Thursday, October 18, 2012

Twenty Sixthaversary

On Wednesday Tanja and I have been happily married for 26 days.

You all must be thinking, what's so special about 26 days. Well nothing really except, those that know Tanja, 26 is her favourite number. So what did we do for this 'special day'? Originally I was going to cook a full three course dinner but unfortunately I have not been so well these last few days. So instead we got pizza, but before pizza I created a starter which consisted of toasted rye bread topped with grilled cheese, cashew nuts and cheddar cheese.


It was nice but it needed something else. Tanja and I thought either cream cheese on the bread or maybe a savoury marmalade of some sort. Whilst we ate this and the Pizza, we had the Proposal on. Those who have not seen the movie, it is very good, funny and well put together. For dessert I made Blueberry and White chocolate Panna Cotta. Tanja loves both those flavours and so I couldn't possible go wrong on this account.


For those who would like to recreate this, here is the recipe:-


  • 3 cups fresh blueberries (substitue thawed and drained frozen blueberries)
  • 1 cup water
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 2 sheets of unflavour gelatin
  • 2 cups heavy cream
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped (substitute 2 teaspoons vanilla extract)
  • 1 cup whole fat buttermilk
  • 100g bar of White Chocolate



First put the Blueberries, Water and Sugar in a sauce pan and reduce by at least half. 

Put the cream, vanilla pod and beans, honey in a sauce pan, bring to boil, then cover and leave for 30 minutes. Break up the white chocolate and add to buttermilk, heat up the buttermilk until all the white chocolate is melted. Melt the gelatin in a little hot water and pour through a strainer into the cream mix, remove the vanilla pod and combined the buttermilk and cream together.

Blitz the Blueberries until smooth. Then pour half the cream-buttermilk mix into the blueberries and mix together. To assemble the panna cottas, spoon some of the mix (either one) into a glass (we used wine glasses)  and leave for 20 minutes in the fridge. Then spoon the opposite mix on top carefully and put back from 20 minutes. Then pour the rest of the mix on top and leave for 2-3 hours in the fridge before serving. I hope you enjoy the recipe.

I didn't get Tanja a gift as I presumed she would state that she didn't know about gifts and so didn't get me one. Well appears she got me a gift and so I felt a little bit daft......... oh well got the rest of our lives to make up for it. Tanja bought me a book which contained tradition Finnish recipes from the different regions of Finland. 

So how have my studies been going? Not bad, I only went to class once this week though because of feeling unwell and I left early because of feeling unwell still but I am going to the class that is held at the local LDS Chapel tonight. In a week I have learnt a lot and got confused a whole lot more. Pronunciation is very important as I found out, Kylä means village but Kyllä means Yes and then Vireä means active but Virheä means Green. So as you can see for learner like myself, we could be misunderstood very easily.

It snowed as well the other morning but it only lasted an hour or so before it turned to rain. I do like fall, I mean real fall where the colours on the leaves change to fiery reds, bright oranges, greenish yellows and all other amazing colours. The downside though it has been so wet lately that everywhere looks a little dull and sad but soon the snow will come and everything will been pure white and shiny. It will also mean time to make snow tunnels and do random things in/with the snow just because we can.

Well I think I will sign off now, got housework to do. I will write another blog entry before next Tuesday, Why? Well Tanja and I are going down to Helsinki with her Family, on the Tuesday till Thursday morning Tanja and I will be going on a mini-cruise to Stockholm in Sweden and then on Thursday we will see her brother Jani be set apart as a Missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He will be serving in the Manchester Mission in the UK, who knows, he might serve some time on the Island. We come back on the Friday and we might stop off Parola Tank Museum, I hope we do. 

So that's all from me for now. Näkemiin (See you later)

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