How could you do this
Tawdry affair with the dawn
Stupid alarm clock
Monday, October 24, 2011
Oishii Ruoka
Alright, so you want to know what kind of food people eat in Finland. Well, they're definitely a country of meat and potatoes kind of people. Some classic Finnish dishes include sausage and potatoes, meat sauce on pasta (there is no tomatoes involved in this meat sauce...just ground beef/pork and thickened gravy) and ground beef/pork and cabbage casserole with lingonberry sauce. I have written beef/pork because it is rare to find ground beef by itself. It is usually a beef and pork hybrid or just ground pork in and of itself. The main meats you find in the grocery store are pork (definitely number one), chicken and to a much lesser extent beef.
Vegetables are a rarity in the actual main dish itself, but everywhere you go they have salad buffets before your meal. I do not exaggerate on the everywhere department; restaurants, the school cafeteria, after hours kebab stands. Similarly to Canada, Finland is a nation of wild berries. By far the main fruits grown in Finland are blueberries, lingonberries, and, to a lesser extent, wild cranberries. Furthermore, most of the berries you buy in stores was picked in the wild, not grown on farms. There is a huge culture in this country around picking wild berries and mushrooms. Some of the people I have talked to go berry and mushroom picking every week. This is partially because of the Everyman's Right law that states people have the right to collect things grown in the wild (ie. not cultivated berries, but ones that are there just because) even if they are growing on private lands. [As a random side note: this is a concept I am contemplating doing my Masters thesis on...assuming I can make it work]
There is also a huge coffee culture in Finland. This was one of the aspects of Finland that I loved right away. Coming from Vancouver, I know that the South African habit of drinking instant coffee was not something that I wished to repeat in a new cultural experience ;-) But, yes, coffee breaks are a wonderful thing and, in Finland, they are usually accompanied with a "light" snack of pulla. Pulla is possible the most delicious pastry/bun/thing I have ever had (coming only slightly short of coconut buns). They are a sweet bread baked with cardamom inside and I have eaten far too many of them since I have arrived in Finland. I will definitely need to learn how to make them before I go back home. There is something about the light flavour of cardamom that makes them irresistible!
So basically my Finnish diet consists of meat and potatoes with a salad for my meals, interspersed with multiple coffee and pulla breaks throughout the day. Delicious!
Vegetables are a rarity in the actual main dish itself, but everywhere you go they have salad buffets before your meal. I do not exaggerate on the everywhere department; restaurants, the school cafeteria, after hours kebab stands. Similarly to Canada, Finland is a nation of wild berries. By far the main fruits grown in Finland are blueberries, lingonberries, and, to a lesser extent, wild cranberries. Furthermore, most of the berries you buy in stores was picked in the wild, not grown on farms. There is a huge culture in this country around picking wild berries and mushrooms. Some of the people I have talked to go berry and mushroom picking every week. This is partially because of the Everyman's Right law that states people have the right to collect things grown in the wild (ie. not cultivated berries, but ones that are there just because) even if they are growing on private lands. [As a random side note: this is a concept I am contemplating doing my Masters thesis on...assuming I can make it work]
There is also a huge coffee culture in Finland. This was one of the aspects of Finland that I loved right away. Coming from Vancouver, I know that the South African habit of drinking instant coffee was not something that I wished to repeat in a new cultural experience ;-) But, yes, coffee breaks are a wonderful thing and, in Finland, they are usually accompanied with a "light" snack of pulla. Pulla is possible the most delicious pastry/bun/thing I have ever had (coming only slightly short of coconut buns). They are a sweet bread baked with cardamom inside and I have eaten far too many of them since I have arrived in Finland. I will definitely need to learn how to make them before I go back home. There is something about the light flavour of cardamom that makes them irresistible!
So basically my Finnish diet consists of meat and potatoes with a salad for my meals, interspersed with multiple coffee and pulla breaks throughout the day. Delicious!
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Shopping 101
I have received a request of information from my lovely Nana about the type of food I eat here in Finland. But before I respond to this request, I will tell you the story of my first Finnish shopping experience that I meant to tell you about weeks ago.
When I first arrived in Finland, the day I was going to move into my apartment, my fellow Canadian and I decided to stock our kitchens with all the essentials while we still had access to a car. Our student tutor pointed us in the direction of a grocery store and off we went. first was the produce section. Collecting all the necessary fruits and veggies wasn't too hard because they look the same all over the world. Proud of our collections we went to move on when I had a flashback to my time in South Africa and the then foreign concept of weighing your produce before hand and taking it to the till with a barcode sticker on it. I scanned the produce area and saw some similar looking machines. First crisis averted and embarrassment avoided.
Next we had the navigate the world of Finnish labels. Our Finnish friend from field school had been kind enough to provide us with some basic grocery-related vocabulary, so we new words like maito (milk), voi (butter), juusto (cheese), kala (fish), and some others. This was very helpful when finding things, but less helpful when distinguishing low fat from delicious milk. For this we had to rely on the efficacy of marketing, assuming lighter coloured packaging meant lighter milk (and it worked!!). After about an hour of clumsily collecting everything necessary to stock an empty kitchen, we moved towards the till.
Only one till was open, so we stood in the only available line to wait. Once we had stopped the learning experience that was our shopping trip, we had time to look around. Maybe see what other people were buying and judge a whole countries diet based on that, like I do back home. That was when we realized the error of our ways. the people in line around us had a maximum of 5 items each and there we were. Carts piled high with everything a new kitchen could ever want or desire. Surrounded by people buying chips and beer for a relaxing evening. Then it dawned on us. We were about to buy everything we would need to survive...at a convenience store. We were next in line, making sneaking out and putting some of our stuff back impossible.
It took the woman about 5 minutes to ring all of my stuff in, at which point there was a growing line of 7 people behind me carrying only candy, chips and beer and looking disgruntled at best. To top it all off the cashier didn't speak English and we had no idea how to ask for bags in Finnish. So our groceries were piling up on the conveyor belt behind the till as we tried to mime that we needed bags. Now there are 10 people behind us in line. We had officially become those incompetent foreigners. Eventually we successfully mimed our need for bags, hung our heads in shame and ran from the grocery store. I snuck a glance back as the sliding doors began to close behind us...they had just opened a new till.
When I first arrived in Finland, the day I was going to move into my apartment, my fellow Canadian and I decided to stock our kitchens with all the essentials while we still had access to a car. Our student tutor pointed us in the direction of a grocery store and off we went. first was the produce section. Collecting all the necessary fruits and veggies wasn't too hard because they look the same all over the world. Proud of our collections we went to move on when I had a flashback to my time in South Africa and the then foreign concept of weighing your produce before hand and taking it to the till with a barcode sticker on it. I scanned the produce area and saw some similar looking machines. First crisis averted and embarrassment avoided.
Next we had the navigate the world of Finnish labels. Our Finnish friend from field school had been kind enough to provide us with some basic grocery-related vocabulary, so we new words like maito (milk), voi (butter), juusto (cheese), kala (fish), and some others. This was very helpful when finding things, but less helpful when distinguishing low fat from delicious milk. For this we had to rely on the efficacy of marketing, assuming lighter coloured packaging meant lighter milk (and it worked!!). After about an hour of clumsily collecting everything necessary to stock an empty kitchen, we moved towards the till.
Only one till was open, so we stood in the only available line to wait. Once we had stopped the learning experience that was our shopping trip, we had time to look around. Maybe see what other people were buying and judge a whole countries diet based on that, like I do back home. That was when we realized the error of our ways. the people in line around us had a maximum of 5 items each and there we were. Carts piled high with everything a new kitchen could ever want or desire. Surrounded by people buying chips and beer for a relaxing evening. Then it dawned on us. We were about to buy everything we would need to survive...at a convenience store. We were next in line, making sneaking out and putting some of our stuff back impossible.
It took the woman about 5 minutes to ring all of my stuff in, at which point there was a growing line of 7 people behind me carrying only candy, chips and beer and looking disgruntled at best. To top it all off the cashier didn't speak English and we had no idea how to ask for bags in Finnish. So our groceries were piling up on the conveyor belt behind the till as we tried to mime that we needed bags. Now there are 10 people behind us in line. We had officially become those incompetent foreigners. Eventually we successfully mimed our need for bags, hung our heads in shame and ran from the grocery store. I snuck a glance back as the sliding doors began to close behind us...they had just opened a new till.
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