BLACK CATS AND OLD EASTER DETAILS

Happy Easter!

Here is my little black cat on this year's Easter-ing tour (or whatever we shall decide to call it in English).

As our house still looks like shit I'll post some old pictures of how it looked this time of year back when it was stil nice.

Enjoy your chocolate!

MÄMMI TIME!

Altough being stacked up in every store for the moment, it still seems I am in the minority of Finns actually rejoicing that mämmi season is here! Well at least if you ask my Facebook feed, that is. It is a short and sweet (and a bitter one, if we are being literal and going after that taste here) season, lasting only for a week or two around Easter. Once my parents did this thing though where they froze mämmi and had it for midsummer dessert. With  Christmas dishes for dinner. (It tasted wrong on so many leves, but was rather fun of course)

Traditionally meant as a dessert, I like to have my mämmi (or memma, as we say in Swedish) for breakfast. I buy the version without sugar that is somehow sweetened slowly by itself. Don't ask, can't explain how it's done. As I posted here some seasons before, I started having mine with fruit and quark instead of the traditional cream and sugar. So I can both piss off people by saying I actually like mämmi, or then the tradtionalists by having mine in new ways. However, this year I noticed a version selling mämmi with quark in a duo-pack, so it is not just me! Or, then it was because of me.

I think the quarks with lemon or vanilla flavours taste best with mämmi, which makes it somethng of a double-easter thing, as I think flavoured quarks tend to resemble pasha, which we also have for Easter,  in taste. Pasha is a dessert that is served in Eastern Orthodox countries but also in Finland (having been part of Russia for 109 years just up until our independece in 1917 there are both linguistic and culinaristic remnants from that time) and, is unlike mämmi, perhaps easier to like. Kind of like it tastes good without having to think about it twice. It has quark and butter and cream in it with fruit and nuts and you get about all the calories you need for a week to survive in one serving. (BRING IT ON!)

Mämmi is bought in carton boxes made to resemble the original birch bark bowls it was stored and served in back in ye olde days. The dish is made out of rye flour and malt and baked in the oven. So it has quite a lot of protein and fibres and keeps your stomach full and well-working. Even though do I like it could still be described as what disappointment tastes like, because as I kid you'd picture it was some kind of chocolate pudding and then BOOM it was so much not that. However, if you ever find ourself over here at this time of year I do urge you to try this only-in-Finland dish!

EASTER BRANCHES - VAIHTOEHTO VITSALLE

(Half of the headline is indeed in Finnish in case you had to look twice. It gives the content of this post away.)

Easter is just around the corner and over here, if you have kids, it's time to decorate some branches!
(If you can find some, that is, as winter has lingered around longer than usual this year...)

The branches are for when the small ones go out "witching", which can be compared a bit to trick or treat on Halloween, altough here no tricks are involved, just wishing well for the year ahead.* Tradition is to decorate the branches with feathers, but I tend to go for animal-free options, and often just a make-do of what I happen to have in the cupboards at home. I just saw a pretty funny video from one of the big supermarket chains though, saying their feathers are a certified left over product from the food (=meat)  industry, which I think is good; to take as much as possible into use as long as it's there. But I'll stick to my alternatives anyway.

Here are some ideas -

Wrapping ribbon.

Folder paper...thingies. With more wrapping ribbon.

And pom-poms!
As the old wisdom goes: when in doubt, go for pom-poms.
Ok perhaps that was just made up right now but pretty sure it works.

I just got this idea to make bows out of chocolate bon-bon wrapping but that would mean I'd have to go trough a whole bag myself and...OK, it is so going to happen.

*) I've written a few sentences more on the tradition of small Easter witches, which combines both pagan and Orthodox believes, before; you can find it under my Easter-tag.

LAST OF APRIL, FIRST OF MAY

Iiro Nurminen 1960, Helsingin Kaupunginmuseo

Vappu.  Valborg. Vappen. The most likely biggest of the Finnish festivities!  Party-wise, I guess. If the city empties at Midsummer Vappu is the opposite - the city is full of thousands and thousands of celebrating people. We've had mead and funnel cakes and donuts for a the past days and I'm getting rather stuffed by now.

Vappen is a festivity for quirky hats and faux noses and costumes and serpentines and confetti (and just making a mess our of everything in general). Kindergartens and schools most often have a masquerade they day before Vappu. Last year Dag was a ninja, this year he went as his latest obsession: a knight!

Costumes that I wore when I was little included princess (quelle surprise), medieval lady and cowgirl.

I've spent most of my Vappu-day, as in the day after; 1st of May, out on town celebrating since early morning, and even those years I was on shift in the harbour I tried to sneak in a visit to to the park before work. Lots of fun memories ever since my early childhood years. The tradition of Valborg, which itself goes way back in time has been celebrated in today's form, with partying on the streets, balloons and picnics and such, since the 1800's. On first of May labour's day and marches meet academic festivities and a sea of white graduation caps.

First of may on the Observatory Hill of Kaivopuisto.
Arvo Kajante 1959. Helsingin kaupunginmuseo.

 Kari Hakli 1972. Helsingin kaupunginmuseo.

Picnic in Kaisaniemi.

Ivan Timiriasew 1920. Helsingin kaupunginmuseo.

 Ivan Timiriasew 1912. Helsingin kaupunginmuseo.

Student gathering in Kaisaniemi.

Unknown photographer, 1870. Helsingin kaupunginmuseo. 

Communist march. Simo Rista SER 1970. Helsingin kaupunginmuseo.

Labourers' march. Unknown photographer, 1919. Helsingin kaupunginmuseo. 

 Juha Jernvall 1950, Helsingin kaupunginmuseo.

Above are photos from celebrations in Helsinki from past days; the Helsinki City museum has released a site -helsinkikuvia.fi- where you can browse and download their collection of 40,000 photographies of Helsinki from then and now, with a free-to-use-if credited license. A lot of interesting and nostalgic pics! So I checked out Vappu-celebrations from past times; turns out they had as shitty weather as we do back in 1899 as well for example. And 1957 and 1929. Phew.

Drawing by A.Federley of their first of May in 1899. Helsingin kaupunginmuseo.

But when you've blogged for a decade (!!) you get quite the archive of your own life during those years as well.
This year, as I was working in the day and as Eddi is away on work in Shiraz I am just staying at home in bed with a glass of, in fact, Shiraz as well (going for that old traditional, but with newly found internet fame, mode of kalsarikännit. Well not really, but close enough. Not drunk but no pants.) I browsed some of my own Vappus from the last years -

2010 we were out with Eddi and some friends on town. (And it was cold. Not like now, but I was freezing in my dress.Weather is such a factor here.). Just remembered that the Vappu before we had been on a day-date after having been on a break and I biked to work in the sunshine wondering weather it would turn into something or not.

2011 we got engaged in the pale May night on our way home after a long odyssey of park picnics and suburbian bars. It was warm and I wore a 50's dress and my big pink petticoat that I managed to spill beer on and Eddi picked me a yellow dandelion and gave me a ring. (We had actually booked our wedding in Vegas by then already but it was still a sweet move.)

2012 I was super pregnant amd we went to a Vappu brunch after the park.

2013 Eddi was in Bolivia and I was home on the countryside with Dag minding my flowers and drinking beer. Kind of like now, heh.
And I got carried away at my son's first chance for a Vappu balloon and got him two. Dag has a dinosaur balloon this year as well btw (< THE INTERNET HAS TO KNOW!)

But I also brought Dag to his first First of May park experience then!
I remember he started screaming so hard in the bus (that was packed) on our way downtown I had to get off and wait for another one. Not very surprisingly we went for brunch after the park.
(Most restaurants organise late brunches on May 1st. )

Last year we stayed out on the countryside and had some friends over for bbq and fixed up my old car. And yes it was so much warmer than now. And no, that's not a real butt.

Glada Vappen!

THAT ONE ABOUT EASTER

Easter. This year I managed to plan a little in advance (as in I beat my side note challenge from last year, did them the night before; tada!) and did not have to rely on what randomness I could find in the drawers. We went feather-free and decorated the willow branches with small pom poms. The kids use these to hand out for when they go around wishing neighbours well for the year to come and expect to get treats in return. They actually turned out rather nice so maybe next year I'll make a vase for us as well. Well, we'll see about that next year then...

And then! Once a year: Mämmi. Memma. Yum. During my thirty-something years of eating mämmi I have, being the kind of person who apparently just can't do things without having to alter them a little, come to the conclusion that I prefer mine with lemon quark, with or sans fresh fruit on the side. And this is for breakfast in my book (and most likely my book only); not dessert.

Well here's another one who also tweaks traditions. For the Easter walk Dag wanted to be a knight, not a witch, which is basically the whole thing and thus pretty much the only option, apart from a bunny or the witch's black cat every now and then. Well we've seen huge eggs and chickens over here too and if the kid wants to be a knight I'll of course turn him into one!
You can read more about the candy begging-well-wishing Eastern tradition in the some past posts of mine.

And all the small witches left their marks on our door.

BUNNIES AND OTHER EASTERY THINGIES

Easter. Felt it was really early this year as I am not sure it's quite spring yet for real, at least not in the kind of way you'd dare to be sure about This year I learned how the dates are set, how it goes related to the first full moon after spring solstice. Aaaahaaa.

Dag bought home easter-grass they'd grown in his kids' club plus a black witch's cat he'd made. Milk cartons and toilet paper rolls, forever strong in the kids' crafting departement. I've made a ton of these as a kid myself; there would be some Christmas elves and angels and Easter witches and bunnies in every corner at every holiday of the year in our home when I was young. I was too small to remember what I thought of my creations myself, but when my sisters started bringing them home some years later I remember thinking they were ugly and started dreading the day my own offspring would clog the surfaces of my future lovely home with their cardboard-glue-and felt pieces. And then BOOM that day comes and you go aaaaaw and think everything is just adorable. Meow!
(Even though that cat obviously is a little drunk. )


On Friday I drove into town for a late night gogo-dance-and-eat-whipped-cream-on-stage gig (in other words nothing different from the usual) in the same time stressing for the following day's Easter-treat collecting that the children do on Easter Saturday, which I had not had the time to prepare properly. Or, I had kind of prepared it already as I had indeed stuffed some material in a plastic bag at the same time I packed my gogo gear at home in the city the day before, but not put into realisation.

(Backstage photo by Antti Vuorenmaa.)

So the next day I had a super-domestic-day and got up early to sew Dag a bunny costume. Well, a bunny hood, not top-to-toe (phew!);  he wanted to be a Easter bunny this year. This time I had also remembered to bring the face paint ton the right house (one of the things I stuffed in that bag)- last year I had to improvise with whatever I had in my make up bag - and Dag turned into a little bunny boy.

His older brother had misplaced his bunny costume I'd made him some years before and after some panicked searching we got a little creative and he became a cartoon mushroom instead. Because why not!
Dag's oldest brother is 15 already so he has skipped out on this for some years now already.

And then those damn pussy willow branches. The ones the kids hand out so they get candy. Let's just face it, I'll probably never manage to have them done well in time.  (Challenge for next year: do it! Well in time might mean I could get the kids to actually work on them themselves too). Usually they are decorated with feathers and crepe paper. But you take what you have and what time you have -  I added gift ribbons like last year and turned a couple of A4's into quick decorations and they did turn out rather decent.

And then the boys were ready to join up with a gang of some small yellow baby chickens, an Easter egg and some witches to go collect sweets.  It's a mix of eastern (Orthodox) and western pagan-meets-Christianity-traditions to go around houses, either on Palm Sunday (east) or Easter Saturday (west), and wish the people well for the coming year. And get lots of candy.



Meanwhile it was time for some (very quick and easy) baking as we had people coming over. Woom woom super Saturday.

Later I turned into the actual big B and hid some eggs around the house for the kids to search for the next morning.

It's always fun! Although one may bump into the ones that were the most well hidden later during the year...

The kids' sugar-rush stash.

Well, it's only once a year...

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Christmas! Christmas christmas christmas.

I really do love the season, even though we are having a very moist and green one this year.
Last year I was so busy everything was rather last-minute and then went by pretty fast. So I decided I'd start my Christmas preparations early this year to get to enjoy it longer.

Which obviously didn't happen, apart from some lights and starts hung up earlier in December.
I had pretty  much everything left for this week.

^That's me the last three days. EVERYBODY HAS TO GET IN THE CHRISTMAS MOOD NOW!

(picture from Fotolia)

So yesterday I had a turrrrbo-christmas preparation day and fixed soem gifts, sent out my cards and some gifts (YES I KNOW THEY WILL NOT MAKE IT but it's kind of nice receiving them during the so called middle days between Christmas and New Years' as well isn't it, when you can take it easy and eat chocolates and receive greeting that are still wishing you a good time, right?), decorated the tree and baked gingerbreads.

I am rather fine with being in a hurry and doing a lot a once thought, as I'm used to that, but I just miss getting to take it easy and enjoy the feeling.  Well doesn't everybody. But I will do it now and afterwards instead - my Christmas always goes on until at least Epiphany (old traditions here "throw" Christmas out after twenty days so there's still time). And we did have a nice although stuffed day yesterday -

Dag baked gingerbreads for the first time properly.

Classic hearts.

And gingerbread men that Dag and I decorated. (For some reason gingerbread med freak me out. Sometimes when I can't sleep I picture them coming up the stairs with knives in their hands. Merry Christmas!)


We did gingerbread trucks too, upon which Dag is happily munching here.

Last year I did a Moomin-inspired Christmas tree,  one like they do in the books. This year the kids got to decorate it so I just let it go for more is more.


I'm not much of a decorater otherwise; apart from lights I just prefer to add flowers of the season here and there.

Like amaryllis!

I love them as they are so big and bold, but they always grow too heavy and fall down and look drunk. So I placed them in the biggest jar I had, where they should be able to keep their alignment right.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to everybody out there celebrating something!