Hangover pizza

After having a few quite uneventful days, I decided to join my class for a end of the school year celebration, in which alcohol was involved. That can only mean one thing the next morning: hangover. It was quite an eventful night out, and now I need to charge my batteries for the weekend.

Agagagga aahh aahhh aahhh iiiihhh... Yeah! 

Too tired to go to school or really care about anything, I decided to do something that always helps after a heavy night: pizza. Using whatever ingredients I happened to have in the fridge, I made a quick dough which
formed the basis for my Pizza Hellognese ©. 

Not having a rolling pin can lead you to get creative in the kitchen!


Making a pizza can sometimes be hard, especially if the dough sticks to your fingers. I recommend using plenty of flour to battle this problem. 

Preparing the meat together with the tomato sauce.

I really like plenty of stuff on my pizza, but with a thin dough crust. If it's too thick, it reminds me too much of a pan pizza. 

Cherry tomatoes.

I usually bake my pizzas on about 200 degrees celcius in the oven because I want all ingredients to be thoroughly cooked together.

It's out of my hands now..

Quite delicious. A real Pizza Hellognese.

Have a great day everyone, and don't drink too much!

Moon photography

18.1.2013

14.4.2013

About bacon

I have always been a big fan of bacon. It's salty, slightly smoky aroma compliment eggs or bread well. I only allow myself this meat product a few times every month, since it's not exactly the healthiest snack available.

Usually, I buy the regular pre-packed bacon because it's cheaper than the side pork cuts that you can get from the meat counter.

HK "American Bacon". Most popular bacon in Finland. 

There are quite big quality differences between different brands of bacon. For example, the one that's available for purchase in Lidl has a quite distinct taste (of preservatives according to some). HK's variety, pictured above, is probably my favourite pre-packed kind. It has a balanced flavour with just the right amount of salt and a relatively high meat content. 

When frying bacon, I put very little flavouring on it as the meat taste itself is quite delicious. Usually, the only thing required (or not required, depending on personal preferences) is a hint of oregano and thyme. These two herbs both have a very subtle flavour, that compliments the meat taste well without overshadowing it.

¨

Today, I decided to celebrate the weekend by purchasing premium side cuts of meat. I went to the local meat disk and asked for "sidfläsk" (swedish for side cut) and got 4 fine pieces of it for about 1 euro. That's a perfect amount to put on a regular finnish rye bread sandwich.

I combined the fried side cuts (flavoured with a hint of black pepper and salt) with goat cheese and sliced tomatoes. Under it all, I used a fresh cheese called Viola (with blue cheese flavouring). I was quite satisfied with this afternoon snack, especially since I hadn't made such a combination before.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Night photography

15 second exposure time.

Car light trails (looks like a laser beam from Star Wars according to my inner nerd).

An evening walk with the camera

Today after school, me and my girlfriend went outside to take a few pictures of Ekenäs, in the setting sun.
I have been photographing as a hobby for a few years now, usually with my Canon SX1 IS camera. It's not an DSLR camera or anything, but usually gets the job done.

We walked around the coastline and took pictures of the landscape, trees, ice and birds. It was very relaxing after the hours I spent in front of the computer monitor at school.

Safety first, ladies and gents !

Church in Ekenäs old town.

Flying higher..

.. and lower.

A new friendship.

Angry Bird.

When photographing most things, I usually use the manual settings with RAW files, so that I can later "develop" my pictures using Adobe Lightroom. When shooting in RAW you get the biggest possible amount of information from the camera (lightning, colour reproduction) and no in-camera sharpening is used either. That can make a tremendous difference when adjusting your pictures. The only downside in RAW is the bigger file sizes and incompability with certain image editors. When saving my pictures (for example for this blog), I resize them and compress them as JPEGS though.

Grumpy Cat

Run in the sun

With the continued sunny weather, I decided to go for a run today by myself. I usually run alone, because I have noticed I need to concentrate fully on what I'm doing to get a satisfying experience.

My running hobby started during 2010 when I did my military service; one could get special "points" for running, which could be collected into a free day. In the beginning of my time in the military (February 2010), the Cooper test results were around 2200 meters which is a very bad results for males in my age. In the end (June 2010) I had already advanced to 2945 meters, which was only 55 meters short of the "excellent" level. I hope I get the opportunity to see how my results would be now.

Before my runs, I try to eat a moderate amount of food in order to get the necessary energy; food with lots of proteins is a good energy source. Today, I made some macaroni with vegetables and bacon, topped with Buffalo Mozzarella cheese.

I recently purchased these new running shoes, made by Salomon. They are called XR Mission and cost me around 95 €. I believe in investing in good, durable shoes instead of cheaper ones. From personal experience I can tell that the cheaper ones break much more easily and leave you with hurting feet.

 In the first few runs with the new pair, there may be some pain while the feet grow accustomed to the specific shape of the shoes.

I always try to make a good playlist as a motivation and a distraction. I am very sensitive to annoyances (for example cars) so music lets me focus on the running. Of course I pay attention to traffic too when I run in crowded areas.

My usual running route is around 3-4 kilometers with no stops. I have been using a smartphone application called RunKeeper, which is quite good for keeping track on your runs and setting new goals.

Brighter times ahead, no clouds on the sky (yet).

It's a beautiful spring day in Western Finland. The earth is starting to appear beneath the melting snow. Skin is starting to show too, which was once covered by layers of clothing and fur. The people seem to be much happier too, with smiling faces and a much more positive attitude.

To celebrate this beautiful day, I bought some flowers from the local lady selling them.
However, they will not grace my own simple apartment, but rather I will let my girlfriend decide what to do with them.

During the last few days, I have been taking part in Easter celebrations and enjoying some quality sheep meat, complimented by great wines and beers.

At the moment, I still have one month left at school. After that I have to actually do something again when my work starts at a photography shop in Porvoo.