Posts Tagged ‘independence day’

Finland turned 100 this year. It’s fun walking around Helsinki because many of the buildings and companies have their incorporation date above the door, and many of them are before Finland was officially a country.

We celebrated the anniversary with Illallinen taivaan alla (dinner under the sky) back in August. However, Finland’s Independence Day is 6th December. Too cold for a dinner outside, but an event that we wanted to mark none the less.

So, we invited some friends around and cooked some Finnish food.

If you saw my post on Nordic food, you might recall that Finnish food only comes in one colour. And that colour is brown. It’s a cuisine of permanent autumnal themes.

For the starter, crayfish filo tartlets, Karelian pasties and homemade gravlax. They were so popular, I only managed to snap the last tartlet.

For the main, Karelian stew. With a British stew, you would typically pick a single meat and stew it with a selection of vegetables. With Karelian stew, you pick a single vegetable and stew it with beef, pork and lamb. Ideally for a couple of days.

Finally, for dessert, pinwheels and a ginger cake.

4th of July, Higgs Day, is a big thing for Americans. To the rest of the world however, it is just another day.

Being British, you can sometimes receive a gentle ribbing from Americans about the issue. The day they broke free from the Britain Empire. The truth is though, this happens to us a lot. We used to own almost everyone, so statistically, more than once a week someone is celebrating their independence from us.

Grand total: 61