Being a foodblogger is a great. Not only do you learn to cook better yourself, you also meet wonderful people from all around the world, and you get given food gifts from all over the world, too. First there's European Blogging By Mail, which has brought me wonderful gifts from Johanna, Shalimar and Meeta. Then there were all those unexpected delightful gifts from Dagmar and Stevi and Eden last summer. And during the last few months I've received other numerous gifts.

To start with, there were those cans of sweet piquillo peppers from Ximena (who, obviously, is the author of that gorgeous postcard as well):



The peppers were wonderful. I didn't even try Ximena's recipe for slowly cooked piquillos, as I liked them so much just on a slice of bread..

Then there are all those gifts from Johanna. I received a much-wanted book, Kaffehaus by Rick Rodgers, some Belgian hot chocolate, fancy coffee spoons and some spices from her in return for writing a Culinary City Snapshot on Tallinn for her. (A rather good exchange, if I may say so. PS Johanna - if you ever need me to write another piece, just give me a shout! :)



I've since received another parcel from Johanna, containing an issue of Delicious magazine, some hand-picked, organic Hungarian paprika (both hot & mild), and some more exotic spices. She had very kindly even included a bag of cheeky peppers de padron, which we had enjoyed so much while in London.

Oh, and of course some Austrian chocolate, which sadly didn't make it to the photo session. Khmm..



AND - not to forget that unforgettable jar of home-made fig jam Johanna gave us in London(picture here).

When in Edinburgh in June, I met Melissa of the Traveler's Lunchbox again, to catch up on the recent gossip from my hometown of the previous seven years. I gave Melissa some suluguni cheese, so she could try my hachapuri recipe and judge how it compares with her previous version (favourably, apparently:). In return, I became a lucky owner of some Hawaiian pink salt (alaea salt), some luscious vanilla beans, and a small jar of ras-el-hanout she had picked up in Morocco recently:



I had a chance to catch with Keiko of Nordljus fame (what's not to like about her dreamy photography!?) and her husband during my trip to London in April. We met in Cambridge on a Sunday afternoon, chatted over a cup of coffee and a large piece of chocolate cake, and she gave me two types of Japanese tea to try:



My sweet Japanese friend from Edinburg, Ryoko, sent me a Japanese care packet, containing some matcha powder (which, you may have noted, I've put to a very good use over the last few months); some dashi powder, ume-cha tea, including English explanations as well:



Last but not least, my friend Liis picked up not one, not two, but three food magazines for me during her recent trip to the US - a copy of fresh (fine cooking), a copy of Australian edition of delicious. and GardenGate's special issue backyard retreat to help me design our 2000 m2 garden. Similarly, my former colleague and now friend Hille brought me a 1977 copy of Carolina Cooking , published by Charleston Post Card Co. Inc., from her roadtrip from Miami to New York earlier this year.

These all should keep me busy & cooking for a while (and I'll be referring back to this post as I work my way through all those gifts and reads).

Thank you, everyone, for making my cooking so much more enjoyable and exciting!!!

The shortest night of 2007 is behind us, and I'm pleased to say I had a lovely time in Lalli village in Raplamaa. Before the night's festivities began, I found my first porcini mushroom of the year (above) - an early brown birch bolete (Leccinum scabrum, Birkenpilz) and between the two of us managed to pick a good kilogram of wild strawberries in just over an hour. Wild strawberries vol. 2007 deserve a separate post of their own, so click here to read :)
After visiting my uncle in Paluküla and one of my first cousins in nearby Kädva, we returned to Lalli just in time for the traditional village bonfire celebrating the shortest night of the year, The bonfire was held on their traditional bonfire site - Sonni hill. Not the most dramatic location, but extremely peaceful and beautiful nevertheless. The party began around 9pm, and there were 14 people in total, aged 9 to 90, with couple of dogs to boot. Here's a picture taken from the bonfire site from 9.30 pm, and it's still rather light:



And almost the same view half an hour before midnight:



Dark, but still not too bad, is it? As we walked home across those fields around 1am, without any flashlights, and I was giggling when I saw my sneakers in the dark. Althought summer nights in Scotland are light compared to the ones in Southern Europe, I had still forgotten how much lighter they are at home in Estonia..

There was some singing, and lots of chatting and catching up. And of course there was lots of food. I had made a selection of small sandwiches to take along: small rye bread squares with garlicky cheese filling, classic sandwich triangles with egg & cress mayo, and some with tuna & tomato filling. Additionally, I brought along two types of muffins, adapting my recipe for moist rhubarb muffins to make pear & ginger muffins and apple & cranberry muffins. From the market, we picked up some day-old salted cucumbers and a huge Italian watermelon, and other people had brought along lots of different sausages for roasting over the flames. Our 'BBQ' was one of the very rustic ones:



You see the two sticks on the right, with chunks of meat stuck on them? Well, that's my improvised rosemary-lemon-honey lamb, which seemed to be much more popular than the various sausages, I'm pleased to report :)



And here's what's left of the big fire at 1 am, just before we left..

BLAST FROM THE PAST: A year ago I spent St John's Night on Santorini, in Greece, where my friends Annemieke and Georgios got hitched. You can read about breakfasts with fabulous views here and dining on Santorini here. Two years ago I was hosting my parents, sister and older nephew in Edinburgh, as they had flown over for my graduation ceremony.

Ilva has done it. Again. Zarah Maria has done it. Anne has done it. So has Dagmar. And Sam.

Now it's my turn.

I'm not big on making new year's promises & resolutions, as I pretty much always fail to stick to them. I must have promised for the last 15 years to join a gym and go on a diet as soon as Christmas is over, but (irregular and occasional) weekly or fortnightly badminton session and some pilates classes are the most I can muster..

However, we're talking about my favourite pastime here - food. It must be so much easier to keep those promises, overcome those challenges and stick to the resolutions.

Here we go then..

1. I will try my hand at panna cotta. I've seen so many beautiful posts about this Italian pudding (see Ilva's panna cotta al caffe, Nicky's blueberry & buttermilk, Clotilde's strawberry ones for example) and I've been thinking of few interesting versions to make myself.

2. I will make a terrine/pâté or two, at least one using rabbit. (I know, cruel!) .

3. I will make gnocchi. I always ordered gnocchi at Italian restaurants in Edinburgh, as I loved them, was too lazy to make them myself, and the supermarket ones didn't really fit the bill. Time to make them myself!

4. I will make a rullepølse or the Danish cooked rolled pork belly. I've had a rullepolse press since 1993 - I got it as a gift from my host-brother Allan when leaving Denmark (he had made it at the crafts class at school). It had been lost in the depths of my parents' larder for way too many years. I rediscovered that Danish charcuterie item during my recent trip there, and then rummaged through my parents house until I found the wooden press. (Done in April 2007, but haven't yet blogged about it)

5. I will make osso bucco. I've seen some suitable cuts at my local supermarket, costing almost nothing. K. seems keen on the idea, too. (Done in June 2007)

6. I will make boeuf bourgoingnon. (Done in January 2007)

7. I will cook at least one new recipe from K's grandmother's and great-grandmother's handwritten cookbooks (written in 1934 and 1890, respectively) every fortnight.

8. I will eat more fish. And fruit & vegetables. And less, a lot less chocolate & pastries & cakes. (Cakes & pastries made of apples count, obviously, as fruit, as I do need my regular fix of various apple cakes).

9. The usual/typical foodblogger resolution for this year - I will try not to buy (too many) new cookbooks, as I've already got loads. Hey, K. had to buy a whole new bookshelf to accommodate my culinary-literary treasures (you can see it hidden behind the Christmas tree on the photo above)!

10. I will take steps to considerably improve my photography skills, focusing obviously on taking good food pictures. This will involve learning from the masters (you know who you are), acquiring a lightbox and possibly upgrading my camera..

That should do, don't you think?

Here's my new apron - a goodbye-present from my Edinburgh colleagues Margaret, Lindsay, David & Paddy. Cheers!



What's your apron like?

UPDATE 25.6.2007: Check out Kalyn's apron post on Blogher. and Ilva's Show Us Your Apron one-off event (deadline 15.7.2007).

This Mama Cooks is a US-based blog written by Anne-Marie, and she features her favourite blogs every now and then. A fortnight ago, her blog featured Johanna's wonderful The Passionate Cook, and this week it was my turn. Lucky me:) Go and check out Anne-Marie's blog.

Meanwhile, I'm cooking again:) For my last fornight in Edinburgh, I'm staying with my friends Dianne and Peter and their children Maarja-Liis (8 yrs) and Maarek (12 months). Yesterday I made some yummy salmon and green pea fishcakes (courtesy of BBC Good Food 'Fresh family food' supplement, November 2006), which were a great success with the two oldest 'girls' and the wee boy. I also baked Nigella Lawson's chocolate and cherry cupcakes again (smiling faces all round), and used up the over-ripe bananas for a banana loaf (thankfully I tried a tiny slice late last night myself, as there was none left when I got home today). For today's supper I contributed Greek meatballs (using turkey, as Dianne doesn't eat red meat) and some beef meatballs seasoned with paprika powder, followed by some of the cherry cake.

I simply love hosts who let you loose in their kitchen:)

One of the positive aspects about living in a beautiful town like Edinburgh is the amount of visitors. This year's visitors' season has definitely began, and I'll be hosting various friends from home and abroad quite frequently for the next few weeks. My first visitor this spring is a former colleague of mine, Hille. We used to share an office back in 1999-2000, and we had another colleague at the head office who was called Sille. Imagine the confusion:)

Having guests is great - especially if they bring you some rye bread, cheese, salami and chocolates from home. However, having guests will have probably a somewhat detrimental effect on my blogging. Acting as a tourguide and a B&B hostess (as well as trying to do my paid day job) can be exhausting. I tend to stick to tried and tested favourites as opposed to spending too much time trying to come up with new dishes. Since Hille's arrival, I've made penne alla vodka again, using smoked pancetta (note that I've replaced the original picture in that post and edited the recipe slightly - so go and re-read it:). This kept us suitably warm for the couple of hours we spent at Calton Hill enjoying the Beltane Fire Festival. On Tuesday night I made haggis, neeps & tatties again, followed by cranachan a la Sue Lawrence, with caramelised oats instead of oatmeal and mascarpone cheese to make it creamier.

We have also been out and about a bit, enjoying various cuppas at Peckham's and BeanScene, and great smoothies at Centotre on George Street to recover after some window-shopping. On Monday we feasted at Nile Valley, a Sudanese restaurant near the University. A spicy lamb stew for Hille and a delicious okra dish (okra, cruncy carrots and soft mushrooms in a slightly spicy sauce) for Pille, whereas we both devoured the coconut icecream above. I dislike both Bounty bars and Raffaello chocolates, but this creamy and overly coconutty ice cream I liked. It was a perfect pud to kickstart a long salsa night that followed:)

* The title refers to a rather unusual show I saw at the Edinburgh International Festival last summer, "nuts coconuts: the story of the 'Gibraltar Follies' variety theatre company" . The programme for this year's Edinburgh International Festival is out now.

No cooking this week, as I'm off to London for various meetings and conferences today. However, I will share with you couple of pictures of some simple meals I've had lately.

Fish at its simplest
(Purustatud ürdikartulid)



I had bought some nice trout fillets from Edinburgh's Farmers' Market. Usually I would simply season the fish with salt, pepper, dill and lemon juice before grilling it, and serve with boiled new potatoes. Here's a slightly different take on it: pan-fried trout fillets (seasoned with salt, pepper and lemon juice), served with crushed potatoes with dill, garlic and melted butter. Crushed potatoes in its various forms seem to appear in every single cookery magazine and programme these days and it was indeed quite a nice way of serving spuds.

A quick tomato soup
(Lihtne tomatisupp)



This is simply passata diluted with Marigold vegetable stock, reduced a little, enriched with cream, and seasoned with salt, black pepper and some basil. Served with a dollop of cottage cheese.
I quite like the picture, even if it is slightly out of focus..

Drunken potatoes
(Veini-kartulivorm)



A recipe from Jill Dupleix via Valentina over at Trembom in English for another great way to serve potatoes. Sliced potatoes, seasoned with salt, pepper and thyme, drowned in dry white wine and baked in the oven until soft and crisp at the same time.
Valentina's blog is definitely worth a visit, so if you haven't been there yet, please check it out.

Banana creme bruleé



And finally - here's a picture of a banana bruleé I had at Maison Bleue in the company of a very charming Scottish politician a fortnight ago. Lovely place, and the bruleé was absolutely delicious, with a delicate yet crisp bruleé topping, a very subtle hint of banana and a cute cape gooseberry decoration.
I'm looking forward to trying to recreate this pudding, so if anyone out there has a good recipe for a banana bruleé, please let me know.

Having consumed this drink non-stop* for 2 days now, I decided it's about time to share the recipe with you.

Blackcurrant infusion
Serves 1

750 mg Paracetamol Ph. Eur.
10 mg Phenylephrine Hydrochloride BP
60 mg Ascorbic Acid
Blackcurrant extract
sugar to taste
boiling water to fill the cup

If you prefer your infusions on the sharp side, then you might want to replace the blackcurrant with squeeze or two of lemon (top, on the right).

Also known as Coldrex or Lemsip:)

Am feverish, sniffing and sneezing and sweating and coughing in my bed, having finally caught the flu bug from somewhere. So no cooking (and thus blogging) - I'm surviving on the above infusions and Geisha chocolates. Oh well, at least I have Nigel Slater's the kitchen diaries to read, home-delivered courtesy of Amazon..

* No more than 4 times a day, of course. The rest of the time it's a version of infusion du jour # 1 of one kind or another..

Just a short note to say that I am unable to update my blog frequently these days, as I'm busy baking Christmas cookies (above), enjoying saunas and hugging snowy trees in Viru bog on the Northern coast of Estonia (below). I'll be back in the new year to tell you all about the copious Christmas eating and cooking, and will try to answer all those memes I have been tagged for during the last month or so.

Thanks to all of you who have made keeping this blog so enjoyable during the last 6 months. I hope you will continue to come back next year!



Head vana-aasta lõppu ja toredat uut aastat!!!

United Kingdom is currently the presiding country of the European Union. Apart from the UK attempting to solve lots of worthy worldly causes (agree on the next EU budget, eradicate world poverty and provide more trade opportunities for Africa), this has personal implications for me. You see, lots of EU meetings take place in the UK, and some of these take place in Edinburgh. And that means that some of my friends inevitably end up in Scotland sooner or later discussing important EU matters.

So it happened that a good university friend of mine was in Edinburgh on a business trip from late Wednesday night until Saturday morning. I only got a final confirmation about her arrival on Tuesday morning. This was followed by a prompt email to my Mum, who compiled a quick goodie bag for her émigré daughter. This was picked up by my friend on Tuesday night, and gratefully accepted by me at a hotel lobby in Edinburgh late on Wednesday.

Here’s a typical Estonian émigré goodie bag:


On the top right there’s a huge 300 gram bar of Kalevipoeg chocolate. This is a lovely darkish milk chocolate with large hazelnut chunks. Very suitable for émigré Estonians, as it depicts the hero of our national epic, Kalevipoeg (Son of Kalev), making it a prime example of a patriotic chocolate. Similarities to the Finnish national epic Kalevala are purely coincidental, of course...

Then there are two pink bars of Geisha chocolate from the Finnish Fazer company. These are utterly delicious, with a soft nougat filling. Not really Estonian, but Helsinki and Tallinn are just 80 kilometres apart, so that’s close enough and shows strong Finno-Ugric unity…

Then three packets of hõõgveinimaitseaine alias mulled wine seasoning. It is getting unusually chilly in Edinburgh – there’s been frost for few mornings in a row now. And mulled wine is absolutely essential for survival in colder climates and mulled wine seasoning mixture is therefore part of any survival kit...

In a proud centre position is a huge loaf of sour rye bread. As Estonians, we have a very special relationship with our bread. We honestly and truly believe that it’s the best bread in the world. I am no exception. This is a fine example of the light rye bread with caraway seeeds – Tallinn’s fine bread - named after the capital of Estonia.

Next to the bread, a small packet of sweets. Well, those of you who read my story about the ubiquous Estonian roasted and ground grain mixture, kama, know about the kama ’chocolate’ bar – indeed, at least 2 other European bloggers have by now had a chance to taste kama ’chocolate’ bar. You may also remember my recipes for kama truffles and kama mousse. But that’s not all. We can stretch kama even further. Here’s a packet of kamabatoonid, alias chalky textured kama flavoured sweets. Definitely a very acquired taste and texture :), but again, totally essential in a goodie bag sent to any young Estonian abroad...

A loaf of white bread with sunflower seeds, päevalilleseemnesai. Not essential, but a nice touch from my mum.

Two packets of sliced Estonian smoked sausages. Go very well with Estonian rye bread (see above).

October-November issue of Vikerkaar, the official monthly magazine of Estonian Writers’ Union (a bit like Granta in Britain). Included in the goodie bag as it has my name on the cover page (the dark bit on the third line, you see) and an Estonian de-academised version of the conference paper I gave in Estonia in August printed inside. Very pleased with that one, as it’s nice to have something published in my mother tongue for a change.

There you go. It would be fun to read what other dislocated and displaced foodbloggers would (want to) find in their goodie bags. Maybe I should start a meme...

Today is my parents' 32nd wedding anniversary. Here's a postcard I sent them on the occasion. It is another postcard by Annie Tempest, called The Male and Female Characters.

He makes coffee:


She makes coffee:


Yes, I know it's sexist and reproducing gender stereotypes. But my Mum for sure agrees with the message. My Dad, you see, does no 'female' housework. I remember him saying that as he has three women in the house, he doesn't need to contribute to the household chores!!! Aaaargh. (To be fair to him, taking the rubbish out, fixing lightbulbs, heating the house & our wood-fire oven, getting the sauna ready, feeding the dogs, cutting the grass/shovelling the snow etc classify as 'male' tasks in our household, so I guess they both work their fair share).

Most importantly, my Dad doesn't cook. Yes, he can make a strong filter coffee, he's quite good in grilling the meat during summer parties, and he can re-heat the food lovingly prepared by my Mum and left in the fridge for my Dad. But that's pretty much all. There are, however, couple of food memories related to my Dad that I maybe should have included in my childhood food memories MEME.

These involve feeding a baby, feeding 2 toddlers and feeding a family. Which I find hilarious. Here they are:

Feeding baby Pille
My sister Merle is one year, 3 months and 6 days younger than me. Which means that in the glorious hot July of 1975, my Dad was left alone with his first-born (alias me) for a while. When my Granny came to check on her son and first grandchild one afternoon, she found me naked, tied to a tree by foot and smeared with chocolate. My Dad, you see, is a car freak - he was a semi-professional rally driver until my early teens. And on that glorious summer day he felt like fiddling with his racing car. Which can be quite tricky when a one-year-old is demanding all your attention. In order to avoid changing nappies and me 'escaping' to neighbouring gardens, he tied me to the tree, strip naked. And kept me oh-so-content by feeding me chocolates (well, Fluff was unheard of in Soviet Estonia). And that's how my granny found me - a happy naked & extremely content baby playing on the grass under the sun. I still love my Dad dearly, so this unconventional babysitting method was fine, I guess:) Though maybe I should blame my chocoholism on him??

Feeding toddlers Pille & Merle
When we were kids, semolina porridge - mannapuder - was a staple breakfast for kids. My Mum wasn't around and Dad decided to cook porridge for us. The right way to make it: bring the milk to a boil in a saucepan, add some semolina, stir and cook for another 7-8 minutes, until semolina has expanded considerably. Season and serve. My Dad had seen my Mum do this, but he didn't know that semolina expands. So he kept pouring semolina into the milk until he was happy with the thickness and consistency. But only then semolina started expanding.
Let me say, it was not a nice fluffy porridge of my Mum, but an inedible stone hard concoction. I guess we ended up eating chocolate again:)

Feeding himself & the kids
Another food memory related to my Dad involves pasta, or makaronid as they're called in Estonian. My Dad likes pasta that has been boiled and then fried in oil or butter with an egg thrown in at the end. But again, he hadn't really focused on the exact process.
He took a box of dried pasta from the cupboard. Heated some oil and butter on the frying pan and threw in the pasta. .................... Yep, he threw the DRIED PASTA into the oil. Not the leftover cold cooked pasta from night before, like my Mum always did. You can guess the rest..

Anyway. My Dad is a lovely man but not exactly a skilled cook. And somehow the above card seemed very appropriate for today. I guess that's why I sent it to them in the first place:)

Palju õnne, kallid emme ja issi!

Melissa of The Traveller's Lunchbox has tagged me for the latest meme sweeping through the foodblogging community and it's a real pleasure to take part. I enjoyed reading the cookbook memes and the cook next door memes of fellow foodbloggers when I started in June 2005 - it was fascinating to get a small glimpse into the lives of more experienced bloggers. Although quite a few of my friends are very good cooks, I'm probably the only one verging on the obsession (you know, buying yet another cookbook, reading all food magazines, getting out of bed early on Saturday morning to go to the farmers market, getting excited about good/new/interesting ingredients, and gleaming proudly at everything she cooks), so it was comforting to find out that I am pretty normal after all..

Here are some food-related bits and pieces from my childhood - not strictly five, but a few more:

1. I have quite a few childhood food memories related to my grandparents farm in Paluküla, some 80 kilometres south from the capital Tallinn. I spent about one month there every summer, alongside with a varying combination of my 11 cousins. It was quite a large farm with cats, dogs, cows (in addition to my grandparents' cows, there were several collective farm cowsheds at the farm), sheep, chicken, and orchards, fields after fields of potatoes and other vegetables etc.

There were lots of forests near the farm and one of the most vivid memories is of going wild mushroom picking with my grandfather. He was a big, untalkative and somewhat scary man, who died when I was 7. Although I can't remember ever playing with him (he was probably too busy working for that) or chatting with him, I remember following him into the forest, where he'd show us the mushrooms to pick and the ones to leave behind.

There were lots of wild strawberry fields at the farm and at the nearby hillside. There's nothing better than grabbing a small jug or plastic container and heading for the fields. The first few handfuls would end up straight in our mouths, of course. After couple of hours in the sun, we'd head back, crush the strawberries at the bottom of a glass with some sugar, pour over some freshly milked cow milk and enjoy. Blissful..

I remember picking cloudberries, blueberries/bilberries, bog bilberries, cranberries, wild raspberries and lingonberries with my grandmother, Mum, aunties and cousins - whoever happened to be at the farm.

Making apple juice was always lots of fun. We'd spent all day collecting ripe apples from the orchard, washing them, squashing through the big wooden chopper/presser, and then drinking as much freshly squeezed apple juice as we could handle. This was an elaborate affair, often taking more than a day.

2. For whatever reason I used to dip tomatoes into sugar when I was younger. And I don't think it was to compensate for the lack of sweetness, as I did it with bright red and ripe tomatoes grown in my grandmother's greenhouse. Now I eat tomatoes with coarsely ground black pepper. Talk about changing tastes.

3. There was a childrens' TV programme, Kass Artur - about a cat called Arthur - in our only Estonian language TV channel back in 1980s. In one of the programmes, the 'cat' gave a recipe for a sickly sweet concoction involving toffees, butter and puffed corn. Almost 20 years on, this is still one of the favourites at children's parties and can even be bought in shops - and it's known as 'Kass Arturi kook' or the cake of cat Arthur. Here's one I made couple of months ago - my nephews absolutely adored it.

4. Chicken neck soup (kanakaelasupp) is one of the food memories I'd rather forget. In the Soviet Estonia of 1980s, the shops got pretty empty, and I've mentioned the need to be self-sufficient already. But despite of the empty shops, we never went hungry. Potatoes and other vegs came from my grandparents' farm, mum grew various fruit, berries and vegetables in our garden. Meat was slightly more difficult to get hold of, but my grandmother slaughtered a pig every now and then (yep, have witnessed this, too), and one of my Mum's younger sisters knew people in a chicken abattoir, so we were not on a totally vegetarian diet. Auntie Valve brought us some chicken necks (cleaned and gutted, obviously) every now and then, which my Mum used to make soup. And I hated it. There was no meat to talk about - just loads of tiny bones that you were expected to suck to get out the meaty juices. Not really my cup of tea. Chicken gizzard stew (kanapuguhautis), on the other hand, I quite liked and wouldn't mind cooking myself again in the future...
(Auntie Valve also brought us some smoked chicken roulade every now and then, which was absolutely delicious and a staple at any festive table).

5. Another sad food memory involves rabbits. It must have been in early 1980s, when my parents had got hold of two rabbits that were put into a special shed in our back garden. The aim - to raise two big rabbits for a stew later in the year. It was my sister's and my chore to feed the rabbits grass and salad leaves during the summer. Unfortunately, we both picked and bonded with 'a pet rabbit' over the summer. You can imagine our sadness when my Mum announced then that poor rabbits are at the end of their lives soon. And indeed, they ended up as a rabbit stew one after another. I remember not eating a single spoonful of rabbit stew made of _my_ rabbit. And my sister refused a single spoonful of a rabbit stew made of _her_ rabbit. We had no problem whatsoever eating the other stew though.. Life can be so cruel sometimes..
Come to think of that, I now also remember protesting once with my cousins when my granny made a big pot of veal stew. We thought it was slightly cruel of her to use the baby cows we used to go and pat and play with every now and then...

6. I have already mentioned kama 'chocolate' bar - this is also one of my childhood sweets.

7. There's another food memory that always brings a smile at my face. Roasting potatoes in the dying ashes of a midsummer bonfire, and then eating them with nothing else but a sprinkling of salt. This was pre-foil era, so our hands would always end up smeared with dark grey ash dust. But it was always a cosy and romantic affair, even as a kid..

8. Strictly speaking, this is not a childhood memory, as I have no recollection of it whatsoever. But my grandmother insists that I used to sneak into the larder and pick out all fatty pieces from the mortadella-type sausages when I was a kid - see those tiny white speckles on the right? I think she's lying. As I said, I have no recollection of that activity and in any case, I always choose the sausage from the shop with no visible fatty speckles. So it couldn't have been me, could it?
(Or maybe I did go OTT with eating fat from sausages as a kid and now avoid it at some unconscious level??)

***********

I'd like to tag Johanna and Moira for this meme, who were my blogging by mail buddies recently. I also tag Paz for this meme, as a thanks for being such an avid visitor of my blog.*

That's the meme tree at the moment: -- when it's your turn, simply move down the list, dropping number one from the top spot, moving the numbers down, and placing yourself in the number five spot (and of course, linking to each):

1. Cuisine et Compagnie
2. Chocolate and Zucchini
3. A Finger in Every Pie
4. The Traveler's Lunchbox
5. Nami-Nami

* I would have really wanted to tag Anne of Anne's Food as it would have been interesting to hear if there're any other Estonian food memories apart from 'pelmeenid' - but then she has already participated in this meme:)

I hinted that I'll be writing about cheesy feet again. This is gonna be a very brief post, but I thought it was worth sharing.
I took my recently acquired feet shaped cookie cutters along with me when I went home a fortnight ago. My sister threw her own and her two boys' birthday party in our parents house on the following evening. And I proudly showed off my new cute biscuit cutters to my Mum. As we were busy preparing the traditional Estonian birthday party fare - that means loads of cakes and the obligatory potato salad alongside my dad's grilled meat as well as cold meat and cheese platters - I decided not to start baking any cheese biscuits that night.
But my Mum had another idea - why not cut the cheese into slices and these into feet shapes with my new cutter. That sounded good, as there were quite a few kids at the party and we could see that cheese-feet would probably look appealing to them. And that's how indeed it turned out to be.
However, before we managed to serve the feet-shaped cheese, I had a small "fight" with my Mum. While I was happily slicing and cutting away the cheese, my mum suggested that I could find something else to occupy myself with in the kitchen. "Why don't you go and check that everything is fine with the table outside" she told me. I replied nicely that I was perfectly happy with slicing the cheese and she can do it herself. My Mum repeated her request. And then it dawned upon me. I looked at my Mum and saw this look of envy at her face and I realised that she was keen to get me out of the way, so she could slice and cut the cheese into cute feet shapes herself. I obliged, of course, and found the situation quite hilarious.
Before I left Tallinn on Sunday afternoon, I spotted my Mum cutting slices of rye bread and cheese with my feet-shaped cookie cutters. Apparently couple of her colleagues were due to come to visit on Tuesday night. Which means that there is a group of middle-aged women this very moment at our back garden giggling over feet-shaped bread and cheese. Who would have thought that these cookie cutters prove so versatile and popular:)
Suffice to say that I grabbed the cookie cutters along at the last moment and brought them safely back with me to Edinburgh. I may need them to cheer me up on a cold, dark and rainy autumn night..

Pre-heat the oven* to at least 100 degrees Celsius (that's about 225 Fahrenheit)**. If dealing with a very tough and experienced blogger, a higher temperature may be needed. For the young, pregnant, sick and elderly, 80 degrees or even less may suffice.
Take a foodblogger, peel off all protective layers. It is especially important to remove all decorative metal bits and pieces. Rinse thoroughly under soapy running water.
Roast in a pre-heated oven for 10 minutes. Take out and quickly rinse under cool running water [in winter, a quick dip into snow can be used instead. If roasting takes place near a natural water reservoir - sea, lake, river - these are preferable for the running indoor water].
Put back into the oven. Roast for another 10 minutes, then quickly cool down under the water. Repeat roasting and cooling as many times as deemed necessary (the process takes considerably longer time, if there are many roasts taking place at the same time, as communal beer or water drinking usually takes place between roasting sessions - to keep the moisture - and usually only 2-3 roasts fit into the oven at any one time, so they must take turns).
The preferred flavouring is birch - slightly dried birch branches are soaked in hot water, and then used to sharply hit the back, thighs and other parts of the (fellow) roast(s) repeatedly to tenderise the meat and get the juices flowing [don't ask, but it improves the end result, believe me].
At the end of the roasting session there are two options one can take:
1) after the last roasting, wash the blogger very thoroughly. Smear with plenty of (Body Shop Nut) butter. OR
2) before the last roasting, wash the blogger very thoroughly. Smear with special sauna honey and put back into the oven for another 5 minutes or so, until the honey has melted into the skin (we're aiming for baby soft and not crisp skin here obviously!) Do NOT rinse with water after this!
Wrap the slow-and-soft-roasted blogger into a towel. To preserve the rosy complexion, leave to cool slowly at room temperature.
Enjoy the post-sauna bliss. (I am currently:)
Repeat the whole process in a couple of days.

* A proper wood-heated Finnish/Estonian sauna (we are still arguing about the origin here) - the dry and very hot type. Read what a Wall Street Journal wrote about Estonian sauna customs.
** That's about the temperature required to bake marengues or oven-roast tomatoes:)))

The January 2005 issue of delicious.magazine has a section on gastrology, where ‘top astrologer Shelley von Strunckel explains how star signs influence your tastes and cooking style’.

My entry states:

Taureans are all about delicate colours, fresh scents and the glowing light of an early spring day. They’re sensual and adore luxury but retain the practicality of a sensible Earth sign. They love the good life and most feel good food is a big part of that: rich cream, fine meats, aromatic spices and, most of all, sweets.
Classic French cuisine – with its complex sauces, extravagant desserts and elegant presentation – is pure Taurus. They also obtain exactly the right ingredients, know and adore fine wines, have the best in kitchen equipment and know how to use it – many may have done cookery courses.
Although Taureans devise delicious menus, a large proportion have a particular resistance to trying anything unfamiliar, and this particularly applies to Taurean children. Still, even the pickiest buckle when faced with a luscious pudding, particularly if it’s rich in chocolate.
Circumstances will force most Taureans to broaden their gastronomic world in 2005 – possibly through travel for business, a friendship that brings new flavours or even health concerns. It’s a rare Taurean who embraces change with gusto but, once interested, they’ll become enthusiasts.
Key flavours: sensual, sweet, flavourful
Traditional herbs and aromas: sorrel, rose, sandalwood

There are couple of things to say about this ‘gastrological’ statement, but not now. I'll be back.

Meanwhile, I know there are some other Taurean foodbloggers out there who might want to comment:)

I've decided to start my own food blog. I'm not new to the internet foodie-ness - indeed, I've been managing an online recipe website since 2002, if I remember correctly. My former partner Heigo, now sadly no longer with us, was a software developer and he insisted that I'd put my recipe collection online. I'm not sure whether it was his software developer Self that wanted to try if he can create an online recipe database from scratch with ingredient search functions etc, or whether he got tired of me emailing from Edinburgh to Tallinn asking him to find, copy and email me a recipe for a particular dish I fancied making at the moment, but in any case Nami-nami retseptikogu was born. It contains over 7000 recipes that I've found from numerous cookbooks, magazines (food/travel/women's), newspapers, websites, TV shows; recipes I've inherited or asked from my mum, relatives, friends. I'm quite proud of Nami-nami - the range of sources is rather wide, especially as I've added recipes from Estonian sources, as well as translated them from English, Finnish, Danish, Swedish and occasionally even from Russian. I've tried only to add recipes that I've tried, or plan to try recreating in the future. Of course, the task is rather daunting, and I will never cook all of them. But one is allowed to dream, isn't she?
However, the recipe database is rather limited in its uses, and until I find a new IT-specialist to redesign and develop the website, I cannot muse about cooking the way I want. Therefore this blog here.
Although I had a rather good overview of various internet sites dedicated to food and cooking, having been scanning and reading them regularly since late 1990s, I've only very recently discovered foodblogging. I have to thank my dear Norwegian friend Guro for inadvertedly introducing me to them. Couple of weeks ago Guro mentioned that her American friend Melissa, to whom I occasionally bump into in Edinburgh, has recently set up a foodblog - Traveler's Lunchbox. I checked it out and was hooked from moment go. The texts were fun and interesting to read and pictures gorgeous (it also explained why I recently spotted Melissa taking pictures at Edinburgh's Farmers Market:). Rather unfortunate actually, as Nami-nami was already eating up quite a big chunk of my time (I guess if it hadn't been for my recipe website addiction, I would have finished my sociology PhD in three years after all:). I knew Melissa could cook well, Guro had often mentioned it, but this was rather impressive. Being a non-native English speaker, and quite crap in photography, my foodblog will never be as impressive as Melissa's. I'm also far less advanced - or adventurous - in cooking (lack of time/kitchen equipment explain some of it), although my friends are always happy to come for dinner parties, so I cannot be too bad. I am also an avid reader of cookbooks and magazines, and keen to learn more and more, so I will try to improve myself. Through The Traveler's Lunchbox I've also discovered other delicious foodblogs (I'll be adding links to them as soon as I master the linking skill) that have kept me staring at the computer screen far more than is healthy or necessary. And I'm also afraid that I should start sleeping less than 10 hours a day from now on - so I would time to do my daily job - AND update my foodblog..