I have never been so relieved to see a frozen lake in my entire life. After seven hours of driving from Oslo, my partner and I finally turned onto the road up to Golsfjellet, only to realise I had left the entire bag of groceries sitting on the kitchen counter back in our flat. Every single item. The pasta, the tinned tomatoes, the cheese I had carefully selected, even the emergency biscuits. All of it. Two hundred kilometres away. My partner looked at me with that particular expression that says "I am choosing to find this funny later" and we drove the last stretch in mostly silence, broken only by my occasional muttering about how I am apparently thirty-four years old and still incapable of basic list-checking.

The cabin itself saved the mood almost instantly. We pulled up to a proper timber lodge, all warm lighting and steep roofline, with snow piled thick on the balcony railings and smoke curling from the chimney. Inside smelled of pine and something vaguely woody, and the kitchen, thank all the Norwegian gods, was properly equipped. Not just the token gesture of a blunt knife and one bent saucepan that you sometimes get in holiday lets, but actual decent pans, a proper stove, and a fridge-freezer that looked like it meant business. I made a silent vow to redeem myself through cooking.

The nearest proper shop was in Gol, about twenty minutes down the mountain. We found a Kiwi supermarket and I went slightly mad with compensation shopping. Reindeer meatballs went into the basket, plus a lump of brunost that I had been meaning to try properly, some dense rye bread, and various things from the fish counter that I could not entirely identify but felt optimistic about. My partner, who is more sensible, bought eggs, butter, and actual vegetables. We also picked up a bottle of aquavit because it seemed rude not to, and some local beer from a brewery in Hallingdal that the checkout woman recommended with the confidence of someone who had definitely done her own research.

Back at the cabin, I attempted to make a proper Norwegian-inspired dinner. The reindeer meatballs browned beautifully in the heavy pan, and I made a simple gravy with the meat juices, some cream, and a spoonful of lingonberry jam that I found at the back of the fridge left by some previous thoughtful guest. We ate at the wooden table with candles lit, looking out at the darkness where I knew the frozen lake was, and I felt genuinely proud of myself. The brunost was another matter. I had planned to shave delicate curls onto the rye bread, but my technique was more "aggressive carpentry" and the result looked like something a beaver had attacked. It tasted extraordinary though, that sweet caramelised savoury thing that makes no sense on paper and perfect sense in your mouth.

The next morning I attempted proper Norwegian waffles on the old cast iron waffle iron I had spotted in the cupboard. The first one stuck completely and had to be scraped out with a knife, which I ate standing at the counter in shameful pieces. The second one worked after I properly buttered the iron, and we ate them with brown cheese and strawberry jam, plus coffee that we made in a battered old pot because there was no proper machine. It was better than any hotel breakfast I have ever had, partly because of the view of snow-covered birch trees, partly because I had earned it through waffle-based failure.

We found a small farm shop a few miles towards Hemsedal that sold local goat cheese and honey, and I bought both without any real plan for them. The cheese went into a baked pasta dish that evening, mixed with cream and some dried mushrooms from the cabin cupboard that I suspect had been there since the eighties but tasted wonderful. The honey I ate straight from the jar with a spoon while reading a crime novel by the wood burner, which felt like exactly the right use of both honey and evening.

By our third day, I had developed an embarrassing level of attachment to that kitchen. I made fish soup with the mysterious white fish from Gol, heavy with dill and cream, and served it with the remaining rye bread that had gone slightly stale but toasted beautifully. We ate in silence for several minutes, just the sound of spoons and the fire crackling, and I had one of those moments where you realise how rarely you actually taste your food properly at home. How often I shovel something down while scrolling or thinking about work emails. Here, with nothing else demanding attention, each spoonful of soup tasted like an event.

On our final morning, I used the last of the eggs to make a simple omelette with the remaining goat cheese and some dried herbs from the windowsill. It was not technically impressive. It was probably not even particularly Norwegian. But sitting there with my partner, with weak winter sunlight finally breaking through and the coffee pot bubbling on the stove, it felt like the exact right thing to be eating in the exact right place. I still forgot things sometimes, still left bags in wrong places, still scraped failed waffles into the bin. But for four days in a timber cabin on Golsfjellet, I had cooked with focus and eaten with attention, and that felt like something worth remembering, and definitely worth repeating.