Ingrid brought some spring into the house.

The sunniest parts of the garden are flowering.

We had no winter, and for a while it looked like spring would be really early, but in the end it arrived at just about the same time as usual.

March 25 is waffle day in Sweden. Why not.

I found a recipe for waffles with lingonberries which sounded delicious. When I tried cooking them, the berries all got burnt and stuck to the waffle iron, no matter how much I coated them in batter. So I ended up putting the lingonberries on top of my waffle topping (of cottage cheese, cucumber, apple and mayonnaise). Not exactly what I had in mind, but it tasted really good nevertheless.

The batter itself was also not very good. The waffles came out floppy and limp rather than crispy – more like thick pancakes. Not a good recipe. I had checked that this was a recipe for “frasvåfflor” based on whipped cream, rather than an egg-based recipe for chewier waffles. I didn’t think that there would be that much difference between one recipe for “frasvåfflor” and another. But apparently there is. Afterwards we compared the recipe to the classic one in Rutiga kokboken and the proportions were way different. Note to self: don’t trust random waffle recipes.

The flashback section at the top of the blog is showing me posts from last year’s Norway ski tour. I look at them with mixed feelings. I had this year’s trip all booked since way back in November and had been looking forward to it for months. It truly is one of the absolute highlights of my year. And now this coronavirus came along and I get no trip. So disappointing.

Instead I am stuck at home. I am also not getting any exercise. Not commuting to work, not going to my gym classes. (The gyms are still open, which surprises me. If people are recommended to work from home and keep away from other people then going to the gym goes against the whole point of it, doesn’t it?)

Working out on my own has never worked for me. It is just too boring; I can’t make myself do it.

I’ve been going for walks but it really isn’t enough. My back is getting stiff and my body is nearly itching with restlessness. This afternoon after I was done with work I simply cycled halfway to the office (to Brommaplan), turned out and cycled home again. It felt boring and meaningless but at least it was something.

It’s green! I’ve gotten my Raspberry Pi running, and made it serve up a simple Python web app.

That means I now have three computers crammed on my small desk. If only they could all be as small as the Pi.

I’m making less progress on this project than I had thought. Mostly because, now that I work from home all day, working on a coding project feels like going back to work. Same desk, same activity. I don’t want to spend all day in the same position in the same spot in the house. Maybe on weekends.

Adrian loved pasta-making so much that he wanted to do it again today, when it’s his day to cook dinner with me.

I read up a bit on pasta-making, we tweaked our process, and everything went more smoothly this time. I made the dough an hour in advance so it was easier to work with. We got a good feel for how dry the dough needs to be, and how much to dust it with flour to make sure it doesn’t stick to itself. I got a better understanding of the point of all that folding of the dough.

Once the dough was done and tested and we got a first batch through, Adrian took over the whole process of making pasta, which let me focus on all the other parts of dinner. So all in all, we got dinner done as fast as I would have on my own with dry pasta. Not bad.

Feeling lethargic but restless. Went out for a walk on Järvafältet, hoping to see some signs of spring, but it was all cold and dead. Ice on the lakeside wetlands, ice on the roadside ditches.

The lake there is a popular landing place for migrating birds, but it was still too early for those: all I saw was a few geese and two cranes in flight. And crows.

Watching all those cooking shows like Master Chef has really inspired Adrian to do more in the kitchen. He has been asking for some while now if we could try making our own pasta, like they always do on TV. Why not?

I looked for second hand pasta machines but didn’t find any, so I bought this beautiful shiny red thing. “Made in Italy” so it just has to make perfect pasta, doesn’t it?

I made the dough and Adrian operated the machine. It didn’t go very smoothly at first, and it took a while before we got a good handle on the whole folding-and-re-rolling process. Making the pasta took us over an hour.

It’ll go faster with practice, I’m sure. We’ll do this a few more times to get our skills up. And then – I wonder how hard can it be to make ravioli?

The resulting pasta was good, lighter and less chewy than dried pasta, but not earth-shatteringly delicious. I may have overcooked it slightly, to be honest.

Served with oven roasted cherry tomatoes, olive oil, Parmesan cheese and fresh basil.

Virtual Friday afternoon fika.

Did not feel like the real thing.

The benefits of working from home, continued: when I see that it is sunny outside in the afternoon, I can just decide to “pack up and go home” and then go out for a long walk, with no advance planning. And be lucky enough to find the year’s first little stand of blue anemone in an otherwise drab and dead-looking forest.

One of the best places for an afternoon walk in the sun is the cliffs near Kyrkhamn and Gåseborg. They face lake Mälaren on its east side and they are only sparsely wooded, so there are plenty of wide open views towards the lake in the west.

Kyrkhamn is also one of Stockholm’s quietest spots. The web site of Stockholm city has a guide to the city’s quiet places. There are no large roads nearby, and to one side of course there is only the lake. At this time of the year there are no noisy boats on the lake either.

There was also very little birdsong. Pine forests tend to be quiet; I guess not many songbirds like them. But the area near Gåseborg had more shrubs and deciduous trees, and some noisy blue tits, as well as some others I didn’t recognize by their sounds.

Working from home has its benefits. I can, for example, make myself a nicer breakfast, with smashed avocado on my buttered bread. And then eat it at the kitchen table, with views of tulips, and a squirrel on the bird feeder outside.