One kind of a perfect day

I get the urge to go to the centre and buy stuff when I'm out of money. Today I borrowed 5 euros and decided that is my budget for today. I'm very lucky to own a bus card, so I can take the bus any time I want :) So I phoned Merja and we decided to have a cup of tea in a local cafe. Merja had promised before to buy tea and laskiaispulla (sweet bun filled with whipped cream and strawberry jam) for me! And of course everything was as good as I expected :)

5 euros is not a big money but it can make you extremely happy and fulfill your need of buying. First I wanted to refresh my childhood memories and I went to R-Kioski to buy Oukki-Doukki! I used to go and buy them with couple of markkas when I was a child and I really felt the same now, because the price of Oukki-Doukki was only 10 cents and I could use all my spare coins :) After Oukki-Doukki incident I had 4 euros left.

Then we visited a local flea market and I met the nicest pair of children sized jeans. They were mine with the mere prize of 3 euros :) I felt so lucky, because normally it's almost impossible to find fitting jeans.

Now in the evening I've just been knitting, eating karjalanpiirakka with egg butter (how can they be so good???), drinking tea and watching tv. One discovery I want to share though -> The easiest replacement for margarine! Any beans, little bit of soy sauce, sunflower seeds and tiny amount of lemon juice. Then just mix with blender and that's it :) I just used a bit too much of soy sauce so my paste is quite salty, but next time it will be better.

And I've been listening to the new song from Rubik. Artturi's singing sounds still so special that it's hard not to love it :)

Japan and Finland, unite!

Ultimate food experience day included Carelian pies, sultsinas and Japanese udon noodles and rice cakes. For me making these old-fashioned pies was kind of trip to my Ilomantsi time -> I used to work in Ilomantsi for 5 summers as a journalist. That village is everything there's left from the old Carelia in my opinion and old traditions like making sultsina and vatruska are still strong. I didn't even know what sultsina was before I went there :) My own family roots come from Savo and Carelia, so after living almost my whole life in Kuopio, I felt like I got to know my "Carelian side" in Ilomantsi. I hope that in the future I know all the recipes of different Carelian pies by heart and I can keep that old tradition alive even a little bit.

I learned to make Carelian pies (karjalanpiirakka in Finnish) also in Ilomantsi. I wrote a story to the newspaper about "my first try ever to make real karjalanpiirakka" and I interviewed an olderly woman for that. She taught me how to make the dough, how to shape the pies and finally how to dip pies into melted butter after baking. This was my first try to make karjalanpiirakka after that and it succeeded better than I thought. New attempt coming soon! I also prepared some egg butter to eat with the pies and the taste was...awesome. I used riihiruisjauho (kind of smoked ryeflour) in the pies and I'm sure the taste was so special because of them.

And here comes a short picture story about sultsina making! Sultsina dough is made from ryeflour, water and salt and it's baked over the stove, greased with melted butter and when you start eating, you put rice (or potato) porridge on top of it and wrap it correctly :)


I'm sad that nowadays people don't make karjalanpiirakka or sultsina anymore at home. I thought it would be a lot of work, but in fact it was very easy!

Besides Finnish pies, we prepared Japanese food. We ate noodles with seaweed and the dessert was always so delicious - rice cakes. I just love rice cakes, because they're sticky and the feel great in your mouth :D They're also easy to make, just mix glutinous rice flour with water, that's it :)

After boiling the rice cakes in the water, we made sweet and salty dressings for the rice cakes; soyflour with sugar and salt and soy sauce with sugar in it. This was unquestionably the easiest dessert ever to make, just a bit mixing and boiling :) I'm going to make these next time when I feel like eating something sweet but healthy!

In the end I ate so much that I'm still feeling a bit bad. But it was worth it! Thank you for food and company Yuki and Merja :) I'll spend the rest of the evening watching Weeds and reading the biography of Dalai-Lama.

"If a pot is cooking, the friendship will stay warm"
Arab proverb

Nothing special - really

Everything seems so blue at this time of the day. The snow is piling up in front of the terrace and soon I will be surrounded by the blue whiteness. Luckily I can keep warm inside, especially when I wear my new cute slippers :)

Yesterday was interesting (all days are interesting if you have the right attitude!). I returned one magazine to Tuula and got a chance to take a photo of her catmaster Kassu. Kassu is the most relaxed, warmth loving cat I know! He spent one week at my place before christmas and because my bed was warm, he was trying to get under my blanket various times! In the end he slept in my bed, I slept in the guest room :D That's why I'm not so fond of the idea of taking a cat...I love my own bed too much!

After running to the bus and travelling to the centre, I attended the weekly quiz. It was a disaster this time, we were 7th! Just impossible to know the names of the bridges in Paris...Or the name of some Finnish generals who died hundreds of years ago. I'm sad to reveal that the only thing I knew was a music sample = Madonna's Erotica :D But I used to listen to Madonna and Aikakone in the middle school!

Our team is called Oravateam (don't ask why, I don't have an idea!) and the geniuses in the team are Kai and Olli. Rest of us are just trying to know an answer to at least one question...

After the quiz the cashier asked for my papers in the shop, when I was trying to buy 2 ciders. She looked a bit funny when she saw my driver's license.

Then some chips, good company, Deep Impact (the worst movie ever) and talking. What could be better?

Now I keep listening to the Field, I have the whole record (From here we go sublime) on my computer and it's just the perfect music for slow saturday almost-evenings. Maybe I'll warm the sauna today too :)

Korean food experimental

My plan today was to prepare Korean food. I accidentally found a blog called Kimchi Finland, where I found some Korean food recipes which can be made from the ingredients we have in Finland. 된장 찌개 was very easy to make and the taste was spicy but friendly :D

And as always, I had to count on my old but still working rice cooker, which I got from my Hyeyeon. Rice cooker isn't a must if you prepare Korean food, but it makes rice cooking so much easier :) You just add rice and water and push the button! It's possible to find rice cookers also from finnish shops (I've seen them in Sokos at least).



First I needed to go to the shop to buy potatoes, zuccini, mushrooms and a chili pepper. Vegetables were quite cheap except zuccini, which was nearly 3 euros. Regardless of that, this Korean food is very cheap (and easy) to make.

First I had to chop all the vegetables in cubes. In addition of the foods I bought from the shop I added onion and garlic. I didn't use shrimps or any meat, but it's possible to use them too. I put the vegetables into a large pot, poured water over them and let them boil for some time.


Then it gets a bit tricky, because Korean pastes can be found only from Asian markets in Helsinki :( My packages are quite old, but the paste stays good for a long time, so I just used them. Korean fermented soybean paste called doenjang (된장) is one of the main ingredients in this dish. It's very healthy because of the fermentation and it tastes very salty.



The other sauce I used in this dish was gochujang (고추장) which is my favourite hot paste ever! It's also kind of fermented soy bean paste but the difference between doenjang and gochujang are the red chili powder and glutinous rice powder in the latter one. I love the hot taste of this sauce and gochujang (and sesame oil) really is the "Korean flavour" for me :)

Back to cooking again...I mixed couple of teaspoons doenjang and couple of teaspoons gochujang, added some water and boiled the paste a bit. Then it was time to pour the sauce over the vegetables and mix. I also added tofu cubes and let the food boil for couple of minutes. And then?

Food was ready! It looks like a soup, but it's supposed to be eaten with rice which is rather difficult to find from my photo...There is some though! The chili pieces were hot, but not too hot and tofu didn't have dull taste because of the sauce. This is a very good dish to eat when it's cold outside (-15 now!) or if you're sick (like my boyfriend is).

But this food can't win my ultimate favourite Korean food, tteokbokki (떡볶이)! When I cook it the next time, I can blog it too :)

감사 합 니 다 혜연!

혜 연, 나는 너를 좋아해 !

That was the Korean part today :) What made me install Korean language pack was a simple reason -> I wanted to say thank you to my Korean friend Hyeyeon, who surprised me totally. I got a big package from her today and it included christmas and birthday presents for me and her other Finnish friends.

This is what I got!


I'm wearing those slippers at the moment and they really warm my feet. I'm just so extremely happy! My Korean studies got a new energy boost :) Today in the Korean class we learned to use numbers and when/what/how much. It wasn't too difficult, only problem was to learn the big numbers in Korean...Il, i, sam, sa!

I also finished one of my knitting projects. I didn't know I'm so unsymmetrical, but although this shrug should be same size on the both sides, it just doesn't want to look symmetrical on me. My shoulders must be on a different level or something! Anyway, I'm more satisfied with this result than the previous "top". Next time I'll choose pink colour and wear the hopefully-i-have-time-to-knit-it-in-the-future shrug with my only fancy dress.


Good night! 잘 자!

Winter lights

I was feeling very tired yesterday but I decided to go for a small walk anyway. I needed a new mixer and Citymarket was the closest place to find one. Walking was so exhausting! I made it to the shopping centre anyway and came home with a new cheap mixer and a pair of discounted jeans, just 9 euros. I stopped to watch the cars driving on a motorway when I came back.

Today I've been washing laundry, cooking and knitting. I made fruity wok with all kinds of vegetables and pineapple and ate it with rice noodles. Quite tasty, although I couldn't taste much :)


It's so beautiful outside! The trees are white again, sun is so bright as well as the moon. Can you spot it in the photo above? I don't know if it was a good idea to go outside while I'm still a bit weak, but I just need to move and do something! When I was a child, I wanted to be sick, that's how I could stay at home and read books as much as I could. Too bad it doesn't feel so great anymore :D

I read the new Ecologist yesterday evening. There was one article about green clothing and besides buying organic cotton and washing laundry in 30 degrees, also swapping clothes was seen as one green way of making your wardrobe more ecologic. I'd LOVE to swap my clothes with people! So many of my friends have just amazing clothes and I wonder where they find all those beautiful garments :) There is only one problem -> I'm too small. So also my clothes are too small for most of my friends, so swapping would be more like "give me your clothes and I give you nothing" :(


Same thing with shoes, but usually it's easy to use shoes as long as they are worn out.

Time for me to drink more tea and knit, maybe I can finish my ribbed bolero today! If it doesn't fit me and looks like the previous "top" I made, I'll go crazy!!!

Time to think

I had fever yesterday and I'm feeling quite horrible also today. I realised I hadn't showered for 4 days...I haven't slept well in 3 nights and my nose keeps bleeding. Every year I forget how annoying it is to be sick! I've had time to think though, because I've been too tired to do anything else.

First I want to write about stupid advertisements. Yesterday I saw new Ed-commercial 3 times and how it annoys me! There is a man drinking Ed and the bottle keeps directing him to beautiful women. One girl looks very pretty, but she hasn't shaved her legs so the bottle reminds the man to keep focused and directs him to 3 other girls. Other annoying commercial is advertising Libresse SCENTED menstrual pads. I'm just wondering, why those ads try to brainwash us to think that women are not good if they either 1) have completely natural hair growing in their legs or 2) smell a bit like blood when they have their periods. Why is it so wrong to be natural? I bet that for example scented pads are not good for mucous membranes and they cause itching etc. Healthiness seems to come second when it's about women being non-smelling creatures.

This morning I watched an interesting document about today's agriculture, where land suffers from too big amounts of pesticides and animals are produced like they're not even living beings. Sometimes I really wonder, how people can close their eyes and just accept the conditions the animals live in. Land and animals are not the only ones who suffer from today's course of agriculture. For example in French Caribbean islands Guadeloupe and Martinique a strong pesticide called Chlordecone was used when growing bananas. Now the water and ground has been contaminated and cancer rates especially in Martinique are getting higher.

I wonder, how long all this is going to continue. Today's agriculture is making the ground poor, because the main thing is to get as big crops as possible, not to keep the soil alive. In India, lots of previously fertile land has turned into salty deserts and because pests are growing resistant to the pesticides used today, farmers need to buy more expensive products to get big crops. I don't even want to think about Monsanto and other GM companies, who just want to make money with manipulating genes, "owning" seeds and selling dangerous pesticides.

What is it possible to do then? I'd say one of the easiest things is to buy organic and local products. For example flour, oatmeal and canned tomatoes are not significantly more expensive than the "normal" ones. Organic meat is quite impossible to find from the shops, but at least you can search for organic milk and eggs, which are easy to notice in all kinds of stores. That's how you can make a difference! Also all kinds of organic food circles are a good choice to support local organic farming. It's also possible to buy for example yarns from the food circle at least in Joensuu :)

When it comes to yarns and knitting, I just finished a sock I made from a very beautiful yarn called Fyberspates Dream Sock, which has been handcoloured in Wales. I should start to make the other sock, but I feel like doing something completely different...Let's see!