Sofia Nordgren - The Nordic Baker: Plant-Based Bakes and Seasonal Stories from a Kitchen in the Heart of Sweden

After youve walked past the two big logs, the trail takes a few turns before you reach the big ferns. You have to lift your arms as you push along the path because you dont know whats hiding within their green tendrils, and you certainly dont want to find out.

Then the path becomes steep; you have to trek upwards before you finally reach the old road. To the left is where you collect chanterelles during fall, and to the right is where you find the raspberry bushes. Today, like always, you stop to have a few. When your fingers and lips have turned red, you continue along the road until you hit a crossroads. Here there are lots of rocks more or less under water and you get distracted looking for frogs in the shallows.

A little further down the road something changes. The forest smells different, like a mix of pine and berries and magic. If trolls and elves exist, it must be here they live. You look over your shoulder every other step. Not because you are scared, of course, you just do You pass a huge ant hill and a few metres ahead theres a tiny pond that is quite hard to see if you dont know its there. You are close now.

The road continues, but you know that this is where you leave it. You exit on the right side, jump over the little stream and all of a sudden find yourself in blueberry land. There are blueberry bushes as far as the eye can see. You are very close to the lake, and if you walk towards it, you know that cloudberries and lingonberries will reveal themselves, too. You skilfully navigate your way towards the water, where you pick orange berries that look like tiny clouds and taste like the forest. It is silent here.

By the time youve filled your basket with berries, you realize that youve been out for almost three hours. Your fingers are blue, probably your clothes too, and youve got more mosquito bites than you can count. You decide that its time to go home, but youll just eat a few more An hour later it has started to rain (you cannot pick blueberries without it raining, it seems), and you are starting to get cold. Now its time to go

As a kid, I spent a lot of time in a little red cabin with white corners, with a lake on one side and the forest on the other. I spent more time outside than inside, building huts hidden in the trees and boats out of bark to play with in the water. Every summer we picked baskets full of blueberries on the fen. The forest was an eternal playground and I found treasures everywhere I still do. But nowadays, I prefer the edible treasures, and I like preserving them so that they can be enjoyed throughout the year. I also love to search for beautiful things to decorate our home with: fallen branches, a few pinecones, chestnuts, acorns and wild flowers.

As we grow older, we often lose some of our ability to see the magic that nature has to offer. Work, laundry, bills and full calendars often stop us from experiencing nature the way children do. I hope this book will inspire you to go out, forage for whatever is in season and start living more according to the natural world. I hope it will help you to see the beauty of the changing seasons, to love nature and take care of what it gifts to us. And hopefully you will find the inspiration you need to start baking your own bread and delicious bakes with ingredients youve gathered yourself.

With love from a kitchen in the heart of Sweden, Sofia.

When shopping for groceries, there are often more options than you can count. Here, I am sharing my advice on how to make the best choices when it comes to ingredients and what to consider when browsing the aisles.

When possible, I choose ingredients grown organically. I want to avoid chemicals and pesticide and herbicide residues for my own health and for the planets health. Also, I personally think that organic products taste better than non-organic ones.

Compared to cheap industrially-milled flours, where the bran is removed and a lot of nutrients are lost on the way, stone-ground, unbleached flours without additives have a lot more flavour and nutrients. Stone grinding involves grinding grain between two millstones a cold process that is done in one step. This keeps most of the nutrients within the finished product, even if it is a white flour. A stone-ground white flour is often more beige in colour than an industrially-milled flour. Try to find stone-ground flour from a local mill, and always choose organic where possible.