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Eggnog - a Christmas comfort drink

12/22/2017

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It’s that time of year again: Christmas. I didn’t sign up for, but I’m bound to it like a contract emblazoned with holly.

It’s like the Terms of Service to a software update. You just scroll down to the bottom and you hit “I Agree.” I don’t remember exactly when I agreed to Christmas, but it appears I did. And so did you.

And so we all enter Christmas together, hand in hand, an inexorable march towards ugly sweater parties. It’s no wonder that so many people drink through the holidays, clutching on to their glass of holiday cheer for dear life. Digits flickering under their eyelids like licks of flame in a toasty fireplace: a glimpse of a credit card statement.
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Eggnog is a classic Christmas comfort drink made with eggs, milk, and rum - spiced only with nutmeg.
My mom got stopped at the airport in Helsinki. They told her she needed a visitor visa to travel to Canada to see her kids for Christmas. Rest assured, an easy fix, but apparently irreparably complicated by her permanent resident status in Canada - a vestige of her previous life in the 1990s when she last lived here. For geopolitical reasons that defy my earnest Canadian mind this meant that she couldn’t come visit for Christmas this year. Naturally, I blame Trump. He’s the Grinch and he ruined my mother’s Christmas.
They say right before you die of hypothermia you feel warm. That's kind of what I think drinking eggnog is like.
And so in this post I give a nod to eggnog. Consuming eggnog is like being hugged from the inside out during a blizzard. They say that right before you die of hypothermia you feel warm. That’s kind of what I think drinking eggnog is like. Consisting of egg yolks, sugar, milk and rum, it’s basically all the elements of a hearty cake. You just ditch the flour and sub in booze.

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Wine - and what I learned from the WSET 1 course

10/27/2016

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“Don't worry - I’ve done it all: I’ve choked and coughed my wine out on the table, I’ve dribbled it onto my chin and drooled into my lap.”
Our instructor for the WSET Level 1 was now teaching us how to taste wine. Inhaling air through the mouth after taking a swig of wine (in other words, slurping like a maniac) aerates the pallette and in effect wakes it up to a myriad more flavours than one would accomplish by just sipping coyly. The girl sitting next to me, a bartender at a classy local restaurant, burst into a coughing fit. “That’s it, good!” Said the instructor. “You’re being aggressive. Great.”
At that point I was really wondering what I had signed up for.
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Typical scene from the WSET Level 1 course: popping corks left right and centre.
This post is about my experiences learning about wine at the Wine & Spirits Education Trust’s Level 1 course held in St. John’s in October. In a nutshell: it was a blast. We tasted wine from 9am to 5pm on a Sunday. We were taught by Erin Turke, former sommelier at the beloved Raymonds, about why to pass up a Pinot Grigio and hail a Riesling,  about pairing a Sauternes with a jube-jube, about why you shouldn't eat spicey food with a Barolo. In fact learned so much about wine on that windy autumn Sunday in October that I find it genuinely hard to believe the attendance was so low: only seven people showed! So I’m going to share a thing or two about the secrets us lucky seven were let in on.

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Blueberries - something new

9/15/2016

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There's just something lost in translation in the title “Blueberry Soup.”

But in Finland, where I was born, the word mustikkakeitto is a household name. And despite translating to “Blueberry Soup" in English, it's not exactly soup as we might imagine it. Blueberry soup can be served hot or cold, on its own or accompanying dessert or breakfast oats. My favourite way is served cold in a drinking glass and downed on the spot at breakfast. It's smooth, but it's not a smoothie. It's packed with flavour, but it's not too sweet. In fact, given its versatility, healthiness, and flavour, it's perplexing as to why to appears to have been banished to Northern Europe.

Personally, I think it's time blueberry soup makes the trip to Newfoundland. And if you’ve got frozen blueberries sitting in the freezer, this is a fantastic way to use them - especially if you’re looking for an alternative to the traditional pie and muffin defaults.

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Let’s see if I can convert you to blueberry soup. I’ve put a recipe up here. You can also read the full post about Blueberry Soup by clicking the "Read More" icon.

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    Author

    I'm Erik, the Burnt Chef. I'm a Finnish-born Newfoundlander living in Norway. I have a passion for cooking and a deep fascination for the culinary history of the North.  Simplicity guides my cooking. Time, place, and history guide my storytelling. This is my personal blog about food. 

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