Moi! I’m Keikei. A few days ago, even though it was around the end of April, it snowed and I was stunned when I saw outside in the morning to find the white world. However, I guess it was the last snow (hopefully), because nowadays, the highest temperature in the day is over 10 degrees Celsius. Although it’s usually windy in Helsinki, which makes me feel colder than the actual temperature.
Today, I’ll talk about the trajectory of my cooking since I started to live alone separated from my parents in Japan. I believe that I has made significant progress in my cooking skill from several perspectives.
I don’t have an oven in my home in Japan, so I have done a lot of “experiments” with one in the shared kitchen.
Cooking and mental well-being
First, since I came here, I gradually started to spend much more time cooking and became excited to challenge something new.
When I was in Japan, I tended to search for easy and quick recipes and was unwilling to spend enough time cooking because I didn’t have space in my mind, occupied by so many things to do every day. Another reason was simply I was too lazy to make even a bit of effort to cook something which seemed difficult and had lots of processes.
However, I realized that if I was willing to take time and effort, the dish could entertain and warm my heart, even if I failed to cook. In contrast, if I skip some processes for the excuse that they are time consuming, or if I feel in hurry when I cook, in most cases, I feel unsatisfied with the meal and somewhat sad when I eat.
I learned how to take care of my mental health through cooking and eating and I believe this lesson will be very helpful in the future as well, especially when I enter the society. Even if I don’t have enough time and am occupied with so many things to do, for the very reason, I should let myself take a rest with good meal.
This is the traditional Finnish salmon soup, whose uniqueness is the nice smell of dill!
Mastering seasoning
Second, I could cook dishes without using semi-ready meals, by which we can season dishes without fail. Indeed, when I started to season dishes for myself, I didn’t know even to fry garlic with olive oil to add nice flavor because I relied on garlic salt until then.
Now I can season dishes better, using fundamental seasoning and spices, which is a great advance for me.
My father tends to buy lots of unnecessary spices and my mother always complains about it because it is always the latter to consume them, so now I can also blame my father, having at least the minimum cooking ability lol.
Diving into international cuisines
Finally, thanks to my international friends, I could experience a lot of traditional food around the world, which made me interested in cooking international dishes more frequently. We, Japanese, of course, are familiar with and cook famous dishes from other countries, but I could experience not only famous ones but also ones that is not widely known, but have deeper roots in the nationalities’ daily life.
I made Spanakopita, Greek cuisine. Most Japanese aren’t familiar with Greek dishes, but since I got along with a roommate from Greece, I could explore great Greek cuisines!
I cannot wait for serving dishes I learned here for my families! One of what I wanna do after I go back to Japan is to tell my appreciation to them by introducing particularlly Finnish dishes!
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