A new American girl just started at my daughter's international school in Espoo. Recently at school, my daughter was the last one in the cafeteria with the exception of the new girl. Why had they stayed behind when everyone else was done eating and had left? They both had trouble eating their food plates and when the teachers were not looking, they dumped their food in the garbage. :) It seems that they are missing their mac n cheese, french fries, burritos and chicken nuggets. Yup, the food staples of the American school child are definitely not found in Finland. In Finland school cafeterias feature items that you might even find in an adult buffet. Depending on the day, you might find salmon, potatoes, meatballs, stew and even fish soup. It is "real food", not just the preservative laden food that you would find in US school cafeterias. My wife and I think that this would be a good shift for her in order to adopt better habits, but she is really slow to change. It is hard to break these habits and she still yearns for Kraft Macaroni and cheese any chance she gets. There seems to be some kind of market for "American" food here in Finland, because there is a specialty shop that sells American goods and there is an "American" shelf at the local K market food chain. I personally tend to stay away from that stuff, because I just don't really feel like spending 5 + euros for some Peanut Butter or Jello pudding. I can live without my American items for now. :)
Surprisingly enough there is also a noticeable difference in lunch culture of Finland versus what I was used to in the States. Finland tends to favor large, heavy lunches and many of them tend to be "all you can eat" buffet style places. Many of these buffets feature heavy meat stews, fish, potatoes, bread and butter, heavy pasta salads, etc. It is pretty rare to just find basic food, a light sandwich or burrito kind of place. Also, not sure if it is just my office or not, but almost everyone tends to go out for sit down lunches, definitely not an "eat at your desk" culture. In my previous job in California, I think only about 30% of the people went out for lunch. The rest either grabbed something to go or brought their own lunches from home to eat at work. I think part of this has to do with America's "rat race", go go go work culture, where the Finns actually take time to go to lunch. I have already mentioned in earlier blog articles, about the differences in food varieties in Helsinki versus San Francisco so I will not go into too much detail here. Finland is however making some strides in establishing more ethnic varieties of food as more as more immigrants have been coming here. See my earlier post "Work life in downtown Helsinki". http://scandinavianinterlude.blogspot.fi/2012_03_01_archive.html
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| Finnish staples |
