Food journal number 54: sweet Finnish buns

I would have never tried the recipe for these sämpylä if I hadn't tasted them up in Ljusdal. It requires lots of bread syrup and butter, but that's the charm: you don't need any jam. For sandwich fillings, non-sweet things are probably best, like ham or even cream cheese. But they can be eaten with just butter on and they're surprisingly tasty just as they are. I made them according to Jaakko's revised recipe, so I'll just link you to Lara's blog for the instuctions and give credit where it's due:

Link to Lara and Jaakko's sämpylä recipe

They're super-easy to make. I didn't form the buns with my hands though, but used two spatulas to form the dough into a log and to cut it into roundish pieces, as I do when baking Gull-Britt's health bread. The dough really isn't meant to be firm (it should just feel like manipulable glob) and is too sticky to handle with bare hands without making a mess, but silicone spatulas seem to do the trick!

L & J: Can you send me the "original" recipe from Jaakko's sister too? I was Googling for sämpylä but all the hits were in Finnish, of course!

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"Blue ridge mountains, Shenandoah river" and food for thought

...Okay, that picture isn't of West Virginia, but of Ljusdal municipality in southern Norrland here in Sweden. The famous mountain in the area is called Järvsö klack (not the one in the picture however) and the river that runs through the municipality is called Ljusnan. But that won't make a memorable country-western song, would it? ;-)

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I've been stalling writing about last weekend's trip to Ljusdal because I honestly don't know where to begin. In some respects, it was just a normal trip: we went up by train, we toured the city and its surrounding areas by car and hopped from one spot to the other. But what you can't see just by looking at any trip's pictures is the feeling. It was a good feeling up there. But there were so many feelings and sensations packed in a short time that I left too happily overwhelmed to be able to write anything coherent when we came back home. Though I didn't want to make the trip appear to be any grander than it was – Ljusdal has an unpretentious beauty – I also wanted to express that "something else" which hung in the air all that time. And, I'll say it again, I just didn't know where to begin.

Lara and Jaakko took us to many beautiful sites. All were really lovely in their own ways, all of them too spectacular to digest in a matter of a few days. We also ate in many of the municipality's charming cafés – even people in the north need their fika, apparently – and in a place like that, all cafés seem to have a view.

But I'll have to start the story somewhere.

For starters, I guess I can say something about the air up there. The general air quality in Sweden is great, but up north, the air around us could have come straight out of an Evian bottle, never mind that Evian is French, or that it's bottled water.

I can also say something about the seeming remoteness of the place. In Sweden, there are fewer people the farther up you go, and Ljusdal, although technically in the geographical middle of Sweden, belongs to the most sparsely populated "lands" of Sweden, Norrland. The municipality of Ljusdal has only about 14,000 residents, and Ljusdal town is home to but 6,000 – the population of a Philippine college. Driving around, we never met more than a few cars in the highway. This is Sweden from my earlier stereotypes, before I knew anything else about this country: small towns, large farms and enormous forests home to a lonely house or two. Actually though, Ljusdal seems to have all the basic amenities of an urban area and more. It has several groceries, it's littered with lovely cafés and river-side pubs, and even has its own Chinese & Japanese all-you-can-eat restaurant. The seeming remoteness from all the rest of Sweden was what was striking though. It was as if the little valley where the municipality lay was all there was to the world, and the rest of Sweden was a long journey beyond its blue mountains. The remoteness was beautiful.

Okay, that's not a ski slope in the distance after all, but space cut for power lines! Haha! The municipality does have a ski slope, though.

Jaakko drove all of us to different nature attractions in the area. The municipality has a lot to offer if you're interested in the outdoors – which is not surprising because most of the area is "nature" after all. We spotted many wind shelters where hikers can stay the night, and grilling pits were conveniently placed in scenic spots – that's to prevent you from building your own, by the way, as haphazardly built grilling pits are fire hazards and can set fire to roots.

The two that top my list among the nature sights we've seen – if I had to choose, that is – must have been the rapids of the Ljusnan river and Gröntjärn, a forest pond with no in- and outlets, so it takes all of its water from the soil or precipitation. Those must also have been the two most contrasting sights we saw: on the one hand violently rushing water that can drag you down with its currents, on the other hand a greenish bubbly pond that would take thousands of years to transform (the water was clear, however).

The river rapids

Gröntjärn's nature reserve

The municipality also wasn't short of lookout points from where you can see the river, lakes and villages from a height. Each view affirms how beautifully situated the municipality is at the foot of the mountains and along the river.

Forestry was, and I imagine still is, a big part of the economy up in Ljusdal, and if you'd like to learn more about how this industry was in the old days, the town's Hembygdsgården, as well as the restaurant in Torön, have small exhibitions. The Ljusnan river had played a big role in the industry though, as it was the major highway for the logs. Workers used to be hired to collect the logs downstream and to carry them ashore. Pictures in the exhibits showed men carrying whole tree trunks on their bare shoulders, one trunk for each man. They were strong, those foresters.

I was kind of reflecting about something the whole time we were looking at the forests – about the value of the natural, how natural "natural" is, and if keeping nature alive is the same thing as keeping nature "natural". More specifically, I was thinking of my sister who works in Greenpeace, who feels that it's a shame that there aren't any original forests left in Europe. She has an anecdote about this German visitor to the Philippines who claimed the tropical rain forest was too "disorderly" because, presumably, it was "in its natural state", "without human intervention" (never mind the fact that they were there. Also, I don't know if his statement on the forest being "disorderly" just got lost in translation).

The forests in Ljusdal don't look ancient. In fact, I don't doubt that many parts of it have been planted by some forester at one point in time because some look equally old (or young). My first reaction was an abstract sense of loss: What would this valley have looked like if the original forests still lived? I guessed that this place, remote as it was and despite its Evian-bottle air, was not as "pristine" as it would seem. And yet I thought: does it really matter? If people can appreciate nature and take real joy from it, can be in nature and experience it, can have a real sense of preservation, what added value to Nature Itself does being "natural" give? Or is being "natural" a value human beings themselves impose on nature? Who can know, can remember, or define what "natural" is, if time, the elements and countless of living beings in this planet including ourselves have already transformed nature into what we recognize it to be? The question just boils down to how "natural" natural really is, if it's something out there, or if it is a human idea.

That's what I was thinking, when I was looking at the forests of Ljusdal. And although this post wasn't too much of a story, I'd just like to pass on that train of thought, which you can think about as you look at this picture.


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Thanks for the weekend, Lara and Jaakko! The kimchi bottle you gave us is already half-empty. And I already baked your recipe for Finnish buns, which I'll post next time :-)

Pictures of this trip posted at my Multiply.

Eyeballing 102*

A year ago, I met this couple.


Or rather, they met me, through this blog. Lara is a Filipina from Iloilo; Jaakko is from Finland, and last year they visited me here in Norrköping during their amazing 24-day car trip around two countries. They live in Ljusdal in the middle of Sweden, which for us folks down here in Östergötland means "way up".

Anyway, we're visiting them tomorrow. We'll be back on the midnight between Monday and Tuesday. Just so you know where I am so you won't miss me, and just so you know you can expect travel pictures when I'm back :-)

Looking forward to tomorrow Lara and Jaakko! I'll bring some östgötsk food items! ;-)


* P.S. To English-language talibans out there: Is eyeballing a word? I Googled it, and the only site that used this phrase about internet friends happened to be a Filipino newspaper. The word was pretty common at the time when internet chatting was a new phenomenon in the Philippines, but I feel weird using it myself. So, is it a valid internet slang or is it just Filipino slang? Or is a word a word as long as two people know what they're reffering to? Chances are that you're not an English-language taliban if you answered "yes" to that last question. I'm not one either, but I don't think I'd use the word for Scrabble. After all, eyeballing – and even eyeballed – has more than seven letters.

Four people on eight wheels

More cycling pictures, this time from a bicycle tour we did with Mats and Margareta last Sunday in Kolmården, the hilly forests north of Norrköping:

Here's after Mats and Marcus loaded the car with our bikes.

The route we took was a very scenic one with lots of changes in terrain and scenery. We started from the parking lot by the lake Ågelsjön(popular among rock climbers, and a popular bathing lake), climbed up to cross the bridge at the lake Sörsjön and rolled down to Näckna läke before cycling back to the parking lot. The last leg of the trip to the parking lot was a bit tricky. We had to pass by a very narrow forest route littered with loose stones and protruding roots. I made it without bruising, scarring, or otherwise hurting myself – what a relief!

We brought some food with us and snacked along the way. The longest rest was in a meadow early into the trip.


I don't have any pictures of us on the move (I don't know how to solve this practically while also being on the bike myself). However, the nice thing about biking is that you can always stop when you see something interesting. Like this:


This was by some stables on a hill with a view over lake Sörsjön. A really pretty place. The young horses didn't seem to be bothered by human presence. In fact, I think they were rather curious. I know zero about horse riding and can't tell one horse from another, but they are pretty creatures aren't they? (if they're tame and don't run you over or kick you I guess, but I suppose you don't find those types in stables).


I want to go out again! First we have to wait for sunny weather, though – it's raining again!

Product review # 4

Aloha folks! I’m back from a weekend of biking in Hawaii, in the islands of Oahu and Maui...


…I was in Virtual Hawaii, of course. The only plane seat that took me to Hawaii was a seat of a trusty old exercise bike. I never really left Sweden. Actually, I was trying out Global Ride's Hawaii Rides DVD set:

The DVD Set, with CD 1 "StrenDurance in Hawaii", CD 2 "Oceanside Ride" and CD3 "Maui Rollers"

Bicycle not included

In contrast to my previous product reviews – of things ranging from hiking boots to a yoga mat, this one is the real thing. About 3 months ago, Global Ride Productions contacted me and other bloggers to review a 3-DVD set called Hawaii Rides, a coached cycling program for indoor- and road bikers. Since I love biking – we go often do bike tours and I volunteer as a functionary for group cycling classes indoors – I didn't want to turn down the offer to write a review. Not even the fact that I don’t actually own an indoor bike hindered me. At any case, I thought, it could be something interesting for the guys at our gym, or for that day I get myself a stationary bike.

Until then, I watched the contents of the DVDs and eventually called someone I knew had an exercise bike. To make things more interesting, I biked all the way there for three hours to try the DVDs out for the weekend. In contrast to the "real" biking, doing the DVD program didn't move me one inch, of course. I couldn't help feeling a bit ridiculous at first knowing that I might as well have been biking outside in real hills. And although I've also been in stationary bikes in group spinning classes, "cycling" on my own in front of the TV was admittedly a new experience. I felt a bit self-conscious when the introduction was rolling and I was supposed to find myself "magically" transported to the Hawaiian islands.

That's only half of the story, though. Eventually, I concentrated on my own biking and on the audio coaching, and I started to realize that there was really more to these DVDs than just being mere visual aids: they were bike lessons on how to become a better cyclist.

This is about six minutes into "Oceanside Ride".
I'll put up my hair soon!

The goal is endurance

You'll understand when the audio coach introduces you to the task at hand: throughout the "climbs", straights and even downhill pedaling, the goal is to keep the pulse at a constant level throughout the 50-minute rides. To do this, you'll have to adjust your cadence (the speed you pedal in) depending on what bike resistance (or bike gear) you have on. The ultimate goal is to bike on this "steady state", on the highest sustainable pulse rate where you still feel that you could go on biking forever without fatigue. For beginners, this is at 70-80% of one's maximum pulse, for professionals, 75-80% or even 80-90%. To keep working effectively at this pulse the whole time and not allowing yourself to cheat to a lower pulse is what builds endurance. It's also about not burning yourself out too early on uphills when you know you still have many kilometers ahead and – when it matters in a race – not letting yourself get too much rest on downhill- and straight stretches so you can pedal instead at a higher cadence, make your ride faster and your overall work more efficient.

The hills go up and the hills go down. Your pulse shouldn't do the same.

This training program also makes great sense when you realize how bike gears can work for your advantage in cycling. This was a mystery which I only began to learn recently, and which I still feel I need to crack. In spinning, you change resistance to simulate terrain; in real bikes, you change gears depending on terrain. The logic behind this is that the human body can only work efficiently in a narrow range of pedaling speeds (i.e. cadence) and the right gears optimize your work. In an ideal situation where the bike and the rider are one, the rider can make the whole ride efficient by changing gears often and varying cadence while still maintaining the highest sustainable pulse, not more.

Fulfill your own goals and find your own road

That said, the DVDs are adaptable for any cycling goal and not just useful if you're racing. The coaching tracks, with American, Australian and Italian coaches to choose from, can be turned off if you prefer to ride your own ride. The audio track, which consists of original techno music scores, can also be deactivated if you prefer your own music or if you're using the DVDs as a visual aid for your own spinning or cycling classes. There's also nothing hindering you from using the videos for exercise on other machines, for example a treadmill. Indeed, they make convincing visual aids, it's almost like a bike simulation program. When you take the resistance up when you see the road ahead going uphill, the mind is somewhat tricked. Seeing the view "below" is also a good psychological reward for any exercise, even if the view is virtual. In that way, it's a good motivation for serious cyclists to reconsider cycling indoors, and indoor spinners to consider going out and experience the real thing.

The suitability to personal goals is partly the point of the DVDs. While they're useful and strategic training to serious cyclists who might think cycling indoors has little charm, they are also made to be accessible to the amateur recreational cyclist like me or even riders that have never biked outside the spinning hall, encouraging us all "to find our road". Don't be intimated by the cycling elite, in other words. The images during the cool down, where they show actual pictures from people's cycling vacations around the world, are particularly inspiring to get out there and just try biking outdoors.

Don't forget!


Don't miss the 30-minute strength, Pilates and yoga sessions for bikers at the end of each CD – they're definitely something we can imagine doing regularly. The strength-training session is particularly attractive for me because I would love to have stronger legs for biking. I like it that the session alternates between explosive movements and slow, controlled movements (for example, in alternating between fast and slow squats), and believe me, my muscles felt the work even without dumbbells. Pilates is another thing I've discovered lately thanks to a friend. Since I'm sold on the idea that strong core muscles makes one a better runner and cyclist and improve endurance, the Pilates session was also really a bonus. I would have probably bought the DVDs if just for the strength and Pilates sessions, which is to say that I do believe they're a good complement to "just" biking.

A round-up of what I thought

1. The music tracks are louder than the coaching tracks (which has its own background "noise" of the coach using a stationary bike), making the coaching hard to understand. I had to turn the music off (alternatively, set the volume really high) to hear the coaching clearly. In my DVD player, the coaching track in CD 1 also had worse quality halfway into the video, but it thankfully returned to normal after a while.

2. The difference between "real" biking and spinning are that hills are always, always so much harder in real life, for me anyway. Of course, the mental toughness and "will-I-make-it? feeling" is one thing an exercise program can't simulate. On the other hand, doesn't it feel good to have conquered that virtual hill so easily?

3. The best thing would be to do all three programs in the set for continuity and variation, but if you are only considering one or two, I can recommend CD 1, "StrenDurance in Hawaii" for its more comprehensive coaching and explanations compared to the other two CDs. The coach explains the basic of cadence and heart rate, and offers alternatives if you don't have a pulse clock. On the visual aid side, CD 3 "Maui Rollers" has some of the best Hawaiian scenes in the CD set, but the coach here dosn't explain the "target heart rate" that thoroughly, which can be confusing for a recreational biker watching CDs 2 or 3 by themselves.

4. There's a positive psychological effect of the coaches "talking you" into the ride as you go along. Their words push, encourage, and give a pat on the back. In CD 3 "Maui Rollers", there's also this long bit I really like where you (the first person rider) and another cyclist alternate at overtaking one another. All these make cycling by oneself suddenly seem less solitary!

5. The DVD set is probably more interesting and useful if your goal is to improve your biking, get better at spinning or to increase your endurance in general. If your goal is to lose weight or to just get moving for daily well-being, I can imagine that most would say they'd rather be on the exercise bike watching regular telly – and I'd understand that. If you're up to the challenge though or want to begin to bike for a hobby, this might be a good start if you're too shy to bike in a class.

6. Lastly, although virtual reality is all well, I don't think the DVDs should be seen as a replacement for biking outdoors. Spinning will remain an indoor exercise form, with the ups and downs that that entails. So, there will be no fresh air in your face, smell of ocean spray and no "nature experience" that has its own rewards. In winters and bad weather though, I think anyone can appreciate the possibility of taking "the ride, outside" in the comfort of your one's own living room. Also, for people who've never tried to ride outdoors, I do think it can create a positive longing to get better at spinning and, eventually, ride outside.

With that, aloha! (means both hello and goodbye in Hawaiian)


Watch the commercial for the boxed set in YouTube (click here), or click on the titles below to see the ads for "StrenDurance in Hawaii", "Oceanside Ride" and "Maui Rollers".

The set costs $75.00 and is available from Global Rides website: http://www.globalride.net/

Thanks for the strawberries, Margareta!

We could have eaten them plain, but I had a better idea for half of the box. Now I think we'd have to eat cake for the next three days... GREAT!


I made the cake base by baking an ordinary yellow cake (sockerkaka) flavored with the peel of half a lemon. The filling is cream whipped with sugar (this supposedly makes the cream stay firm longer) and drottningsylt, a Swedish jam of blueberries and raspberries. The top layer is just cream and sliced strawberries.

P.S. That girl in the picture is Strawberry Shortcake. In nursery school, I had a hand-me-down pink lunchbox with a picture of her. It was a time when strawberry was my favorite fruit and pink was my favorite color (I had favorites of everything). Today, I found out that not all strawberry cakes are "strawberry shortcakes". Traditional strawberry shortcakes have a base made of cream scones, apparently. I thought she'd look good in the collage, though, so I added her in.

P.P.S. Isn't it funny how the Swedish word for strawberry (jordgubbe) is a compound word from "earth / dirt" (jord) and "old man" (gubbe)? I didn't make a Strawberry Shortcake; I made a cake topped with old earthmen!

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