Local cooking

Brent and I both enjoy cooking, actually, he does the cooking and I do the baking. It's a fun hobby with near instantaneous results. And once you learn a few techniques you can start playing around with different ingredients. Now that it is very cold outside (lows around -20F or around -30C over the weekend), the motivation to venture out is very low. That leaves plenty of time for experimenting in the kitchen -- not too different from being a scientist. The best difference is that I get to taste the results of these experiments!

Since being in Finland we have discovered new-to-us food traditions. We can find most of the ingredients to make our favorite recipes from the US, and a few that we cannot. In place of the missing ingredients there are items that are new to us -- why not try to use them? This to me is the perfect opportunity to test out some new recipes. Luckily, Brent gave me a cookbook for Christmas with the best inspiration:

It's a cookbook of Finnish recipes adapted for the American kitchen, written by a woman of Finnish heritage, cleverly entitled, The Finnish Cookbook; the author is Beatrice A. Ojakangas -- the last name is certainly Finnish.

I first experimented with making the piirakka (PEA-rah-ka, roll that r!), also known as Karelian pies. Karelia is a region of Eastern Finland and part of it was ceded to the Soviet Union in 1940 after The Winter War, and has never been returned (more messy history I may or may not attempt to tackle). Anyway, you will find these tasty little treats all over Finland. Traditionally they are a rye crust filled with a rice porridge or 'smashed' potatoes, or maybe even carrots. Children may eat small ones as an after school snack, people would take them for lunch, and a coworker always has one on the 2-hour train ride from Helsinki to Turku. I opted for the much shorter potato filling -- I am an impatient cook and the rice porridge required at least 2 hours of intermittent stirring. They were quite easy to make and turned out nicely!

Rolling out the dough -- no resting required. And the potatoes boiled while I prepared the crust.

Make the mashed potatoes your favorite way, load a few spoonfuls onto the dough, fold the edges up and pinch.

Bake 25 minutes (or until crispy) at 350 and baste twice with a milk/butter mix. The potato filling was tasty, and the crust was crispy. Though the filling doesn't vary much, I could definitely see testing a variety of vegetables and proteins together, and making them larger for a meal or smaller for a snack. I will definitely make these again.

Design Museum

Helsinki was the 2012 Design Capital and we were reminded all over town by this symbol: 

There exists in Helsinki an entire museum devoted to Finnish Design, cleverly named The Design Museum (Designmuseo in Finnish). We finally made it there over the weekend. It is a bit off the beaten path, but in Helsinki, that means just a few blocks away from the major attractions. And at 5€ a ticket, the price was just right. 

The building itself is beautiful build in the neo-Gothic design and once was a school. The museum had an exhibition entitled The Home, which was in its last weekend. On display were firsts: TV, telephone, refrigerator, microwave, and washing machine, just to name a few. A critical Finnish invention was on display: the dish-drying cabinet.

This cabinet was invented by a woman who thought that Finnish women spent way too much of their time hand drying dishes, and that dish racks that sat on the counter took up way too much precious counter space. It is considered to be one of the top Finnish inventions of the millenium. And they are ubiquitous: you would have difficulty in finding a residence without one of these handy fixtures over your sink and neatly hidden behind cabinet doors.

The museum also had an exhibit entitled Light Therapy or Valohoito, perfect for these dark winter months. It was a room filled with white balloons large enough that I could probably stand in. Inside the balloons were LED lights that changed all colors of the rainbow to some relaxing music. My description doesn't do the exhibit justice, but though simple, it was mystical and a bit tripy.

In all, it was a nice little museum in a gorgeous building and was a good use of an hour.

Hyvää Uutta Vuotta!

Can you guess from context what this little bit of Finnish means? It says, 'Happy New Year!' My greeting may be a bit late, but 2013 is still new -- I imagine that many of you are still writing '12' in the date slot like I am. After a whirlwind tour of Iowa, we have returned to Helsinki and to the peaceful monotony of a routine. Here are a few things we missed while we were away:

The shortest day:
In Helsinki, it's not so bad. At least when compared to the rest of the country. Here the shortest day occurred on December 21st and clocked in at 5 hours and 48 minutes. That doesn't sound so terrible, right? But, when you consider that in order to achieve those numbers, the sun rises around 9:20 and sets just after 3, your perspective changes. The other downside is that it is rather cloudy most of the time here and so it is rare to actually see more than a dim brightness. For some people this means real problems of depression and to help combat it, they use light therapy. 'Nordic Lamps' are manufactured and you are supposed to turn it on for 30 minutes every morning to 'reset your clock' and those who use it swear by its effectiveness. Depressed or not, everyone hopes for fresh snow during these dark months: whatever light is present (sun, filtered sun, street lights) is reflected by the snow to create a more glowing environment. On the upside, the days are quickly lengthening and we've already gained 45 minutes of daylight since the solstice and a few days of sunshine.

Christmas:
The Christmas holiday is widely celebrated in Finland with Christmas Eve being the most important. This is the day that you would spend with your family for the traditional meal and gift exchange. This means nearly everyone and I believe that public transit even shuts down in the early afternoon. So unless you have a car or are willing to shell out some major €, you had better get to where you are going by 2 pm, otherwise you will be stranded. It is also a holiday, so you won't find places of business open, either. Christmas Day is a day of relaxing after the night before, and for visiting the people you didn't see the day before. Much the same, Boxing Day is another relaxing day and for visiting friends. Though this day after Christmas is typically a British thing, I think it's been adopted here to make the holidays a bit more relaxing and to give people the time off from work because they would normally take it off anyway.

New Year's Eve:
This isn't too different from the way the rest of the world celebrates NYE: in the presence of family or friends and staying awake until midnight to welcome the new year. There were fireworks in Helsinki and I am unaware of anything that might distinguish a Finnish NYE celebration from a NYE celebration anywhere else. It is also a time to reflect on the past year and to make resolutions for a better coming year. 

We return to our Finnish lessons this week and hope that we really didn't forget as much as we thought we did. Though, when someone in Iowa asked me on the spot to say a greeting in Finnish, I blanked. Now that we've returned, so has my Finnish and I can even understand what my coworkers are talking about -- not exactly what they are saying, but the subject of their conversation. So far, it hasn't been me! Wish me luck -- I'll need all that I can get in learning the nuances of this language. I hope that you all had an enjoyable holiday season, and that 2013 is your best year yet!