Unpacking after the ski tour, I came across my hike garbage bag. I always have one with me, both for my own garbage and for whatever trash I find on the way. In more populated places, the second category often outweighs the first one. This time, however, 90% of it was snack wrappers.

Things I already knew, that this trip confirmed:

• Skotte is an ideal snack for winter hikes. Dark chocolate with a chocolate and hazelnut filling – tastes good and is easy to chew in cold weather, unlike anything caramel-based, for example.
• For winter hikes, choose snacks that you can eat while wearing mittens.
• Winter hikes need more snacks than summer hikes. Yes, it’s heavy, but worth the weight. I went through a 100-gram chocolate bars (or equivalent) and a 200-250 gram bag of fruit and/or nuts daily.

Learnings and inspiration from this trip:

• Most people count on everyone drinking tea or coffee. Don’t count on any saft/cordial being available (except in Norway).
• Ice tea powder, while mostly sugar, is a convenient substitute for cordial – lightweight and spill-proof
• Cup of soup is also a decent way to make an instant hot drink. I’ve always thought of instant soup as a meal, but a mostly useless one because it has almost no calories or nutrition. But as a drink it actually becomes useful.
• Speaking of cup of soup: hot water + cup of soup + instant rice makes a decent snack. I didn’t know that instant rice existed.

Staying at Duottar for another night. Today was planned as a slack day, in case we needed to adjust our route or timing due to the weather – or to be used for a day trip. In the end it was a bit of both. The day started out very windy, continuing on from yesterday, so we mostly stayed in the huts until lunchtime.

In the middle of the day we had a couple of fine hours of beautiful sunshine, and went out on a small circuit on the nearby lake. On the other side of the lake we took off our skis and climbed to the top of the (very small) peak to get some views.

It was rather satisfying to get some good glide going. Swish, swoosh, across a flat lake, with the wind at our backs and the sun brilliant above us.

More dark clouds were piling up when we were turning back, and the wind picked up again soon after, so our outing remained short.

The rest of the day we just puttered around our huts. I think many in the group appreciated the rest. There isn’t much space nor comfortable furniture in the huts. You can lounge in your bed, or on one of the small, hard chairs.

I had packed some knitting, given the more generous “luggage allowance” with the pulks. I finished a pair of socks this morning and wound the yarn for the next pair. A ball of sock yarn weighs 100 g, so the two didn’t make my bag much heavier.

At one point we took the time to dig out another stall in the outhouse. When we got here, only one of the stalls was clear of snow. Two others were full of snow inside, and the fourth had a large drift in front of the door. But we were getting low on toilet paper in the one that we were using, so it was worth digging out a second one.

When there’s nothing else to do, there’s almost always water to melt and boil. It’s the first thing we do in the morning, and likewise the first thing we start when we get into a hut in the afternoon. There’s almost always two pots of water on the stove and a bucket of snow next to it.

Had I been on my own, I’d most likely not have bothered with the boiling. Fresh snow, freshly melted, is good enough for me. But I understand that the guides feel like they need to be more responsible with the group’s hygiene.

During this trip I’ve learned that there is technique and tricks to melting snow for drinking water. Sure, you can just shovel snow in a pot and put it on a stove, but there are ways be efficient about it.

Firstly and most importantly, don’t start with snow in an empty pot – you want some water at the bottom. Otherwise the first snow to melt will immediately boil and evaporate, which is a waste. So you prime the pot with the last dregs from your thermos.

Secondly, the first batch of ready, boiled water goes not in the thermos but in ordinary bottles, which you then put in the bucket of snow waiting to be melted next. This way you start warming up the snow while also cooling your drinking water. The thermoses you fill last.

And, of course, don’t leave any of your leftover water in the kettle, like some fool had done, because by the time the next guests get there it will be a solid chunk of ice, spiced with dead flies, which you can’t even pour out because it’s larger than the opening of the kettle.

On any normal trip we’d also spend a fair bit of time cooking. This time we had packed, frozen meals for all dinners, and the guides took care of breakfast porridge. I’ve never eaten as well on a hut-to-hut tour, with as little work.

Easter is behind us, but Easter food, just like Christmas food, generally lasts longer than the holiday itself.

I realize that I’ve never shared my recipe for pasha. Those of you who make your own probably have a recipe already, and those of you who don’t are probably not interested, but here it comes anyway.

150 g butter
70 g sugar

3 egg yolks
1.5 tbsp vanilla sugar

0.7 dl chopped almonds and hazelnuts
0.7 dl candied orange peel
0.5 dl dried cranberries
40 g dark chocolate (4 squares of Lindt mild 70%)

grated zest of 1 lemon

750 g quark, for which I use 500 g Kesella (quark with 10% fat) and 250 g Keso (cottage cheese with 2% fat) which I press though a sieve to break up the grains

3 dl whipping cream

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Cream butter with sugar. Add everything except quark and cream.
Add quark to the mixture.
Whip the cream and fold it into the mixture.

Painting Easter eggs, as per tradition.

Also as per tradition, Ingrid makes the most artistic ones, while Adrian makes the crazy ones. This year his eggs had body parts – a giant eye, an ear, a mouth.

Afterwards somehow the women ended up cooking dinner while the men snoozed.

A whole new quarter of apartment blocks has been constructed along the railway tracks over the past few years, replacing the worn office block and warehouses that used to be there. Mostly student housing, from what I’ve understood. And more is appearing on the other side of the tracks.

It’s a great location – the near end is just five minutes’ walk from the train station, and there’s a bus line along the road so those living at the far end are only two or three bus stops away from the station. There’s a Lidl, and a gym, and a cheap pasta & pizza restaurant. Probably more services will pop up as more people move in.

Already the new housing has led to the opening of a large new Coop supermarket, one size up from the ones we have at Spånga torg. The grand opening was a week ago, with special offers and food tastings and whatnot, so we went for a look.

Large, spacious, and well stocked, and with a wider range of most things than “our” Coop. More exotic vegetables, and funky mushrooms. And this fridge, of like, 10 metres, is filled from edge to edge with just vegetarian products – tofu and falafel and meatless burgers and vegan cheese and so on. Nice.

Nysse tends towards overweight when given free access to food. We serve him his measure of kibble three times a day. If he demands more in between meals, he gets canned “cat-quality” tuna. If he is hungry for real, he eats it; if he was just feeling peckish, he ignores it.

Today I dished up some tuna and he was sort of not very interested in it. He was, however, interested in the activity in the sink. The sink is an interesting place and can contain all sorts of delights, from eggy whisks to buttery knives. Or empty tuna cans, for that matter.

Nysse was much more interested in the empty can in the sink than in the bowl at his food station. When he’d licked the can clean, I put his bowl with the actual tuna in it in the sink as well. And that suddenly made it worth his attention.

There was some trouble with the commuter trains when I was leaving the office for home. I thought I’d save time by doing my grocery shopping in town while giving it all some time to settle. All fine and good, but it was enough of a deviation from my routine that I accidentally left the bag with groceries on a bench in the train station. I always, ALWAYS only have my backpack to think about, so when the train arrived I just grabbed it and boarded.

I realized my mistake about 5 minutes later, unfortunately after we’d already passed the next station. Had it been just the groceries, I might have just left it and bought everything again in Spånga. But it was also my favourite grocery bag, made for me by Ingrid, colourful and comfortable and just the right size, and I wasn’t going to just leave that.

So I got off at Sundbyberg, where I got to wait 10 minutes in the cold wind for a train going in the other direction. Back at Stockholm City my bright orange bag was exactly where I had left it, a splash of colour on dark benches against a dull red floor. Looked very pretty, and I wish I could have taken a photo – but the train home was standing at the platform, ready to leave, and I really did not want to wait 15 minutes for the next one.

Here is the bag, holding the makings of fritters for dinner: two courgettes, a three-pack of tinned sweetcorn, and some feta cheese.

It’s Shrove Tuesday, which means semlor. I’d forgotten all about it, until Ingrid reminded me. Had I remembered earlier, I would not have timed my visit to the bakery to coincide with all the commuters coming home. Still, the queue was only half this long when I joined it. It grew with every arriving train.

Eric got a whole semla, while Ingrid and I shared one. It was more of a symbolic thing, really. I mean, they do taste good, but it’s not like they’re my favourite baked goods. And they’re usually huge anyway. Adrian meanwhile wasn’t interested at all.

Nysse gets cat-quality tuna as “filler food” when he’s begging for more food even after he’s been served his three measures of kibble for the day, or between meals. If he’s hungry for real, he’ll eat the tuna. If he’s just feeling like having a snack, then he ignores it.

These cans are all of human-quality tuna, though. Ingrid eats them almost daily because it’s an easy and tasty way to get more protein in, for building muscle.

Ingrid wished and got a baking book for Christmas, about bread and buns and brunch. We’re all about to appreciate the results. She’s making mud cake buns – rolled buns with a mud cake filling.