Food

Finnish food is interesting. Different. Varies.

During our orientation in Turku, the YFU staff had us trying food from all kinds of places, from nice, modern restaurants to a viking themed eatery, from an all-vegetarian (yuck) cafeteria to lunch on a boat on a river. Needless to say, I am not the biggest fan of traditional finnish foods. I find most either entirely unseasoned or incredibly fishy.

But luckily, my host family isn't either. Therefore we eat more european catered food. And it's delicious. My host mom cooks lunch and dinner regularly, and for breakfast its always bread and butter, accompanied by cucumber and some sort of meat (ham, turkey, salami) plus some patries.

Some days there is no time to cook because of a long day or it's so late after baseball games that we eat out at a restaurant. Most of the time the food has been good. But there was this one cafe where the chicken and blue cheese was just nasty. But when we go to a pizza joint or hesburger (the finnish mcdonalds basically) i'm fine. as long as it isn't everyday because at hesburger you can just taste those calories from all of the mayo they put in your sandwich.

Lunch and dinner for me usually always include bread and butter and meat, as well as potatoes and more butter. But there are different butters for the bread and potatoes! Back in the states i stay away from butter, but here it's almost neessary to put butter on your food because it's traditional, plus it gives it some flavor.

At the ambassador's dinner reception, i enjoyed the meat and sausages and potatoes and desert. Desert here is great. There is some kind of strawberry cake similar to shortcake that finnish peeps eat for special occassions that i first had the chance of trying at the embassy, and again at a girl's confirmation party.

There are also these cookies that are my favorite. They are S-shaped, and thus so named S cookies. they are topped with cinnamon and sugar like a churro, but crunchy like a cookie.

My host mother has bought a huge container of them. And there's hundreds of them in there. My host sister doesn't eat sweets, and my host bro doesn't seem to eat them, so I have quite a lot of those everyday.

My host mother also bought a cake called tig cake. Tig as in tiger cause it is white and chocolate colored striped-ish. and its great too.

Some things i won't try again. i don't like fishy foods, so there is no real chance that i will eat the packaged salmon unless its been cooked so well that i can't tell that it came from a fridge. Nor will i eat the miniature fish that is a finnish traditional dish. Nor shall i eat raw fish...

there's something called salmiaki. its a bitter, black colored candy that tastes like black licorice and i absolutely cannot ingest.

soooo with candy, i stick to what i know and that is twix. that's perhaps the only candy they have here that we have back in the US. and there's a chocolate by Fazer, a company that makes everything like bread. and those are really good too.

And finns, they eat all of the time. since i wake up around 10 or 11, we eat breakfast and then lunch comes about 2 to 3 hours later, and then the kitchen is always free to take from. and then later on a snack before a baseball game, and then dinner, and right before bed we have late snacks. haha. i try to run it off.