This is something I have to share with you.  It’s a trick so simple, so fast, with such great results.

Do you do a lot of baking?  Any baking?  Do you ever run across a recipe that calls for an unusual type of flour – like or oat or rice, or coconut?  Or maybe you’ve heard that flour gets old after a while and loses a lot of the nutritious value (assuming it isn’t over processed to start with).

I have dreamed about milling my own flour, but I don’t own a flour mill and I wasn’t about to buy yet another gadget to stuff somewhere in my compact, tightly packed kitchen.  Then I discovered that you can make flour yourself – in a blender!

Yes, my friends – that blender you’ve been reserving for making smoothies, pureeing soups…The homely, standard home appliance has just raised your baking to a whole new level.

(As a side note: if you haven’t yet bought an immersion blender and you like a smooth pureed soup, try this one – I have had mine for several years now and use it 3-4 times per week.  This is a workhorse appliance – buy the best you can afford and you’ll have it for years.)

Whole grains keep a lot longer in the cupboard than flour does – your flour actually ages quite quickly, and if you are buying organic flour without any of the preservatives normally added by big name flour companies, you’ll notice that the expiration date is typically listed as only a few months after your date of purchase.  This less of a problem with flours you may use more often, but what if a recipe calls for oat flour, spelt flour or rice flour, and you just don’t happen to have any on hand?  Whole grain spelt kernels something I’ve recently started stocking in my pantry since I learned this trick – but most people I know keep oatmeal and rice around all of the time.  The same trick works with wheat kernels, barley kernels, or any type of grain it’s whole form such as rye or millet.

Bread bakers will tell you that fresh flour makes the world of difference in bread, but unless you are baking and selling bread in large quantities, chances are good that the bag of flour you’re keeping is getting close to retirement age.  Do yourself a favor and try the fresh stuff.  Here is great post on the subject of fresh milled flour if you are interested in reading more.

When making flour, you want to start with a minimum of 1.5 cups of whole grains in the blender.  The reason is that if you don’t have enough grains, they’ll just fly around like sand grains in a wind storm, never forming flour, making a lot of noise and leaving you with a mess.

If you are in Finland and looking for good quality Organic whole grains, Malmgård sells wheat, spelt, barley, oats, rye, and emmer/farro in stores around Finland.   For Spelt, try SunSpelt in Finland.   I know that specifically Stockmann Herkku and Eat & Joy Maatilantori carry them.  In the US, Whole Foods Market sells them as well.  You can find whole grains from other farms at your local health food store or Co-op as well, or order them online.  Your local grocery store may be a great source as well, though not, perhaps, for organic grains.

Fresh Ground Flour

1.5 – 3 cups / 3 -6 dl of whole grains of your choice (wheat, rye, spelt, barley, rice, millet…)

Pour the whole grains into your blender.  Process for one minute.  Stop the blender and stir the mixture with a rubber spatula.  Process for one more minute.  Repeat 2 more times.

Place a sifter or a fine mesh sieve over a bowl.  Pour the flour mixture into the bowl and sift it so that any larger chunks are separated and you get a nice light flour.  The flour is best if used immediately, but can be stored in a glass jar for use in the refrigerator for 2 weeks or in the freezer for one month.

Your end volume of flour will be slightly greater than the volume of whole grains you started with.

I discovered that there were Juniper bushes growing all around the cabin sometime in March 2012.  The ground was still covered with snow, and we were at the cabin to do ice fishing.  J had tried to coax me along on these treks before – but I was a little skeptical about how much I’d enjoy sitting out on top of the ice in the middle of the lake, trying to catch a few fish in freezing cold weather. 

But because the weekend was supposed to be bright and sunny, and because J & H always come back grinning like kids every time they’ve been out ice fishing, I decided to go along.  We strapped on old Swedish army skis, and headed off into the bright morning sunshine, -10°C temperatures notwithstanding.  It was glorious!  It’s no wonder the flag of Finland is a white cross on a blue background.  In a country with 7 months of winter, on the days when the sun comes out and the ground is covered with snow, the whole of Finland seems to be a sparkling white landscape against a perfect blue sky.

We skied out past a few islands, drilled hole after hole across the lake, and tried our best at fishing until my toes began to freeze and we all got hungry.  The only fish biting that day were itty bitty perch/ahven – but we did keep them – J made an Ahven Kukko, which is basically tiny fish (traditionally Vendance), skins removed, bones intact, baked with bacon in a buttered rye crust at a low temperature in the oven all night long – until the fish bones are soft and the crust a combination of crisp and chewy.  It’s a little odd at first, but the taste grows on you, and J’s dad loved it.  If you want a little entertainment about Kalakukko, the original version, check out this hilarious video made for the Shanghai World’s Fair Finland Pavilion here.

The weather was still beautiful when we got back, so after lunch I went for a short walk in the woods and quickly became distracted by dusty purple berries on some of the trees: Juniper!  I have learned since that the best time to harvest Juniper Berries in Finland is in the early Fall – it may be different where you are – so I had to wait 6 months to get my hands on Juniper to freeze, but it was well worth the wait.  The berries on the trees are up to 2 years old, and are a dusty purple and slightly plump when they are ready to be picked.  It’s slow work picking them by hand – and if any of you have figured out a quick way to harvest them, I’d love to hear it!  The size of the berry depends on climate and the type of Juniper tree, but as far as I’ve experienced, there is little difference in taste or fragrance, and the tiny Juniper berries I’ve found in Finland are lovely.   You can dry them, but the flavor declines over time when dried, so I freeze them instead in a small glass jar.

Now that I have a cup or so in my freezer, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with them.  Hunger and Thirst had a Wild Things had a Juniper Roundup in October with several recipes that I am planning to try, but I for some reason wanted soup and had cabbage in the fridge that was ready to be made into something delectable.

This was a recipe born of tasting the contents of the pot, adding a bit of this and a bit of that until I arrived at a recipe that is deep and satisfying in its flavor, has a subtle scent of Juniper, and is simple to throw together.  If you don’t have demi glace (available at most grocery stores) you can use a good beef broth as the base to replace half of the water.  You’ll get the best flavor with the demi glace, however.

Also, because Juniper goes so well with game – if you have that, definitely use ground or shredded game instead of the beef – you’ll knock your flavor up a notch.  If any of you try game, please let me know how it was!  I’m going to look for moose at the local Hakaniemi Market Hall and throw that in the pot next time.

TIP:  Another trick I learned from J’s dad:  in the summer when you have parsley (works for dill, chives, cilantro and basil too), wash and chop the parsley and store it in the freezer in labeled plastic freezer containers.  It works just like the fresh herbs in cooked or baked products, and is way more convenient to use in the winter than the fresh herbs are.

Cabbage Soup with Juniper & Beef

In a medium-sized, heavy bottom pot over medium heat , pour in 2 tablespoons of oil and add:

1 onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 carrot, diced
1/2 green pepper / paprika, diced

Saute until the vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes.   Add:

1/2 Savoy cabbage, roughly chopped
6 cups / 1.5 l water
1 1/4 tablespoon Juniper berries, crushed and chopped
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup demi glace

Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce heat to medium low, and allow to simmer for 20 minutes.  Meanwhile cook your beef.   Into a frying pan over medium heat, pour 2 tablespoons of oil and add:

3/4 lb / 300 g ground beef or game
1/2 onion, diced
1 teaspoon Italian Seasoning
salt and pepper to taste. 

Fry the the beef until it is cooked through, using your spoon or spatula to break it into small chunks as it cooks.  Taste the beef mixture to make sure it is cooked to your satisfaction.  You want to make sure the meat is well-seasoned so that the overall flavor of the soup is in balance.  Add the beef mixture to the soup pot along with

1/4 cup chopped, fresh or frozen parsley

Cook for an additional 5 minutes.  Taste the soup broth and add salt or pepper if needed.  Garnish with fresh parsley leaves and serve with fresh bread and slices of cheese.

Serves 4.

Happy New Year 2013!

It’s January 1, 2013.  You have 365 days ahead of you in the new year.  How are you going to spend it?

Kallahti, Helsinki – roads diverging in a yellow field

I look back on the last 12 months, and time has absolutely flown by.  I wonder when the month changed from February to June and from August to October.  Yes, it often seemed that one month would end and another would be half gone before I noticed.  The days fly by faster and faster, and then, somehow, it’s New Year’s Eve again, and we glance back at the blurry memory of the year just gone, wish those around us “All the best for the new year”, may or may not make a few resolutions for how we’ll improve our health, lose weight, increase fitness, learn something new, travel more, be more patient, spend more time with people we care about, do a little more self-reflection, live in the moment, and Slow Down.

Vuosaari, Finland

Deep down inside each of us is a dream, large or small, to do something special.  Some take action, some do not.  Some talk about taking action – and spend so much time talking that it absorbs all the time and energy they have for actually doing the thing.  Some are paralyzed by fear:  fear that they’ll be neglecting the duties of family or history or expectation…or worse…fear of neglecting what they “should” do for what they actually “want to do”.

I speak to myself as much as to anyone when I say this:  there is no time like the present for living a life full of the things you love.  That in itself requires that you sacrifice something, and that “something” is different for everyone, whether it be time, money, someone’s approval, our own comfort zone.

Just before the snow

Window in the Finnish National Museum / Suomen Kansamuseo

We can tell ourselves we don’t have the time to change or to learn what we need to learn in order to bring that new something into our lives that we dream of.  But then if we think of all the time we spend doing things of no consequence – if we count them as wasted hours that could be applied toward actions that fill our lives with things that bring us joy, whatever that is for you – then the picture changes and you realize that really, the only thing that stands between you and what you want is the willingness to get started.

Wild Strawberries on a straw – a traditional way to gather them in the Finnish countryside

Let 2013 be the year you start on fulfilling that dream you’ve been hiding away deep down inside:  from getting a college degree, to changing careers, to running a marathon, to traveling to a foreign country, writing a book, starting a company, beginning a new hobby or finally organizing those thousands of digital photos into something you can actually enjoy and share.

And because change is something that moves us out of our comfort zone so that we can grow, here is some comfort food to enjoy as you get started.  It’s from the Åland Islands (Ahvenamaa) – an archipelago off the coast of Finland home to a good number of freedom-loving Swedish-speaking Finns.  According to Wikipedia:  ” By law, Åland is politically neutral and entirely demilitarized, and residents are exempt from conscription to the Finnish Defence Forces.  The islands were granted extensive autonomy by the Parliament of Finland in the Acto of the Autonomy of Åland of 1920, which was later replaced by new legislation by the same name in 1951 and 1991.  Åland remains exclusively Swedish-speaking by law. “

In other words, it’s an archipelago full of people who are doing what they want.  And the bread?  The bread goes with pretty much anything.  I like it with Borscht Soup, spread with a soft goat cheese or with a thin layer of butter.

While the bread bakes, tell me – how are you going to spend your year?

Saaristoleipä / Archipelago Bread