A perfect day

Best days are the days you don't have to do anything. Okay, getting tyres changed. But that's done now and I have summer tyres and sunglasses and new windscreen wipers. Well, yeah, and a new car. And white lilies in the bathroom, gotten from a sweet American girl who was couchsurfing here. And another sweet, joyous couchsurfer sleeping on my floor, this time from Brazil; and melon muffins, although I used honeydew and toadskin melon instead of cantaloupe and damsons instead of apple sauce; and a happy tired cat and patches, endless, neverending patches. Soon, soon it'll be finished and I can finally do something else. And I feel like writing a memorial to my old car.

Self-admiration and spice

I honestly feel that all of my guests should admire my collection of spices. They should express their awe of both variety and quality and ask interested questions. This applies especially for couchsurfers, when I show them where they can find everything they might need during their stay. I imagine an ideal discussion would go approximately like this:

'And if you should need any spices, you find them here', I say.

'How much spices you've got!' goes the couchsurfer, with an expression of astonishment.

'Oh, I'm afraid it's not so much', I say modestly, pointing out some vital shortcoming.

'But such good quality too!' continues the awed couchsurfer, ignoring my remark.

I imagine s/he would also like to go through all the tiny jars, bursting sometimes with excitement commenting 'organic galangal!', 'organic French rosemary!' or 'oh my god, you even have organic ramsons and Cambodian black pepper!', nodding vigorously to him/herself.

I also expect to hear something about the way sage behaves when you try to pour it from a jar or a box, a little like a flock of sheep would fall from a cliff to the sea; or, if not that, at least something about the coarseness of Korean chili on the skin of your fingers. This happens quite rarely, however. Mostly they just nod without any interest and probably with no plans of cooking. Apparently they do not realize they could just prepare a raw cocoa drink with ground cardamon, clove, dry ginger and some oat milk, or spice up their sandwiches with green pepper and basil. Poor people.

But as I am left alone to admire my spiceshelf, I don't think I have much else to do than to list them. Spices and herbs are also one of my favourite souvenirs, and I like to remember where they come from.

Things I have on my spice shelves

 - algae, from Portugal
 - basil, organic
 - bay leaves, whole
 - black pepper, organic, ground
 - black pepper, Cambodian, whole,
   got from a friend met accidentally in a hostel in Saigon
 - capsicum, organic, ground
 - cardamon, organic, ground
 - cardamon, green, whole
 - chili, Korean, roughly ground, bought in London
 - chives, from France
 - cloves, ground
 - cloves, whole
 - coriander, ground
 - cumin, ground
 - curry, Panang style, paste
 - fennel, whole
 - fenugreek, organic, whole
 - galangal, ground, from France
 - ginger, organic, ground
 - green pepper, from France
 - lemongrass, organic
 - mustard seeds, yellow
 - oregano, from France
 - parsley, organic
 - pili-pili, ground, from France
 - piri-piri, sauce, a souvenir from Madeira
 - ramsons, organic, from France
 - rosemary, organic, from France
 - sage, organic
 - salt, gray sea salt, from France
 - Sichuan pepper, whole
 - soybean paste, Korean
 - star anis, whole
 - thyme, grown by myself in Estonia
 - turmeric, ground
 - vanilla, from France
 - wasabi, paste
 - white pepper, from France

Spices I need to get

 - some good quality Indian or Thai kind of chili
 - fennel, ground (I'm not exactly sure what for but I feel I should have it)
 - fenugreek, ground (it's difficult to grind it smooth enough by yourself)
 - nutmeg, ground (for soups and baking)
 - vanilla, powdered
 - wasabi, powdered

Observations. First, spices I've been using most lately are, quite curiously, ground cardamon and rosemary. Second, listing your spices is just what one should do on April 2nd when it's [add bad words here] SNOWING.

From left: chives, pili-pili, cardamon, rosemary, sage, cloves, piri-piri, Sichuan pepper, oregano, ramsons, black pepper, green pepper, algae, mustard, white pepper, fenugreek, coriander

Kvass vs. sima

I like kvass, the Russian bread-based beverage.

The first time I tasted it was on Olkhon island at lake Baikal. I was coming home from Cambodia by train. Probably my memories are clouded with the fact that it was the most memorable travel I've ever done. In reality, the kvass may have not tasted that good. It was home-made and I remember it was yeasty and a bit cloudy, not at all how a good kvass should be. But I had just gone to a banya and had a dip in the (cold-cold) lake Baikal and was surrounded by these untamed Siberian hills and cliffs... I fell in love with kvass as well as with Siberia.

While living in Estonia I had quite unlimited options of different kinds of kvass, which in Estonian is called kali (like Finnish kalja). But moving back to Finland, I returned to a sad kvass-vacuum. I simply had to start brewing it myself.

I've mainly used this recipe, although there's too much yeast in relation to too little sugar. Once, I think, the yeast actually ate all of the sugar, and the result was surprisingly sour. A half teaspoon of yeast should be enough. Another time I used Finnish style rye bread instead of Russian style  ̶  which is often baked in a tin and closer to our archipelago style bread  ̶  and the result was like drinking jälkiuunileipä (a kind of semi-hard sour rye bread). I've spiced kvass with winter spices like cinnamon, cardamon, ginger and cloves; I've spiced it with fresh mint; at times I've thrown in whatever comes to mind. Once a friend actually went through the trouble of preparing and baking a mash of rye flour and malt for the base  ̶  it was awesome.

But kvass takes a lot of bread compared to how much of the ready beverage you get, and you have to know that you have time to sieve and prepare it the next morning and then bottle it the next evening  ̶  and quite often I don't know if I will  ̶  and then there's all the leftover mash that you simply have to bake to a bread, as otherwise it would be a terrible waste, so you have to know you have time for that too...

Not very surprisingly, I only brew kvass for very special occasions and have turned to much simpler mead-kind of drinks instead.


Sima is a Finnish spring mead. I have to admit I've never followed the basic recipe with only lemon and brown sugar to give it taste. My favourite is sima with dandelion flowers, as they give the beverage a wonderfully soft, honey-like taste. For some reason I'm convinced that lemon balm would make a perfect base, too, although just one glass would certainly make one quite sleepy. For that experiment I have to wait until the end of the summer, but nettle beer and spruce beer I can already try in May. (The latter I first heard of in Jane Austen's Emma: it happens to be a favourite of both Emma and Mr. Knightley.)

But, as my favourite spiced tea this spring has been decaf green tea with cardamon and clove, I begun the brewing season by turning some of it into sima. Doesn't look especially tasty yet, but we'll see in few days how it'll turn out. Hopefully it'll be ready just for the general birthday party on Saturday.

Stupid Western medicine

I'm getting extremely tired talking to doctors. Extremely. Tired. Probably I should quit the phase one of my doctor round (the Western medicine doctor) and just go directly to following phases (Chinese doctor, herbal books, hearsays). Lately I've benefited mostly of Chinese medicine and hearsays. I get needles of course, and follow a diet. My kidney yang is much better, as it wasn't fortunately the base of the problem; the bottommost problem seems to be spleen yang deficiency. That can be caused by overthinking and too much emotional stress. I can't help thinking: oh really? Like writing a master's thesis and then applying to a PhD program? And at the same time awaking some old panic syndrom sankharas on a vipassana course?

Well, the doctors at the public health care still think I'm depressed, and after realizing I should have never been prescribed Citalopram in the first place, they are toying with what to make me take next. It's getting wilder every appointment. And what makes it more interesting is that I'm not depressed. I'm fatigued  ̶  and not even so much that anymore. Before the Citalopram experiment there was nothing wrong with my general mood, and now that the rest of that crap has left my body, I'm fine again. Have a guess if I will take another pill.

One of the most benefical hearsays I've been listening to is the claim that I'm overhydrated and should drink less and better fluids. Again, I need to eat a heavy breakfast  ̶  just a few mornings of porridge on a road make me shiver unexplainably through the day. Organic eggs fried in butter, hot cocoa, a huge (although sugarfree) apple muffin and chunks of cantaloupe keep me energetic and warm. If I want to lose weight, I can always eat less calories later in the day, but morning is just not the time.

And then the latest hearsay: raw cocoa beans contain stuff that increases the amount of serotonine and dopamine in your brain. I've not bothered to research this by myself yet, but I did make myself a raw cocoa drink in the morning, mixing three teaspoons of raw cocoa powder, cardamon, clove, hot water and oat milk. It tasted and felt awesome.

Sun, cat, crochet :)

Sun is shining today and Ludvig will get to go out. She doesn't look extremely eager, though. 126/135 patches ready!

Ludvig got out today.

One of the nicest things I've done in my life is making a cat happy. Because it's another creature, especially because it's not a human, and probably especially because it's a cat.

She moved in with me when my parents were losing their nerves with her peeing everywhere. I quite understand them. My personal favourite must be when she managed to drop a Bible from a bookshelf and peed on it. Only a Bible; no one book besides. She haven't peed once outside her sandbox when living with me. I try to give her a lot of positive attention and a good amount of excitement. And, admittedly, I pamper her with treats.

Today morning I looked out of my window and decided that there are enough dry spots on the ground that I can start phase two in her happiness training: teaching her that going out on a leash is actually fun. And you know what? It was. At least for her. She ate some early grass and we spent a half hour watching sparrows and wading in snow.

Happy, old cat.

Oh, March

It's a grey, dull day, clouds hanging miserably on rooftops. And after many days of surprising excessive energy, I have none. So don't imagine I'd be going outside for a second, expect slouching to the nearest grocery store to get candy. Instead, I'm spending my day pretty much like this:

The book is Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, and a DVD of Agatha Christie's Marples is just outside the picture.

I've made a bet with my boyfriend. If he finishes his bachelor's thesis before I finish my alpaca quilt, I'll treat him a dinner in Dong Bei Hu (the best Chinese restaurant in Helsinki, and the only one which number I have on my cell phone). And, obviously, vice versa. He's written some five pages of minimum 15; I'm up to 89 of 135 patches, above to which I will have to crochet the uttermost round to each 135 and sew them together.