(I’m Hanna Laukkanen, a 26-year-old journalist, who moved from Finland to San Diego for an internship in San Diego Community Newspaper Group. In this blog I will compare Finnish and American lifestyles and try to find out a lot more about the Californian way of living. Please send me feedback at [email protected].) After 10 days in San Diego, I’m starting to feel like home, little by little. I have read, that if one wants to feel like home in a new place, two important steps are to make a big mess at new home and have a party. Well, last night I made a mess while cooking and in a few days I think we will have a party, too! One way of feeling like home, is to get to know your closest grocery stores. Yesterday I food shopped for one week’s worth of groceries and I was amazed, how big is the difference in prices compared to Finland. I got groceries here for $60 and in Finland I would easily pay $80 for the same amount of food. And the quality here is better, because vegetables and fruits are grown here and not 7,000 miles away. The nicest thing about shopping for groceries is that customer service is usually really friendly. In Finland, saleswomen doesn’t usually have a small talk with you, but here it’s really common and also nice. Yesterday, a saleswoman praised my scarf. I was so overwhelmed that I started to talk about how nice that set of potatoes is, although I didn’t have any idea of how they taste. I love cooking and usually I make really easy and simple foods for myself. Yesterday, I did very traditional Finnish food, which is basically meat-potato casserole. The food is really nice for the family with fresh salad on a side. Here’s the recipe, enjoy! 6 potatoes
1,5 lb hamburger meat
1 small onion
2 clove of garlic
3 eggs
17 oz. of milk (non-fat or low-fat)
salt
black pepper
other spices according to your own taste (paprika, grilling spice etc.) Peel and slice potatoes and spread them around the glass oven casserole dish. Put hamburger meat in a frying pan with chopped onion and garlic. Add salt, pepper and other spices to meat-onion mix. After searing, add meat and onions to casserole with potatoes. Mix milk and eggs and whip egg yolks broken. Pour milk-egg-mix to casserole and place in oven at 392 degrees for one hour.