I have been hearing rumors and even seen some photos shared on facebook that there is snow in Minnesota. I’m hoping that it might have melted by the time I come. Spring is in the air here in my kitchen. The cranes have returned and can be seen flying over the house and feeding in […]
Author: Laila Uljas
I've just turned 40 the other year, and to tell you the truth, I like being forty. I'm a mother to nine beautiful children (including one set of twins). Previously I have done product and concept development for coffee shops and bakeries. At the moment, I have been focusing on the wellbeing of our communities. I graduated from the University of Helsinki with a Master's in political science. The welfare of our society and community we live in is something I have always been concerned about ever since I was young. But life sometimes takes you into unplanned and exciting places. Soon we will be returning to our home city of 17 years, Kouvola, Finland after spending nine months on a dairy farm in northern Finland. It has been an experience of a lifetime. I have been telling the story of life on the dairy farm on my youtube channel Jenkkimutsi maalla interspersed with issues that affect our society. Most videos are in Finnish, but a few are in English. Welcome along.
A Perfect Ten
We have a tradition that the morning of your birthday starts with a song and gifts. Everyone else is woken up and we quietly make our way to bring the well-wishes for the coming year to the lucky birthday kid. A few weeks back when Marian turned ten our Erik had told me that he […]
Homemade yoghurt
When I was a girl, we had a brown piano in our living room. My Mom had a collection of glass birds of different sizes that resided on the piano. Some of them were from Finland and had been designed by Oiva Toikka. I remember dusting all of the nooks and crannies of the piano […]
Goexpo Helsinki
Last weekend we visited the Helsinki Goexpo Fair at the Helsinki Messukeskus or Convention Center. It is Finland’s largest sport and outdoor event and there was something for everyone. There was bikes to try, volleyball, soccer, golf, hunting, fishing, photography, horses, rock climbing, fitness, running, nordic walking, and sailing amongst others. On the day we […]
In My Kitchen, March sweetness
I had been desiring something sweet. Shrove Tuesday had been on Tuesday and traditionally in Finland we would enjoy the laskiaspulla along with sledding in the white banks of snow. This year nature has not been following traditions and neither did I as we do not have any snow and really only got a few […]
Light as a feather, stiff as a board
“No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth.” –Robert Southey Around the time when I was about ten or twelve, my friends and I would get together with irregular frequency for sleepovers. I’m not sure how much we actually slept since […]
The Swedish Lapland and the heart of a moose
Little by little we have been eating the contents of our freezers. This year we were lucky to have a fairly large quantity of game meat. As nature goes through cycles, so does our freezer. Some years it is better for a population of a species to grow and flourish and then if there is […]
Cousins
When I was a kid, the cousins and aunts and uncles and of course the grandparents would get together at Thanksgiving and Christmas and sometimes on Mother’s day and Easter. I think we all have special memories from those times at Gramma’s house. We would always eat well, create music and have old-fashioned quality time […]
Lunch for two…or for eight
The other day I was just thinking about years past and about us. Our fairytale started when we were both in our late teens, the world was wide open with options. It was a lovely time. We’ve had fourteen quite extraordinary years together. There has not been a boring moment. Our six beautiful children make […]
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