Same procedure as last time, random photos from the second past of the month. Text to follow over the days to come. M’kay?
Photo 1 ⬆️
In my no food waste strategy I was left with an old fresh yeast package left in the fridge I really didn’t want to waste. So I baked my second batch of cinnamon buns the other day, from a new vegan recipe I found, was it this year? Or possibly for the cinnamon bun day last year (October 4th)?
Anyway, turned out much much better than the old recipe I had used ’forever’. It isn’t perfect, the amount of sugar, agave (no honey for me) and butter in the filling is ridiculous. So I’m tweaking it even more next time, when I find it perfect I will blog share (and link to the Swedish recipe I found online). As I don’t bake a lot these days (apart from the overnight no knead rolls) it will most likely not be any time soon.
But why not try and share it for Cinnamon Bun Day 2026? Fingers crossed for that.
They turned out great! (But for too animal free butter and sugar in filling then). Concistency was perfect. And the amount of cinnamon too. The style needs a bit of work too. But at least it was a fairlyquick work this way.
Most of them rest safely in freezer now. But I’m fairly sure we will have devoured them by the end of August.
It was a perfect way to spend a late July day prior to our second mini-heatwave in Sweden (this summer has not been nearly as horrible - so far - as in the south of Europe. The complete devastation the human caused climate emergency has caused for wildlife is 💔💔💔💔💔 ad infinitum. And I cry every day over the photos and videos… Poor innocent souls.)
Photo 2 ⬆️
The very last plantbased dinner I cooked in July was a simple, moreish stir fry with tofu and noodles. 🥕🧅🧄🫚 baby spinach, green beans, topped with sesame seeds, edamame and Hoisin sauce.
Plenty of leftover for tomorrow, so foodwise August will begin as July ended. Perfect.
My thrifted books focus and summer reading continues. These are my latest finds. Which includes a very inspirational Swedish book about sprouts. Which seems like an achievable place to start growing things for someone like me.
However, the information (overload) of the book kind of leaves you a bit afraid to start, as the growing process needs to be super focused to avoid pit falls and possible toxins. I still vividly remember the people who died from toxins in particular sprouts in Germany 15-20 years ago.
I was in Berlin at the time and it was a big deal having to remove the generous amount of sprouts on vegan meals. Didn’t know exactly which variety of sprouts it was, so better safe than sorry. And as it was it fairly well-known commercial grower who had missed the cleaning, with deadly consequences, how easy wouldn’t it be make a fatal mistake as an amateur…?
We did sprouting in the kitchen window sill when I was a kid. For easy accessible, healthy sandwich toppings. Never ever was there talk about the growing process and toxins back then. Or maybe life was overall healthier back then, when the toxicity and pesticides hadn’t laden our foods the same way it has now?
Anyway, will still love eating fresh and healthy grown sprouts when opportunity appears, but am still not sure I will grow it myself. 🤷🏻♀️
Every little vegan rawfood recipe in the book I would love to eat though. But even if really well made rawfood is delicious, I am not at all interested in doing raw food only.
⬇️
The celebratory 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 thing that happened in July though, was this pretty pretty P R E T T Y vegan cake we ordered at favourite Bageri (Bakery) Passion. Combining little mum’s name day earlier that week and my grand 10 years vegan-iversary 2026 💛🎂💛
A sponge cake with vegan cream cheese and passion fruit. It was lovely. Even if they didn’t make the cake with raspberries any longer, passion fruit seemed quite befitting somehow. Granted, their classic Swedish Princess cake is as perfect as it gets and this wasn’t perfection like that… But variation is the spice of life so I’m happy I got this.
I think they have 5 different types of vegan cakes you can order. Hopefully things will finally change back to more financial stability soon, so ordering a little cake like this isn’t a big deal.
It was a much treasured vegan treat for July 2026.
As long time readers might remember - 10ish years ago I had a tiny colour revelation; I need to focus on incorporate more block colours in my life (wardrobe), not more patterns.
As much as I love all the colours all at once, to match a pattern or two around one specific block colour is easier on the eyes and mind. Dopamine dressing 2.0, hello!
How do you think that ”elevated me” has worked?
Well, generally as poorly as expected.
But it’s year 2 of the max5 challenge thus my clothes consumption has changed a lot anyway. Yay me!
And now and then I make a block colour + #secondhand buy that tick both boxes.
Behold sun yellow tshirt, lemon-lime press (with poor IKEA finish as expected, Marimekko bucket hat and handmade earrings in the best colour combo ever 🩷💚 ~
all perfect useful finds in their very own way! Little pockets of joy moments at its best.
I do miss those days with thrift/charity shops or auction bargains whilebrowsing in actual shops regularly. Now I mostly sell off things instead. But I do love those little special thrifted things I find these days too.
What is your best (so far) thift of summer 2026? Any thing you’d like to share?
Remember the first vegan cook book I thrifted on Vinted, Zeina’s Green Kitchen? Zeina Mourtada is a well-known TV-chef in Sweden, and cook book author. With focus on international dishes from all over the world.
So far I’ve made three soups from the book. Two brilliant (from surprisingly simple ingredients) and one pretty blah one (which was a disappointment after the other two…)
The Hungarian mushroom soup ⬇️ Kapros gombaleves was just fantastic. So flavoursome. As I happened to have an old bag of Hungarian ground paprika left in the kitchen cupboard, I like to think that added to the experience.
The Bulgarian bean soup ⬆️ Bob chorba, was almost as good. And generally I don’t like tomato based dishes so that surprised me. It must have been the white beans who added the mmm-factor.
The third soup was cauliflower soup, which was hugely disappointing and really lacked the creaminess I expected.
Will probably go for another kind of dish than soup in next recipe.
This was the result of a very unfortunate dog meet for little mum a few weeks back. I wasn’t with her at the time so I can’t say what actually happened, but according to her (the much loved dog treat lady of the neighbourhood) she gave a dog a treat on the bus to an unknown dog (accepted by the owner) and then the dog bit her hard in the hand. First time ever that has happened.
The dog’s owner completely ignored all the blood and just walked away at the next stop, but she got help from other passengers. She then went straight to the primary care center, and was taken good care of. Still think it’s weird she didn’t get the ”obligatory” tetanus shot, but maybe the Swedish health care system don’t give that to geriatric patients routinely anymore?
Anyway, she has had follow up appointments, new bandages and a very strong antibiotic dose for 10 days and feels good (apart from the usual age-ache and pains).
New rule now: do not give treats to unknown dogs and their stranger owners. And do not attempt to pet. Period.
One evening, the other week, we walked past the bus stop at 6.45 pm. Saw that it was vandalized. Again. Something that usually happens semi-regularly (by unknown hooligans) at night.
Have no idea if anyone else but I report it, but interestingly enough it always get fixed very quickly after my reports so…
I emailed the bus company late that evening and when catching the bus 9.30 am the glazier company was already at work with the damage. Well done, yay! It’s nice when things actually works well. The vandalism and idiots destroying property (and costing us all money) are still infuriating of course.
While I’m on the subject of infuriating matters. The recent ”kerfuffle” at border of Spain/Ceuta and Marocco, I’m glad (if that’s the word) that more people and head of states acknowledge it for what it is/was.
A blatant geopolitical right-wing fascist strategy to punish Spain and other countries who refuse to help the two biggest threats to stability and world peace and climate action, namely U and I. The two genocidal terror countries behind most things evil in our timeline, and while there are so many other non-democratic countries all over the world waging wars and mayhem here and there, these two truly shines of self-entitled narcissistic awfulness. 🤮
Sad, but not the least bit surprised, that our Swedish right-wing politicians (and incompetent prime minister) immediately hopped on the populist immigration bandwagon.
Am so very much looking forward to the September election when we finally get rid of this Peak Stupidity government in Sweden! I am exhausted, all of us who are still able to think and be decent human beings are. The utter anger, sadness and shame we feel about the incompetence, ignorance, greed and evil laws they have tarnished our country’s reputation with, and willingly shown the world. As if not everything. is. connected.
Karma, please do your job now.
That said, let’s talk a bit more about colours again. This 🧡🩵 skirt in organic cotton was my celebratory treat to myself for the 10 years vegan anniversary. (Which makes a 3 of 5 ✅ in the Max 5 challenge this year.)
Once upon a time I used to sport wildly different skirt and dress models. With age and a changed body type, I always opt for A-line models with elastic waistlines and large pockets. As they are comfortable and easy to dress up/down.
It’s interesting to see and acknowledge how much things in life actually should revolve around comfort. And that style does not have to be the opposite from it of course.
Menopausal insights me thinks, see there are positive things amidst this sh—- phase of life! The ’I don’t care, there are so many more important things in life and living’ insights, you might say.
💫💫💫💫💫💚💫💫💫💫💫
The dark-ish blue skirt I got 3-4 years ago - yes from Marimekko too, pretty much always as the brand’s sizes/models are generally easy to understand and predictable to choose. Add to that of course the company’s CSR focus, quality and abundance of colours.
I still firmly believe they have too many and large collections and sales though. Which is disappointing. The planet do set boundaries. For us all. -
has turned out to been one of my best, most worn buys ever. Works equally well winter as summer, even if I prefer lighter shades the warmer the weather.
It would be nice to have a similar neutral skirt in another block colour, for formal/work situations. One that would go very well with those black (second hand) loafers I’m hoping to get one day… That’s a little silly nice superficial aim to have for the autumn, wouldn’t you say?
Little mini-goals that allow you some brain rest are important in their own way too.
⬇️ Just an overview of the latest thrift of books. And yes, they weren’t necessary per se, but buying second hand books I can actually read and keep in by own book shelves is a simple joy I will not deprive myself from.
Two of these titles were actually originally the first book I Vinted thrifted. The seller unfortunately sent my books to another buyer at the same time as she sent that buyer’s book to me. It took a month to get the deal sorted. The customer ”service” on Vinted does leave a lot to be desired… sigh. And Tradera’s custoner ”service” is just as unreliable.
It took me well over a month to get the issue sorted and get my money repaid. I never got the books, and I’m not sure the seller got my books back from the other seller…
I’m glad I saw another woman selling the exact same book combo later, and I’m thrilled I also got them for an even cheaper price. It was a (totally avoidable) ridiculously time-consuming hassle, but it did end well in the end.
As far as I know, the two available platforms for second hand buying/selling in Sweden are Tradera and Vinted (ebay has limitations here), as well as Blocket (which isn’t really my cup of tea) so if you want to sell/buy like this with a semi-consistent safety net, this is what you have to deal with 🤷🏻♀️
It has been so much fun choosing the next book to read in thus heap (as well as mixing with other older books), what mood am I in now, mystery, thriller, feelgood, cosy crime, drama… I try to alternate with two pockets (bed literature) and one hardback (not for bed) to keep it interesting.
You might remember the cutting down tree-business from last year, when a kind neighbour helped be doing it? I know the tree needs to be cut down to the stump we had cut it down to when M was alive. But I also read about a simpler truck to ”unalive” a tree.
Which I’m certainly not happy to do, but the location of the tree has never been great (planted by the previous owner, who never saw it grow this big and spread causing issues both for me and the next fence-neighbour) and I bought a sustainable long term solution thingy after M’s death 2016, which somehow got lost and well…
I will try and find it or a new one again, but right now I am just so so chuffed that I actually managed to cut all the (very fast growing) branches down all by myself last week. No prior-photo alas but definitely a done-photo.
Yup, I now, a bit of garden clearing would be good to get done to. But for now, let’s just celebrate this small win, m’kay?
And the birds and insects have enjoyed the greenery of a messy garden immensly, so yay for helping biodiversity.
I wish I could get as much pleasure and enjoyment from this little oasis as I did. However, the amount of tics in Sweden (and very much so in the Stockholm suburban area) are now crazy due to global warming, and even if I’m fully TBE vaccinated there’s still borrelia and other nasties to get, and that is seriously garden/nature off-putting, sadly.
Ztina has always been easily affected by tics with weird symtoms. So to avoid that she hasn’t been outdoors since last summer. Which makes me really sad as she has always loved her garden time and how lovely it would be if she could just go in and out in the fenced in garden like they always have been able to do.
Even if she haven’t been outdoors for over a year now, I spotted a really nasty gargantuan blood-filled tic on her ear early this summer. Absolutely disgusting. And she sleeps in little mum’s bed, so that’s unacceptable really. It must have been one of us humans who took it in with us and it quickly transported itself to the easy to hide on furry animal.
To sum July up, it was an overall good, peaceful, calming month, with both highs and lows. I’ve been good at keeping the constant worries away while focusing on the N O W and reading. Like summer holidays should be I suppose.
Now I do hope, wish and ask for August to be similar, but with many more highs and successes, and much, very much less lows, please. Let’s focus on that, dear Universe!
XOX,
Yours truly 💚
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