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.