baking powder had its one chance. But no – the cake rose, and if I didn’t know its history, I would probably not have guessed that there was anything wrong with it. When I took it out again, it behaved perfectly normally.

It looks a mess, there are odd crater-like rings around the cherries, and the texture is not as even. But it is totally and absolutely a fully decent sheet cake. B-tier quality, but far from garbage.

I love cherry jam. It’s one of my absolute favourites. I do have a lot of jam in the basement but now that I checked, there’s only a handful of jars of cherry jam. Two from 2023, and two from 2011. It’s actually worth making another batch. Who knows, maybe we’ll have a lousy harvest next year.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually cooked jam myself. Seen it done, of course, at various times, by various people, so I know the principles.

I brought up what I thought would be a ridiculous excess of empty jars from the basement – better to have too many than to have to fetch and wash more while I’m in the middle of ladling up the jam – and ended up using most of them.

The jam looks black like tar and came out just right in consistency, even though I mostly eyeballed the amount of pectin I added. Flavour-wise, excellent cherry flavour but maybe a tad too sweet. Some recipes add lemon juice, and some use citric acid. Might try that next time.

Pitting cherries is somewhat tedious, and messy. It looks like a bit of a bloodbath afterwards – my hands, the bowls, my apron, and anything else nearby. It’s not a job you want to do indoors, ideally. Today I sat tailor fashion in the grass while doing it, and afterwards had to wash not just my hands but also my arms up to the elbows, and both legs.

It was clear a while ago already that the cherry harvest would be good this year. I missed the cherry harvest last year and was most determined to not make the same mistake this year. There would not be any “oh I’ll just do it next weekend”.

The cherries looked ripe a couple of days ago. No procrastinating; today I spent most of the afternoon picking them. Had a friend for company, which made it both easier and more enjoyable.

A spontaneous trip to the beach with Ingrid, in the middle of the day, just because we could.

Kanaanbadet is a public beach on lake Mälaren. Here it looks like we almost had it all to ourselves, but it was rather busy. There’s a whole other pier to the right, and even a third one with a diving tower. A sandy beach, and grassy slopes, and a café, all of which were quite crowded today.

We were just happy to get a quick dip in the water.

My little currant bushes that I planted last summer have borne fruit. Not much – the harvest is mostly symbolic – but it’s still nice. The redcurrant only yielded a handful of berries; the blackcurrant a bit more. I picked enough for my breakfast today, and there’s some left for another day.