02 Apr 2009, Posted by Nora Pouillon in Guests from Washington D.C., 0 Comments

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Aki, Jari and I had breakfast at the Hotel Klaus K, which is famous for offering the best Finnish breakfast. It was very interesting. On his breakfast buffet he indicated where every item came from and who produced it – cheeses, yogurt, fruit, fish, meats, assorted homemade breads, most of them dark ryes and one with lingonberries baked inside. There were different jams, made with different berries such as cloudberries.

I gave an interview with Henna Jensen, a journalist with the biggest daily newspaper in Finland. She is very interested in organics, small producers and local products.

I met Chef Jyrki Sukula at Klaus K, his wife had a baby girl the day before and could not join us sooner. He is a man of many talents. He works for a big company helping to develop local and healthy products. He is active in the school lunch program developing healthier meals for kids. He also owns a winery in Piedmont where he produces a delicious Barolo.

Aki and Jyrki Sukula took me to visit an elementary school where Jyrki had introduced a healthy lunch program. It looked great and tasted very good. The lunch hall was airy, clean and quiet. It was also the school’s auditorium and performance space. The buffet had an assortment of food – soup, pasta, curry with meat, vegetables, salad and a bread station with only dark Finnish bread. There was a special station for children with allergies, such as gluten, wheat and dairy-free. The kitchen is small but the staff prepares what they can such as soup, salads and snacks. The children looked great and healthy. In the entire crowd of nearly 100 children there was only one chubby kid. I was amazed at how disciplined everyone was. While we had lunch Jyrki gave me a lesson in the origins of Finnish food. The west of Finland, being closer to Sweden and the east being closer to Russia, have different characteristics.

Western Finland with wheat, white bread and sugar are influences from Sweden. The old capital, Turko is in the West. It has a coastline which offers fish from the sea, there is also pork, poultry, green and root vegetables, and malt to make beer and booze. One difference between the east and the west is that on the west coast they salt the fish for two hours and on the east they salt it for two days. They have a lot of fresh cheese from cows and goats and in the southwest they have many orchards for apples, as well as buckwheat.

30 years ago the government changed the Finnish diet by reducing fat and salt. The project started to change people’s health in the East part of Finland. It lowered their blood pressure, cholesterol and reduced cardiovascular problems. Now their diet is too high in sugar and carbohydrates.

Eastern Finland is characterized by dairy cows, milk, cheese, butter, sour cream, and salt (close to Russia). There are lots of mushrooms, pickling with only salt and smoked meats. There is lamb and small fish from lakes. The famous fish is called vendace. It is served fried, smoked or salted. This fish has very good roe. It is small but pops in your mouth. Eastern Finland has a lot of game such as moose, bear, dear, rabbit, birds such as grouse, quail, squab and wild duck. They make the famous round rye bread with a hole in the middle, which they hang on a dowel to dry and keep. The health problem here is too much salt and fat.

Afterwards we all went to visit the Marimekko factor but came too late and the production line was already closed. I had another interview with a young man and was filmed at the same time by a German-Finish woman, Katherina. Both were students at the art film school in Helsinki.

We had another stop at Aduki, an organic wholesaler and distributor. A very nice couple started it about 20 years ago and now it is doing better then ever. They carry products from Sweden, Denmark, England and Germany, mostly groceries and packaged goods.

In the late afternoon Jari brought me to the Sauna Society,Saunaseura. It is truly an unusual place. The location is wonderful, on the water with a dock leading into the ocean. There is also a small snack bar in the lounge with a round open fireplace, where women sit wrapped in their towels drinking, eating and chatting, watching the beautiful sunset over the ocean and the small islands that dot the water.

The sauna itself is not spa-like. It is very simple and user-friendly. There are the usual dressing rooms and a big room with showers on one side and on the other side wooden doors that lead to different kinds of saunas, from hot to hotter to very hot. I thought that this was wonderful because you could choose a temperature to your liking. Then I was introduced to the very traditional sauna, a smoke sauna, which is an important part of the Finnish culture. In the past they not only took their bath there but they also cooked their food and even gave birth in those saunas. Supposedly, the soot-covered walls give you more oxygen. To heat the sauna, they start a fire in the basement, with big wooden logs to really smoke up the room, at 5 am and it goes until 12 pm. The smoke from all those fires goes into the sauna room. Before you can use the sauna they open the windows to let the smoke escape. Then one walks into a blackened wooden room. The smoke supposedly brings oxygen into your system and is invigorating. There were also three different temperatures for the smoke sauna. In between taking the saunas you go onto the dock and jump into the ice water. Then there is a nice bench along the house where you can sit to find your bearings and then you go onto the next sauna.

Jari picked me up from the Suana Society. I was the last person to leave. I had such a great time. We went back to the hotel where we had a pleasant dinner at Helsinki’s famous fish restaurant called Fish. The chef had specifically prepared something for us, an appetizer of salmon prepared in all different ways, the Finnish fish, vendace, and for the main course a turbot, which came from Sweden. It was perfectly cooked and served with vegetables. Different wines accompanied everything. The whole experience was delicious and light, perfect for a late-night dinner after an afternoon in the sauna.