The cucumber plant we’re plant-sitting has produced exactly one crooked, fist-sized cucumber.

I don’t eat fish often but if I go without for a month or so, I can get a mild craving for seafood. Ingrid is a stricter vegetarian than the rest of us (except when it comes to sushi because it is her favourite food) so I try to satisfy my craving when Ingrid is away.

Another day, another walk, another set of dramatic clouds in the sky.

The sky was threatening rain and thunder when I went out for my walk today. I went anyway and just stayed close-ish to the house, zig-zagging the nearby roads instead of venturing farther, so I could rush home if/when I got drenched.

The rain never came, even though I could literally feel it in the air. The clouds kept appearing and vanishing right over my head.

For some reason I expect weather to arise somewhere else and then arrive here. Even though I know very well that that is not how later-summer thunderclouds work – hot air rising up and all that. But it still felt weird to literally see clouds appear from nowhere.

Back to work today.

I lost my daily workout routine during vacation. Starting it up again with daily vigorous walks to begin with.

I didn’t take a proper photo today, but I did photograph a cake recipe – the strawberry and elderflower one we’ve had for Midsummer a few times – to send it to my mum, in return for the redcurrant cake recipe. So I guess I could share those with you.

Redcurrant cake

Crust

• 125 g butter
• 75 g sugar
• 2-3 egg yolks
• 250 g flour
• ½ tsp baking powder
• 2-3 tbsp breadcrumbs

Filling

• 4 egg whites
• 200 g sugar
• 75-100 g hazelnuts
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• 500 g redcurrants

Cream butter with sugar. Add egg yolks one by one while stirring. Mix baking powder and flour and add to the butter mixture. Roll the dough into a ball, cover and cool for 50-60 minutes. Line a springform pan with the dough, leave a 5 cm edge. Sprinkle the bottom with breadcrumbs.

Whisk the egg whites. Gradually add sugar. Whisk for another few minutes. Add chopped hazelnuts and cinnamon.

Stir the redcurrants into two thirds of the egg mixture. Pour the filling in the crust. Cover with the rest of the egg mixture (either piping or simply spreading).

Bake at medium heat for about 1 hour. (We interpreted “medium heat” as around 175°C.)

The original Estonian recipe had margarine instead of butter but nobody misses that.

The also recipe called for “nuts” rather than specifying hazelnuts. Back then everybody understood that that’s what you mean when you say “nuts”. Locally grown nuts were simply nuts; exotic, fancy nuts had longer, fancier names. That may still be the case actually.

My mum was able to locate that old recipe for redcurrant cake and Eric was kind enough to make it for me. This, this is what the cake is supposed to be like! A deep crust properly filled with lots of redcurrants – three times as much as the other recipe! Meringue mixed in with the berries, and chopped hazelnuts as well. I had completely forgotten about the nuts but now that I can taste them there, I realize what a difference they make. And the meringue itself is slow-baked so it’s crunchy and crumbly instead of sticky. I’ll be holding on hard to this recipe.

If our own tree has a disappointing cherry harvest then I can just go to the store and buy some, can’t I?

Yes, but nope. Our cherries have a rich, deep, sweet flavour. These store-bought ones were sort of sweet but mostly bland and watery.

I don’t even understand how I could expect them to be the same. I know that about every other kind of fruit and berry – you can’t just buy any old thing and expect it to taste good. Golden delicious apples will never be anything but blandly sweet. Belgian and Spanish strawberries will never compare to Swedish ones. Please, my Belgian friends, do not take this personally – that is just the way it is.

I wonder how much this is due to geography (the longer days and cooler nights here in the north are good for strawberries, from what I understand) and how much is simple selection. If you’re going to transport your berries all the way from Belgium to here, you would naturally prioritize a firm texture over juiciness and flavour. So perhaps we here in Sweden just get the firmest but least flavourful of Belgian strawberries.

The cherry harvest this year is really poor. Half the tree has borne no fruit at all, and that’s the south-facing side which is usually heavily laden with fruit. The north-facing side had some at least, but many have gone bad and fallen to the ground before even being fully ripe.

Even when there is a box of macaroni in the pantry, it doesn’t mean that we actually have macaroni. Or, well, I guess technically we do have macaroni, but the amount is a rounding error.

How hard is it to actually empty the box? Would cooking these last 25 pieces of macaroni really have made that lunch portion too large? Argh.