A merry Christmas and a happy new year to everyone! I hope that you all enjoyed your merry season with your loved ones and weren’t too silly in the process.

To continue on my series of Scandi foods, we’ll have a look at what the Finns eat. Their snack foods were rather standard (and perhaps not as highly spiced as ours), but they certainly had interesting names.

But more seriously, the Finns like their baked goods, especially their sweet buns. And they also seem to like their pancakes too. We went to a traditional pancake house in the middle of Oulu, and sampled some of their savoury pancakes – Hubby had the salami and cheese.

While I tried the salmon and dill. They were a bit too salty for me, but Hubby enjoyed his.

We also ate some distinctly Finnish cuisine. A summer crayfish salad – refreshing as the spring weather peaked over 20C.

Grilled reindeer steaks with lingonberry sauce – gamey and hearty.

And shortcake tart with cloudberry sauce. I hadn’t seen cloudberries before but it’s the summer berry from Sweden and Finland. They grow on the edges of swamps and also makes a good local liqueur.

So the Finns eat pretty well when the weather is warm, but like a lot of cold climate cultures, preserved foods (jams, pickled vegetables, meat and fish) played, and still plays, a big part of their diet. So different to Australia where the climate is so mild to have fresh food available all year round.