Trip to FInland, 4

Food

I loved the food I ate in Finland. From the coffee to the fish soup. Especially the fish soup. There were so many kinds of rye bread, too. One for every town, it seemed. Then there were Tarja's pastries, yeasted sweet rolls, and Wille's enormous pancakes. I liked the sausage, the cheese, but especially the potatoes. Those potatoes were delicious, every last one of them. Boy, what potatoes!

I had fun seeing how people made their coffee. Most often, I saw the yellow coffeemaker at Ilpo and Merja's summer house. It looked a lot like my coffeemaker at home, except it was yellow and prettier. Then there was Elsa Bergmann's percolator. I had never made coffee in a percolator before, believe it or not. Freshly prepared percolator coffee is just fine, quite tasty. The Moccamaster coffeemakers were funny, two-part affairs that looked like they sat on a two-burner hotplate. I liked them all, and all the coffee they made. What fun! At home, Brad and I have tried making coffee many different ways, over the years. It's always fun to try a new coffee gadget.

Now that I'm home, I want to find recipes for rye flatbreads. I want to make that fish soup, probably with salmon. I want, need to find a recipe for the shaved beef with gravy. And I have promised myself to choose my potatoes more carefully.

Here in Maryland, I often try to buy local food. In Finland, I didn't worry about that. And I know that the Finnish tomatoes I ate came from greenhouses. I might not eat a greenhouse tomato at home. In Finland, I ate grapes from Egypt. I think it would have been wonderful to have some wild Finnish blueberries, if I'd been there in late July (or August?), but the grapes were good too. I certainly ate some local bread and fish, and other foods too. I didn't talk to people about what a local-food diet might be, but the food I ate was wholesome and tasty. Here, have a strawberry, or maybe a potato. And please, pass that salmon over my way.