Potatoes two ways,

words for this year, and my foolproof mayonnaise recipe.

I didn’t write a long Happy New Year post, with inspiring words this year.

To be honest with you, words failed me.

As I looked towards this new year ahead, all I wrote down in my journal were words of comfort.

I wrote down little sentences of the very simply things in life, of love, hope, forgiveness, long tables filled with friends and family, of homemade mayonnaise, butter and bread, and of wanting to go for more walks, and for the sun to return to my litte home.

I didn’t write of loss, but nor did I write confidently about hope either.

More often than not, I would put the pen down, only to return to a journal page with the date and location scribbled at the top, but nothing more.

When words failed, I would cook.

Simple ingredients filled my market basket on those days, in an addition to the occasional jar of tahini, sesame seeds.

Aleppo pepper and lions mane mushroom, the latter a gift so I can take no credit for that addition to the pantry this week, the usual suspects would be bought on repeat.

I looked towards familiar root vegetables from my childhood, of swede, turnip, parsnip and potatoes.

I brought home a jar brimming with gloriously bright orange cloudberries from the airport specialty shop, on the way back from our Christmas holiday with family in Norway.

In hindsight I should also have added on a jar of brilliantly red and juicy lingonberries, but it was early hours when we strolled through the airport to our departure gate, and in my defence we had yet to have a proper breakfast.

The cloudberries, a sunny berry of dreams from my childhood, that grow one by one on a little plant that thrive on moss covered wet meadows in the Norwegian woods. They are as delicious as they are scarce, and simply folded into whipped cream, they form a dessert on their own.

That jar of golden berry delight is now found at the back of my fridge as I type, and it feels precious, like a childhood treasure.

And although I aim to enjoy the content before its best before date, I feel like it needs a special event to be brought to the front of the fridge, and for me to open the jar and the lid seal, which will then make it more perishable, thus spurring on the above mentioned event.

It’s the kind of pressure I’m shying away from these days, hence the placement at the back the fridge, for now, until the time is right.