Warm Wishes for the Winter Solstice

Dear reader, it seems like ages since I last posted. I returned from Italy last weekend to find a winter wonderland here at my home. Here is a photo of my barn taken this morning -- I thought it looked lovely and peaceful -- how I imagine the Finnish countryside in winter must look.

It is the Winter Solstice -- the shortest day of the year. And I imagine that there are places in Finland where the days are very short indeed, if the light dawns at all! However, it gives me hope to think that from now until June, the light each day will be getting a little bit longer.

I think that my ambitions for trying many new Finnish recipes for Christmas were just that -- ambitions and perhaps overly ambitious at that. Tomorrow, I will be baking Nisu -- however, you have already heard about my adventures in that department. As part of our Christmas Eve dinner, we plan to make a Finnish cucumber salad (Kurkkusalaati). However, the rest of my time has been absorbed with our family traditional recipes, which are not Finnish in origin -- cranberry bread, Spritz cookies, "black bottom" cupcakes.


Peace to all in these days of the Solstice and Advent. I leave you with a picture of our pine grove in the snow. In ancient Rome, the evergreen was considered a symbol of the Solstice, and still today we see sign of never-ending life in the pine