Ingrid spotted these mini-pancakes at the supermarket that looked just like the quark pancakes we had in Estonia. I think we both knew these wouldn’t be as good, even before opening the package, but some part of us still hoped. And of course they were nothing like the Estonian ones. The Estonian quark pancakes (which even came in several varieties, like one with banana and one with oats, I believe) were delicious enough to eat as a snack straight from the bag. These quarkless Swedish ones were bland even after heating. The quark makes a difference, of course, but store-bought Swedish pancakes are also always disappointing compared to home-made ordinary pancakes. I don’t know what they do with them – or what they don’t do. Skimp on butter and fry them in oil?

The dev team at Urb-it celebrates major achievements with cake, and also mourns major losses (due to people leaving the team) with cake. Cake goes fell with all kinds of feelings.

Apparently it’s cinnamon bun day today. I’ve become blasé about most holidays and celebrations and traditions, especially the more commercial ones. But Ingrid, young and full of energy and enthusiasm, baked wonderfully fluffy cinnamon buns for us.

I’ve reached middle age, or something. Some time earlier this year, there was a step change in my caloric needs. All of a sudden I couldn’t finish what used to be normal portions. In the end I had to switch to a smaller serving bowl, because I kept serving myself more food than I could eat.

That’s my bowl of salad on the left, and Adrian’s on the right. It’s Friday movie night, so dinner is served on the chest that does double duty as a sofa table in front of the TV.

I’ve also stopped eating breakfast on weekdays, because I realized I no longer need all that food. I still haven’t quite learned to manage restaurant meals yet, and keep ordering as if nothing had changed. I made the mistake of ordering an entire pizza in Slovenia and had to send half of it back.

Wednesday is office day, which also means a restaurant lunch. I had a vegan burger for my lunch. And I don’t know what they put in there, but it gave me so much gas that I was basically laid up for the rest of the day. I managed to get through the afternoon’s work, tottered home, and then stayed horizontal as much as I could in the evening. I haven’t felt this awful since I went lactose-free. If the burger hadn’t been vegan, I’d maybe have suspected milk – but you can’t even squeeze that much milk products into a simple burger, so I’ve no idea what was in there. I won’t be going back to that place any time soon, in any case.

No river valleys today! We went hiking on Velika Planina, a mountain plateau covered mostly in pastureland and cows. A complete change in scenery. And we didn’t even have to climb the hill to get up there – a cable car did the work for us. At 50 EUR for a family, the cable car ticket price seemed rather steep, and I was actually considering finding an alternative hike for today. 50 EUR just to be allowed to walk! But I’m glad we went with this option after all, because the scenery up there was quite unique.

The plateau with its gentle rolling hills made for easy walking. The sun was bright but we got a lot of wind, so for the first time in a week we were actually not hot at all.

Velika Planina has several old herder settlements with shingled huts.

Cows were mingling freely with the tourists and barely even curious about us.

One of the huts hosted a museum, which was closed today for some reason. Several had simple cafes or sold cheese and other milk products. Speaking of cheese, I found these Slovenian cottage cheese pastries that you can apparently buy in most bakeries and supermarkets. The cottage cheese filling reminds me of Estonian kohupiim. I’ve been having these as my packed lunch almost every day.

Speaking of pastries, I only noticed today that the word burek/börek (“filled filo dough pastry” in various places around the Balkans and the Middle East) is strikingly similar to pirog/pirukas (“filled pastry” in Estonian, Russian, Swedish etc). Do they have the same origin? Harden the B, soften the K, and you’re there. I went down a deep Internet rabbit hole to figure out whether that’s the case, and people on the internet have had some very passionate debates about the origins of both words, but I guess nobody really knows for sure. In any case, the Slovenian cottage cheese burek are delicious.

Back to the plateau and its huts! One of the buildings was a beautiful wooden chapel. The gateway of the chapel was decorated with two spruce trees, stripped of bark and branches all the way except for the very top. Eric had noticed a similar tree while driving, so it’s not just some tourist thing here on Velika Planina. I asked around, and a Slovenian colleague tells me they’re called mlaj and put up for celebrations – traditionally for May Day (like a version of the maypole I guess) but more recently also for birthdays and weddings.

For those with tired legs, there was a two-seat chairlift between the cable car station and the top of the hill. (There’s a ski resort here during winter.) We walked, though, and actually kept pace with the chairlift. Adrian might have voted for the chairlift, had it had more than two seats so that we could all have sat together.

No photo today, because we were too busy packing for our upcoming 10-day trip to Slovenia. Adrian got his new passport just a few days ago, so we won’t need to queue for another temporary one. But we are expecting potentially a lot of queueing at Arlanda airport. And our flight leaves at 8 in the morning, so we’ll be getting up at 4 to make sure we don’t miss the flight.

This photo is from our stay in Estonia. Adrian is eating reheated one-pot pasta straight from the pot.

My father and his wife kindly made their apartment available to us during our stay there. It’s always interesting in a way to live somewhere that is not at home, because it makes so obvious the things that I take for granted. The things that I miss when I don’t have them – and the things that I realize aren’t that important after all.

This apartment has a much smaller kitchen than our own home, so there is no dishwasher, and the microwave was on the blink. With just the three of us, and nobody cooking any fancy meals, we didn’t really miss the dishwasher. It just made some of us sometimes (like Adrian in the photo) prioritize differently, so there would be less washing up.

We did miss the microwave. I’m so used to having leftovers from dinner for lunch the day after, or for a snack if someone suddenly gets hungry. A microwave oven makes that so much easier.

And then there are the things that I know I would miss so badly that I don’t even want to try – sharp knives being the prime example. I bring two newly sharpened kitchen knives (one small, one large) with me to every trip where I know I’ll be preparing food, but I don’t know for sure what knives I will find there.

Eric and Adrian made my favourite birthday cake for me, with tons of redcurrants and a merengue topping.

We visited my father and his wife, and made sushi together. I was mostly too busy talking to take any photos, so most of these are not mine. Ingrid photographed some of the sushi materials; Adrian photographed me from various angles.

The book I’m enjoying is Estonia’s most famous and well-known cookbook – the wonderful Raamat maitsvast ja tervislikust toidust (“The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food”) from 1955 which contains everything from very traditional Estonian recipes, to lots of Russian baked goods, to instructions for using all sorts of fish that I’ve never even heard of. It was strange and exotic already in the 1980s.

I made such a beautiful salad for dinner that I just have to show it off.

30°C is maybe not objectively hot in most parts of the world, but for us it’s hot enough that nobody wants any hot meals for dinner, so it’s been salad for dinner several days in a row now. Today’s salad is roast fresh potatoes, lentils, sugar snaps, nectarines and strawberries.