Breakfast

...is one of those things that tells us a lot about the culture that we come from.  Every country I have ever visited has had its own traditions relating to the first meal of the day.

These differences can become more interesting when you live in a cross-cultural family like ours. We are influenced by the cultures of Finland, England and France, so breakfast in our house can be very different from one day to another!  I know that my older children, who were brought up in England, are very pleased on the days when I announce that today will be a "full English breakfast" consisting of eggs, bacon (vegetarian in our case), baked beans, mushrooms, tinned tomatoes and toast with brown sauce on the side. However this is fairly unusual for us these days, as cooking this type of big breakfast in a family of eight can take the best part of the morning. Still, for those of you who will be starting our English conversation classes, I would be happy to cook you an English breakfast one day if you would like to see what it tastes like.  There is a big kitchen in Kiiruun Tila..so just let me know!

In France, the most typical breakfast is toast, a baguette or a croissant whether on its own or served with butter and jam. When we first came to Finland three years ago we found it quite hard to find really good croissants, but that has all changed since they opened the bakery section at Lidl! Have you been?  If not, I recommend it. Somero's Lidl opened its new baking service just a couple of months ago, and from what I can see it has been a huge success. The croissants cost only 39 cents each and Frédéric says they are the best he has ever found since arriving in Finland. The problem is that if you go to Lidl when you are feeling even the lightest bit hungry, you will generally come out with a basket full of cakes and pastries simply because they smell so appetizing. Be warned...

Luca and Niko having a Finnish breakfast

This morning we settled for a very Finnish meal...riisipuuroa ja mustikkakeitto. This is rice pudding with a type of thick blueberry sauce which is both packed with vitamins and delicious. Three years ago Frédéric was not at all interested in eating rice pudding in the morning...but he has been converted, and these days he often asks for it! 

I did not live in Finland as a child, but I used to visit my family in Lumijoki (near Oulu) during the summertime and I have very warm memories of sitting round the large wooden table together with my aunts and uncles who came to eat breakfast after having already worked for several hours milking the cows in the barn. We would be surrounded by the smell of fresh bread straight from the oven - I can still picture those scenes now.

One of our families new year's resolutions this year has been to spend more time together eating round the table, and this is something which we have really appreciated so far. Childhood memories of what you had for breakfast stay with you for a lifetime, and can often shape what you later try to recreate for your own family. My rice pudding will never be as good as my Aunt Elsa's, and I still have not mastered her method of making strawberry sauce (mansikkakiisseli) as mine always has lumps in it, but I have had no complaints from the family so far - and from the signs round Niko's mouth at least someone enjoyed breakfast this morning! Feel free to let me know what you ate this morning...this week we have had readers from both Sri Lanka and Japan so our breakfasts are likely to have been very varied. Should you ever come to Somero you are more than welcome to join us for a typically Finnish breakfast!