North by North

True – a few signs of spring have manifested themselves: the house is invaded by ants and the lake is ice-free since last weekend. The roads are almost snowless and thus we can go looking for false morels – highly poisonous  and as highly delicious. Generally we stay on the safe side and sell them [...]

On Friday we were transplanting seedlings and decided that – as the soapstone oven had been heated in the morning – the best way to celebrate the event was to have a lunch off a Marina di Chioggia squash. So it was put into the oven, together with onion, sweet pepper and herbs, topped with [...]

As if we didn’t have enough of the stuff already (some 60 cm) it has been snowing relentlessly all day, about 10 cm up to now. We do say that at this time of the year the new snow is death for the old snow – but surely this is an overkill! Bravely, we have [...]

There are moments when it’s difficult to agree enthusiastically with that statement (of course it might be on its way to somewhere else…). When we walk out of our front door and turn right this is what we see Going a bit nearer (if you dare – but then there is not much snow left [...]

That’s how we call this time of the year (absolutely nothing to do with St. Valentine’s Day!). And the winter has been of classic style: For the last ten days the temperatures have been between -25 and -36; fortunately there has been hardly any wind. Now it’s reasonably mild (-7) – and a high wind. [...]

For several months our one and only remaining Musquee de Provence has received admiring comments from all visitors. Today we decided to use it while it still is admirable – the other possibility would have been to sell it but actually we have been curious as we have never tasted Musquee de Provence. Well, now [...]

Once again the shops have closed at noon, the  Christmas  Peace has been declared for the whole country and we all are preparing for the evening festivities . It seems that this year Father Christmas has to hire a car (or a boat) to reach Southern Finland – here we do have snow, more or [...]

An old Finnish saying – and like most sayings, not quite accurate. Having grown up between two brothers (at times literally) I can assure you that the years are exactly like brothers – clashing every so often. – At this time last year we had -20C, blue skies and fairly deep snow – now we [...]

The snow seems to have an identity crisis this year: here yesterday and gone today – and definitely gone with the wind! The greenhouse used to be (yesterday) quite nicely and carefully covered… The days are so dark and miserable that it has been necessary to buy a lot of seeds to be able to [...]

…we are today. Yesterday Pekka had a look at the weather forecast and made tracks to the vegetable patch: up with carrots, parsnips, leeks, Hamburg parsleys and thyme. The Jerusalem artichokes were already harvested but still out; now they also are in the (unheated) sauna, waiting to be taken to the restaurant. Yesterday we peeled, [...]