Foodblog

 There's been whey too little food blogging, don't you think?

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 How cheesy, I know.

Ta-daa!

The meaning of this is that I'm currently into making fresh cheese, and then using the whey (vassla/ hera for you Finns) to make cold rise bread. They make for a very delicious breakfast combination, I can tell you. I have also made jelly. It was supposed to become winegums, but it turned into jelly instead. I'm too lazy to take a photo right now, but a cut piece of it looks almost exactly like this, except 348 times prettier, especially when the sun shines through it.

Speaking of the sun, the weather has been exceptionally sunny and summery, which has been nice, as it feels as if this country is drying up slowly, until the regular damp gloom ensues. One thing that has stayed in our damp entry room for too long is my winter coat, as it had some cozy colonies of mold growing on it. They seem to have perished rather expectedly when I threw it into the washing machine. The mold is one thing I won't miss when I move away.

Drawing Lobster

This is how exciting life in England can be when you're not paying attention to your own lunch.

In other news I've been ill and recovered since I wrote last time, just a fever, but an oddly tough one as it went on for a little over a week, although it never got very dramatic in my case. About halfway through the illness I got weird sniffles, my nose didn't get particularly blocked, and wasn't terribly runny either, but was kind of itchy and irritated all the time. It took me a couple of days to realize that the symptoms were identical to the allergic symptoms I get later in spring, and lo and behold, they went away with allergy medicine. It isn't that strange I guess, although the weather has been terrible the temperatures have been mild, so loads of trees are already blooming and growing leaves. I sincerely hope it really is the trees and not that I have developed sensitivity to mold. Hmm.


Here is a link to some animations I've drawn here at uni.


As you might devise from the link, I have started collecting my stuff on yet another website, Drawing Lobster. I'm building it with the intention of it being my sort of main, artistic showcase website for a forseeable future. There isn't very much on there yet, so the index isn't working in an ideal way yet, as some of the sections remain empty at the moment. Later on I'll put a CV and portfolio on the website as well. So, now there is another way to keep up with what I'm doing.

Runeberg!

As you may derive from the picture below I have been meaning to write for a while. I baked some Runeberg tarts for 5th of February:

They barely existed for 24 hours.

We have had guests, Finnish Friend had invited an Austrian friend she had met during her stay in Spain over. We invited some friends living in London over for a superduper tapas evening, featuring tortilla de patata, paella with mussels, ensalada rusa, marinated olives, marinated feta (sorry, Greek style salad cheese), tzatziki, houmous, parma ham, chorizo, grana padano and manchego cheeses, krupuk, fruit, flan de huevo, cinnamon buns, sangria and beer! I probably forgot some things, the table was absolutely full of food. I can tell you that we had the best breakfast for ages the following day.

On sunday we visited Whitstable to try some oysters. This was my first one (I had a chance in Nice in back in 2004 or something, but I wasn't brave enough) ever, and I actually liked it a lot. We bought our oysters straight at the harbour, we were served by a nice old man who told us he had been in the oyster business for 50 years. He was indeed very deft with the oyster knife. The oyster tasted fresh and had a much firmer texture than I had anticipated.

We have luckily not (yet) been severely affected by the floods and storms here in England, although Canterbury now has an increased number of ponds and small lakes here and there.

Take care y'all.

Dissertation Accomplished!

 This was me at approximately 6:20 a.m. on Friday morning.

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This was me at approximately 15:57 p.m. on Friday afternoon.

I would have written sooner, but I was very busy with enjoying my new freedom. While waiting for the dissertations to get bound me and Roomie went downtown to do important stuff, such as buying me a recipe folder, going to the library and borrow comics, a book on sausages and a book on cheeses. Most importantly, we bought cake! After walking back to uni and submitting the dissertations we went via the grocery store and bought lemonade and fresh live mussels (£2.80/kg was quite decent I'd say), and ate a really delicious mussel soup for dinner. I had never cooked live mussels before, and big thanks to Roomie and Longhaired Roomie for their help with cleaning them (such a time consuming hassle, but well worth it, I'd say). I'll definitely cook mussels again sometime, apparently they seem to be in season now. It seems to have been a good bag overall, I don't know about the others but I discarded three mussels in total, and there were loads and loads.

(Thanks to Roomie for the photos!)

 Cleaning in progress. . .

 

 How beautiful!

 Mmm-m-mmm!

Ooh la la! Fresh coriander on top, aww yeah!

Other than that I have mostly been playing games, reading books, eating chocolate and filling my recipe folder neatly. Best weekend ever! We also had pizza yesterday! And brown sausage sauce today! Woohooo!

And the deadline isn't until 12 at noon tomorrow, but I don't even have to go to uni at all. I could just lie in bed all morning and eat chocolate or something. The world is in my palm. All it took was 9874 words of academic English.

Deadlines, deadlines

Soon, we have been back in England for a week. The trip went well, I began feeling better on the plane, after eating my provisions (I managed to get another bout of stomach flu the day before the flight). Yesterday we had a deadline for the studio unit, so life feels much better now, although there isn't terribly much time to feel smug, as the deadline for the big bad, the dissertation, is approaching quickly. Luckily I have pretty much enough words, my work is going to be about rewriting parts and polishing it until it shines brightly like a bautiful star. Or a piece of illegibly academic writing.

Happy holidays!

Hyvää Joulua, God Jul, Merry Christmas! Hope you all have a good one, whatever you celebrate and in whichever language you do so.

UWAA!

Oh wow, time really flies, doesn't it!?

Flying back to Finland TOMORROW! We have to wake up a little before 5 a.m. so I'll be going to sleep pretty much now. I'm switching to my Finnish SIM-card as well.

The huge plus is that we are taking a cab to the airport, as it's so early in the morning that a cab actually proved cheaper than train tickets for four people.


See you soon (if you're in Finland)