I have never been brilliant at reading maps, which is how I ended up driving past the turning for our holiday let three times before finally spotting the little wooden sign half-hidden behind a bush. My partner sat in the passenger seat with that particular expression of patience worn thin, clutching a bag of petrol station crisps that constituted our lunch. "Next left," she kept saying, and I kept missing it, distracted by the absurdly blue water glimpsed through the trees. Welcome to Blekinge, I thought, where even your navigational incompetence comes with a scenic backdrop.

The cottage itself, when we finally arrived, was one of those red wooden affairs that make you feel immediately like you ought to be wearing chunky knitwear and foraging for mushrooms. It sat among pine trees with a view down to the water, and the first thing I noticed was the outdoor grill on the deck. The second thing I noticed was that I had forgotten to pack any charcoal. This set the tone for our culinary adventures rather neatly.

We had planned, in that optimistic way you do before a self-catering holiday, to cook proper meals every night. Local ingredients, simple preparations, perhaps a glass of wine as the sun went down. The reality began with a frantic trip to the ICA supermarket in Solvesborg, where I wandered the aisles in mild panic trying to identify familiar products through packaging I could not read. My partner, who speaks slightly more Swedish than I do, which is to say none at all, kept holding up items with a questioning look. We returned with enough herring to feed a small village, some potatoes, and a type of cheese that we later discovered was technically a dessert topping.

That first evening we attempted grilled fish, which seemed appropriately Nordic. The fish was excellent, the execution less so. I had not accounted for how quickly things cook over a proper charcoal fire, having only ever operated a gas barbecue that required roughly forty minutes to warm a sausage. The result was edible but described charitably as "rustic." We ate it on the deck with that particular quiet that falls when neither person wants to admit something is slightly burnt, watching the light fade over the water and pretending this was exactly what we had intended.

The following morning brought our first proper exploration of local food possibilities. Solvesborg's market square, down near the harbour, operates on certain days with a scattering of stalls selling what people actually eat rather than what tourists are expected to buy. I found a woman selling smoked fish from a cooler box, the kind of transaction conducted mostly through pointing and smiling. The fish was still warm from the smoker, oily and fragrant, and we ate it with our fingers on a bench overlooking the boats, feeling briefly like competent locals rather than confused visitors.

Breakfasts at the cottage became our most successful meals, perhaps because they required minimal cooking. We found a bakery on Storgatan that opened early, run by a man who seemed faintly amused by our attempts to order. The bread was dense and dark, nothing like the fluffy white loaves I default to at home, and it demanded proper butter and decent cheese rather than my usual rushed marmalade. We ate slowly, properly, which I suppose is the point of holidays even if it took me several days to remember how.

Midweek we attempted something ambitious. There is a fish shop near the water, the kind with sawdust on the floor and whole creatures displayed on ice, and I decided we should cook something that required actual technique. The man behind the counter spoke enough English to sell me cod, and I watched him clean it with movements so practiced they seemed ceremonial. Back at the cottage I consulted my phone repeatedly, trying to translate Swedish cooking instructions and failing. We ended up with a reasonable oven-baked version involving far too much dill, which is apparently impossible in Sweden, and potatoes that were simultaneously underdone and overdone in that mysterious way only I can achieve.

The local systembolaget became a source of both supply and mild humiliation. I know embarrassingly little about Swedish alcohol regulations and stood for several minutes trying to work out why I could not simply pick up wine in the supermarket. The separate shop, when I found it, had a selection that made my usual grab-and-go approach feel barbaric. I asked for something local and was directed to a crisp white from further up the coast, which we drank with our imperfect cod and pronounced excellent, though honestly after the cooking stress I would have enjoyed vinegar.

By the end of the week our fridge contained the accumulated oddments of failed experiments and overenthusiastic purchases. There was half a jar of lingonberry preserve, something pickled that we never identified, and cheese in three stages of consumption. The outdoor grill had seen action most nights, my technique gradually improving from charred to merely well-browned. On our final evening we cooked simple sausages from the local butcher, nothing ambitious, and ate them with mustard and the last of the dark bread as the light stretched late into the evening.

What I remember most is not any particular meal but the rhythm of it, the way shopping and cooking and eating expanded to fill proper time rather than being squeezed between other obligations. I am not a natural cook, and this was not a natural setting for me, yet something about the combination of unfamiliar ingredients and adequate time made even my failures enjoyable. We left with recipes scrawled on the back of a shopping receipt, most of them illegible, and a resolution to attempt that dark bread at home, which I have not yet done and probably never will.

The last morning we cleared the fridge of remaining bits, made a final breakfast of strange combinations, and sat on the deck with coffee that tasted better than my usual purely because of where we were. My partner reminded me of my three missed turnings on arrival, and I reminded her of the dessert cheese incident, and we agreed that the whole week had been exactly what holidays should be, which is to say slightly disorganised, occasionally ridiculous, and better for it.