Newborn's parents do get to eat too

Well, to tell you the truth, at first it felt like we wouldn't. Or at least at the point where we did have time to eat, it was so late I just wanted to fall in bed and play dead. Especially my life was suddenly all about eating, but instead of the cook or the eater I had become the food. The days are still short - and I mean that literally. The sun rises at 9:06 and sets at 15:19 currently, so that leaves about 6 hours of daytime. But either we've learned to plan ahead or the little newbie has started to pick up some sort of a life rhythm, since our dinners have started to return towards normal.

After the everyday posting of Vegan MoFo during September it's been relaxing just to cook without thinking if this stuff fits my blog or is there still enough light for taking pictures without colours that would make any dish seem unappetizing. But I have thought about you. I've kept a diary of my main meal of the day for a solid month. Not all of these can be called Finnish or vegan, but perhaps it gives you a bit more honest picture of what I really eat. These kinds of menus people make have been a great idea source for myself when planning what to cook, so I hope to pass the help on.

Some of these are dishes I've already posted, some I might be posting in the future. If something sounds so tempting you'd like to have the recipe for it, leave me a note so I'll remember to cook it soon enough again.

Mon Macaroni casserole
Tue Leftover casserole
Wed Miso soup with tofu, leek, noodles and sweet potato
Thu Leftover soup, convenience food tortellinis (Eating was delayed so late we felt too tired to cook anything real anymore. Again.) 
Fri Salad with quinoa, chickpeas and cucumber (A lot like this, just with quinoa instead of millet)
Sat Tofu and frozen vegetables on a pan (At my spouse's parents.)
Sun Leftover salad, pancakes

Mon Burritos
Tue Spinach pancakes, brown sauce with quorn and mustard, lingonberry cram and alfalfa sprouts
Wed Chickpea, cauliflower and coconut curry with rice
Thu Mozzarella sticks, smoothie (I don't usually count smoothies as a meal but this was one of those badly planned nights again, so I just grabbed something from the freezer.)
Fri Spinach, nettle and lentil lasagna
Sat Chinese take-out (We were having the naming ceremony on the next day so my spouse's sister came to take care of the baby so we could clean and cook. After that it seemed too late for making a dinner, so we ate with sticks on the living room carpet.)
Sun Karelian pasties, beet and bean soup (I made three kinds of filling to the pasties and turned the remains, mostly the beet one into a soup by adding water and couple of handfuls of a colourful bean mixture.)

Mon Leftover soup
Tue French fries and soy sausages
Wed Seitan kebab, rice, tomato sauce and yogurt sauce
Thu Hemp and carrot patties, potatoes and brown sauce with crushed tomatoes
Fri Leftover patties
Sat Kekri feast table (Couple of friends invited us to celebrate the traditional Halloween type end of the year's cycle to the ecovillage where they live. Most ingredients in the standing table dinner had been grown by the villagers or gathered nearby. It featured for example fried green fava beans, mushroom salad and rutabaga casserole)
Sun Pizza / falafel (I don't know whether this is true elsewhere, but at least in Finland Turkish immigrants seem to run restaurants serving pizzas, kebabs and falafels just about everywhere, even in the smallest villages. On the way home we stopped eating at one of these tasty places.)

Mon Pea soup and rye bread
Tue Rieska "pizzas" topped with (lupin) tempeh and pear
Wed Oven tofu topped with bean stalks and pineapple, mashed potatoes
Thu Soy strip and fruit salad
Fri Seitan in red wine, spelt
Sat Quorn burgers
Sun Leftover seitan and braised kale, talkkuna pannukakku

Mon Chili, bell pepper and tofu pie
Tue Savoy cabbage loaf and balsamic beet (Basically, I made just one big cabbage roll instead of many regular ones to speed up the cooking.)

VeganMoFo Round Up

It's been a busy month with MoFo. I didn't quite meet my goal, which was to post every day, but I did easily surpass the official goal of 20 posts. At first I was super excited and thought about food half of my day, but later on it started to feel more like a necessity that often slipped towards the evening. The last couple of days I felt so tired I just decided to skip the whole thing.

Still, this was very educational experience and I'm quite certain I'm going to participate again. It was especially fun to find new interesting blogs and see what others posted. The least fun part of it was to think all your meals in the way you would have something to post about. Think the better way of managing this would be to have "cooking for blogging" days where I could prepare lots of things for one meal and then just forget about it for a few days. That way there would always be some spare recipes and pictures to post about during the eventual busy days.

One thing that really surprised me was that kale chips climbed straight into one of my most popular posts ever. And I thought whether such a simple recipe, previously posted by half the food blogs already, is worth posting at all. Apparently, there are still lots of people who found the idea useful. So new food bloggers, please just forget about all those lame tips aimed for starting food bloggers.

And to satisfy my fetish for making lists:

Out of 25 postings, what did I actually cook?

- 7 mushrooms dishes (much smaller percentage than I expected)
- 5 berry dishes
- 3 brassica dishes
- 3 dishes for preserving autumn harvest
- only one dish that didn't use any autumn harvest
- 3-7 dishes you might call traditional
- 6-10 dishes where i used other recipe at least as the base (more than I imagined)
- 9-13 dinner items (less than I would've imagined)
- 3 dishes I'd call a bit laborious
- around 10 very simple dishes ready in no time

What I'm going to eat this month, now that I don't need to worry about the MoFo anymore?

- What ever my spouse wants to cook. Just bring it on the couch while I play Psychonauts.
- All those delicious sounding recipes other people have posted during the month
- Recipeless dishes like "throw something on the pan"
- Some of my old favourite dishes I have already posted in the year X. Hello cabbage rolls, I haven't seen you for ages.
- Dishes definitely not Finnish in any way. Right now I especially crave for some Thai cuisine.
- Tacos! Taco cleanse sounds for once like a fad diet even I might try. Perhaps it would work with the new baby in the house too.
- Still, I'll need to find use for the harvest from our little garden, hopefully even for more mushrooms. So don't worry, I'm still going to have lots of things to post about.

What kind of theme I might try during the next MoFo?

- Salmiakki!
- Adventures in feeding a one-year-old midget.
- Introducing mushrooms (in case it's still held during September) or beer types
- Dishes from a certain time period. My flatmate would probably love if I asked her advice with medieval cuisine.
- Classic Finnish pastries.
- Reviewing a cook book per day (and of course preparing some recipe from it)
- Finnish versions. Taking well-known dishes from around the world and completely raping them with domestic ingredients.
- Low carb diet.
- Camping/wilderness dishes.
- Cheap and fast dinner ideas. (This might be a little hard since those attributes change depending on who you ask and where they live. But as an example.)
- Chili peppers!

Hiking Menu

This summer my baby belly is so big and my speed so slow I'll better settle for short hikes in nearby national parks. Basically in the Southern Finland they're so small you can't really do more than weekend trips in them. If you really want to see wilderness you have to go up north to Lapland. Last summer I made my first "real" hike in Urho Kekkonen National Park and now dream of more of those. Seeing this post about food packages of a one-night trek I realized someone might find use for the food list of our last year's hike, since I think we managed pretty well for two complete newbies. My spouse hadn't done even short hikes before this but thanks to compulsory military service Finnish men have to through I felt more than confident he'd understand what he's doing.

Our actual trip took six days but if you're going to wilderness it's always a good idea to take one or two days worth of extra equipment. And if you're going to walk 90 kilometers carrying everything you might need on your back (plus carry the containers away as well), you want to pack as lightly as possible. So that basically means you don't want to drag much liquids, tin cans or fresh veggies along. In the autumn there are mushrooms and berries you can use but otherwise the national park rules limit foraging ideas quite a lot. I like to think myself a good packer, and with planning we managed to keep the starting weight of both backpacks well under 20 kilos though we carried along a tent we only used once and my old but loyal camping stove is probably one of the heaviest available. Also, you'll want everything to cook fast and be easy to prepare without a proper kitchen.

Some of the convenience food packages we bought from a local market probably had some animal-based ingredients in them (we didn't check) but there shouldn't be anything here you couldn't find vegan.

For breakfast:
- 12 bags of only-add-water oatmeal porridge
- 11 bags of only-add-water kissel
- a package of harsh coffee grounds suitable for cooking in a pan
- a packet of rye crisp bread
- a tube of tomato and tofu paté

Snacks and evening treats:
- 772 g dried fruits (banana, apricot, pineapple, raisin, date and papaya) 
- 616 g hot peas, curry cashews and smoked almonds 
- 6 vegan jerkys
- 8 vegan dry sausages and hemp bars
- 6 flapjacks
- a chocolate bar
- 0.5 l cut brandy (Jallu is a classic camping booze)
- different herb teas
- pancake ingredients mixed in bag except for water
- a small plastic bag of sugar
- a tube of multivitamin effervescent tablets

Main dishes:
- 464 g lenses
- 220 g crushed horse beans
- 136 g roasted onion
- 142 g dried vegetables
- 162 g textured soy protein strips
- a package of ready made dry ingredients for hemp patties 
- 2 bags of dry root vegetable mash ingredients
- 3 bags of dry sauce ingredients
- 3 bags of dry soup ingredients
- 4 bags of dry pasta and stew meal ingredients
- 400 g macaroni
- chick pea omelet ingredients mixed in a bag except for water
- small amount of salt, a bottle of chili sauce and a garlic
- 2 dl rape oil

Divided by six this all of this weights about 700 g for each of us a day. In terms of nutrients this means:

All:
energy 30142 kcal
fat 952 g
protein 1076 g
carbohydrates 3940 g
fiber 509 g

Daily portion per person:
energy 2512 kcal
fat 79 g
protein 90 g
carbohydrates 328 g
fiber 42 g

Q&A

I got this acknowledgement from  Paula of Veikeä verso. Thank you, Paula!

The rules of the challenge:

1. Thank the person who gave you this challenge.
2. Answer the 11 questions proposed for you.
3. Make up 11 questions. (All don't have to concern food like this one.)
4. Share the acknowledgement for11 blogs with under 200 readers.

1. Your favourite dish/ingredient?

This keeps changing a lot. As you may have noticed, the first green wild veggies were like a small  heaven for me after the long, dark winter, when there wasn't much crunchy and tasty things available. Perhaps at the moment it's tomatoes, new potatoes, nettle and zucchini. Also, I'm very eager to sink my teeth into those first strawberries.

2. Your least favourite dish/ingredient?

I've pretty much taught myself to like all the things I didn't, first of all because it makes life easier and second of all, because I have a low tolerance for grown-ups being picky. But I do sneer at bland food that hasn't been made with love and respect for the ingredients. Examples include "pea soup" where peas are the only ingredient, those mayonnaise breads you can get from every kiosk, a bag of frozen vegetables just thrown on a pan without any seasonings that gets called a meal and "vegetarian pastas" in chain restaurants without a single source of protein besides tons of cheese. You know, the stuff that's more like feed than food and which makes a bag of potato chips seem like a tempting choice.

3. What kitchen equipment you wouldn't give up?

This question seems to be on the line "how primitive are you ready to go". Though the first things that pop into my mind are a stove and a refrigerator, perhaps a good, sharp kitchen knife as well as a dishwasher are really closer to the answer it's looking for.

4. A kitchen inutility?

Guess this is only a matter of what you actually use. But can't say I fully understand the idea of a separate rice cooker that seems to make more trouble than just boiling the damn rice in a kettle. I assume it's useful if you're keeping a Thai restaurant but in a normal home kitchen? Also, I find the habit of my spouse wanting to wrap all leftovers in plastic a bit icky but try to bear it.

5. Your fast food tip for workdays?

During summer there's nothing easier than a filling salad. In wintertime I tend to favour chopping everything from the fridge on a frying pan with some spices.

6. Your best party/feast dish?

They change depending on the nature of the given feast. Besides, I rarely like to prepare the same thing twice for the same people. But I think my dip sauces have always done rather well.

7. What kind of kitchen philosophy or food principles do you follow?

I hope most of my philosophy is apparent in this blog. I favour food made from the scratch, choosing best ingredients of the season and preparing them in a way that brings out their own aroma and couldn't have been the same on the other side of the planet. I respect resourcefulness and fresh ideas, but resurrecting traditions is also valuable. If you're interested in my ethical concerns, I just wrote about them with a bit more depth.

8. Your favourite restaurant?

I don't go to restaurants that often but when I do, I usually prefer good-quality Asian places since they tend to have real vegetarian choices and offer a different taste world from most my own cooking. For a tourist in Tampere I'd recommend Plevna because of the historical atmosphere and perhaps the best beer in all Finland.

9. Your favourite café?

I'm more of a pub person, but Kahvilla right next to me is an adorably cozy and hippie place with a lot of options and a sincere attempt to make their customers just hang out there, playing games, meeting friends and listening to music.

10. To who's dinner table would you like to get to?

My friend Päivi Lehtonen just released her first cook book Kotipuutarhan keittokirja, which concentrates on finding use for things that people often get from their gardens more than they can handle. She's a biology doctor who decided to change her research career for becoming a cook specialised in local food. So far I've only had a change to taste some of her individual dishes, so it would be interesting to get to savour through a whole dinner planned by Päivi.

11. What would you want to learn to cook?

Oh I could just write a neverending list here. I haven't really found the sparkle for raw cooking yet, I'd like to become a decent confectioner someday, molecular cuisine presents tons of tempting ideas and haute cuisine still seems like only a matter of arranging the items nicely on the plate to me. Little by little I think I've finally built up enough of confidence to host some dinner parties for friends, so that's something I'm sure I'm going to do more. Another thing I'd definitely like to become an expert is cooking for children, since we're waiting for our first baby at the moment and I have really no idea what those things should be fed with after the initial breast feeding period, beyond the fact that it shouldn't contain salt. Yikes!

My questions:
1. Who are your greatest kitchen heroes besides mom?
2. Best alcohol drink for cooking?
3. What kind of a food-centered feast would you like to take part in?
4. If I was coming over for a dinner, what would you cook?
5. How much time do you normally use for cooking?
6. Do you plan your weekly menus in advance?
7. Your most horrible restaurant experience?
9. At the moment, what kind of ingredients are the easiest to acquire where you live?
8. What would you cook while trekking in wilderness?
10. In what country have you got the best food so far?
11. What country would you like to visit just for the sake of food?

I challenge:
Greek vegetarian
Green Gourmet Giraffe
Czech Vegan (in America)
Life Up North
While Chasing Kids
K-kos
Reissausta ja ruokaa
Eläimetöntä
Noidankoto
Villikataja
Eräjormailua

Some opening up about my complicated relationship to food ethics

I find it interesting that people often seem to jump to the conclusion that I'm a vegan since I keep a vegan food blog. Some have even said they can't follow my blog because it's vegan. For me, it's really hard to get inside this logic. What is it so terrible about oat cream that only a vegan could use it? I mean, I've never refused for a gluten-free bread or seen anything disgusting about it even if I mostly use Finnish grains (which all contain glutein). On the contrary, I'd like to learn some gluten-free baking myself just because I'm interested to see how it works and possibly to get more variation to my diet that way.

In reality, my relationship with food ethics is much more complicated and defies categories. I do respect vegans a lot since they, unlike most people it seems, actually follow their own ethical principles. Then again, I also respect hunters who are ready to kill their own food, at least the ones who stay in moderation and show proper respect to their prey. I also respect people who take good care of their pet chickens and eat their eggs. On the other hand, I don't have much of any respect towards the meat industry that only sees other living beings as production units and torturing them in any way acceptable as long as it's profitable. Or people who lie to their children this is how cows they abuse live. Also, I find the amazing amounts of animal products people in the western world have come to eat today as anything but sustainable or healthy and think it's utterly unreasonable to eat them every day let alone on every single meal.

After sixth grade when I had started to realise where sausages come from I stopped eating red meat. I kept eating fish though, which was probably a good thing for my health considering I had no idea about nutrition or protein sources and the grownups in that small hillbilly town had even less. For a long, long time, I accustomed to food being something that everyone around me – including my friends, family and first boyfriends – could freely mock me about and that didn't need to taste much of anything. Still, writing about my thoughts this openly feels uncomfortable. When I met my ex who's a lacto-ovo vegetarian we ate the same food of course and after a while I realized I hadn't eaten fish in a whole year so maybe it wasn't something I'd really need or even miss anyway. The years with him also taught me to actually cook instead of just warming convinience food and that food can really be something fun and pleasurable thing that has the power of bringing us together.

My blog is vegan because nearly all the food I cook is. Simple isn't it? It's not completely vegan though. On the last new year's eve we hosted a Japanese evening for friends and that included a tamagoyaki, and couple of times during the spring I've made pizza with cheeze on top. I don't think my blog would gain anything more if I posted those foods too. I find food blogs with a clear theme are usually better, so I try to tell you guys about the kind of cuisine I have something I can share. That means for example that since I consider myself more expert in Finnish food, I won't even try to tell you guys how to make sushi – the Internet is full of great instructions already, sometimes even written by Japanese themselves, but finding information about Finnish food culture in English is much harder. In the same way, I feel the world is full enough of animal recipes so I might as well recommend something I think people could eat more often, be they vegan or not.

Outside home I usually go with the title lacto-ovo vegetarian purely since I'm a lazy bastard and in the countryside even that can leave you hungry. Not always sure if that's such a good idea though. That seems to give some meat eaters the idea that vegetarian food absolutely must contain eggs and cow milk, which has practically made me hate butter and cream that seem to cover any other taste on my plate with that somehow rotten one. (Sometimes I even get this weird impulse of wanting to strangle the first person who got the idea of ruining a perfectly good cake with whipped cream.) Also, I'm not especially fond of the idea of consciously acquiring osteoporosis or raising my risk for cancer. I do love good quality cheese with wine and some sour milk products with quite a unique taste like piimä (a type of buttermilk), but of course I only eat them couple of times a year and could perfectly give up that bulk I don't even like. At the moment that's the direction I'm aiming at.

But I can't say my personal ideal of the moment is going totally vegan either. I don't think I'm ever going to care about carefully examining product descriptions in case of animal based food additives, though I would ideally like to cook most of the things I eat myself anyway and discard candies or such alltogether. I'll probably continue using otherwise such a handy mycoprotein source as Quorn though the company making it uses egg as a binder instead of some better ingredient. Moreover, I've been thinking I could learn to include some meat I feel ethically sound about in my diet a few times a year, mostly out of principle. This summer I'm planning I'd try fishing first time since childhood and next time I visit Lapland I might take a bite of reindeer that are let free to roam and eat the things they're adapted to eat – no matter what some Englishmen think. Lately I've also been seriously pondering about the possibility of rasing insects for food like UN wishes.

Still, I don't see much reason to include these possible attempts in Mämmi, just like I don't include sushi. This blog will always stay vegan and that's a promise.

A Food Meme

Lately, I've seen many Finnish food bloggers I follow answering the same questionnaire, for example Kamomilla from Kamomillan konditoria. I've found it interesting to read what they have to say so thought I'd go for it as well.

How do you enjoy your coffee/tea?

First thing in the morning: two mugs of filter coffee with a drop of oat milk. If no vegetable milk or unprocessed cow milk is available I'd rather have it black please. I'm not a big fan of espresso-based coffees though I drink them sometimes (unlike those awful quick coffees) but love Japanese-style black ice coffee.

I also prepare a lot of different loose teas and herbal teas. Basic black tea is something I can't drink without a sweetener and I often throw in some spices as well. During summertime I always keep some self-made ice tea in the fridge.

What's your favourite breakfast?

Lately I've been eating porridge with some jam plus a carrot, but more often it's been toasted rye bread with changing toppings. And coffee is always what comes first, something I won't give up even when traveling.

Peanut butter?

Maybe once a year. Don't really know where to use it.

What kind of a dressing do you want with your salad?

Usually just oil and vinegar.

Coke or Pepsi?

Can't say I'd like either one but Pepsi Max passes.

You're feeling lazy, what will you make?

I'll wait for my spouse to come home and cook me something. Or if he's not around I just nibble things without cooking them.

You feel like cooking, what will you make?

Check my idea list (which I've ordered by month). Or just see what I have in the fridge and throw them on the frying pan.

Does some dish give you bad memories?

Those watery, tasteless mashes they serve in canteens. The one especially giving me creeps is the so-called ratatouille.

Does some dish remind you of someone?

Nearly all I've ever eaten. For example macaroni soup reminds me of my dad, cabbage rolls remind me of my mum, soy sausages remind me of spouse, sparkling wine jelly and vatruskas remind me of certain friends.

Is there a dish you would refuse to eat?

I try not to eat meat unless I'm about to die in starvation (Though when I have accidentally bought something that looked vegetarian but contained 'little surprises' in Eastern Europe I've forced myself to eat it anyway since I wouldn't want to throw it away.) but otherwise no, not really, provided it hasn't gone bad or anything.

I've got myself accustomed to nearly all the things I didn't originally like. Eggplant still makes me a bit suspicious though. And once I said no thank you to my spouse's habanero dish that made my whole body hurt after just one spoonful. (He on the other hand ate it crying and kept telling how sorry he was.) Also, it may take a moment before I want to try habanero absinthe the second time.

What was your childhood favourite food?

Potatoes with brown sauce, 'hamburgers' (toast, mustard, ketchup and pickles) with milk. Oh, and mealy sausage, cold, with mustard.

Is there a food you hated as a child but now love?

Just ask how many! But I think spinach soup wins this category easily.

Your favourite fruit and vegetable?

These keep changing all the time. At the moment I'd say strawberries and tomatoes.

Your favourite junk food?

Sadly, cheese. The smellier, the better.

Your favourite snack?

Rye bread with different toppings, fruits in many forms, nuts.

Do you have any weird food habits?

Does it count that I think french fries are at their best frozen? Some may also find it odd that every time we eat dinner we simultaneously watch a Simpsons episode from a computer. At the moment we're in the middle of the 14th season.

You're on a diet. What shall you eat?

I don't believe in diets but many soups make filling yet low-calorie meals. Although every time my weight really has gone down I've been living mainly on sandwiches.

You finished your diet. What would you like to have?

A pint of some chocolaty porter, please.

How hot do you order your Indian/Thai food?

Intermediate.

Something to drink?

With food, usually tab water.

Red or white?

In case this means wine and not for example taking sides in Finnish Civil War, red.

Your favourite dessert?

I don't usually eat desserts but ice cream with slightly frozen berries go down anytime.

The perfect nightcap?

A spicy and sweet cup of tea with a generous amount of brandy or whiskey.

What's your first baking or cooking memory?

Can't say what comes first but I was 'helping' all the time when my parents cooked. It probably has something to do with burning my fingers in a sauce or trying to silence the smoke detector.

Who has most affected your cooking?

My spouse. I didn't really cook anything but convenience food before he showed me that even zucchini can be made edible. Before that it was probably my home economics teacher who made me convinced I'm a no good person.

Do you have a photograph as an evidence from your early cooking?

Before I went to school my dad took photos of me nearly every day so I'm sure there is. But right now I can only remember photos where I play with toy cars.

Do you suffer from any sort of a cooking fear, does even a thought of cooking a certain dish make your hands sweat?

Not any specific dish but I'm dead nervous every time we need to feed guests.

What's your most used or valued kitchen utensil and/or your biggest disappointment when it comes to your kitchen utensils?

This is a hard one since I usually just cook with anything I have available. A campfire (or trangia) and a pocketknife at minimum. A freezer is quite nice to have. But my blender is crappy.

Name a funny or weird food combination that you really like.

Wonder what's funny or weird enough. Carcinogen and mustard?

Name three eatables or dishes you just can't live without.

Chili pepper, rye bread and tofu.

What's missing from your cooking?

A garden.

Happy Birthday to Me

I almost missed the occasion. It's been a whole year since I posted this. I was just going to collect a recipe archive of my own and possibly offer information for an occasional googler but to my surprise some fellow food enthusiasts have started to follow my kitchen adventures. Thank you! During this short period I have even been officially awarded. Thank you! Blogging about my cooking has taught me to value more seasonal (in a country of four seasons this is no light issue), local, ecological, ethical, healthy, better tasting and culturally richer eating. So last, I'd like to thank myself for doing me a huge favour.

Guess the occasion would yield for a cake but think I've had enough of them for a while, right after salmiakki muffins, bilberry cheese cake and Runeberg's tarts. (Plus, I'm starting to understand why counting those nutritional values after the recipes isn't always a good idea.) Instead, I thought I'd amuse (or bore) you with some data from Google Analytics.

One thing I feel quite excited to look at is the world map, showing where on earth do people visit my blog. The all-time top ten shows no huge surprises (India might be one if I didn't remember how many English-speaking internet users there are):

1. Finland (Surprise, surprise!)
2. United States (with California, New York and Texas leading)
3. Canada
4. United Kingdom
5. Germany
6. Sweden
7. Australia
8. France
9. India
10. Austria

Ten most popular recipes (or at least most visited ones) include:

1. Glögi
2. Mämmi
3. Hemp Milk
4. Hefu
5. Salty Mushroom Salad
6. Sea Buckthorn Parfait
7. Rhubarb Mead
8. Sour Rye Loaf in a Tavastian Manner
9. Salmiakki Pasta
10. Warmer Röstis

Ten most common keywords that people are looking for when coming to Mämmi through a search engine are almost entirely in Finnish:

1. mämmi (Surprise, surprise!)
2. hamppuvoi
3. suolasienisalaatti
4. mammi
5. perunasalaatti
6. tyrnijäädyke
7. omenapiirakka
8. hernelevite
9. hamppumaito
10. glögi

The weirdest part is the most hilarious keywords (though I must admit, they don't come even near the ones of BitterSweet):

i've been eating frozen mämmi instead
salmiakki tastes awful
simmer industrial hemp in ilk fatty
beetroot syrup harden
eat apple pie in finnish
does rhubarb have yeast?
soya bean should be take fried or simply dissolved in water
mammi cameras
how to mämmi
www.mammihot.com

Finally, maybe I really should try these:

salmiakki coffee, salmiakki chili and salmiakki wine
the weirdest gingerbread
soups made with hemp milk
rasberry beetroot
roasted pumpkin and apple soup
caraway finncrisps
cabbage rolls with rutabaga
chili mammi, mammi gravy and mämmi pasta
fermenting fireweed leaves
macaroni gram flour omelette

At this point I'd also like to ask you, my dear readers, what else do you think I should definitely write about during my second year as a food blogger?

Food Blog of the Month \o/

Wow. Mämmi was chosen the food blog of the month by Suomalaisen ruokakulttuurin edistämisohjelma ("Program for Promoting Finnish Food Culture"). It's a three-year program started by Finnish government and aims to uplift the respect of good food. Judging by the list of the previous acknowledged blogs I'm in first-class company. Mämmi isn't even the first vegan blog that has been selected but it is the first one in English. Excuse me for repeating myself but wow!

Here are the reasons they mention:

"Mämmi on blogi, joka on selkeästi profiloitunut suomalaisen ruokaperinteen sanansaattajana. Se muistuttaa unohdetuista suomalaisista herkuista ja luo niistä omia, tuoreita versioitaan. Englanninkielisyytensä ansiosta Mämmi kertoo ruokakulttuuristamme myös ulkomaalaisille - tehden sen iloisesti ja nöyristelemättä. Blogin jokainen postaus vakuuttaa lukijansa rikkaasta ruokakulttuurista, jonka antimia voi soveltaa monenlaisen ruokailijan tarpeisiin sopiviksi."

Apparently I've managed to do something right for a change. It's been less than a year but I find food writing abnormally fun and addictive. It encourages me to try new things in the kitchen (which certainly improves at least my own nutrition) and gives the satisfaction of filling a certain empty spot in something I care about. Hope I'll stay this excited in the future as well!

Kreative Bloggers

Okriina from Kahvila Vegaani gave me a Kreativ Blogger -award. (Kiitos!) I don't usually do chain memes but this was such a great honour I have to make an acception.


The rules are:
1. Thank the person who gave this to you.
2. Copy the logo and place it in your blog.
3. Link the person who nominated you.
4. Make 7 confessions about yourself that others don't know yet.
5. Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.
6. Link those 7 to your blog.
7. Tell those 7 about the nomination.

My confessions:
1. I have already told I'm not really a vegan. Well, here's the actual confession: if there's a piece of cheese in my fridge I act like an alcoholic who knows there's a bottle of whiskey in the closet.
2. Last summer I didn't post a thing for couple of months because I was traveling around Siberia and Asia, all alone. During which I started calling Russian kitchen "vodka and potato chips -diet". Would love to go there again.
3. My spouse is the one of us who usually cooks. I just experiment.
4. When he's away (and that's about a month at time) I turn into a zombie. I eat convenience food, smell bad, barely go out and only talk to people in IRC unless they ask me for a visit themselves. But don't worry, I can always post recipes I tried three months ago.
5. I don't even want to understand most diets people have. I just don't see how come potato is unhealthier than any other root vegetable, why you shouldn't eat rye bread, why one should favour Tibetian goji berries over Finnish bilberries or why an ingredient suddenly becomes dangerous as soon as it gets an e-number. IMHO, the only sensible way to find how you should eat is listening to your own body (plus occasional rational reasons) and maybe reading some real researches instead of that pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo and anecdotal evidence you find from women's magazines (what kind of people buy that crap anyway?).
6. I once fantasized over publishing a world-famous cook book and then sending bitter regards to my old home economics teacher in some press conference.
7. My professional interests are about as far as you can get from anything traditional or making things with your hands but do have a lot to do with blogs. As a matter of fact, I feel guilty cause I don't have time to play enough computer games.

Next, the hardest part. How to choose just seven from the infinite selection of great blogs? I decided I'd stick with innovative food blogs, avoid those that have already been nominated and concentrate on the ones I feel aren't as well known as they deserve to be. (This mission also reminded me I should update that link section on the right.)

My awards go to (in no special order):
1. Ketutar of Noidan keittokirja for impressive enthusiasm for confectionery. I don't make sweeties that often myself but when I do I know exactly where to look for recipes. (In Finnish)
2. Lelly of Lelly's Vegan Kitchen for the funniest food blog I know. Cosy Scottish food that makes you want to try it yourself. (In English)
3. The team of Posessed (By Seitan) for showing us that vegans don't have to act like sheeps who smoke hemp and metal music lovers don't have to to live with rotten shark to prove they rock. (In English)
4. Rochelle R. of Weird Recipe Finds for a food blog completely different from the rest since it talks about bad food instead of good. Contains must-tries for any kitchen experimentalist. (In English)
5. Pinea of Kirjeitä keittiöstä (and its predecessors) for telling how two different cuisines, Finnish and Japanese, can be combined in a graceful way. (In Finnish)
6. Pille of Nami-nami for getting me acquainted with the familiar but unfamiliar cuisine of my dear kindred nation. Aitäh! (In English)
7. Timo of Humalablogi for setting up an inspiring example of the love for the world's most diverse and nuanced drink, beer. (In Finnish)

The purpose

This modest starting shall evolve into a food blog. Yes, I know, there's an endless amount of them already. This one's among you to serve three main functions:

1. I'm mostly writing this to myself. It's nice to look what I've already achieved, get a good cataloged recipe book of my own, share my cooking with friends and occasionally even wonder the philosophical side of food. Unlike most food writers I'm planning to tell also about the kitchen failures and ponder why they went wrong.

2. My main interest here is Finnish cuisine, traditional as well as dishes with modern twists. This is also why I'm blogging in English. I want everyone to know how excellent food we have and how the tasteless crap with Mediterranean names you typically get from Finnish restaurants doesn't show the best of it. But since we're living the life of the modern noblemen here in wealthy western countries, I'll of course be enjoying some more exotic things as well.

3. All the foods here are vegan, so you can eat them with clean conscience and they are likely to fit all your guests as well. This may sound controversial with the previous point since ancient Finnish peoples (yes, that's a plural) lived mostly on fish, seals and occasional plants they found from the woods. However, after agriculture and steady life were introduced, the most common meals actually started to be based on root vegetables (turnip, potato, rutabaga, carrot, onion, beet) and grains (barley, rye, oat, spelt, millet). The excessive eating of meat and dairy products is by and large a modern invention. I'm not a strict vegan but a lacto-ovo vegetarian myself. This is an ethical choice, otherwise I consider myself an omnivore. If I don't like some food, I'll just keep eating it until I've learned to like it. There's not many things I despise more than squeamishness from grown-up people.

Those being said, let's move into the kitchen!