I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I tried to unlock the wrong cabin. There we were, me and my partner, standing in the drizzle of Varmland with three bags of groceries and a growing sense of doom, jiggling a key that absolutely refused to turn. Turns out the Charlottenberg/Koela we had actually booked was fifty metres further down the gravel track, hidden behind a rather smug-looking birch tree. The actual cabin was lovely, red paint gleaming, little porch light already on as if to say "about time." I laughed, she did not. Yet.

The kitchen, we discovered, was where this holiday would truly live or die. Compact, yes, but with a proper cooker and enough pots to attempt something ambitious. I had grand plans. We had stopped at a supermarket in Charlottenberg on the way up, filling the boot with things I recognised and several I absolutely did not. That first evening I attempted what I called a "Varmland stew," which was really just beef, whatever root vegetables I could identify, and a quantity of dill that would frighten a Swede. It simmered for hours while rain tapped the windows and we drank coffee from the cabin's surprisingly decent stash. By nine o'clock we were eating something edible if not elegant, sat at the little wooden table with candles flickering against the dark. I felt genuinely proud until I realised I had forgotten to add the potatoes. They sat in their bag, watching us eat, judgmental little spuds.

Morning brought proper exploration of food possibilities. The local market in Charlottenberg operates on certain days, and we had timed our arrival badly, missing it by twenty-four hours. This became a running theme. We did find a smaller shop, however, with a cheese counter that made me stop and stare. The woman behind it spoke limited English, I speak catastrophic Swedish, and together we managed something wonderful through pointing and hopeful noises. I came away with a wedge of something sharp and local, a lump of butter that tasted of actual grass, and bread from a bakery I never found again. That lunch, eaten on the cabin's little porch with the lake visible through trees, remains one of the best meals I have ever assembled. No cooking required, just assembly and gratitude.

Self-catering, I learned, reveals character. My partner approaches a kitchen like a methodical scientist, everything measured and timed. I am more of a hopeful improviser, flinging herbs about with misplaced confidence. The cabin's modest space forced collaboration, or perhaps collision. We made pancakes on our third morning, the proper thin Scandinavian kind, and I overturned the first one spectacularly onto the floor. The dog, had there been one, would have been delighted. Instead I scraped it up, considered the five-second rule, and was firmly overruled. The subsequent batch, made with more care and less theatre, we ate with cloudberry jam from that same mysterious shop. Tart and golden, it tasted of somewhere specific, somewhere not home.

By our fourth day I had settled into a rhythm. Breakfast was simple, lunch was whatever we had found, and dinner became my project. I made fish one evening, proper Varmland lake fish from a local seller who wrote the cooking instructions on a scrap of paper I promptly lost. I guessed, based on memory and optimism, and produced something that flaked beautifully if unevenly seasoned. We ate it with potatoes, finally remembered, boiled and buttered and perfect. There is something about hunger and accomplishment that makes food taste better, I am convinced of it.

We never did master the local market timing. Left on our final morning before it opened, waving at a woman setting up her stall, boxes of mushrooms and early berries still being arranged. Next time, I told myself, though next time is a promise I make too easily. What we managed instead was something perhaps better: the particular pleasure of feeding yourself in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar ingredients, in a little red cabin that initially hid from you. The Charlottenberg/Koela gave us shelter, a decent knife block, and proximity to people making honest food. I gave it burnt offerings and forgotten potatoes. We both, I think, came out ahead.