Adrian is making a double batch of his favourite chocolate chip cookies as gifts to our friends in Estonia.

It’s hot and I have no appetite.

Leftover midsummer cake and a smoothie counts as dinner, right? At least while I’m on vacation.

We missed midsummer, but I guess this could be annandag midsommar?

Everybody gets their favourites. Devilled eggs, mini-quiches with leeks and cherry tomatoes, silltårta. And elderflower cordial and strawberries of course.

If you think the amount of devilled eggs looks a bit over the top then we agree. But our first attempt at the filling came out too runny so we had to boil more eggs and add more yolks to the filling to make it firmer. They make for excellent leftovers for breakfast, though.

A non-walking day today. Instead we visited the archaeological excavation/museum at Akrotiri. Like the site at the top of the hill near Kamari, this town dates back to the Bronze age. It was destroyed by the volcanic eruption in 1600-something BC and the excavation has been in progress for some fifty-odd years.

The site was interesting to see, but I was disappointed to find out that absolutely everything they’ve found – tools, household objects, frescoes – has been carted off to museums in either Fira or all the way to Athens. Only the walls and stairs and streets themselves are left here, as well as a few token clay vases, and castings of bed frames, for some reason. (Wooden objects rotted over the centuries, and left behind hollow spaces in the volcanic ash, so when any hollows were found, the archaeologists made casts of them all.) They haven’t even put up replicas or projections or even posters with images.

On the other hand, it was interesting to see archaeologists actually at work, with their brushes and sieves and wheelbarrows.

We had lunch at the beach in Akrotiri, which was a much calmer experience than the crowds in Kamari. I wanted to try something local so I ordered red mullet. My plate did indeed contain a bunch of red fish. I was informed that even the fins were usually eaten and would taste like chips/crisps, which indeed they did.


Then we looked at pretty black rocks on the beach, and threw some into the sea.

500 years since Gustav Vasa was elected king of Sweden, which ended the Kalmar union and made Sweden an independent country.

(Fancy cake by Ingrid.)

Eric and Adrian are on a scout hike, and Ingrid is going camping with her group of friends tomorrow. Feeling almost left out, I decided to also go camping tomorrow. Which means that I rather urgently need a new sleeping pad. I tried to patch the old one when it sprang a leak, but it still had a slow leak afterwards. I could lie on it for 15 minutes and not notice anything, but after three hours it was noticeably deflated. Having to get up in the middle of the night to re-inflate it is not fun.

Thus, to town for errands. Sleeping pad; cotton fabric and pattern for a dressing gown; wool fabric and yarn for my next embroidery project; some small stuff from the pharmacy.

Stockholm Marathon passed through the city while I was there but I happened to pass the route only when the runners weren’t there, so I didn’t see anything more than banners, and heard some distant cheering.

Lunch at Waipo (delicious dim sum and spring rolls and chrysanthemum tea) brought back memories of team lunches there with Urb-it. I wonder how they’re doing.

Sometimes I eat ice cream late at night. Not because I’m trying to be secret about it, but because I can enjoy it in a different way when the house is all quiet and nobody is talking to me.

Chocolate ice cream will always be the best kind.

Eric and I got a chocolate tasting experience as a Christmas gift from Ingrid and Adrian. We’ve had to reschedule it several times, for all kinds of reasons, but today we finally managed to make it happen.

I have to start by saying that Duane at Small Island Chocolates did a truly excellent job. Welcoming, knowledgeable, enthusiastic – he made this a really enjoyable experience. The tickets were sold through a generic “events and experiences” company so I was sort of prepared for a somewhat commercial and impersonal event, but this was the complete opposite. Several of the chocolate varieties we tasted came from Duane’s own chocolate plantation on Tobago, and we were offered pieces of nearly day-fresh batches of chocolate.

The far row had pieces of single-estate “bean-to-bar” chocolates made of cocoa from Tobago Cocoa Estate. A milk chocolate, then the same with added sea salt, then a dark milk, and finally a dark chocolate. To my surprise, I found the 58% dark milk chocolate the most complex and interesting one. I don’t generally like milk chocolate much – it’s too sweet and doesn’t taste enough of chocolate – and I was expecting the “dark milk” to be more “milk” than “dark”. But it truly combined the best of both worlds. (I bought two bars of it after the tasting to take home with me.)

The second row had adventurously flavoured chocolate bars, from white chocolate with cocoa and beetroot, through a chilli chocolate and a liquorice one, ending with a bar of 100% cocoa solids. I didn’t much like any of these, but tasting them with my full attention was interesting to say the least. The white chocolate wasn’t bad but really didn’t have much to do with chocolate. With the chilli chocolate, the chilli added heat but no actual flavour – once the chocolate melted in my mouth, the chilli heat was in the roof of my mouth rather than on the tongue, so it didn’t blend with the chocolate flavour at all, which kind of made it feel pointless. The liquorice chocolate turned out to contain not just liquorice but also salmiak, which gave it a chemical taste. Finally, the 100% chocolate had so much cocoa butter in it that my whole mouth felt like it was coated in butter, which was a distinctly unpleasant sensation. This was the only piece I actually spat out. Worse than liquorice, which is saying something.

The third and final row had truffles and pralines. The dark chocolate truffle was utterly delicious, and the pralines were not far behind. I guess the cream in the truffles and the ganache takes both of them into dark milk land, too – which kind of makes sense and explains why I like them so much.

(The lone piece of milk chocolate at the far left wasn’t left over because I didn’t like it, but because I kept it as my “palate cleanser”. Water is no good at rinsing out a coating of cocoa butter.)

I’m eating as much I used to, and barely getting any exercise (because commuting) but suddenly I’m hungry. I can barely make it home after work before. Today I didn’t; I was twenty minutes from home when I just couldn’t deal any more and had to buy myself a banana. The brain is supposed to use a lot of energy, isn’t it? Perhaps it’s all the intense learning I’ve been doing.

Paskha – as good this year as it has been every year.