I have never been so grateful for a packet of ginger biscuits in all my life. They were squashed flat at the bottom of my rucksack, remnants of a panic purchase at Gothenburg airport, and they ended up being the only thing I had to eat for the first six hours of my trip to Tidaholm. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The train from Gothenburg was blessedly straightforward, winding through the kind of Swedish countryside that makes you want to quit your job and become a watercolour painter. Lakes everywhere, forests that looked like they had been arranged by a particularly meticulous set dresser, and the occasional red wooden house that made me press my nose against the window like a child. I had done my research, or so I thought. I had a rucksack full of enthusiasm, a booking confirmation for a charming holiday home near Lake Vattern, and a shopping list I had lovingly compiled featuring local cheeses, smoked fish, and something called "Vasterbottenost" that I had been practising pronouncing for a fortnight.

What I did not have, as I discovered upon arrival at the tidy little station, was any actual food. In my excitement about the kitchen at the property, which the listing had described as "well-equipped," I had somehow neglected to consider that Tidaholm is not exactly brimming with twenty-four-hour supermarkets. The town itself is lovely, compact, all neat streets and that particular Swedish stillness that makes you instinctively lower your voice. But it was past six on a Saturday evening, and the shops had closed with the punctuality that Scandinavians are famous for.

I walked to the property, which took about twenty minutes, pulling my wheeled case over cobblestones with a noise that I am sure disturbed several generations of local residents. The holiday home was everything promised, a traditional wooden house with a proper stove and a kitchen that did indeed look well-equipped. I stood in the middle of it, starving, and contemplated my options. The ginger biscuits. A jar of mustard I found in the cupboard left by some previous saintly guest. I ate four biscuits with mustard, standing at the counter, feeling like the protagonist of a particularly bleak Scandinavian crime drama.

The next morning I was up with the larks, or whatever the Swedish equivalent is, determined to rectify my situation. Tidaholm has a small but perfectly formed market on certain days, and I had timed my arrival badly, but the local shops that do exist are a revelation. I found a bakery where an elderly woman sold me cardamom buns that were still warm, and I ate one in the street like an animal, making small appreciative noises that she seemed to find amusing rather than alarming. The local butcher, when I finally located him, had smoked ham that he sliced so thinly I could almost see through it, and a type of sausage that he described in Swedish while I nodded enthusiastically, understanding perhaps one word in ten.

The self-catering aspect of this trip was meant to be a highlight, and once I had actual ingredients, it genuinely became one. The kitchen at the property had everything I needed, including a proper coffee maker that I used with religious devotion each morning. I attempted to recreate a traditional Swedish breakfast, which mostly involved assembling rather than cooking, but I felt enormously accomplished laying out crispbread, cheese, ham, and a soft-boiled egg with the precision of someone defusing a bomb. My first attempt at frying herring was less successful, filling the kitchen with smoke and a smell that lingered for days, but I ate it anyway, standing at the same counter where I had consumed mustard biscuits, feeling strangely proud.

Lake Vattern is right there, of course, and I took to walking along its shore after meals, partly for the views and partly to justify the extraordinary quantity of food I was consuming. There is something about self-catering in a foreign country that makes every meal feel like an adventure, even when it goes slightly wrong. I bought potatoes from a honesty box at a farm gate, left the correct change with the smug satisfaction of a local, then discovered I had no idea what variety they were or how best to cook them. They became a sort of rustic mash, lumpy and earnest, served with more of that excellent ham and a glass of surprisingly affordable Swedish beer.

By my third evening, I had settled into a rhythm. Morning trip to the bakery for fresh bread, afternoon exploration of whatever local producer I could find, evening attempt at something ambitious that usually ended in either triumph or a story I would tell later with rueful laughter. I never did master the Vasterbottenost pie I had planned, the cheese behaving in the oven in ways I still do not understand, but I ate the failed attempt with crackers and a sort of stubborn pleasure, watching the light fade over the lake through the kitchen window.

What I learned, apart from the importance of checking shop opening times, is that cooking for yourself in a place like Tidaholm connects you to it in ways that restaurant meals never quite manage. The ginger biscuits and mustard remain my secret shame, but everything that followed, the warm buns and the smoky ham and the lumpy potato mash, tasted of the place itself, of my slightly chaotic attempt to belong there for a little while. I left with recipes scrawled on the back of receipts, a new appreciation for cardamom, and a firm resolution to always, always pack more emergency snacks.