Finland - Finnish Picnic

And we're back! It's been quite a while since I last made one of these posts. Honestly, I've been having a really hard time finding the motivation to keep up with the posts for this blog. I get very excited about the cooking part, which I have kept on top of, but I need to find a way to stay excited about the writing part as well. Anyway, we're back now, with one of my favourite meals I've made for this project so far!

Back at the beginning of May, I decided to do something a little different, and took advantage of the nice weather to have a picnic in the park down the street from my place, using several Finnish recipes.

This was the first meal I made for this project after my sister had gone home for the summer, and so of course I found a recipe featuring mushrooms, one of my favorite foods, which my sister can't stand. This recipe was a salted mushroom salad called suomalainen sienisalaatti. This very simple recipe was absolutely delicious. At first I wasn't sure that cream and vinegar would be a combination I would enjoy, but I was absolutely proven wrong.

The park by my house in early May

I also made some lovely sweet buns called pikkupullat, which were very soft and fluffy, and also quite filling. If I were to make these again, I would maybe use slightly less cardamom to make them a little less sweet, but other than that, they were quite delicious and lasted me several days.

For my picnic, I also tried two recipes which were a whole new experience, both of which I was very excited about; a recipe for cheese, and one for mead! The cheese is a baked egg cheese called munajuusto, which was also quite tasty. It was a little tricky to make, as I had a hard time getting the the milk to curdle, but once it was done I was very proud of myself.

Finally, the mead, called sima, was incredibly easy to make, and very delicious! I've actually made it a couple times since, and it is now one of my favourite recipes. It tastes like a slightly alcoholic sparkling lemonade, and has been very refreshing through this very hot summer.

Over all, this picnic made for a lovely afternoon, and all the recipes were very tasty! I know I've said this before, but hopefully I can get back on track with these posts from here on out.

FIRSTS THIS WEEK:

• Made cheese
• Made mead
• Salted mushrooms

RECIPES I USED:

• All recipes on this page: https://finland.fi/life-society/finnish-recipes/