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!