Paj is the Swedish word for pie, but a lot of things get to be pie in Sweden; quiche, which I can understand, but also apple crisp/crumble/cobbler, which I feel is a different type of thing than pie. I have never been too good with roll-out pastry, but I do like making crumble and they mostly turn put pretty well if very crumbly since I always think the amount of butter in the recipe is too much, then at the end I often decide to throw in some extra nuts and oats and flax seeds and this does not add to “system cohesion”. If you get specific, a cobbler-type pie is a “smulpaj” but often doesn´t have the oats or flax or other hippie-additions, so I will probably go on calling my granola-bombs “crumbles.”
Spring and summer are late to come north of 60, but Rhubarb has been sprouting up and I have already benefited from some generous folks who have shared their harvests. I have also been keeping my eyes open for the smultron (wild strawberry) flowers so that I know where to come back to later when they are ripe.
If you are looking for a taste of Swedish summer, check out this smulpaj site that my work buddy Margaretha sent me.  Not that you really need a recipe for crumble (they even mention that on the homepage!), but the pictures are inspiring.
I made strawberry-rhubarb-orange smush just this morning – it’s a little late for rhubarb here, but it is the time when the two harvests overlap. I make it slowly on the stove, with a little sugar, just like Nana did. Kristina happily inhaled the berry-ness in the air and asked to have it on ANYTHING please. I love the idea of you hunting and harvesting the wild strawberries. That is so cool. At any latitude.