Creamy stuff

The government budget talks have now agreed upon a cutback on the VAT on food in October 2009 with 5 % of the current rate of today’s 17 %.

I really wonder if that makes any difference to the consumer retail prices anyway, the shops and supermarkets tend to hike the prices up before such changes in order to be able to afford the prices going down with the tax reduction. Another thing that recently has been up for discussion is the origin of food, what it contains and where it comes from as many producers just refine what they have bought elsewhere and mostly not even locally or nationally.

Just recently one of the Finnish dairy manufacturers had to withdraw one type of food cream, which is a cream with lower percentage of fat than average cream, from the supermarkets. This cream in question was not even real cream made out of cow’s milk but instead a concoction made of vegetal fats with preservatives and other additives making it cream-like and said to be healthier than ordinary cream as it contains more vegetable oil, thus also containing more unsaturated and healthier fatty acids.

The reason for the manufacturer being obliged to withdraw the creamy stuff was that the guar gum used as emulsifier in the product was discovered containing too high levels of dioxin and according to the cream manufacturer the dioxin containing guar gum in question originating from abroad as it does of course not grow in Finland. Even when food is made organically, grown locally here in Finland, how do you know it is not grown next to the most trafficked roads in the country, right in the middle of a big city or next to a chemical plant? Even though the food is grown without fertilizers and pesticides, according to my logic it is not organically grown with nearby sources of pollution.

Where does our food come from originally?
How healthy is it ?
Anyway, it snowed yesterday in the most northern parts of Finland and snow is quite rare this early in the year and up in the north people woke up with 5 cms of snow that had fallen during the nightIt is currently colder than it usually is in the rest of the country as well and the fall is well on its way. Funny you always look for the migrating birds to arrive in the spring and especially for the swallows to return to Finland, but you hardly ever see them leave, they just disappear every fall over night like they have done it one more time. Of course you see the other migrating birds flying to the south for the winter in long rows, singing as they leave.

Whether to or not to?

Nicotine chewing gums and pads to aid quitting smoking were in February last year released in Finland to be sold in supermarkets, petrol stations and shops in addition to having earlier been available in only pharmacies.

The sale on cigarettes has gone down less than expected and it seems that it has had no effect on decreasing smoking as the nicotine products now are used in addition to smoking cigarettes when smoking is either prohibited or not possible out of one some reason. According to recent a Gallup 26 % of persons between the ages of 15-79 are smokers and 7 % of them are using nicotine products in addition to the smoking.

So the question seems to have become “when to smoke or not to smoke” instead of the “if to smoke or not to smoke” as “Big Brother” obviously wanted it to rather have been.

Still I am personally thankful that my dear spouse has sticked to his non-smoking line this long as his health has been better than it used to be when he was smoking. I can not quite understand anyone having been smoking for 30 years, always tasting like an ashtray in your mouth as I have only been “on and off” more kind of party-smoker and not an accustomed smoker for longer periods of time.

Anyway, now it seems that we finally might be moving, and that quite soon within the next week possibly as we are going to see an apartment this afternoon that at least on the sketch might be working for our family. Now we just have to see the place in reality so we can determine whether it meets our needs, whether the location is approved by the offspring or not and if it feels right, if you know what I mean. I am thrilled by having a new place to furnish and decorate but at the same time I just hate the idea of moving. I hate the to having to pack everything into boxes to be transported to the new place in order to be unpacked again, hate everything needing to be washed and cleaned, curtains, rugs… God, I wish I could just throw everything out of the window and just buy new stuff! On second thought, maybe not a good idea after all as I do not like shopping like some of my girlfriends do and maybe the fact that I actually like most of our stuff, but perhaps some things might kind of accidentally break when moving and needing to be replaced with new ones?

Third most guns in the world!

Apparently firearm ownership in Finland is the third highest per capita in the world, according to The Small Arms Survey 2007 done by the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

It is said according to the study that there are 90 guns per 100 people in the US, followed by Yemen with 61 per 100 people and coming third with 56 guns for every 100 residents in this country!
According to the Geneva based researchers, “gun violence often occurs in urban areas rapidly growing with extreme poverty creating lawless areas without effective policing”. I wonder how that applies to Finland, the urban areas with extreme poverty. I had no idea the Finns were this gun prone, but it sounds quite a lot to me. Anyway, I guess it is one person owing more than one gun, and this was not just handguns in the survey I gather, hunting rifles and shotguns must have been counted as well and there are a lot of people hunting here in Finland.

The most annoying thing has occurred, I have come down with an eye infection in only my left eye, and my left eye is swollen and it hurts to just keep it open, which would be the normal thing to do when being awake. This is an odd thing that happens to me now and then and it is only the left eye that gets infected and swollen. Guess I now have to think about getting a doctors appointment for this afternoon to sort this thing out before it gets out of hand and affects my eye sight permanently.

Is coffee good or bad?

Just last winter Finnish research suggested that coffee has beneficial effects on our cholesterol-levels also reducing blood-sugar which would mean less heart-disease and diabetes but now according to this latest Finnish research suggesting the consumption of coffee can lead to hypertension in no concordance with the consumed amount of coffee with one out of 10 commencing an anti-hypertensive drug treatment from the test group.

So, is coffee good for us or is it bad?

Who is to tell if the test group in the latest research would have had to begin the drug treatment anyway even if not drinking any coffee ever? It seems to always be the same, you have to make up your own mind whether to and what, just if and with moderation. Same thing about alcohol, good for you in moderation, especially red wine with it’s’ health effects, but bad for you when over doing it.

One thing lately widely discussed has been whether to treat smokers in the public health care as they have inflicted their deteriorating health by smoking, but years ago no one knew it was bad for you and the same government that now is limiting and prohibiting the smoking in every possible way actually gave away cigarettes for free during the wars to every soldier whether smoking or not smoking! It was back then every man’s right and I know for a fact that in many homes parents smoking indoors with the children present still was every day life in the 70’s here in Finland!

There are nowadays warning texts on every cigarette pack sold in the country and currently is discussed whether to place pictures on the cigarette packs in the future. Like with everything, when it becomes the ordinary every day you don’t even notice it anymore, like the warning texts, and in many ways you rebel against too much of “Big Brother watching you” mentality and now it seems we are to quit drinking coffee as well.

Well good for me as I only drink an average of one cup a day of coffee just for company’s sake and have stickled to my accustomed tea for decades already but guess it will be banned as a health risk too in the near future.

The creeps

Yesterday was spent on an ex tempore mushroom picking trip into the woods. The picking was quite fun as there were so many different species for gathering and the challenge was to keep them separate as they need to be prepared in differing ways. Some to be cooked in salted water, some to be fried separately according t species and some to be dried in the sauna. As we do have a sauna I use it for drying mushrooms and some herbs as it is a space readily available and mostly empty unless when heated up for having a bath and it was not Saturday yesterday which is the traditional day for having a sauna.

Our trip was great fun and I got some smashing photos of the mushrooms collected, some berries and other stuff growing in the wilderness and the collectors picking mushrooms as well. The day was spent in splendid sunshine with none of promised rain showers in sight although it has cooled down a bit from previous days.

There was one thing that really did annoy me in the woods, I mean spiders there are anywhere so them I just have to cope with but this nuisance is fairly new here in Finland, the elk fly. Much has been told about them in the media and they most certainly have arrived from the east and have now spread all the way to the Åland archipelago but I had not quite understood what they were about until googling them after arriving home yesterday. The elk fly is a species of flies that suck only the blood of elks and lay their eggs into the hide of the elks, although some stories have been told about them possibly also be interested in reindeers as well, but this I have not got confirmed as yet.

I thought they did bite humans as well sucking our blood and was weary about having them crawling around on my person. The elk fly land on elks or in this case humans and, loose their wings and begin to crawl around to find a place to suck blood and lay their eggs. They are quite flexible even though they have a hard shell like most insects, and they are almost impossible to squish to death, they just keep on crawling on you over and over again after you think that you surely by now have killed them.

After yesterday having googled the elk fly I found out that they hardly ever bite humans and are in no way harmless to us unless you happened to be allergic to them and they accidentally bite you. I really do no understand why people buy special hats to avoid the elk fly bites as they do not bite and why there would need to be an elk fly repellent. What’s the point of having a repellent if it does no harm to you?

As it happens, the elk fly is a master of hiding and still hours after quitting the woods we still found some crawling around in our clothes and hair back at home even though we thoroughly went through all our clothes when leaving. It still gives me the creeps just thinking about an elk fly crawling around on me!

I am quite with the Internet; having the information needed, freely available ready at hand when needed; now there are just annoying mosquitoes, elk flies, spiders and ticks to mind when out in the woods just annoying but nothing dangerous. Well one occasional and nowadays quite rare poisonous viper. You hardly ever come across anyway as they tend to avoid us humans, we just accidentally step onto their territory or on top of them in the worst case.

Anyway, I am quite pleased with yesterday’s catch of mushroom now we are stocked up with most mushrooms we are able to eat in one year. Maybe we should do one more trip as you never know if there next year will be any mushrooms, as some years have been exceptionally dry summers, like last year.

Going off

One thing I have been wondering about is that everything and anything is marinated in the supermarkets here in Finland.

When walking through a supermarket there are chopped, sliced whole or diced chicken, fish mostly salmon, meat chopped, sliced whole or diced and chopped, sliced whole or diced poultry and they all come in several different marinades and packed ready to just fry in a pan.

Then there are the unseasoned ones, the same fish, beef, pork, chicken and turkey but without any spices that is more expensive than the marinated ones. And what do they put into the marinade that makes them less expensive than the plain, unseasoned meats? Or has the plain meat after the best before date has run out been re-packed and shoved into a spicy sauce to conceal it not being as fresh as before?

And what is in the marinades anyway as there are plenty to choose between the tangerine, garlic, herbs and barbeque ones only to mention some for each of your chopped, sliced whole or diced variety of chicken, turkey, pork and beef?

This is said to be a development during the past few years as people have less time for cooking, well how hard can it be to season it in your own way and being sure of its’ freshness and how it tastes without the spices to cover it if being slightly off?

Anyway, the strangest things begin to happen with people when they fall in love, their personality alters and the younger the person is, and the unsure of themselves the persons are, the more they try to match their partners, their boyfriends and girlfriends. And as you begin to date and go steady, you want to see the other half as much as possible and the time is limited if you are going to different schools and do not share a hobby.

Now the latest turmoil in our home had been discussions about all of a sudden quitting about a hobby that has been around since early childhood, which during the years has become a way of living, and it would be hard to be without it as much of the excessive energy is used that way, and I think it would be the wrong thing to do right now.

Even sadder is that the offspring has good chances of becoming a professional in it, if not even real world class champion but surely to live of, and many others would give their right arm for being as good as that. Well maybe not, they would not be able to without the arm but you get my drift, so now we are trying to talk calmly about thing and explain that too much time together might even be bad for the relationship as you have to be an individual, to know who you are yourself, before you can be joined and one with somebody else.

At least that is what I have learned from life. Maybe it is some kind of marinade this love thing too, you just don’t see it yourself while being in the middle of it and too much company might also sadly enough make relationships go of prematurely.

Copyright

A fifteen year old adolescent here in Finland has been fined for posting a video of his teacher singing on YouTube, declaring it being from a mental hospital mentioning the teacher’s name.

The District Court of Nurmes determined that the adolescent was of age to understand the consequences of his actions and how it would affect the authority of the teacher in the school. The adolescent got fined by the court with 90 euros for defamation together with 800 euros for suffered damages together with having to pay about 2.000 euros for the court proceedings.

The story has one good point in all its’ sadness, you can not publish photos or film clips without the approval of the person appearing in it if the face is to be recognized. That is why I so rarely take pictures of people or in public as they are not always applicable in any way. Take a photo in the town square for instance and post it somewhere and someone is in the wrong place with the wrong person they are not supposed to be there with at that time, then you are in trouble.

This is the reason why I strictly stick to photos of friends and family, and hardly ever publish any recognizable faces on the Net, to avoid getting into any trouble.

Anyway, now the southern most Finland has been pestered by heavy rain with thunderstorms during the mornings. Lightning has struck in people and aerials affecting the national TV and radio broadcasts and the train connections have been on and off standstill in various directions around the capital area, hindering commuters getting to work. Buses and coaches seem to have been the safe way of getting where you have planned to arrive at a given hour these last few days if you have not had your own car to rely on.

Now the weekend finally is here and a bit colder weather is expected together with rain in most parts of the country which should be nice for a change.