My first-ever attempt at sourdough bread.

Eric was the master baker in the house. Now that he’s not here, I need to learn to bake my own bread. Because I’m not going to be living on store-bought bread only.

For him it was a hobby; for me the process is not that interesting, and technical mastery is irrelevant. So I’m choosing the easy, low-effort route. For today: a no-knead sourdough bread.

First learning point: put the dough to rise in a warmer place. I had it in the kitchen at first, because that is where one bakes, but the dough wouldn’t rise. Moved it to the living room, under the heat pump, and things started happening.

Second learning point: even though the dough looks all gluey, you don’t actually need that much flour when handling it.

Third learning point: do not try to puff up the loaves before putting them in the oven. Even though the book says you can. They’ll just lose their form entirely and you end up with very misshapen loaves.

Fourth learning point: bake the loaves lower in the oven, or lower temperature compared to what the recipe says. These would have benefited from a bit more time in the oven, but the edges were nearly starting to burn.

Despite all of the above, the loaves rose, the texture was only a little bit doughy, and the taste was good.

I made the brandy sauce for the Christmas pudding based on BBC Food’s recipe and it’s almost like a jelly in texture. I could probably cut it into shapes. You’d think the BBC would be a reliable source for a recipe like that! When my mum saw the sauce, she immediately guessed that it was the BBC recipe – “that’s the one with 55 grams of everything” – because she’s had the same experience. So it really is the recipe that’s strange, not me mis-measuring anything.

But if you can get past the odd looks, it’s rather practical. The sauce stays where you put it on the plate, and you can take precisely as much as you want.

A low-key New Year’s celebration, as usual. Salmon stew with cream and saffron for dinner. (With kohlrabi instead of fennel because, shockingly, the supermarket was all out of fresh fennel.) And an experimental dessert, which tasted absolutely delicious, even though parts of the recipe didn’t work out as expected. (ICA’s whipped panna cotta with marinated raspberries and an oat crunch.)

Ingrid went off after dinner to celebrate with her friends, and my mum also left before midnight in order to drive home safely before the promised snow storm. With just Eric, Adrian and myself, the mood wasn’t quite as celebratory. We watched Pulp Fiction – Adrian has been interested in older movies recently – and that was that.

The snow storm wasn’t too bad around midnight, but visibility was crap. We didn’t bother going up on the roof, which we normally do for the great views, because there wouldn’t be any views anyway. Instead we walked to a nearby football field, hoping that people around it might use it to fire off their fireworks. A few did. But a lot of the time we could hear the cracks and booms but not see anything through the snow and the low-hanging clouds. It was like there were invisible ghost fireworks all around us.

It’s Christmas Eve!

Knowing Nysse and his habit of attacking wrapped-up gifts, with all their play-friendly paper and ribbons and shiny bits, we didn’t leave the gifts out overnight. But when he’d had his breakfast and gone out, we put the gifts under the tree. He managed to attack one of them – luckily the one where the inner layer was a sturdy cardboard tube, and thus hard to damage and easy to re-wrap – but after that I kept my eye on him all the time and chased him away twice, after which he was almost afraid of even going near the tree, so there was no more damage.

Lunch was devilled eggs, pickled herring of three kinds (flavoured with blackcurrant, apple and curry, and mustard, respectively) and a citrus and gravad lax salad. Plus potatoes and vörtbröd, a Swedish Christmas bread.

Ingrid piped and decorated the eggs, and folded the napkins.

The citrus and salmon salad was a new entry on the menu. Tasted good!

Then it was time for presents. With everybody so grown-up, there’s a lot less cheering and jumping up and down than there used to be!

Nysse, when he woke up, attacked the rolled-up Santa hats as if they were fluffy little animals, and for some reason really enjoyed licking the little olive wood bowl that I gave to Eric.

Ingrid and I went grocery shopping for all the Christmas meals we’ll be having tomorrow. Herring and gravad lax and brussel sprouts and potatoes and all that.

I always mix up the Stora Coop shops near us. I know that one of them has a deli counter that sells their own pickled herrings, but I forget which one it is. (Note to future self: it’s Coop Bromma Blocks.) This year, without a helpful note from past me, we started at Coop Vinsta. While it didn’t have the good herring, it had plenty of parking space and almost no queues, so it was rather nice to get the bulk of the shopping out of the way here. Then we headed to Coop Bromma Blocks for herring. And for julmust, because Coop Vinsta didn’t have the good stuff there, either.

Neither did the other Coop, as we discovered. Usually they all have several brands, sugary and sugar-free, large bottles and multi-packs of small bottles, but this year it was just this single variety, and that was that. We thought we must have walked past them, so we searched, even asked the staff, but no, that was it. Ingrid remembered seeing at least the sugar-free kind (which she prefers) at our local, small Coop, so we ended up going there as well, and finally got the julmust we wanted.

None of the three Coop supermarkets had cranberries, though, and neither did our local ICA. Some years ago I know I bought fresh American cranberries at one of the large Coop supermarkets, and then after that at least there were frozen Swedish ones. (Different species, and they behave differently when cooked, but they taste similar enough.) But I guess there’s not enough demand. We’ll have to make do with some kind of lingonberry-based sauce instead.

A Christmas day with my brother.

I picked him up by car in Uppsala as usual. What was not as usual was the thick slush coming down from the sky. I also hadn’t accounted for today being the first day of Christmas break and thus large crowds heading out of town to their cabins in the woods or wherever. The roads were slippery and full of snow and a lot more traffic than usual for 7:30 on a Saturday morning. The drive there and back usually takes me an hour and a half, but took two and a half today. For a good chunk of the way, we were all driving at 40 km/h behind a pair of snow ploughs.

Anyway, I managed to not become a statistic (and we saw no cars on the side of the road and no cars with sirens on) so all is good.

Then we baked. More lussebullar in all sorts of shapes, because after a while we all become bored with the traditional ones. There were lusse croissants and doodles and swirls and twists, and even a lusse snow lantern.

And then we made a batch of mince pies, too, because those are delicious and everyone should have access to mince pies at Christmas.

We made gingerbread cookies. Store-bought ones can’t compete, and I realize I need to copy Eric’s recipe because otherwise next Christmas in this household will be a sad affair.

Every year we tell ourselves that we will only bring out the most important cutters and that there is no need to dirty all of them. Our priorities overlap but only partially, and we end up using at least two thirds of all the cutters anyway. I like the traditional shapes, Ingrid wants the ones that are good for decorating, Adrian prefers the small ones that are best at using up the most dough. Eric is happy to just bake whatever we cut.

The dough gets smaller and smaller with each round, but there will be no wastage!

A somewhat delayed eighteenth-birthday dinner for Ingrid, at Berns Asiatiska, by her request. Her boyfriend Albin also joined us, for the first time.

Berns Asiatiska was Stockholm’s first Chinese restaurant back in the 1940s, and it still has and old-school luxurious interior, reminding of days gone by, with crystal chandeliers and wood panelling. Very festive.

The sound level was very modern, though, actually making it difficult to talk to people across the table. We all kept having to ask each other to repeat our words. So there was more focus on the food and less on the conversation.

Ingrid, of course, ordered sushi. So did Eric and I.

She chose Berns because they serve not only excellent sushi but also excellent Asian fusion dishes for those who aren’t fond of seafood. (Like Adrian and Albin.) Adrian had a giant serving of tonkatsu, while Albin had Korean barbecue chicken. Both were happy with their dishes.

My dessert was a bit of a disappointment. Titled “Cherry and lime”, it led me to expect an explosion of flavours. But the cherry sorbet(?) barely tasted of cherry, and the fluffy, creamy lime was also very delicate in flavour. Not bad, per se, but after eating sushi with wasabi and soy sauce, this felt very tame.

We had a mini-celebration at work for having finished a feature we’ve worked on for a while. For some reason, Swedes’ go-to celebration cake is princess cake which is the most unsatisfying cake ever. It looks sort of festive, I guess, but what you get is a large amount of marzipan, covering a cloying sponge, loads of sweet whipped cream, and a bit of raspberry jam. It’s sugary and fluffy and that’s it. There is no texture and barely any flavour. If I never see another princess cake in my life, I won’t feel even a moment of sadness.

I took a sliver to be polite and felt no temptation to eat more. And then I got a stomach ache from all the lactose in the cream. I thought the sliver was small enough to be safe, but no. Not worth it.

In the evening Ingrid came home with tartelettes from the bakery where she works. A thin, crumbly crust; blackcurrant curd; Italian merengue with a delicate raspberry flavour. A flavour explosion in every bite. This is what a cake should be like.

Ready for Ingrid’s eighteenth birthday festive brunch. Ingrid did all the creative work yesterday – baking and decorating the cake, making the panna cotta, preparing the filling for the devilled eggs. All that was left for this morning was plating and such, plus some slicing of veggie sticks and cheeses.

Devilled eggs is one of her favourite party foods, and now she wants to introduce her friends to the concept. Several of them are generally sceptical about new foods, but the bacon on top of these should convince them.

Fresh fruit, to go with yoghurt and granola, for those who want a lighter meal.

Crostini with burrata, a lemon and olive oil drizzle, and raspberries.

Panna cotta with raspberry jam and a mint sprig.

And now everything is ready for the guests, and it’s time for the parents to make themselves scarce. Ingrid herself was perfectly fine with having us here for the duration, but we all agreed that her friends wouldn’t feel as comfortable with us in the house.