Finnish Christmas Baking

Baking. I love baking and being my last week here in LA, I decied to bake some Finnish goodies for my co-workers as a good-bye. My friend and I baked Karjalanpiirakat and Joulutorttu. My mom helped with the ingredients. 

I found websites that had both ingredients & directions:

Karjalanpiirakat

Joulutorttu

Enjoy the pictures of our attempt. :)

My all time favorite is Karjalanpiirakat. It's a pastry that is made with rye dough and a rice filling made with whole mike. What makes this even better, top it with egg butter. YUM! 

Karjalanpiirakat (Karelian pies)

Rice filling

300ml water 4 cups whole milk 2 tablespoons butter 2.5 cups short-grain rice, or sushi rice 1 teaspoon salt Rye dough

300ml water

1 teaspoon salt

250g rye flour (extra to work with)

Basting

50g butter (melt more if needed)

4 teaspoon milk (optional)

Egg Butter

~6 eggs, hard boiled

4 tablespoons butter

Baking Time
425°f oven for 15 minutes

After the rice filling was finally made and was cooling, we started making the rye dough. Rolling out, not too thin, cut them into disk using a cup, this way everything is the same size. This will make them small. 

Bigger the rim, the bigger the piirakka you'll have once you shape it. 

Once you rolled them out, fill with a bit of filling and fold the 2 sides over so they lay flat, this is much easier when your making normal size piirakat, and take the thumb and index finger and lightly pinch to give the ripple design along the sides. 

We had to pinch upward since our filling was a bite runny, but not too bad for first attempt. I personally think it's all about the taste, as long as it taste like a piirakka, add the egg butter and everything will be tosi hyvää! (really good) 

Joulutorttu(Christmas Stars)

Again here is for the Joulutorttu website. 

Simple way to make the filling, I just took the dates(prunes) in a blender, few at a time and blended with water.

The best ready made pastry dough for the is Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry Sheets.

Lay the sheets out and make even squares. 

Slice the corners midway toward the middle. 

The best way so that your pinwheel doesn't pop open, add the filling on top, AFTER you take the corners and stick them in the middle, making a pinwheel. 

What more filling??? You can also put some filling in the middle before you fold in the corners to make the pinwheel, then add a bit more on top in the center. 

Enjoy ja hauskaa joulua! 

Thanks for reading!

Fit and Healthy Dairy

2 Months In

These past couple months I've been getting my butt in gear. Running and working out and I thought I should document my progress thus far because I recently went and bought a pair of new jeans and WOW, I went down a size.

I like to run 2-3 miles every other day and 30 min workout on the off days, I leave weekends for light workout, usually to give my legs and arms a rest and focus mostly on core.

When I started becoming pro-active with getting myself fit, I realized I was eating more calories than I burned and started weeding out useless foods that gave no real meaning. I took out soda and started drinking more water, I'm not a heavy meat eater, but I do try to get it in my diet.

 No need to snack pointlessly on cookies, ice cream and my all time fav, chips and salsa, but have them as treats. I try now to eat things that will benefit me on a healthy level. I still have my treats and yummy gooey goodness, just not as often.

Duh! Common Sense Misha

I do eat out, but I do it smarter now. I'm more aware now of what is going into my body and how much of it. I still eat what I like but I am AWARE. By doing so I've lost water weight and went from 138 lbs-126 lbs, granted 5 lbs was extra water weight.

No way am I focused on losing weight, I don't need to, my goal is to be a fit and a tight size 6.

WOO-HOO! So far my changes have stayed for 2 months, like they say:
"takes a month to build habit" ???- anyway....
Since they were not drastic changes, like becoming vegetarian or vegan, it has been do-able.

See you in the next update

Thanks for reading!

Ramen

I went with my aunt for dinner and we ended up at Tatsu, not the 6 flags ride, the restaurant I had my very first Ramen, not the 20 cent kind you get from Wal-mart, but nice tasty Ramen. For their website click here.

When you first walk in you order your food from a tablet on the wall, pretty cool. It was not that hard at all, very basic. They have pictures of the dishes and items you want to add. Moving around in the menu was easy, forgot to add something, not a problem, click back and you are directed to the previous page. You also pay on the tablet and the receipt is printed. The order goes straight to the chefs and they wipe up your food. 

It was set up like a fast food place, with bar sitting and a large community table, which is a new twist. They had whole garlic with press to add into your soup and extra seaweed to add as well. What was a challenge was eating with chopsticks but the soup spoon helped.

My aunt and I really enjoyed our time there. I am looking forward to going back for the experience and to try a different Ramen or find a place at one of my home towns :) 

Thanks for reading!

Welcome December

WOW! It's now the holiday season! So much to do and only 2 weeks and 5 days until Christmas. Time to search on my trusted Pinterest for awesome crafty and thoughtful gift ideas for my friends. Here's somethings that caught my eye :) 

Some buttons, stamps and a card and with some creativity, a DIY Christmas card. I think this is something special to go along with a gift. HOW CUTE!  

project from www.bangstyle.com

I do like to be a little personal with gifting to friends. To show them how much they mean to me and how I appreciate our friendship. As you get older and faced with big changes, it's interesting who in your life stays with you and who doesn't. 

BUT...

Let's move to more Pinterest DIY.

If you love baking, as I do, this is something you can do. This site has some other DIY gift ideas that could spark inspiration. You can never go wrong with baked goodies :) 

project from: www.andthenwesaved.com

Let's wrap this up. 

The last 2 DIY ideas I loved are great to give because your friends or family can reuse them. I always like to find things that can be reused since it won't get put away and forgotten. 

What I also like about these ideas, they are not done "Christmassy" which makes it easy to use or have out all year round. Obviously if you want to do them in Christmas colors or add snowflakes, go ahead. These are just for your inspiration and mine. 

project from: www.thewinthropchronicles.blogspot.com

project from: www.pleasenotepaper.com

Well got to get going with planning. I have a feeling most of my gifts will be coming from online stores for my family and homemade for friends. :)

Happy Holidays!