Juice factory

We had again a busy weekend on the island. It's August, which means harvesting in Finland. All the berries are now waiting to be picked, juicy and sweet. And normally when you plan to work in the kitchen, it is hot and sunny, just like this weekend.

We picked some 10 liters of blueberries in the forest, resulting in black hands and back pains...
The girls picked black and red currants from our garden and made several liters of juice with Mehu-Maija juice steamer.

I bought 10 kg black currants from Bjursängen berry farm in Parainen (couldn't actually find black currant for sale in Kemiö) and made two lots of strong and tasty juice.

One bat was watching on the window bench...

On Saturday, we also went by boat to visit my sisters and brother in Karuna, Sauvo. My oldest sister has a new summer cottage and she invited all the siblings there. Was nice to meet each other after a long time - and see how much older the others have become (not me:). She had made salmon soup and for vegetarians chanterelle soup. Both soups tasted so good outside.

Traditional cooking

I miss my mother's cabbage rolls at this time of the year. As she is no longer with us to make those, I decided to try wheather I can cook as good rolls as she did. Not quite, but JD liked them a lot (which is a big achievement). I picked the recipe from Eero Mäkelä's cook book. Next time I'll ad some more pepper to the filling.

Finally heat! ..to try on llama dresses

After one week’s work in the office we returned to the Island for the weekend. The weather looked promising, sunshine on Friday and Satuday! Our guests were waiting for us there, a couple with one teenager son, and Annie’s family and Inka came soon after. Headcount 10 + little Ollie.

We had planned to cook paella according to Jamie Oliver’s recipe outside on a big Muurikka wok pan. We used gas instead of wood fire, to be able to control the heat and ensure a good meal. We started the meal with honeydew slices covered with Spanish Serrano ham. I was a bit lazy with the dessert, so we just went to have coffee with chocolate on our seaview terrace. Then JD surprised us and opened his precious bottle of Davidoff cognac which really raised the standard and was superb. I don’t normally like cognac but this was yamm... Our Chinese friend doesn’t drink alcohol, so she missed it, but the others enjoyed it – also partly because the evening turned to be very chilly and it warmed so nicely.

The evening ended with three games of Mölkky  with the kids.

Saturday was the hottest day so far (+25C). We picked some 5 liters of blueberries and some wild raspberries in the morning and made big smoothies mixing vanilla ice cream, milk and the plenty of berries – the kids (big and small) love it.

Jumping from a crane in Mathildedal

Then we packed the boat full of people and went to see Mathildedal shops and cafés. It is nowadays very quiet there with little activities in the marina, but this Saturday there was a village event and many boats and visitors, music and water sports activities.

We found a new interesting boutique – Ruukin Kehräämö ja Puoti – specializing in llama wool, women’s clothes and yarn. My friend bought a nice long dress and I plan to go back later in the fall to buy some yarn.

Our friends left home on Saturday evening and we spent the night watching a spectacular thunderstorm and thousands of lightnings.

Sunday was even hotter than Saturday, +27C – great – that’s how it should be in summer!

High season – wet!

What can you do on an island when it’s raining and cool and the house is full of people? We had the high season with 14 persons of different ages, making at least 30 pairs of shoes lying in our porch. 

I went to Turku, which is one hour’s drive away, for shopping. We have just had one upstairs bathroom renovated and it needed some accessories.

I restored a pair of bed tables and painted them white to look old. When there was a heavy rain, Inka destroyed a bees’ nest that had been growing in the garden lamp.

When waiting for the sunshine we went washing carpets – a Finnish tradition done formerly in the sea or lake, but nowadays in special facilities designed for carpet washing and provided by the county in each village. It took one week for the carpets to dry outside…

We visited an art exhibition at the Westankärr estate. There were Kaj Stenvall’s  paintings and graphics about Donald Duck presented in a beautiful old animal shed / sheep farm. I didn’t buy any paintings (6,000-12,000 euros each) but some sheep wool yarn from which I plan to knit socks. 

On Saturday, our big and small girls went to see horse jumping at the biggest riding and jumping competition event in Finland, which took place on the Kemiö Island. There were nearly 200 beautiful horses for three days to look at.

Nellie and Mike went to a candle light concert  in Westanfjärd old church (part of Kimito Music Festival) whereas the ‘boys’ went one night to a rock pub.

And of course there was a lot of cooking. The upside of daily rains is that there will be a lot of mushrooms. I found enough chanterelles in the forest and made on Tuesday the first sauce this summer.

On Wednesday we made Korean bulgogi, barbecued marinated beef strips according to Eero Mäkelä’s (a famous Finnish gourmet chef) recipe, which had to be multiplied by 5. It was delicious with a garlic – roasted sesame seed – oil sauce.

On Thursday we grilled safran-marinated chicken breasts and served them rice and orange sauce. On a half-sunny Friday we had a Greek night and made two large bowls of Greek feta salad (using 1 kg of feta) and stifado meet stew (2.5 kg of meet, took 3 hours to cook, but it was worth it:) and bought authentic Retsina wine to get the real taste of Greece (however, only JD and I love Retsina with Greek food..). And as there were all the kids present on Saturday, we had a home-made hamburger dinner around the grill. Ten youngest ones ate two big hamburgers each. I liked most the cole slaw made of new local cabbage and seasoned with self-grown chili.

It will be hard to return to the city and get used to cooking for two and eating much less!

Old charm and antique

It was a hot (24 degrees) and humid (94%) weekend with thunder in the air. It was raining, and the house was full of life and noice. All JD’s children with their partners, kids and pets, and my daughter Inka – altogether 11 people.  Our pop-up restaurant was quite busy. However, I am happy that our girls and boys are participating in the kitchen, offer help and always clean the table etc. It's teamwork.

JD and I left the Island and headed for the Billnäs Antique Fair, some 60 km from Kemiö towards Tammisaari. It has been our target almost every summer. I like old furniture and watching antigues, the region is very beautiful – both Billnäs and Fiskars villages – and even driving there is as if you were in Tuscany. Beautiful hills and fields, pittoresque old little houses and lush gardens.

In Billnäs Antique Fair we found a table for our city kitchen, although the event was a bit disappointment.  There were not so many sellers as earlier. But there was a similar event going on in Fiskars, some kilometers away, and there were over 70 antique sellers and a lot of beautiful stuff. Also a lot of visitors.

The thunder storm did not reach Kemiö (good, because the electricity goes off quite often then). I made a strawberry cake for dessert. It was so warm in the evening that we sat until 2 am outside (at least some of us). The house never sleeps… Roy, JD’s daughter’s Annie’s partner, woke at 4 am to do some yoga and little Ollie normally wakes up at 6 or 7 am.

Out to sea

When the temperature rose above 24 degrees, it was too hot in the garden. It was time for the first day out boating. Hank, Angie and Sam were with us, all as eager to get a cool breeze on the sea. It was as calm as a mirror (a Finnish saying). But as soon as JD started the engines and we went full speed ahead, it was cool and nice. Sam was excited as the bridge in Strömma  was open and there was a big ship coming. The channel of Strömma is beautiful with the old bridge and a new one aside. It is actually the only place in Finland where there is tide.

We went along the coast line to see nice summer cottages and beautiful bays and stopped to fill in the tank in Förby. Someone could say that motor boating as a hobby is not sustainable, but it is not so often you can do it in Finland. In an average summer there are less than ten hot days. After the boat trip Hank, Angie and Sam returned to Helsinki.

I had to give some water to the flowers and herbs (first time this summer!). The peonies have big gorgeous flowers, both white and purple, in our flower bed. In addition, plantain lily and malva start to blossom.
In the evening, JD’s daughter Nelli and her partner Mike arrived with their cat Tiipii for their two weeks’ holiday.

Herb garden fantasies

There’s a French style herb garden on Kemiö (Kimito) Island, Westers, located some 15 minutes drive from our house towards Angelniemi. If you like to see or buy different types of herbs and flowers, this is the place to visit in summer. I go there frequently to fantasize, get ideas, plan and just enjoy the beautiful flower beds, pots, settings and decorations. In July there are unbelievably many different colors, species and smells in the air.

I went there with Rose on Tuesday. The place is closed on Mondays and opens at noon on other weekdays. There’s also a café and an art gallery – and quite often, the restaurant hosts private events.

I didn’t need anything, but couldn’t resist a lemon thyme in blossom, some salads, a rare golden perennial (have to find the name..) and foxgloves.

Rose left for Helsinki in the afternoon, and two hours later, JD's son Hank, his wife Angie and Sam (5 yrs) arrived for their first visit to Kemiö this summer. As the day was sunny and warm (luckily, it IS July), we had a late dinner outside. We made Lemon Chicken á la Kemiö, which has turned out to be good for adults and kids.

Lemon Chicken (for 5 persons):

- 9-10 flat chicken cutlets

- Marinade: 1 dl of virgin olive oil, grated peel and juice of one large lemon, freshly ground black pepper, one cup of chopped sage (sometimes I add mynth or thyme)

- Let the chicken cutlets marinate one hour in the marinade, then put them on a hot grill for a few minutes on both sides

- Serve with rice or, as we did, stuffed and baked red peppers.

Chilled chardonnay or sauvignon blanc goes well with this light meal. For desert we had again strawberries and vanilla ice cream.

Wild roses and lazy days

There has been more rain this summer than for years, say the local farmers. Our garden looks green and lush without any watering – there are many different roses, the kinds that do not need much attention, and now they are all in blossom. So are the wild roses along the roads. There are also some old mallows, beautiful white flowers, increasing fast in the flower bed.

Finally, one week after Midsummer the sun stayed for a couple of days and the temperature was above 20 degrees. We went to buy strawberries (8 liters – sweet and excellent) from our favorite seller on Turuntie with Henna and Emma.

The girls saw three lambs in a pen and we all went inside to feed them.

When back to the house, the load of firewood JD ordered from the mansion nearby had arrived. We need it to heat the beach sauna, to warm the water in the outdoor hot tub, and in the fireplace. The firewood had to be piled in the shed, so that was my gym and jogging for the next two days. One hour piling wood – 15 minutes swimming – then comes a reward: two hours reading a book (just started Ian McEwan’s Atonement).

On Sunday the kids returned to Helsinki, and suddenly, the house was quiet and empty again. Just Rose, JD and me – enjoyable for a change. The evening was so hot that we decided to make a light dinner, our favorite summer meal, ‘pasta puttanesca’ and ate it outside with a bottle of rosé.

Pasta puttanesca for 3 adults:

 - Cook 6 anjovis filees, 1 teaspoonful of chili flakes and 4 cloves garlic (crushed) in virgin olive oil

- Add 10 chopped tomatoes and some black pepper, cook some 10 minutes
- Add 12 large capers (chopped) and some 15 pitted calamata olives (cut in halves)
- Finally, add two bunches of basil (chopped) just before serving with spaghetti

First chanterelles popping up

Thanks to the rains in June, the chanterelles have started to pop up, actually one week earlier than normally. I found the first small chanterelles on 24th June. However, they were so few that have to wait a couple of weeks until we get enough for a meal. Behind our house there’s a forest with plenty of chanterelles.

There are also some flowers that have been placed under protection in Finland, such as Lesser Butterfly-orchid (valkolehdokki) which was in blossom right after Midsummer.

In the garden the Iris pseudacorus (kurjenmiekka) is the most handsome flower at the moment.

On a cool rainy day we drove with my sister-in-law Rose to Söderlongvik gardens  to buy some chili and tomato plants as well as more flowers…

Summer soup

Once in the summer we cook the so called ‘summer soup’ from the first small carrots, cauliflower, peas and Siikli potatoes. This was the day. We found all the ingredients along the road in small stalls where you can pick what you need and leave the money in a box. You get fresh and often organic grown vegetables - and support local farmers. There's a proverb on Kemiö, in Swedish:  'Håll pengarna på ön!' which translates 'Keep the money on the Island!'

The spinache leaves are normally hard to find, but this year the local S-Market surprised us. Without spinace the soup is not as it should be.

The summer soup requires dark rye bread, and Kemiö bakery has definitely the best rye bread in Finland. They have won awards for that. You just have to go before noon to buy it, otherwise the shelves may be empty. With warm bread and butter, this milky soup becomes a delicacy.

Midsummer feast

We started Midsummer preparations already in May, when JD bought 5kg of veal tenderloin in vacuum. He planned that after six weeks in our refridgerator at 0 degrees the meet would be just perfect to be grilled in our Midsummer feast. At that time we counted 15-17 persons to join us, but the final number reduced to 11, just family and one new partner/friend to my son. So there was plenty of meet…

The weather was perfect on Midsummer eve, sunny and +20C. We fetched the preordered potatoes – the first Siiklis – from our favorite potato seller on Turuntie.  My sister-in-law brought 8 liters of strawberries grown in Muurla.

The day was so hot, that kids were bathing in the sun and even swimming in the sea. I cleaned the beach sauna and started heating it at 3 pm with birch logs.

Then I saw a bird’s nest above the sauna door, it was swallow’s nest. We decided to move it to a better place, but then while moving the nest noticed that it had five nestlings. This was tragic – the mother swallow didn’t find the nest and the nestlings were abandoned. All our fault! Later in the evening another swallow (or maybe the desperate mother) flew against a window and got a heart attack. We had to bury that bird, too. For Emma (5 yrs) this was too much, she cried.

It took six hours to make the sauna so hot that it would stay hot all night for several groups of visitors. Meanwhile, we cooked dinner, and at 6pm we raised the Finnish flag and started eating outside.

Our menu was quite typical Finnish Midsummer menu (for 11 persons):

Siikli potatoes (4 kg), butter, dill
Various types of Baltic herring
Smoked Norwegian salmon (one large fish)

* * *

Veal tenderloin, grilled in one peace (2 tenderloins, appr. 3.5 kg, seasoned with Kosher salt, black pepper and dried herbs)
Green salad with 5 herbs dressing  (Virgin olive oil, white balsamico, Herbamare, basil, sage, thym, mint, rosemary, black pepper, honey)

* * *

Strawberries
Lime Mascarpone cream, mint leaves

The sun was shining all night and the music was reggae. Smaller ones went to sauna first, then to a hot tub and to bed.  Younger men sneaked inside to watch football (European championship games) and others were sitting outside long after midnight.

Midsummer day was rainy and easygoing. We had late breakfast/brunch and went for a walk just before the rain.

We repeated the rituals with sauna and hot tub, and for dinner JD prepared on the grill a special entrecote Wagyu steak from New Zeeland (normally not available in Finland, but he found it just before Midsummer). The two kilos was just enough for good-size rib-eye steaks for the eight of us left for dinner. JD added only Kosher salt to the meat which was very tender and juicy, tasted excellent and turned out to be the best steak we ever had. Even little Ollie said nam, nam.

More noise



Little Ollie was mainly busy with the tractor

 A week to go until Midsummer, and we got some life to the house. JD's sister, daughter and her partner with their three kids (aged from 2 to 10) spent the weekend with us. The house was suddenly filled with noice - around the clock.

Men were cleaning the terraces and patios with pressure washer, carried the grills (yes, JD has several...) and heavy outdoor furniture out from the garage and prepared the summer kitchen for the season while the girls went to buy summer flowers in Agrimarket and Cassandra downtown Kemiö. Luckily we took the bigger car, because we found irresistible flowers and had 50 plants in the trunk on the way back.

The garden looked good because it had been raining. The poppies that had not blossomed a week ago, had almost withered. Everybody was busy doing something out of doors (again moving the lawns as well) and so we were very hungry in the evening. I made children's (and actually everyone's) favourite dish, pasta bolognese - takes only some 30 minutes to cook, is simple and makes everyone happy. Served with grated cheese and good South African pinotage it beats many restaurants' food. 

Pasta bolognese for 10 people
- take a large cast iron pot (e.g. Le Croiset)
- chop 2 large onions and 5 gloves garlic, cook in olive oil
- add 1.5 kg of good minced meat (beef), let it brown
- season with black pepper and 2-3 spoonfuls of dried basil (or fresh)
- pour one large can of Bertolli pasta sauce (2.2 liters) in the pot
- let it simmer while you cook 1 kg spaghetti

It was too cold to eat outside. Before dinner, we went to sauna, and after dinner we watched a family movie alltogether, Mrs. Doubtfire. Even seen the third time, it was great!

On Sunday, I made a walk in the forest with Henna (10 yrs). We saw Rhododendron Tomentosum (suopursu) which smells strong and can be used as a herbal medicine.

We saw Finland's national flower,  Lily of the Valley (kielo), which was my mothers' favorite wild flower and she had them in her wedding bouquet. All the roadsides were taken over by hundreds of wild Lupinus polyphyllus (lupiini). 

Fight against beetles

We were celebrating JD's birthday in the city with all the kids and some friends in the new Boulevard Social Restaurant (very tasty but also tight and noisy for our group of 17 people..), and therefore had only Saturday evening and Sunday to spend on Kemiö island. In 6 days all these new flowers had popped up!

To my big surprise, also the scarlet lily beetles (liljakukko), whom I learned to know last summer, had already started to eat lilies, most of them had wholes on the leaves.
And the little red beetles were all mating - that means that next week there would be no lilies left! I found from Google that the only way to get rid of them is to boil them. So I headed to the flower bed with a kettle of boiling water and picked these little creatures two at a time with rubber gloves and dropped in the boiling water. I went back a couple of times, and found more.
I guess this has to be renewed next week.

For dinner, we cooked virgin potatoes grown in Perniö and sold by the road (the seller was drunk again as he did last summer almost every time we passed by). With butter, dill and baltic herring it was delicious. For desert, I made a compote of rhubarbe growing in the garden, seasoned with cinnamon and vanilla, which needed then vanilla ice cream to balance the acidity of rhubarbe. So, this weekend I said Goodbye to my low-carb diet.

Weeds taken over

I had a short stay with my son on the island, just one night, to mowing the lawns and check that the newly planted flowers are doing well. Weeds taken over the lawn! Millions of dandelions everywhere, actually very beautiful. It's amazing how much a plant can grow in one week! My son Yaffa spent several hours with the mower to get the grass look like grass (he was paid for the job, otherwise would rather play some games in the basement..).

It was +23C, sunny and as hot as in the best days in July. Had to protect skin from burning. The first summer day!

I made a light salad for lunch, some lettuce, cherry tomatos (unfortunately from Spain at this time of the year), basilika and buffalo mozzarella with dressing of virgin olive oil, white wine vinegar, Herbamare and black pepper. Tasted summer!

After the lawn was done, apple trees looked fantastic - the buds had just opened and the trees were in full blossom. That view you cannot miss, it lasts only one week. It was a pitty that we had to leave for Helsinki early in the sunny afternoon.

Lizards and bats woken up

Another peaceful weekend, just JD and I, in the big house. Finally the sun started to warm up all those apple, plumb and cherry trees waiting eagerly in bud. It took only one sunny day for the first white flowers of the cherry trees to pop up.

Leena Törmä, an artist living in Turku, has made this garden statue.

I worked with some flower beds, but most of the time just enjoyed the sun and warmth, just like the statue in my garden. Besides me, there were some other creatures in the garden bathing in the sun, a lizard (viviparous lizard, sisilisko) and I also saw a copper brown blindwarm or slow warm (Anguis fragilis, vaskitsa) moving slowly through grass. Yäk, to me it is a snake, although I know that it doesn't do any harm and it has been placed under protection.

In our house, somewhere above the living room window and under the roof, there lives a colony of bats which are also under protection in Finland. So we have the pleasure of enjoying them flying around in the evenings. This weekend the bats had also woken up from their winter sleep to find something to eat. Luckily they are small and not vampyres - anyhow a bit disgusting.


Lamprocapnos spectabilis (särkynyt sydän) almost in blossom



Last tulips (tulppaani)



Still spring

Bad weather on Saturdays continued. The wind was blowing hard bringing showers every now and then. It was too cold to do anything in the garden. This is unusual at this time of the year. Anyhow, I went to my usual walk to the forest.


Oxalis acetosella

Some new spring flowers were trying to blossom. There was Oxalis acetosella (ketunleipä, käenkaali), which is edible and has some vitamins. I remember eating it as a kid when we were playing in the close-by forest. 

 

Then the first pink wild blueberry flowers had appeard in the forest. There's plenty of wild blueberries on Kemiö Island, last summer we picked several tens of liters of them. 



Bloody dock

In the garden the Bloody dock (Rumex sanguineus; viinisuolaheinä) surprised me. I bought it last summer as a salad and then planted the rest not used in the salad. I thought that will die in the winter, but it is perennial and doing well after all that snow and frost we had last winter. There's also plenty of stinging nettles (Urtica dioica; nokkonen) popping up under the bushes. I decided to make a nettle soup on Sunday night, the first try ever.

Sunday, the second in May and Mother's Day, was luckily sunny and +13C. I spent all the day out of doors, planning what to do with the flowers and herbs during the summer. The men came to install the pier that was taken on the shore for the winter, so now we are ready to welcome the summer (except for the boat, which will be brought in June). Actually, there's a lot of things to be done in the house before we'll start the summer. Our upstairs bathroom is being renovated and that brings a lot of dust allover. There'll be a lot of cleaning before the holidays can start.

The first edible greens

Saturday 5th May, 2012 was a rainy and quite cool day. Not much to do outside in Kemiö, therefore JD (my beloved husband) and I decided to go to Salo for some shopping. There's a marvellous shoe shop you can't miss, Zapato, selling beautiful Italian shoes and recently more and more clothes as well. So JD went to look at grills while I spent an hour trying on dozens of shoes. Unfortunately, no shoes of my size (41) that I would fell in love with right away, but couldn't leave the shop without buying a black jacked with smocked sleeves.

In the afternoon, the rain stopped and I went to check the beach.It looked ugly: some strange foam had landed the coast. Can it be nitrogen from fertilizers flowing to the sea from the fields? Or just foam caused by strong wind...

I had planned to make parsnip (palsternakka) puree for dinner and luckily the first lovage  (lipstikka) had grown big enough to season the puree.  

Lovage (lipstikka)

 In addition, I made some steaks (from organic grown beef) and for the sauce I  found a box of funghi porcini (herkkutatti) in the freezer. I fried some mild onions in butter, added the mushrooms and poored some cream and let them cook for 15 minutes. The sauce tasted perfect - thanks to a spoonful of Sherry Oloroso. We had a fairly good dinner.

On Sunday, it was a great sunny day and you got a feeling that summer is finally coming. I had a long walk with Nordic sticks in the surrounding forests, keeping the eyes to the ground in case the first gyromitra esculenta mushrooms (korvasieni) had popped up. None yet.

Sunny, warm day (+15 C), however, the wind from the sea was brisk. The birds have now returned from Africa to make their nests on the Kemiö island (which is the hottest place in Finland most of the year).
The grass is green, hepaticas and the first garden flowers are in blossom. I saw the first yellow brimstone yesterday above the daffodils.

Some herbs pop up already in my small herbarium, but have to wait until the next weekend to make a parsnip puree flavored with lovage. I had a change to taste it last May in Champagne, France, and it was delicious.