Painted eggs, and then herring and devilled eggs and potatoes for lunch, and paella for dinner, and paskha and a lemon merengue pie.

The same procedure as last year? The same procedure as every year.

Away travelling overnight on business. Got to the hotel late in the evening, after a four-and-a-half-hour train ride. Googled for nearby restaurants but was too tired to even choose one, so I went to the Burger King right next door. I can’t remember when I last ate there, but how bad can it be, right? People go there every day.

It really was quite bad. The fried cheese was good, but the burger was truly not an experience I want to repeat. The blandest possible white bread; pale, hard tomato; tasteless iceberg lettuce; sauce with barely any flavour. Was it always this flavourless, or has it gone downhill in recent years? Don’t know, don’t care, just have to remember to stay away. A piece of bread and a tub of yogurt from the nearest convenience store would have tasted better.

Actually, waffle day was yesterday, but we’re having waffles today instead.

On my way to a ski tour in Norway this year again.

Last year I missed my connecting train even though I was supposed to have an hour between the arrival of one train and the departure of the next one. That was not fun at all, so this time I left myself three hours in Oslo Sentralstasjon. Which is, honestly, not that much fun either, but at least it’s less stressful.

Last year I also discovered the upmarket end of the station. Previously I only knew about the main station concourse on the upper level, and the food options there were sorely disappointing, especially given Norwegian prices. But then I learned that if I go down and to the right and down again, I can at least get a nice Neapolitan style pizza, or expensive conveyor belt sushi. Norwegian restaurant prices are eye-watering when seen with Swedish eyes, but I tell myself that I’m on vacation, and I do have to eat, and I’d rather pay for an expensive, good meal than an almost as expensive but crappy one.

No snacks, though. When a small 250 ml bottle of juice costs 50 NOK (that’s about 4.5 EUR) and a croissant is 42 NOK, I’ll make do with my bottled water from home.

I’m technically not really sick any more – no fever or anything, although I’m coughing at the least provocation. But my appetite is still gone. I eat half a portion at lunch, and even though I don’t feel full, I really don’t feel like eating any more, either. Just don’t want to, at all.

After a week of little to no food already, this isn’t exactly helping me get my energy back.

Chocolate ice cream as a late night snack sort of works. I can eat it without actively struggling against it.

We don’t pay much attention to Valentine’s day, but Ingrid bought a bouquet of pink and red roses, and I made pink pancakes.

There’s a new trend at low-to-mid end sushi restaurants in Stockholm of smothering all sushi in sauces and toppings. Chili mayo, other mayo, even onion flakes of all things. I’m still expecting sushi to be served without this crap, and then I get an unpleasant surprise when I get my meal. And I usually don’t remember this until I’m already staring at the problem. But today I remembered, and asked them to skip the toppings, and actually got to taste the sushi itself.

Adrian, just like me, likes arranging eggs symmetrically in the carton.

When we moved back from London to Stockholm, one of the things we brought with us was the tradition of Christmas pudding. And mince pies, which I now see I have never blogged about either.

It tastes a lot better than it looks in a photo.

In England we bought them. Every supermarket in London had Christmas pudding, and if you wanted a fancy one, you got it from Harrods or Fortnum & Mason. Here in Stockholm we also started out with store-bought ones, from NK or The English Shop. But one year (I think maybe because NK stopped carrying them?) Eric tried making his own, and after that there was no going back.

Christmas pudding is served with brandy cream, which you can think of as a sweetened sauce béchamel flavoured with brandy. The pudding on its own is a bit too heavy and sticky, which the sauce helps balance. A hot pudding paired with a cold brandy sauce is the perfect combination.

There is a tiny problem, though: the sauce always runs out before the pudding. So then you buy more sauce – and then you run out of pudding before sauce. And then you buy another pudding. Which works if you’re in London with its abundant offering of Christmas puddings, but is harder when you make your own, which takes a couple of weeks at least if you want it to be really good.

This time when we ran out of sauce I tried hacking the process with a sweetened, brandy-flavoured quark mixture (no cooking, just stir it all together) and it was better than nothing but not as good as a proper sauce.