Baking dreams and reading blogs

So it seems I've survived a week of manual labour. We did a few hours on Saturday too so I didn't get to "hålla helg" until almost midday yesterday. But on the other hand, the rains today mean we won't be able to do any work tomorrow. Now we have to wait for the soil to dry before resuming work.

While I spent yesterday mostly sleeping and reading (it's hard to suddenly change your daily rythm and get up  at 7 when normally falling asleep hours after midnight), today I've actually managed to get myself do something at least somewhat useful. I've been baking. Tex mex pierogi and some cookies. I ate a good portion of the chocolate cookie dough as usual and couldn't resist tasting the dough for the dreams referred to in the title, the airy, crispy sweet cookies called drömmar in Swedish. Bad move. They contain baker's ammonia (hjorthornssalt) and, unlike the swedish name, the english name pretty much tells you what it's going to taste like. I never learn... Granted, it's ages since I last baked with it, but that smell and taste is very memorable. Makes for great cookies, but jeez it tastes horrible before baking (and stinks during)! And eating cookie dough and cake batter is kind of half the reason I bake in the first place...

Now that I'm an adult I can have as much dough or batter as I like so I'm making up for all those times as a kid when mom always poured most of it in the pan or sliced almost the whole roll into thin cookies -- even the ends. It's not like we didn't get to lick the bowl, eat the trimmed-off uneven ends of rolled cookies, pinch the "scraps" of dough around the gingerbread men etc. It's just that now I can eat as much as I wanted back then, but never got as mom for some odd reason meant that most of the batter and dough should actually be baked. Hmpf, we all know it tastes the best before baking. Well, unless it contains baker's ammonia... (It's hours ago and just writing about it, I can taste and smell it. Yuck!)

But, anyway, I'm not just baking. I'm also doing my best to catch up on blogs, blog post writing and job ads, but haven't yet gotten to the blog hop lists so if you read this, having participated in Suddenly Spring Challenge and/or Bead Soup Blog Party, and I haven't yet visited you: I will be by soon. Or relatively soon -- every time I promise to "stop by soon" things have a way of getting in between.

I should remember to bring the camera. The field is down by the sea and the climate is actually warmer and milder there, a few kilometres south of where I live, than here so you can already find lots of sweet pussy willow. Ours are probably days or even weeks behind. I rarely bring the camera with me as there's little time during the work day to take photos and afterwards I'm if not tired so at least too dirty to want to handle my precious camera. Since I see so many of the spring signs while working, it can be slightly frustrating not being able to snap a pic. There's the first pussy willows, the first day you see smoke raising from the tilled soil, the first white wagtail etc. But then other times I find it silly that instead of just enjoying it, I'm obessed with capturing in on camera. I'll remember it and treasure the sight, but for some reason I also want a photo of it. To share, of cause, but also for my own sake.

Well, enough rambling for today. It's soon time to go to bed again and I still have blogs and e-mails to go through. Just wanted to say I'm still here, still reading even when I don't write.