There are cooking wines that you cook dinner with, and then there are cooking wines that you drink while cooking dinner. I very rarely drink any alcohol at all, but the fruit wines that Eric has made are all delicious. I usually don’t remember them, again because I don’t have a habit of drinking. But sometimes when I go to the pantry to fetch vinegar or olive oil or some other bottle, I notice that lovely bottle of wine next to it. So that’s when I pour myself a splash of it.

Ingrid preparing to make beetroot risotto for dinner.

Adrian and I cooked dinner. We made his favourite dish: pasta with pureed peas and goat’s cheese. It’s a Linas matkasse recipe originally and we keep coming back to it because Adrian loves it so much.

Adrian likes to cook but he is so distractible that he can barely do one task at a time, and let’s not even speak of having two tasks going on in parallel. When we cook together, he does a small fraction of the actual work. Today I cooked the pasta and the peas and grated the goat’s cheese and pureed the peas, while he toasted nuts and melted butter and sauteed garlic. But he learns the basic skills at least – and we enjoy it.

Weighing things is one of his favourite tasks. (And tasting!) If the recipe says 70 grams of pine nuts, and I suggest taking a 60-gram bag and then a bit more, he insists on weighing them, and being precise about it. 70 should be 70 and not 68!

Eric came back from visiting friends in Hälsingland, with lots of fresh redcurrants.

I love redcurrants, but they are impossible to find in shops. So now I will gorge myself on them for the next few days. Redcurrants for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

Fresh strawberries and Swedish plums. This will be a delicious breakfast.

Adrian making pancakes for dinner.

After a visit to the aviation museum (with aircraft and helicopters of all sorts to look at and climb into) my father and his wife treated us all to a sushi making and eating session. I’ve only made temaki at home before; here they were rolling proper maki and nigiri pieces together with the kids.

Now that we have the oven back, we immediately made potato gratin, which Adrian has missed for so long.

I enjoyed a doubly luxurious breakfast. Firstly, the food itself: cereal with yoghurt and a mound of fresh berries of various sorts. We splurge on fruit and berries all summer. Secondly, the circumstances: since the rest of the family is away, I could eat exactly when I want, which generally means odd hours, with no advance planning and no concern for anybody else’s hunger levels, preferences, plans for the rest of the day, etc.

It’s Friday, which means movie night, which means dinner that can be eaten in the sofa. Ingrid is cooking us a beetroot risotto.