The last week, the world around me has been exploding into various shades of green. Finally, there's no naked branches (almost) and the fields are looking healthy again. In a month or so, this will feel like the most obvious thing ever, but I'm going to try to keep the feeling of appreciation for as long as I can. Some areas of grass are also totally covered in dandelions, and it's so so pretty. May is a great month in Sweden.
For well over a month, my friend Mikael has been talking about picking nettles and making soup, and now was the time to act. We went to his mother's house in a small mining village south east of where I live. It's called Zinkgruvan, which literary means "the zinc mine". I had never been there before but the house and surroundings were really nice and it was relaxing to spend a day in a place like that.
We picked the nettles, and made a very simple soup (spring onions, nettles, garlic, nutmeg, black pepper and a little squeeze of lemon) with them. We used an immersion blender to make it smoother and ate it with some freshly baked spelt bread on the side. I love cooking new "complicated" things, but simple meals like this might be the best there is. It didn't hurt that we ate it on their glass surrounded porch either. His mother gave me some stalks of her rhubarb to take with me home, so I had to make a mini crumble with some of it when I came home. I think summer is here now. 
