Activities Indoors, Outdoors And Cheesy Late Night Snacks

It is a good season to do things both indoors and outdoors. When it is raining cats and dogs, we frequent the movies, chip away at golf balls at the indoor range and attend a few ice hockey games.

Recently we spent a Saturday watching the Karjala (or Karelia, as we would say it) ice-hockey tournament between Finland, Sweden, Russia and the Czechs. The Russian team walked away with the honours. They played flawlessly. There is simply not another team that can keep up with them. Ice hockey is not as violent as I believed before I started living here, and never boring. It is so fast and active and they put on quite a spectacle for the spectators.

Of course the game is not preserved for boys only. Just check the cute logo for the girls’ hockey day that took place earlier this month.

Sunshine today and while out hiking, I was fortunate to spot a little Pygmy Owl  and observed him hunting. I do love living here. We are only 7 kms from the Centre of Helsinki, but it feels as if we are living in the countryside. I was therefore delighted to hear that our stay in Finland has been extended and we will be spending another spring and summer here.

Coming home from the chilly outdoors or the ice rink, is the perfect time to indulge in something warm with a glass of the best. Gougére, the classic French cheese pastry is easy and quick to pull together. It melts in the mouth and is equally good as a pre-dinner snack.

My own recipe include adding ½ Cup of finely chopped sundried tomatoes and sometimes I pipe the gougeres in a ring on the baking sheet, like a pull-apart loaf.

You can find links to recipes for Gougére on the Wikipedia site and I really like this recipe by FXCuisine. It has step-by-step photos and includes all the necessary hints to make perfect gougéres.

Looking for snacks during the game, we surveyed some of the sweeties on offer. There are some strange (in my opinion) flavour combinations for sale in this country, such as Mint-caramel and Lemon-liquorice. But this one intrigued us.

We wondered what sweetie flavoured sweeties would taste like and if Sweetie also referred to a type of fruit, as the packaging suggests. Well, it just tasted like sweeties. No particular flavour. I suppose we should have guessed.