7:10 Alarm

7:15 2nd Alarm

7:25 3rd Alarm.

• I finally get up. It is so dark in the morning I need to gradually wake myself up! It’s getting ligher everyday though!
• Get dressed for practice, choosing the correct color shirt for practice (we cycle through our team shirts in order black, pink, yellow, purple).
• Throw my waterbottle, shoes, ipod, kneepads, and snack into my gym bag.
• Quickly eat a little something.

7:40 Go outside to car

• unplug car and fan in car
• turn on car and heater
• clean ice and snow off the car
• leave for practice (about a 5 min drive to gym from our house)

8:00-9:20 Morning Volleyball Practice

9:30-10:45 Gym to lift

• cardio
• lift weights, different everyday
• abs always
• sometimes I sauna, occasionally swim, and shower at the gym depending on time/hunger/energy

11:00 Home to the Cheesefactory

• make coffee
• eat a snack
• shower if I didn’t at gym
• watch whatever shows are on (syndicated Canadian shows), usually Bulging Brides and Birth Story, then a house hunter show, Border Control Australia, or dirty jobs, then the most annoying infomerccial for the Genie Bra is my sign lunch is ready

11:30-12:30 Lunch

• Either my roomie Milena or I and sometimes both of us take our tupperware for lunch, one for salad and one for food, and walk over to the Cheese factory cafetereia where we recieve our lunch on the weekdays.
• There is a weekly menu posted what we will eat all week long but since we understand nothing it is always a surprise!

1:00 Bring lunch back to the apt and nap for an hour or 2.

3:00 Wake up eat, computer time, Wii super mario, read, paint my nails, etc until the next practice. Go to store or run errands if necessary. Since nobody is awake in California during this time I can’t even skype yet.

5:00 Skype, 7:00am…usually when Ca is waking up so I try to make calls

5:30 Get car ready for practice, same routine as the am

5:45 Stretch and relax at gym before practice

6:00-8:00 Volleyball Practice

8:15 Home, plug in car for the night

• Shower
• Eat Dinner (what is left from lunch, we get big portions)
• Relax on couch with computer until bedtime!

11:30 When I try to goto sleep

12:30 When I usually fall asleep

Wake up and do it again tomorrow.

It is a staple snack food in many Finnish people’s lives and yet I hadn’t even heard of or tasted it until coming to Finland.

I have had it as a dessert several times now and loved it every time, the problem is I never knew what I was meeting. The other night we had what resembled this photo below and we were told it was a combination of rahka, vanilla sauce, a little sugar, and a berry mix (lingon, blueberry, strawberry, raspberry) all blended together then chilled in the fridge. It was delicious, a creamy, cool, sweet,  berry yogurt. Yum!

I have been trying a lot of Finnish Food since I have been here, and this is one of them. The difference is usually the food I am trying somebody at the table can translate what exactly it is I am eating. Not so easy with Rahka, it stumped everyone…except google!

Rahka translates to Quark which to be honest I don’t really know what that is either or if I have had it in the states before.

Rahka/Quark is described by the Finnish Food Glossary as:

“The first is the regular Finnish quark, called maitorahka (literally “milk quark”), which is made by curdling pasteurised low-fat/nonfat milk with lactic acid bacteria. It has a smooth, soft and slightly watery texture and contains between 0,2 and 0,3 % milk fat. It can be found at the dairy section of every grocery store. Imported German quark of similar consistency may be found sold in some well-equipped Finnish grocery stores.
The other is the Russian-type quark, which has a firm, dry consistency with a varying milk fat content, from about 8 to 30 %. “

It is sold individually packaged with and without flavor as well as lactose free. Some of the flavors I checked out at the store today included blueberry vanilla, lime and white chocolate, lemon, tiramisu, and regular. All had varying fat contents and there were several to choose from.

Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t mean you won’t like it and that is exactly the case with Rahka. I think it will be a tasty snack for me while I am here in Finland and I look forward to sharing the tasty dessert with everyone back home if I can find all the ingredients. If not, I’ll just enjoy it while I am here

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