hidden treasure helsinki

Preparations for the winter

 

Winter is a long period of darkness. You will need vitamins but tired of taking them as a pill? Finnish products are ften grown during the summer, under the sunlight. They usually are locally farmed and well, taste just different. Better.

 

Is it then our soil or our endless light during the summer, you will want to continue this delicious life during the winter. So my tip is that you go to market place - my favorite is Hakaniemi market. Get your locally farmed veggies and herbs and store them. Also forest is full of food from wild herbs to bilberries to mushrooms. You can throw everything in the freezer, but there are also plenty of ways to store your goodies.

 

Herbs go best when you dry them 

For preparations, you shouldn't chop your herbs, try to keep them as complete they can be. This way they will keep the best taste in them. The sooner you dry them, the better they'll keep their aromas. 

After drying, pack your herbs in tight package.

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Mushrooms dried or frozen? Or maybe corned?

Old way is to store your mushrooms in salt. Before there weren't freezers around, so this way mushrooms could be enjoyed around the year, even though mushrooms appear normally in autumn. Shroomies like funnel chantarelle is easy to dry, but thicker fellow like cep needs a bit more effort to loose all that water in it. Italians love their cep dried, but I prefer to froze mine. First you clean them, then chop and throw in frying pan. Let them loose most of their water and then store in the freezer.

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Berries? So many berries, so many options!

You can do anythign from berries. And so has Finns always been doing. Blackcurrant juice is something each one of us remembers from drinking at our grandparents but you can do bilberry juice too. Or sea-buckthorn. Anything goes to be honest! Just need a bit of an effort but this juice is a savour during winter when flu wave hits. Raspberries and strawberries turn easilly into jam. And lingonberry can be stored ridicilously easy: just crush all of those lingonberries and store in a jar.

 

Plastic cup will do it also, but maybe plastic is not the healthiest... Lingonberries are so acidic that their own acid will store them. I collected my lingonberries last autumn and I have still some left, and it's delicious as what! And of course by freezing everything stays great. If you add a bit of sugar in your berries before freezing them, they will last longer, but it's not a must. Most of the berries are slightly acidic, so they will stay good for many months. Even years. How about that? Free food from the forest - mind if I do!   

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