Summer and Archipelago Food Photography

The summers before last one my holiday started with a drive and a boat trip to my dear and talented friend Marina's family island. We loaded the car and then the boat with a lot of photography gear and lots of food and wine.

The island is amazing and the guest house is even more amazing. It feels like you are in the French countryside even thought you are at the Finnish archipelago.

We dedicated three days for cooking, styling, photography, sipping wine, eating and going to sauna. We were so obsessed with the food photography that one day we had two lunches. I think I gained weight at least one kilogram.

More pictures on Instagram under #archipelagofoodphotography. Also read Marina's blog post here.

Hounds and Hunting in Lapland

I think Pete has already been hunting for 10 years or so. And at the moment he is in Lapland hunting with our vizsla Mimi. Mimi is accompanied with Arran the vizsla.

Tomorrow Mimi will turn 10 months old and this is her first hunting trip. Arran is 6 months older so he has a little bit more experience.

Photo © Pete Salonen

Photo © Timo Haanpää

I am still awaiting for news if they will catch any birds.

Mostly I have just been enjoying my time here at home without the crazy and energetic puppy. But I am sure our 10 years old galgo Nuba misses her even she thinks the puppy is a pain in the ass. Next Tuesday we will get the hunters back home.

Metro Helsinki Hunt Club

Crayfish Party for Two

Some years ago Pete and I both thought that we were allergic to crustacean. We both have the allergy for fish so that's why we thought it was the crustacean as well. Then Pete read this article that said that it is really rare to have an allergy for fish and crustacean both. As culinarists we were really excited and went to the market hall and bought different kind of oysters and mussels. It was amazing. After that I have been eating a lot of crustacean especially shrimp.

We decided to spend last weekend together at the cottage because the hunting season is starting and Pete and our hunting dog Mimi will be away most of the time during the autumn. As it is the season for traditional Finnish ans Swedish crayfish parties we wanted to eat crayfish at the cottage.

Pete went to the market hall and bought ready boiled crayfish and few oysters for starters. For wine we had a bottle of Jacquart champagne.

Pete bought the crayfish from Eriksson at the market hall.

Poor Instagram pic of the table setting as I forgot my flash at home.

It was so good. I wish to eat more crayfish soon!

Do you prefer noble crayfish ("jokirapu") or signal crayfish ("täplärapu")? The ones we had were noble crayfish.