On Saturday, August 18th we made our way to Helsinki's market square (Kauppatori) by tram and shopped. We walked through the old market building which is indoors and full of small niches of permanent vendors, and also fish and meat vendors - charming. Then we walked through the outdoor market just beside it where there are fruits and vegetable vendors and also food vendors with giant wok-type pots with Finnish stews - usually potatoes and some meat and maybe mushrooms too. Hard to tell! We bought cherries, plums, apricots, chanterelle type mushrooms, summer squash, a pepper, cucumbers, small potatoes, some little cheese pastries decorated with berries and a reindeer sandwich. Plus the odd broccoli relation we had seen previously in Firenze and big peas - both pictured here for your amusement. We cooked our first meal that night and everything tasted great.
It's nice to have the option of cooking at 'home', but we're certainly enjoying our meals out too. I am beginning to decipher some roots in the long Finnish food words and so can occasionally figure out menu items now (kurkku, tomaatti) but we have a long ways to go. The wait staff are very helpful everywhere though, particularly the night we went to the nice Cafe Tori's outdoor terrace after a rain, and got meatballs with lingonberries and mashed potatoes. The waiter suggested sharing and that worked fine - along with the salmon dill soup - all delicious. We won't starve!
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