... and we're back! Again.

This whole blogging thing is getting more and more sporadic. It doesn't help that my laptop is pretty much dead and I need to rely on other computers to do my stuff on. It's never the same when it's not yours, is it.

I have done a lot of cooking and baking and things over the past year, as I've lived with my parents I've had access to their better than average kitchen and my budget for food has also been a bit better. Although, I'd say one of the highlights of my food year was a Sunday roast cooked at the boy's flat. My first ever roast (beef) and my first ever roast potatoes (homemade, that is). I think it came out pretty well, and it tasted nice and all, even though I believe me and the boy did have some differences of opinion on how pink the meat can be. Still, I think we both agreed it was a nice meal.

I also found a new love in risotto. I have enjoyed risotto cooked for me in the past but have always been way too intimidated (for reasons that now completely escape me) to try making one myself. My first attempt was a variation of a lemon risotto with crab meat, prawns and peas. Whilst it didn't taste amazing (the crab meat was tinned and didn't really taste of anything but salty water) it was a good start and since I've pretty regularly treated myself and some other to the niceness that is risotto.

Here's a photo for you of the first ever risotto. Not a good one, but I assure you it did taste nicer than it looks.

There have been some disasters too, like the time I decided to make rasberry and white chocolate muffins, and whilst they tasted nice, they didn't resemble anything close to muffins in appearance. You know, I say disasters, but I can't really think of any others than those muffins.

There was a time earlier this summer, I can't remember why, but I was home alone and decided to treat myself to something supernice to nibble on whilst watching tv. I went to the supermarket with not much of an idea of what I'd like and as I strolled around I found they had barbecued chicken on offer so I bought that and nachos. Behold, the ultimate nachos!

It was a rather perfect mix of nachos, cheese (I think it was Edam, which was not the best choice), salsa, cheese salsa, chicken and sour cream. The only thing missing were jalapenos, which would've completed the amazingness of it all.

In other news, there aren't many. I'm trying to sort out my life and I think for the first time ever, I'm completely unsure where I'll be in the next month let alone next few months. One thing's for sure though, I have got to move out. I'd like it to be London where I'll move to, but at the moment it seems like it might just be the city here. Hmm. Town.

I'll try to get back on track with this blog. I'd love to do more food postings and I've done a lot of food I've thought about making a post here on, but then have lacked the photos and time or something. Excuses they all are. But thanks for reading anyway. Don't get rid of me on your feed reader just yet, this place isn't completely dead.

The one with not much awhine.

[Foreword: If you're into drinking games, I suggest you have a drink whenever I say 'Christmas' in this post. I do it a lot. And I don't feel like editing now.]

Yo yo yo!

There are like SO MANY blog posts that need to be written but I'm a LAZY ASS blogger so you can wait for them forever. Well, maybe not forever but for a long time. I've been making loads of nice foods now that I'm living at my parents house and have unlimited access to their kitchen, which while may not be perfect, is pretty damn much closer to perfect than any of the kitchens I've been cooking at for the past 4 years. (Such a LONG time!!)

Anyway, this post might as well be called 'Why I DO kind of like Finland' because it's not about whining at all. For the past week it's been cold. Like down to -15C cold, and it has been awesome. It would only be more awesome if the boy was here to cuddle up to, but I'm not going to whine. I can wrap up in flannel and lambswool (courtesy of Uni Qlo from my recent trip to see the boy, which was awesome btw) and I've got woolly socks too! Whilst these things obviously can't substitute the boy, they make life a wee bit better and the cold weather awesome.


Perhaps because of the actual wintry weather, I'm also sort of looking forward to Christmas (and I'm not going to mention here how much I'd like to spend Christmas with the boy because I'm sure it's self-evident). This hasn't really happened in the last few years and I'm sure as the days go by and it gets closer to the 24th I'll start feeling suitably annoyed and moody about yet another one of these parties which stopped being fun the moment I got younger cousins and stopped getting the biggest load of presents and made further worse with the realisation that most of the presents really don't matter as the person receiving them won't show any gratitude unless it's something they had specifically wished for. Nevermind if you spend a lot of time and effort in coming up with a really great personal gift for someone. (There's the whine!)

To get back to business I am actually looking forward to Christmas this year and in my futile attempt to make Christmas eve and the present giving (and opening) situation slightly better and enjoyable I've decided to help myself. In a flash of shopping mania I bought myself a Christmas present and as opposed to the usual (ie. saying it's a Christmas present for me, taking it home and instantly consuming whatever it is) I wrapped it up as soon as I got home and put it in the Santa's bag to wait to be handed to me by Mr. Claus himself.

This Christmas I also got the best present from the boy, which was handed to me on the 1st of December as I was there at his place then. It was originally sort of unwrapped and we both opened our presents there and then and have been reading our things (I got him a comic and he got me a comic) but I decided to wrap my present (as in his present to me) up too so that I can be mega happy unwrapping my presents on Christmas eve. Here's a picture of the wrapped present too. If you're interested after Christmas I can tell you what it was. I can tell you it's awesome though.

Merry Christmas to you all! Hope you'll be having a lot of fun in good company and that it isn't stressful or anything like that.

Why I don't like Finland, pt. II

Part deux is here for you already! Can you imagine.

The other thing I don't like here is people. I mean I like being close to my family and friends here, they're nice and friendly and all that. But other people I don't like. You know, just randomers you come accross on the street. I will obviously generalise here but I hope you'll forgive me (if there's anybody out there reading anyway).

What I found odd when moving to London was how lots of people seemed to think that Londoners somehow lacked good manners. I mostly found people in London just as polite as people in Birmingham or Manchester and always more polite than in Finland.

To start off with, people are shit at small talk. That's fair enough and I can't really complain because I don't do small talk either. But if someone leads me I can small talk too. People are also pretty clique-y - breaking into groups of people can be pretty damn hard even if you already know someone in there. Obviously this is the case elsewhere too, but I find that when you're a "stranger" to a group I find them less accomodating here. However, I had a chat with a friend who lives in Helsinki about this, and she said she thinks this might just be a regional defect, not a nationwide thing.

Also, only a handful of people hold the door open for you. Even fewer will say thanks if you do so for them. It's little things like that - a sort of general lack of politeness that makes me miss London. And here's the story that sparked me to start up this series of posts. Are you sitting comfortably? Here goes:

I did a big food shop the other day and obviously forgot one important thing (burger buns, if you must know) because it wasn't on the shopping list. As I'd already left the supermarket I figured I'd just go to a smaller one on my way home, and I did. I found my buns pretty effortlessly in the store (a KKK Supermarket FYI, although I believe they're now just called K Supermarkets). The shop was a bit bigger than your average Aldi or Lidl. I got to the tills and there was only one till open at the time so I joined to queue like a good citizen would. The queue grew bigger though and a lady came to open the next till too. As I made a move towards the newly opened till an older man (I'd say in his fifties) rushed his trolley over from behind me and got into position to start off loading his trolley.

I was slightly baffled and asked him if I could go first since I only had that one bag of buns to pay for (I didn't mention that I was also in the queue before him, because I'm not petty like that) and his response completely blindsighted me. 'No way!' was his answer to me. It completely threw me off, at first I though maybe he was joking but after a short silence he continued saying how he'd waited for so long he wouldn't wait any longer now. (Again, I was in the queue before him so I had actually been waiting for longer than he had.) I was so surprised at his reply that I just didn't know how to react. So I didn't really say anything. And then I felt sorry for the lady (presumably his wife) who was with him. She apologised to me saying how he's such an impatient one etc. etc. And I said to her it's fine, I'm not actually in a hurry, I was just wondering. And she said they're not in a hurry either. Oh well.

I paid for my buns eventually and ended up leaving the parking area before they did anyway, not that it matters. I'm just baffled, because I can't imagine myself ever responding like that if someone asked me if they could go first in a case like that. Even if I was in a hurry and therefore had a good reason of saying no to someone, I'd feel inclined to explain that I'm in a hurry and all that. I've been going through the incident in my head over and over and I just don't understand how someone could be so rude like that. It's not that I couldn't take no for an answer, and like I said I wasn't in a hurry and to be honest I'm not completely sure why I even asked to go first (I think it was probably because he rushed up there from behind me the way he did that made me do it), but I just can't get my head around the way he said no. There.

Now while that was a single incident and obviously could've happened anywhere in the world, it didn't, it happened here and put together with the general lack of politeness around here it is thus added to reasons why I don't like Finland.

Why I don't like Finland, pt. I

So here begins a new series of posts (again, I hope I get to at least pt. II or even III this time around). In case you don't know, I moved back to Finland about a month ago and let me tell you, it has not been easy. First of all the boy is still in London, secondly, I (still) need to look for a job to get me some moneys to allow me to move away from my parents care and, thirdly, it's just not like London here. Or anywhere in the UK for that matter. At least not like the places I've been to.

Right, reasons why I don't like Finland. The first shocker came a week or two into my stay here when I spent Sunday night at my sisters house and got a lift from her to town on Monday morning. She had to be at her work for half seven so we had to leave a bit before 7am and I figured since I don't really need to be at work (I occasionally work at my dad's office) before 8am I could sleep a bit longer, skip breakfast and just get something from a coffee shop before going to the office. We got to town around 7.20 and I began my wander around the centre of the town in search of a place that would serve a sandwich, or croisant to accompany a cup of a hot beverage but it was quickly obvious that no place was open. In the end I found two places that opened at 7.30 but as I walked around I ended up moving closer to the office than those two places and just went into a corner shop that opened at 7.00 and got a juice carton and a croisant. I realise it's a small-ish city I live in (well close to) and there probably isn't a market for early morning breakfasts, but I'm not sure I want to live in a place where I can't get a bloody sandwich in the morning if I want one! If you get me. Anyway, this isn't the thing that sparked me to start this series of posts, but you'll get the other story in the next edition. Stay tuned.

(Sorry this one's a bit rubbish, but I guarantee the next one will be better.)

Prosciutto and focaccia.

Hello there!

It has been quite a while since I last wrote here. I do have a couple of ideas that have been circling around my mind for the past few months, but I never seem to have the time or energy to sit down and think about actually writing them up.

Now this post is about food, as you may have guessed from the title. First, let me show you a photo of yummy starter bits I made for the boy and myself a while back. They're nothing overly special, but I thought they looked nice and they tasted amazing! I shall call them Tomato-Mozzarella-Prosciutto wrappers. Isn't that a nice name? Here they are: I very simply made them by wrapping bits of fresh mozzarella, cherry tomatoes and basil in prosciutto slices. I found these awesome slices slices of prociutto in our local Asda. In fact, they were Asda branded too. They were half the size of the normal slices, and thus, perfect for these little finger food bits.

The main thing I was going to blabber on about in this post is the MOST AWESOME olive focaccia I made yesterday. I did it according to a recipe I had on a dish cloth (yes, a CLOTH!) and I was so so happy with the way it turned out. My mum sent me the cloth over a year ago now and I've not used it as a cloth because I thought I really should try baking that focaccia, just never felt like doing it. Well, now I have and I've written down the recipe and am using the cloth for wiping purposes. In case you're interested, here is the designer's home page, sadly, it's only in Finnish. Anyway, on to the recipe.

Olive Focaccia

Ingredients:
1 litre of plain wheat flour
1 bag of dried yeast (I used a Finnish standard yeast, which had 11 grams in a bag. Most UK yeast has been 7 grams, so about 1 ½ bags of that stuff.)
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of honey
approx. 3 ½ desilitre of water (NB. about 42 degrees warm to wake up the yeast)
½ desilitre of olive oil
handful of pitted olives
sea salt

The How To:
Mix flour, yeast, salt and honey together.
Add water (remember the temperature!) and olive oil and mix to make a nice dough.
Let the dough rise under a cover (I tend to use a kitchen towel/ pillow case, whatever is clean when baking) for an hour.
Dump the dough on an oiled baking tray and tap it to about ½ an inch thick thing. Let it rise for another 30 mins under a cover.
Press the olives (the original recipe says black olives, but I prefer green so used them) on the dough and springle sea salt on it.
Bake in 180 degrees for about 20-30 mins.

And behold! You've just made yourself a focaccia. It wasn't difficult at all now, was it?

The boy and I ate about half of the focaccia on it's own (although he picked out his olives and I ate them) freshly made last night. The other half we had for lunch today. We filled it with lettuce (rocket would've been nice, but we had romaine so settled for that) prosciutto, tomatoes and mozzarella. It was well yummy. Here's a pic. Byebye.

Obamania, take 2

Firstly, I want to make it clear that I have nothing against Obama and I fully support him and hope he'll do well in office. On the 5th November morning when the boyfriend and I woke up to the 8am news and heard that Obama had won, we high fived half asleep and the day seemed to begin well. (It turned out to be a rather depressing morning, but it's a completely different story and didn't involve Obama in anyway.)

I've set out now to sort of rewrite Obamania because I don't think that it was anywhere near eloquent and as I wrote it in a frenzy of uncontrollabel and part-irrational anger I'm not too happy with it. In this post I wish to explain myself again, and I've tried to incorporate some things that I thought about after the feedback I got on the original post. (I'm still going to leave the original post up there, in case someone wants to read it. I'm not sure if I recommend it.)

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I've had the beginning of this post (above) ready for ages, but just didn't have the determination to actually write it up. I did, however write a personal message to a friend of mine who I had a minor argument with regarding my Obamania post. I think, with the Awesome Inauguration coming up next Tuesday, this might be a good time to tackle this one again. However, since I'm lazy and I'm actually quite happy with that message I sent to that friend of mine, I'm just going to copy paste it here. I've done some minor changes to it, mainly to make it a bit more PC as well as adding some links and stuff. (It's a bit long, so prepare yourself, get a drink and some snacks and.. Enjoy!)

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Firstly, I hope you realised from the quality of the blogpost in question that it was written in a frenzy of mindless anger and annoyance. Although, I do stand behind my words. I just mean that had I actually THOUGHT about what I was writing about I would've said things a bit differently.

I am still holding on to my opinion on local elections. I do believe that they are the most important elections for the average Joe or Jane. However, I'm not trying to say that other elections aren't important, on the contrary I believe elections are a wonderfull thing and all of them matter. Neither do I think that people are wrong to get enthusiastic about the US elections (and this is something I realise I didn't make clear at all), but I think that it's a real shame that many of the people I know who got all worked up about the election are people who don't care about what goes on in their own country. Or people who in general don't seem to have any real interest or opinion about US (politics) other than 'Bush sucks' (or more recently 'McCain sucks and Palin is an idiot'). And I'm not trying to say they're wrong, I just think it's a bit pathetic in a way, you know just repeating things they've heard other people say. If you see what I mean.

I'm finding it very hard to believe that we are now or would have been anywhere near WW3 had McCain been elected. I'd like to think that if McCain had died in office and Palin would've become president, she wouldn't have just sent out a load of nuclear missiles to Russia, even if she has seen Putin rear his ugly head or whatever it is she said she'd seen. I just can't imagine it [WW3] happening anytime soon, and I think I personally will stay a lot happier not even imagining such a possibility. (Following pic from flickr.)



I take your point with the July 2005 bombings, though. [This one I should probably make a bit clearer. My friend used terrorism to back up his argument about the importance of the US election to people everywhere, which is a fair point, I suppose.] Terrorism is something (kind of like the WW3-thing) I don't really think about, having never experienced anything the like. I've never felt a real threat of terrorism even living in London now. Perhaps it's because I'm selfish and can't really picture it before something happens to someone I know or something.

I'm a lot more scared of being stabbed, shot or simply mugged in the streets. Just the other day there was a stabbing/shooting (I never found out which it was, my guess is stabbing) right next to our local library. And a few days before that someone got stabbed right outside the house of some friends of the boy. That's something I worry a lot more than terrorism, which brings me nice and neatly back to the importance of local elections. I think it's not easy to link local stabbings with the US presidential elections, but it's a clear sign that there are severe problems in the society we live in (and I mean society here in the national/local sense not in the international sense).

Hm, I think that's it. Well, I've exhausted the pseudo-academic side of my brain and won't say more even if I should. ...And in case I've not made myself clear enough, I'm really glad Obama won!

Original art work by Alex Ross - Get it as a t-shirt here

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I think there is more to be said on the topic, perhaps that's something that could be done in the comments. If you've got something to say, SAY IT! I would very much appreciate any feed back or opinions and I do to keep an eye on the comments in case some of you actually DO want to discuss all of this. If you got this far, that is.

Because I like my chili.

This shall be a food post for a change. I wrote it because I've been off ill for a week now and am a lot better now and BOREDBOREDBORED, yet too lazy to do anything. Oh well.

I have found a new favourite food. I had a chili con carne at the boys parents whilst we were living there early autumn, it was my first since age 10 or something like that and it was AWESOME. After that, however, we sort of forgot about chili and stuck to our more usual dishes; different curries, stir frys and pastas. Lately though, we've started making chili nearly once a week. We do one big enough to last us for two dinners, and thus save money and it is always amazing. Today's one, I found exceptionally good, here's how we did it:

Incredients:

400-500g Minced beef (preferably lean, I'm not a big fan of random bits of something indescribable in my mince)
1-2 Onions (depending on size and strength)
1 Chili pepper (medium hot)
3 Peppers (this particular time we used two reds and a yellow)
Box of cherry tomatoes
Tin of red kidney beans
Jar of chili cooking sauce (this time we used a cheap one from Aldi, I think it's quite nice. The boy doesn't like things too spicy, so we've been eating medium spicyness ones.)

Rice (I prefer long grain with chili, but since we usually only have Basmati, that's fine too)
Tortilla crisps
Grated cheese

Preparation:

* Chop everything first. I like my chilies and onions extra small, peppers quite small and cherry toms in half. Beans can be as they are.
* Stick the mince in a pan (we use a wok, it's very handy with large amounts of food) and fry until quite brown.
* Add onions and chillies. Stir and fry for a bit. Then add peppers, stir them in and let things fry on medium heat for 5-10mins. If you like, you can also add some salt and pepper and such spices and flavorings.
* Add cherry toms and stir.
* Open the kidney bean tin and drain the water (if using chili beans or something alike, you can obviously use the juices too). Throw the beans in the pan and stir.
* Add the cooking sauce and rinse the jar with a tiny drop of water and pour it in as well. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat and let simmer (if possible) under a lid for the time it says on the jar (usually between 15-25mins). The longer it gets to simmer, the softer the veg get and everything is nice and smooth and flavours are mixed and yumyumyum.
* (If required) rinse a suitable amount of rice and boil it according to what the package says.
* When the rice is ready, the chili should be pretty much ready too so deal it out, grate some cheese on top and serve it with tortilla crisps. It should be AWESOME. If not, you did something wrong and I'm not to blame!

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Realised I probably should've taken a photo of the chili tonight. But then again, I didn't think I'd blog about it when we had it. Perhaps I'll photograph the left overs when we eat them and add one then. Or perhaps not. I shall keep you in suspence. Muahhahahhaa! (That was an evil laugh, in case you didn't know.) Over and out.