Phew!

It's been a busy week.

We went skiing at Lykynlampi on Sunday in the sunshine.

M's skating school had their end of term performance on Monday (the tinies were hilarious). The bigger ones, especially the formation skaters, were just amazing. Here's M's class in the middle of their routine...

On Wednesday, I made Easter decorations with the Martat ladies. We covered eggs in paper and fabric, and us (and some of the table in my case) in glue.

Thursday was the last of the miniliga races at Pärnävaara, which was great fun. M came in a very respectable 7th. Everyone won a medal or a cup, ate lots of grilli makkara and went home smiling.

Today we've had a girl's morning out in town (including buns at Houkutus), followed by skiing on the lake in brilliant sunshine.

All in all, a top week!

Vatruskas!

Yesterday we learned how to make vatruskas, with our lovely ex-neighbour Taina (who used to work in a bakery in Illomantsi). Best of all, we then ate them with munavoi.

Here's the recipe:

For the dough you'll need

1 litre mashed potato
1 egg
1 dl flour
1 teaspoon salt

For the filling:
some cooked rice (1/2 litre water, 1.5 dl rice, 1/2 teaspoon salt)
a little melted butter

First of all you boil the potatoes (which should be a nice floury variety) without peeling. Once cooled, peel (as M's demonstrating here, it should just come off with a blunt knife).

Mash, and add the egg, flour and salt. Mix together, to make a very soft dough.


Then make the dough into a round stick. Cut into 10 pieces, and pat flat, in a rough half-moon shape.


Take your cooked rice, and add a little melted butter. Place a teaspoon of rice on each half-moon.


Fold the dough over, patting gently down. Use an upturned mug to shape into a half-moon (from the offcuts, you should get another 5 vatruskas).


Bake in an oven at 300 degrees (or the hottest it will go) for 10-15 minutes.


Once they're done, brush with a little melted butter. Then top with munavoi (egg butter - yes, there's lots of butter involved here), and scoff...


...very quickly, before the small child eats them all!

An energetic weekend

Sundays are quite busy in our house. Yesterday, we skated at the ice hall, ate buns at the ABC caf, then headed off into the wilds of Noljakka for some skiing and potkukelkka-ing.


It was great fun, even if I did get overtaken by a lot of supercharged grannies (bet they all had porridge for breakfast). I may need to practice a bit more, as the hills were really hard - or maybe it's the fact that I had scones for breakfast, not porridge. Hmm. The brown ninja did a good line in running alongside, anyway, while Orb manfully potkukelkked up the hills.


When we got to the end, the brown ninja decided to throw herself down the massive mound of snow you can see here. She knows no fear at the moment.



The rest of the day was rather more sedate. A trip to Citymarket to do the weekly shop, followed by chicken pie in front of the Frozen Planet. The cat has rather taken a liking to the penguins, and sits glued to the screen.

Lunchtime walk in Joensuu

It was -25, so I didn't stay out for very long, but the sunshine was too good to miss.
I saw the strangest thing - the river 'steaming' in the cold.

And the boat is certainly going nowhere at the moment...

Small girl, large snow mountain...

We had a fantastic day playing out in the snow on Saturday. Orb took his potkukelkka out, I went on skis, and the small brown ninja ran around like a mad thing. We tried some of the cross country trails in Noljakka which were breathtakingly beautiful - the trees are laced with snow, and you could see the flakes of ice dancing in the air.

I'd forgotten how much fun going down hills (albeit very small ones) on skis is. And I discovered just how much work going up the hills on cross country skis is too...

In the evening, we went to watch Jokipojat play at the ice hall, as it was a free match. We were squidged into the standing area, and had to carry M so she could see, but it was fantastic - a really exciting, end-to-end game. After being 3-2 down for much of the match, Jokipojat managed to equalise in the last minute, and then won on penalties. M had never been in such a big crowd before - and I think the enormous roar when they equalised was rather a surprise.

Today's been very cold (it's about -25 now, and is forecast to be -30 when we set off for school tomorrow morning). We walked about 10 minutes from the car park to the cinema this morning, and ended up with tingling noses and quite cold fingers and toes. Puss in Boots was on in 3D, and in the original English version, and was great fun. M and I had never seen a 3D film before and were quite impressed. It was pretty much designed to appeal to a cat-obsessed six-year-old, I think. I'd love to know, though, how on earth they dub Antonio Banderas' Spanish accent into Finnish...?

Sadly nowhere open in town had good buns on offer on a Sunday (normally Houkutus, the library cafe or Taitokortelli would be our first points of call, but they were all shut), so we came home and baked some of our own. The butter buns from the Nordic Bakery Cookbook turned out to be fab, and I may have scoffed at least two. Don't tell the small ninja...

Before and after

My little girl is growing up. Gone is the tiny IKEA chair and table, scene of much painting, colouring, play-dough, baking and eating (she used to eat here breakfast at it in our old kitchen). In its place is a brand new 8 euro desk from the recycled furniture shop...

Happy New Year!

New Year's Day, Lykynlampi.

New Year's Day

Today was amazingly cold and clear, the perfect fresh start for the new year. We've been very busy:

1. Hunting for yeti at Lykynlampi.


2. Sledging and stomping about in the cold at Lykynlampi, including venturing out onto the frozen lake.



3. Eating doughnuts at the Lykynlampi cafe. Very important.



4. Scoffing toad in the hole, with sausages smuggled back from England.

5. Using M's new telescope to see the craters on the moon, Jupiter, and several old rockets circling the Earth.

6. Telling our fortunes for the year ahead, using some tin horseshoes, a ladle and a bucket of water.




Orb had what looked like a crazy cross between Homer Simpson and a Cavalier, mine was either a nest full of birds or a witch, and M had a dragon. But whatever the new year holds, I think it will be an exciting one...

Winter solstice

Today we had a 'midnight feast' in our pyjamas to celebrate the longest night. The tonttu (elf) hat is for tomorrow's school play, but is being worn in.


Our feast included Karelian pies with egg topping, sausages on sticks (we had one lonely sausage left in the fridge which needed putting out of its misery), salad, fruit, haggis rolls (I'm sure they don't have haggis in, but they taste like haggis-flavoured sausage rolls), gherkins, and a selection of leftover doughnuts and biscuits. Well, you have to raid the fridge on these occasions...

Just for the record, we had 4 hours and 54 minutes of 'daylight' today. The sun rose at 9:32, and set at 14:26.

Independence day

Today was Independence Day in Finland - it's 94 years old today. It's a public holiday, so we celebrated by making almond buns, creating a wreath (it's amazing what you can do with some garden twine, newspaper and lots of ribbons), and going for a splodge around in the snow at Lykynlampi.

We had two or three centimetres of snow this morning, so all the trees looked beautiful in the still air. There were no birds to be heard, but we did see a squirrel run across the road on the way there, so there is still some wildlife lurking.

Spot the difference

Yes, that'll be the 16cm of snow which landed in my back garden last night then.

This morning was our first experience of 'snow work' - shovelling the snow off the driveway so the car could get down it. Most of the roads had been snowploughed, apart from the little roads in our estate in Marjala (but even these had been done by the time we got home at around 2pm). It was my first time driving around in proper snow, and wasn't too bad (there was the odd bit of sliding about, but I'm now a HUGE fan of studded tyres. And estate cars big enough to stick your snowboots, shovel, blanket etc etc in). I'm also a big fan of my lovely neighbour Tiina who helped me shovel the driveway this morning at 7.30am...

Apparently Finnish school is brilliant because you can go and play king of the castle on the enormous snow heaps thrown up by the snowplough, and the school actually has a box of sledges you can get out at playtime. There may also have been meatballs today, which just added to the excitement.

A weekend in Finland

Friday: Rustle makes some new friends:

Saturday: We stack wood in the garage. Two square metres is quite a lot of tessellation...

Sunday: We go ice skating at Joensuu ice hall. I attempt to wobble round without falling over, in only the second time I've been ice skating since about the age of 10. M uses the cunning ruse of 'pushing a chair round'. It's surprisingly good fun. Even if my ankles have been complaining ever since.


Sunday also happens to be -8 degrees, sunny and stunningly beautiful:






We have a lovely afternoon with some friends. And the whole day is rounded off by a firework display for the opening of the Christmas season in Joensuu. It was too cold to take my camera out, so here's a picture of a small Michelin child instead:

Sunshine!

View across the square on my walk to work this morning:


A lunchtime stroll by the river

Bonfire night, Finnish style

It's been quite a test of my history knowledge, explaining Bonfire Night (and why we don't have it in Finland) to the six-year-old. You can't exactly rely on the old historian's excuse of "that's not my period". Between me and Orb, we managed to get the story about right, with the correct monarch (James I) and century (17th, just).

Today, we managed to have our own bonfire in the middle of Lykynlampi, the lake area where we often go for a walk. It was quite a cold, grey day as you can see (probably a couple of degrees above zero), and it started to snow a little as we walked round.


Orb built us a small fire (there's a shack full of firewood for you to use), and we had a Moomin-style picnic. Not sure we've ever picnic-ed with snow starting to fall before...




Instead of fireworks, we went to the ice hall this evening, to watch an ice hockey game. Joensuu Jokipojat were playing Sapko, a team from Savonlinna. Sadly, Joensuu lost 5-3, but it was great fun to watch. Neither team showed much mercy in terms of shoving the opposition into the sides of the rink! The small girl thought this was hilarious...


Last of all, we paid a visit to Joensuu cemetery, as it's All Saints Day here in Finland. It's celebrated by placing candles on the graves of family members - and the graveyard was a sea of lights. Every grave had a candle or lantern, with the lines of lights stretching as far as you could see into the darkness. The war memorial was especially moving, as it was surrounded by a low wall of flickering lights.

We've lit a candle, and put it outside our house in memory of Grandpa.