Minus 26 Morning

It was -26C yesterday morning on the farm. I mean: come on. The donkey and 2 horses grow some thick winter fur, but our new horse Ginger is 22 and has very fine hair, so J bought her a blanket, which looks to me like a horsey snowsuit.

After feeding and watering the chickens and horses, we made ourselves a grand slam breakfast.

For reasons that I don't understand, considering the weather, the chickens are laying a lot of eggs, but they freeze overnight. J brought in half a dozen eggs that were frozen as solid as cue balls, and mostly cracked. The dogs get the cracked eggs, in fact yesterday Chloe ate a total of 13 eggs.

The chickens were huddled under the heat lamp.

The geese were smoking in the barn.

The tractor with the snow blower attachment on the back, to plough out the 1 km lane way

  Sadie out on the frozen Tundra

Finnish Mushroom Pastries

I made these with my mother and have been eating them for lunch with soup. Finnish comfort food.  A hot cup of beef bouillon goes well with them, as we used to have, when I was a kid. They are delicious. The pastry is outstanding, flaky and flavorful. They are traditionally made a Christmas time, which is why we have them left over now. Delicious. 

Joulu Torttu (Christmas Flake Pastry)

3 dl   (1 ¼ cups) whipping cream

300 g   (1 1/3 cups)  butter

6 ½ dl (2 ¾ cups)  white flour

1 tsp baking powder

Whip cream until stiff. In separate bowl, whip butter until white. Mix together using a mix master. Mix baking powder with flour then mix into butter/cream, don’t over mix. Pat into a disk, wrap in Saran, and chill.

Filling:

Fry in butter: 1 grocery package (a pint) of mushrooms diced fine and 1 medium onion diced fine.

Mix in 1 cup of cooked rice 

Salt and pepper

A beaten egg to bind ingredients

We also fried a little ground beef (about 1/2 cup) and added to the mixture this time. 

Roll chilled dough on floured surface. Make sure it doesn't stick. Cut circles and put 1 tbsp of filling, fold to make into dumplings. Brush with egg wash. Bake 350F for 20 minutes or until lightly browned.

Wakefield Barn Painting

Well happy new year everyone! I have been meaning to post but fell behind a bit.

This is a painting I did of our barn. It's from a photo, done in class, with my teacher Chui, who himself paints like a great master. I am so lucky to have him as a teacher, and of course to have had a Dad that also painted so beautifully to inspire me. I have 10,000 hours to get there, still.

The painting is done with a brush, in oils. I was using cold blues and cold browns for the barn and the fence, and Chui told me that the fence where the sun was shining on it was yellow. I mixed the grey the way my dad taught me (blue + white until the right value, then add orange bit by bit for grey- less for cold, more for warm) and then I put in some cadmium yellow, and Chui said "non!... jaune" and he really meant it- warm, cadmium yellow. He took my palette and brush and painted on the yellow fence board, and the sun shone.

In places, he said, you have to exaggerate the color. The roof where the sun is shining is a very warm grey- underneath is a strong orange that Chui also added, when he was correcting my work.  The hills are white with quite a lot of cadmium red in there to warm it up, the shadows are cold blue, and the sky is a warm blue- ultramarine blue and white with some cadmium yellow and a tiny touch of cad red. 

Chui is Chinese but speaks French also. 

"Pas peur!" (go for it he says, as he will fearlessly paint up a storm).

"Il faut tojours comparer" (the colors with eachother- don't paint  sections in isolation without comparing warm/cold dark/light with the rest). Find the darkest part, and then compare the rest to that. And the warmest, and so on.

Favorite Finnish Things

Time to take a vacation from the cold and fly to Finland for a mental vacation. This is the view from my uncle's cottage. 

When in Finland I love:

Helsinki's Kappelli Restaurant- it really is a converted chapel. Last time I was here I had caribou meatballs with dill. Yum.

The view from the Ateljee Bar at Sokos Hotel Torni 14th floor. Came here with my bfff  (best Finnish friend forever) Minna, for a glass of champagne.  

View from the ladies room!

The Fazer Restaurant at Stockmann's department store.

Fazer is THE finnish bakery. So fresh and good.

Cafe Ekberg in Helsinki. I want to sit here and read the paper and write postcards forever.

The Ekberg fresh shrimp sandwich, piled high with shrimp, dill, lemon and mayo. These sandwiches are everywhere, and they are so so good.

And lunch of fish, potatoes and morel mushroom sauce with friends

The Marimekko, Aarikka, Arabia and Iittala sections at Stockmann's

Chanterelle mushrooms from the forest, Arabia Mumin mug, black licorice, yogurt, rye crisps, foot cream, beer, beet salad, Fiskar cheese cutter, vitamins

Hamburger in a deep fried bun, my favorite junk food EVER. To get really decadent, can put a sausage inside... OMG it's both a hamburger AND a hot dog

Vintage coffee pots, 230 Euros. (Ours got burned in a camp fire a long time ago, ugh!)

I love that they put cupboards above the sink to dry the dishes, close the cupboards and the dishes are done, drying and put away all at once.

Check out the history of this Finnish invention here

 I love that when they construct new buildings, they protect the trees, instead of cutting them down.

I love Finnish Saunas- this one is my uncle's

Home made fish soup with dill, and delicious dark rye bread

I love Finland

Paintings From Photos

A diary of paintings from photos. This was from my first lesson, a copy of Monet's La Pie (The Magpie). Chui's corrections fixed this up big time. I was paralysed in front of the canvas with the book with the photo propped up  next to me, and Chui would come by, tell me to mix the cobalt blue with white for the snow shadows, and I would tentatively dab at the canvas. He would then emphatically say "pas peur!" take the brush from me, and paint it down. "Comme ca!" I had some fun painting the sun coming in through the fence, and that eggshell sky. I saw Monet's original masterpiece at the Musee D'Orsay; and stared for a long time- it's truly beautiful.

Our field with horses in the fall. The one lying down didn't make it into the painting, as he looked sort of dead. Though that's Jake, he was just napping.

Our neighbor's farm

At Montebello:

A hideous attempt at the St. John's harbour with the icebreaker the Louis St. Laurent

And our neighbour's house

Mrs. Rogers Shortbread Cookies

The Christmas version

These are inspired by Mrs. Rogers, a very nice lady who used to bring these to work at Christmas time.  I obtained the recipe from her, they are buttery and lovely, and the icing is perfect.

One year, she brought in several dozen, and a doc at work sort of ate the whole tin, and everyone wanted to kill him.

Mrs. Rogers Shortbread

She gave us the recipe written on a little scrap of paper:

1 pound butter (soften)
4 cups flour
1 cup icing sugar minus 1 tbsp
2 tbsp brown sugar

bake at 275 F for 40-45 min

That's all she wrote!

Details and hints:

one pound of butter is one big rectangle from the grocery store 473 g. I leave it on the counter all day to soften.

In my version there is also a pinch of salt, a quarter teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Directions: Beat butter using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, add icing sugar, brown sugar, salt and vanilla, then add flour by half cupfulls till mixed. 

Chill it a bit in the fridge 20-30 minutes, then rub a little flour onto the table or counter (or sometimes I use one of those thin plastic cutting boards) flatten it a bit with your hands, then flour the rolling pin and roll out to shortbread thickness (about 1/4 inch), use the cookie cutters to make perfect circles. 

As she says, bake 275 F for 40-45 min. If they are thinner, bake for less time. I bake on parchment paper.  I don't like to let them brown at all- just when they are starting to look set and the bottoms are light golden, I take them out, and cool on the sheets.

Then there is the icing which I think is mandatory. Her recipe was passed on verbally:

Icing sugar - about a cup and then 2 spoonfuls of milk and mix- add more milk by drops until it is spreadable (but not runny). Wait until the cookies are cool. Put about 1/2 tsp on top of the cookie and then smooth out with the back of a small spoon. It will settle and smooth out.

Decorate right away with candied cherries cut in 1/4s or 1/8ths (as she did) or nonpareils (which I sometimes do, as in the picture) or more colorful icing decorations like snowflakes or what have you. If you're going to decorate the cookies with colored decorative icing, I'd do that after the first white icing is dry. I got the nonpareils from Dean and Deluca.

Let the decorated icing dry overnight. Makes about 4 dozen. Keeps for a few weeks in a tin, or for a few hours, depending on who's around to eat them.

Hoof Chow

Here are Donkey, Jake and Monty (Montana, clearly named by a teenage girl before we got her). Our hoofed animals are tended to by our kind neighbours, who come and saw and then shave down the hoofs. Donkey's hoofs were getting long, so they came over with their equipment.  I was surprised that the dogs came running to eat the sawed off hoofs. The neighbours said "yeah, our dogs risk their lives to get in there to eat them." Who knew?

Donkey with trim feet

"Yum!"

On Top of Spaghetti

Made local spaghetti and meatballs, and by that I mean, all of the ingredients were from the farm, 20 feet away.

Sauce:

12 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped and cooked for 2 minutes in olive oil (I used quite a lot)

8 L of tomatoes from the vine, washed and chopped. I left all of the seeds, and the skin on.

2 tbsp sugar and 2 tsp salt:

Boiled it all down at a high simmer for 4 hours, ladled off about 4 cups of liquid that was on top (which I saved to make soup later), and then hand blended with an immersion blender: 

The meatballs: this is based my mom's Finnish recipe. The main thing is to grate an onion into the mix.

1 lb of our own beef, ground chuck, seasoned with

1 tsp salt

a grated onion

1 egg

a lot of ketchup

1 tbsp dijon mustard

1 tbsp poultry seasoning

a lot of Italian bread crumbs with parmesan

a couple of dashes of Worcestershire sauce

Mix with hands and then make into little meatballs and bake at 325 for 20 minutes or fry in a little oil until browned and cooked through:

Mixed with the tomato sauce, ladled over spaghetti and covered in cheese.

And if you're in the mood to eat this while playing the old "On top of spaghetti" song on the ukulele, this is the best free downloadable book: Ukulele Camp Fire Songs

Plein Air Painting

Painting out in the wild has it's own difficulty level. One thing is the perspective, and figuring out how much view to include in the canvas. That's why people make those little finger-thumb boxes to frame the shot. The other is that it's important not to have the canvas in the sun, as the colors are all off and will be very muddy once looking at the painting in normal light. I set up my easel under a big umbrella.

This is my first attempt at plein air painting up at the cottage.

In class 5 of us went out with Chui our teacher to a park, and painted this view:

First, a sketch on a scrap of paper. Looks easy, but getting the perspective is not that obvious.

Chui pointed out that the path was darker far away, and lighter towards us. Purple grey for the path, with almost pure orange and white for the sunlight shining on it. He told me to mix very yellow green on the hillside, as it was, with the sun shining on it. I was surprised at how yellow it was. He added the fluffy leaves, and then used light blue to make the sky come through the tree. And that bright blue in the water that is not in the sky is something my dad always said, that the water sees the sky first; i.e. the sky is darker in the water than it is looking at the actual sky.