I have never been so relieved to see a wooden cabin in my life, and that includes the time I got caught in a hailstorm near Aviemore. The drive from Trondheim Airport to our little Alen in South Trondelag had been going swimmingly until I decided I absolutely knew a shortcut. Reader, I did not know a shortcut. What I found instead was a farm track, a very patient sheep, and twenty minutes of reversing in a hire car that had definitely seen better days.

By the time we rolled up to the cabin, my other half was giving me that look. You know the one. The "we will discuss this over a cup of tea" look. Except we had no tea, no milk, and crucially no food beyond a packet of mints and a slightly squashed cereal bar that had been living in my coat pocket since Gatwick.

The cabin itself was gorgeous, all red wood and proper Norwegian simplicity, with a kitchen that looked like it meant business. Big windows overlooking nothing but trees and the sort of silence that makes you realise how loud Britain actually is. But first things first: we needed to eat, and we needed to eat soon before I became genuinely unpleasant to be around.

The nearest proper shop was in Orkanger, about twenty minutes away, and I will confess I drove there with the sort of urgency normally reserved for medical emergencies. The Meny supermarket became my cathedral. I wandered those aisles in a state of pure wonder, filling my basket with things I could not pronounce and had no definite plan for. Brunost, obviously, that caramelised whey cheese that looks like it should be fudge and tastes like nothing else on earth. Cloudberries in a jar, because they felt decadent. Some very serious-looking salmon. A loaf of bread that weighed approximately the same as a house brick. And herring, because when in Rome, or rather when in South Trondelag, one buys herring and hopes for the best.

Back at the cabin, I set about what I optimistically termed "a light supper." The kitchen had a proper stove, good knives, and a view that made chopping onions feel almost spiritual. I attempted gravlax-style curing with my supermarket salmon, having watched approximately one video about this on the plane. The result was edible, which I consider a triumph given my track record with fish. My other half made a potato salad with dill that actually worked, probably because they followed a recipe rather than relying on misplaced confidence.

Breakfast the next morning was where the cabin kitchen really came into its own. I fried eggs with that brown cheese shaved over the top, which sounds wrong until you try it, and then sounds wrong but tastes absolutely right. We ate at the little wooden table watching mist rise off the fjord, and I had one of those moments of gentle self-reflection that holidays sometimes allow. Here I was, a person who had got lost behind a sheep not twelve hours previously, now eating like a vaguely competent Scandinavian and feeling genuinely content about it. Perhaps I was not entirely hopeless. Perhaps I just needed to stop trusting my sense of direction and start trusting Norwegian dairy products.

We found a farmers' market in Orkanger on the Saturday morning, small but serious, with people selling root vegetables that still had actual soil on them and jars of jam made by someone who definitely knew what they were doing. I bought a cabbage the size of a football and some locally cured lamb, and spent the afternoon attempting a farikal-inspired stew. It simmered for hours, filling the cabin with a smell so good that I kept finding excuses to walk through the kitchen and lift the lid for another sniff. By evening it was tender and warming and exactly what we needed after a walk along the fjord that had left us both slightly damp and very hungry.

The brown cheese became a running theme, as these things do. I put it on everything. Waffles, which we made in an ancient iron I found in a cupboard and nearly burned myself with. Crispbread. Apples, on one experimental occasion, which was not successful but taught me something about boundaries. My other half drew a line at brown cheese in their coffee, which I respect, though I did try it once when they were not looking and found it weirdly comforting.

Our final night, I attempted proper Norwegian pancakes, thin ones, with the last of our cloudberry jam. They were not perfectly round and one stuck to the pan in a way that required serious scrubbing later, but we ate them by candlelight with the darkness pressing against the windows and felt genuinely sad that tomorrow we would be back to Pret sandwiches and reality.

I left South Trondelag with a slightly tighter waistband, a new appreciation for dairy products that challenge you, and a solemn promise to myself that I would stop pretending I knew shortcuts anywhere, ever.