"Lihapiirakka kahelnakil" and food talk in general

This morning, like every other morning, I was listening to the morning show from a Finnish radio station called Radio Aalto. It's called "Dynastia" for the ones interested of checking it out. Like already explained before, they often give me something to think about, and that happened also this morning.

Since I've been living in Italy I've become more and more sensitive and proud of my roots, and being Scandinavian in general. Which is really hard sometimes among Italians who are superduper proud of what they have and rarely want to consider that there are pretty things all around the world (also in Finland), not just here. Obviously this doesn't apply to all Italians, this is just my general opinion. 

For example, I once dated VERY BRIEFLY an Italian guy, who was very surprised to find out that we in Finland have our own Monopoly with Finnish street names, places and monuments. "But how? Why? What could you possibly have that's worth putting in the Monopoly? Here in Italy we have nice pretty buildings and lots of history, you have nothing. I don't think Finland should have it's own Monopoly. There should be a European Monopoly with different monuments and important places from all over Europe for countries like Finland that have nothing". Needless to say that we didn't stay together for much longer after that.

mom's (Finnish) pizza or....

One thing that pisses me off is trying to discuss food with Italians. To them Italian food is the only kind of food there is, and what ever people eat in other countries is just some second hand shit. And these are comments from people who have never tried any other kind of food than their momma's, so you can imagine how much value their comments have in my eyes.Especially Finnish food is terrible, looks horrible and is made of bad ingredients (again comments from people who have never tried a Finnish dish in their life). In the beginning I tried to explain that maybe you should try out other foods before you go all expert on what's the best food in the world, but obviously I wasn't listened to and so I just gave up. If you taste Finnish foods and don't like them, that's more than fine. But you gots to eat them first, otherwise you're just being ignorant.

BTW, I'm not even convinced that the food here is THAT excellent, to me it often lacks taste and spices. But that's just my opinion. I've also had some really tasty dishes here so if you're asking me, I'd give it a solid 9-. 

So, getting back to this morning's debate in the radio. They were talking about the Finnish tradition of eating "out" on a grill, which is like this little hut in the middle of the town where they will sell you all kinds of unhealthy things to eat, such as french fries, sausages, and something called "lihapiirakka" (here are some links to help you better understand what it's all about Lihapiirakka , various other goodies) Now I admit that these make me gag as well, and they're extremely unhealthy, but when you're going home from the bar at 4am on a Saturday night, you suddenly get the urge to stop at a grill on your way home and eat one of these bad boys.

Now in this little Finnish city called Hamina, there was this little grill that sold a little dish with lihapiirakka and two sausages (called "lihapiirakka kahelnakil" = "lihapiirakka and two sausages"). It was very popular not because of it's taste, but because instead of two sausages they gave you three sausages! So you got a sort of a bonus sausage as a surprise. Now how nice and fair is that?? Very.

...the italian breakfast (the cappucino hadn't arrived yet)

Recently the owner of the grill had changed, and the new owner had decided to stop this nonsense, and started selling "lihapiirakka and two sausages" with just two sausages, like the name itself indicates. No more bonus sausages peeps! And of course this made the people of Hamina very angry. So much so that they've created a page in facebook to promote their cause (here's the link FB Kahelnakil ). Mind you the same people support a FB group that wants to bring the Guggenhaim Museum to Kouvola, another small city in Finland, so I'm not so sure if they're looking to be taken seriously or not.

So now there's this big fight in Hamina as to whether the grill owner is obligated to put 3 or 2 sausages in the lihapiirakka. If you ask the Finnish Patentti- ja Rekisterihallitus, which would be the Finnish officials for patents and company registrations (and yes, they have been dragged into this mess), they say that "kahelnakil" is just a bit of Finnish dialect and indeed means "kahdella nakilla" = "with two sausages". So this would mean that the grill owner can go ahead with her plan of sausage-reduction.

Instead the good people of Hamina are saying that "kahelnakil" has already become a legend, and everybody knows that if you order something, ANYTHING, with "kahelnakil", you get three sausages instead of two. If you want to have something with just two sausages, you can't call it "kahelnakil".

The grill owner has been interviewed by the evening news, and she's explaining that the reduction of the sausages is based on the fact that otherwise she has problems with storage and has to make too many trips to the wholesalers. Also, the previous owner had seriously encouraged her to reduce the amount of sausages in this dish. Valid reasons I'd say, especially the one with the storage problem. Maybe putting too many sausages in the dish caused the previous owner to bankrupt in the first place, who knows?

At Radio Aalto they came up with some good ideas how to solve this very important dispute. The grill owner might just raise the price of the dish a little and this way cover the problems she has with storage and extra trips to the wholesalers. Or, and this one's my favorite, she should call the dish "yhelnakil" = "with one sausage", and this way the customer would still get the bonus sausage and walk away happy.

So I guess we Finns are as uptight about food as the Italians.
Or worse.