Finnish dinner, and our first sauna

Tonight we attended a dinner party and get-together with our Finnish moms. Ritva and her husband invited us over to their house, where we had a wonderful homemade dinner, and we got to experience Finnish sauna for the very first time.

Most houses in Finland have saunas, which are small (closet-sized) wooden rooms, with two levels of wooden benches and a radiator with a bed of hot stones on top of it. The sauna is dark except for a single low light, and to create steam and heat we had to take a ladle, dip it into a bucket of water, and pour it on top of the hot stones. The heat was a little oppressive at first, but after a few minutes it became soothing, and actually enjoyable. The sauna door opened into a small shower room, where we rinsed off afterwards. Though traditional Finnish sauna is experienced naked, and we've even heard that some Finns find it awkward when people cover themselves up, we have to admit that, being Americans, we snuck in our swimsuits and towels. We are happy to report that we emerged intact and unshriveled, though a bit pink.

After that, we headed up to the dining room, where Ritva and her husband served us a delicious home-cooked meal. We've heard a lot of rumors about Finnish cuisine not being up to par, but, so far, the Finns have totally proven this wrong. (Jacques Chirac even said it was the worst in Europe, but for a man whose country eats frog legs, tongue, raw meat, and snails, we don't really know who he's trying to kid.)

Dinner started out with seeded homemade rolls and a thick, creamy sweet potato soup, then salmon with wild mushrooms, broccoli with parmesan, mashed potatoes, and a Greek salad, all with rosemary water and white wine to drink. We'd like to point out that Elizabeth doesn't normally like sweet potato much and Jaime doesn't normally like salmon or mushrooms much, and the food was still awesome. The rosemary water was really interesting, too. You couldn't taste the rosemary in the water itself, but it filled your mouth afterwards.

After that was dessert, bitter cranberries with warm white chocolate sauce to pour on them, though we quickly realized that our ratios of chocolate-to-berry should have been much heavier on the chocolate side. We thought the meal was over at that point, but then, to our surprise, out came a berry-flavored black tea and homemade pulla, really awesome Finnish cardamom pastries, accompanied by hjortronparfaittårta, really awesome Swedish cloudberry cake. (Fortunately it's also known as "Brita cake" - we don't even try to pronounce hjor... tro... something.)

All in all, our night was really enjoyable, and we really love our Finnish moms. We're already excited for next weekend, when they're taking us to the city of Jämsä. Though, they've given us a really funny dialogue to present - we think - to the Finnish-American Society there. We've got to get practicing!