Tekkah.net

In the spirit of spring and one of my very favorite foods, I have taken the time to give tekkah.net a layout with some personal flair.  The last one was only meant to be a placeholder until I had time and inspiration to, at the very least, create a custom header and color scheme for the site.  I like what I’ve come up with, it’s fresh, easy to read, and hell, who doesn’t love strawberries?

Let me take a moment to tell you about one of my very favorite things: mansikkasoppa.  It’s hard to describe — well, hard to describe eloquently, anyway, as I tend to get a bit “mmmmmmm” and “nom nom nommmmm” about it — but it’s a delicious strawberry soup that my paternal grandmother pretty much has the market on, as far as I’m concerned.

One of my most vivid memories of my childhood trips to Finland is that of my grandmother’s kitchen.  She’s one of those people who just has to feed you every time you visit, and for the entire time you’re there.  She’s a woman who looks at her curvy, well-fed granddaughter and turns to her mother and says, “What are you feeding her? She’s too thin.”  I remember my siblings and I sat together at the table, each of us holding a cheese grater, and going to town on a freshly opened package of Oltermann cheese with the same flavor-high feelings that adults enjoy when sharing a good bottle of wine.  And I remember most of all sitting at that table as my grandmother ladled out warm bowlfuls of mansikkasoppa, not daring to temper it with cream like my father, barely having waited for it to cool down enough to eat without burning our mouths.

My brother, in his culinary experimentations, has tried time and time again to make a mansikkasoppa of his own, but the boy can’t help himself.  He’s always adding other berries.  Blueberries.  Raspberries.  Blackberries.  Things That Are Not Strawberries.  Now, I have nothing against other berries, but mansikkasoppa is called mansikkasoppa for a reason.  Mansikka (strawberry) and soppa (soup).  It’s not mansikkavadelmamustikkasoppa.  That’s a mouthful.  But that’s not even the reason Henri hasn’t managed to replicate grandma’s mansikkasoppa, and I’ll tell you why.

It’s the strawberries.

I am completely convinced, as are all the other Finns I know, that there just isn’t a strawberry good enough for a true mansikkasoppa outside of Finland.  They just don’t grow the same anywhere else.  In Finland they’re impossibly sweet and exceptionally juicy.  Mansikkasoppa made without Finnish strawberries is just lacking.  Perhaps it’s the atmosphere, perhaps it’s the feeling of aaah, motherland that comes with enjoying Finnish things in Finland, but it just isn’t the same no matter how much Finnishness you have in your bones.

In any case, since I can’t get a bowlful of that delicious, delicious mansikkasoppa for myself, I thought I would at least celebrate the strawberry with my layout.  May this year’s berry harvest produce good souping strawberries the world over!