Sé que este blog no es de recetas de cocina. Sin embargo, acordé con mi familia de compartirles una receta que preparé para ellos en agosto, la cual les gustó mucho. La receta la descubrí en el app de k-ruoka: Uunilohipasta (Nota: admito que uso mucho ésta aplicación para descubrir nuevas recetas, es EXCELENTE). También es posible leer la receta original en la revista de esta cadena de supermercados (k-Ruoka #9 del 26.8.-29.9.2020, pág. 41). Ahora busco traducir la receta al español y espero la disfruten. Realmente es una receta sencilla y deliciosa.
En la foto están todos los ingredientes de la receta y mis herramientas de trabajo 🙂 Nota: en esta ocasión utilicé espinaca y rúcula, porque tenia un poco de las dos. 🙂
Preparación (menos de 30 min)
Limpiar la superficie y retirar la piel del salmón.
Nota: Lavarse bien las manos si se van a utilizar también. En mi caso usé el cuchillo, peor en ciertas areas me era mas fácil utilizar mis manos.
2.Rallar un limón
3. En un refractario poner el salmón. Sazonarlo con la ralladura de limón, sal y pimienta.
4. Agregar la crema
4. Hornear a 200 grados durante unos 20 minutos.
Mientras tanto:
5. Cocer el espagueti en agua
6. Exprimir el jugo del limón
7. Lavar el cebollin y la espinaca (o rúcula)
8. Cortar el cebollin y la espinaca (o rúcula)
9. Ya que la espagueti está listo, guardar un poco de agua.
10. Sacar el salmón del horno, y cortarlo en trozos con una cuchara.
11. Agregar el cebollín picado (y mezclar un poco)
12. Agregar el jugo de limón.
13. Agregar el queso parmesano rallado.
14. Agregar la pasta escurrida. Si es necesario y requiere mas líquido, agregar el agua que se reservó anteriormente (Nota: a mi no me ha hecho falta ). Mezclar.
NEWS! for first time in my life, I start to collaborate in writing articles for a more established blog. The name of the blog is: Out in the Nature and their URL is this one: https://www.outinthenature.com/
A brief story behind this milestone. I discovered Out in the Nature’s blog last year, when doing some research for umaze. We were preparing ourselves to visit the labyrinth in Nagu, and the team behind Out in the Nature, had some information about this location in their post: Troy Town rock maze in Nauvo archipelago.
After reading more of their blog, I thought to myself: maybe if I start collaborating with them it will allow me to share some of my discoveries, from my Finnish adventures outdoors. I have this good intention of sharing since long, as you can see in some of my posts as this one in paddling or this one in Koli. However, I confess, it is mainly a good intention. Many times I start to write, but “n” things happen and either I do not start or I leave a post in the middle. Only few adventures are able to pass the publication’s challenges threshold. Actually, my life, I could say is so similar to the following cartoon of developers….
I believe a collaboration with Out in the Nature might benefit us both. To me, it will help me to actually finalize articles and share things to an audience, and I will do quality content for the site. After some emails, we agree to give it a try. Then I start to write my first post for them.
Then, guess what? Yes, the post was al: most ready and my chaos hit my desk, leaving my article in hold. The only aspects missing were address, some tags, and to activate a plugin needed to activate an interactive story, I made with ubium’s MINE editor. Yes, there were small details, but of those that require time.
Then the collaboration started to bring fruits, as a colleague from Out in the Nature reach to me, and helping to fine tune the details that were missing. Then voilà the article is out for the public to enjoy. The title is: Örö – Military history and a fragiel ecosystem. You can fin d it in following this link: https://www.outinthenature.com/oro-military-history-and-a-fragile-ecosystem/ Feel free to visit the post and let your comment.
I am so happy.
In my agreement with Out on the Nature is that the interactive stories that I produced can be also share in other blogs. Hence, here is the story I did about Örö
I truly believe this collaboration will be positive for both parties. We will find synergies due to common interests. And most importantly I start to feel it will also allow us to build friendships. Now to move forward in this share journey!
This photo is our arrival to Örö. First marina of this new collaborative journey!
Even in pandemic times, there are many things happening during one day. Furthermore, the days continue passing by quickly. I believe if one day I am able to harness the challenge to cope with time, I can say I succeed in one of the biggest quests in life. Anyway, this post is not about time, but about paddling at Kuuskoski.
Thursday May 21 was a public holiday in Finland, the Ascension day. In this day, Mikko and I decided to go paddling as the weather was perfect: sunny and “warm” (note: warm can be a relative to interpretations depending the context). I didn’t review how warm was it, however for this post I researched this information and according to the Finnish Meteorological Institute and should have been around 13C, as we left late in the afternoon
The follow up question after taking the decision to go paddling was: where to go? . To give answer to this question, Mikko shared with me a map (Side note: this map is well done by the the Foundation of the river Aura). The selection was: Kuuskoski.
We reached our destination, approx 40km from Turku center. The first sign we saw was the placate from http://koskipirtti.com/
Due to the current regulations for covi-19, we were not able to visit the the museum (behind the yellow house of the photo above) as it was closed. Next time we will visit it. What called my attention was the private home next to the museum, which is BEAUTIFUL.
At first I thought it was a church. However, a sign down a road (next photo) indicated that it is a private property. Nevertheless, I got many questions about this unique construction.
The next decision was: which direction to paddle ? We had two options up stream or down stream. Down stream was a family already enjoying the water, as you can perceive in the photo below. With this photo serves as evidence that in Finland to keep a distance between people to avoid covid-19 transmission is relatively easy 😉
While searching for our start point for paddling, we got a closer view to the rapids” . Note the following photo with my shadow 🙂
We decided to paddle upstream. Thus, a large rock was our departure spot.
In total we paddled approx 10km. I can’t believe it!
The following screenshot indicates the point where we return from our paddling. Where the Jalkalanjoki intersects the Aura river.
That was approx 5kms in one direction and 5 kms back. The river was calm and beautiful.
For the human eyes and ears, it is undeniably we are in the middle of spring. Many trees still do not have leafs, at the same time the “lemon-green” starts to be noticeable in the landscape, and one can listen birds singing. This is, unquestionably, a beautiful time.
As we advance paddling the landscape changes. The naked tree photographed below was magnificent. The photo does not transmit its grandeur.
Suddenly, one could see more spruce trees as we can observe below (I think those are spruces, I need to ask).
Of course Risen Bear was present all the time 🙂
In the next photo has the purpose to show a bird house hanging from a pole, which in my opinion was a big bird house with a large hole. Wondering who could be the tenants of such a house? (my knowledge of birds is literally nonexistent).
The following bridge also call my attention. Wondering if I can find information about it. Apparently is a wooden bridge, and with all the calmness of the water look alluring to my eyes.
A closer view to the bridge.
A photo after we just cross it, underneath in our way back.
In this trip I called my mom, who has been inside her flat since mid-march, with the intention to bring her along and let her see the beauty and calmness of nature. Also I attempted that she listened to the birds. However the build-in mic of a mobile phone does not have the quality to capture the birds’ signing. Something to look for: a good mic. I hope she was able to enjoy some of the landscape.
In our way back the calmness was more evident and the birds were louder, maybe indicating us that it was time to go to sleep.
Getting close to our departure spot.
It was a wonderful and recharging time. No wonder Finns are happy, quality time in nature is unbeatable.
A personal wish within the current covid-19 disruption is that more people increase their interest in science and philosophy in addition to art and culture. These are the foundations of our development and innovation.
We need to learn to make questions and look for answers. In addition to be open to hear and offer constructive feedback.
By now, maybe some of you might be wondering: why can’t we gather? (e.g. restaurants, theaters, classrooms, concerts ) Well, the following video gives an insight of a potential reason behind this rational.
Petapixel wrote an article reflecting about this video in reference to covid-19. In their article, they embed a tweet with a link to another article from the LA Times, which describes an outbreak case of a choir probably through air. It is worth the read both articles.
I really enjoy playing. A Game, for me, is more than a game system. Each game, in my perspective, includes many contextual aspects which can be summarize in the following dimensions: environmental, socio-cultural and personal (see my dissertation for more) . However, relax, I am not writing an academic reflection here. This post is about games I am playing with my family during this confinement. 😉
The purpose of this post is:
to share board games which one can play in the distance, and
to invite others to share ideas of other games that can be played with players located in different locations, at the same time and with a strong physical presence in the game.
Before I start describing the games we have played so far, let me specify our constrains: We are 4 players in 3 households. We are distributed as follows:
One player in Mexico. This player is a lovely lady of +70 years old)
Two players in Germany. One of these players is 11 years old
One player in Finland.
Our communication set up is: we have a group in whatsapp, and through a video-call at an agreed time the game session starts. 😉
Before covid-19, each one of these players have their own group of friends to play and we gather only to talk. However, during this confinement, we want to play together and laugh a bit together. [side note: I am a lucky person, because my family like to play games 😉 and many of us have the same games at home 😉 facilitating things] . We do not want to be play games which are only digital for the following reasons:
(i) we want to see each other,
(ii) we have different ICT skills and technological equipment, in addition to different digital games skills.
(iii) we like to have a “tangible” aspect in the game
We look for games that allow us to feel confident to play together, and we can fix individually if something doesn’t work. So far we have played the following 5 games, which I am presenting here.
GAME #1: Loteria Mexicana
My niece proposed the first game in this “confinement” series: “La Loteria Mexicana”. All the players of this group know how to play it, and all of us have the game. Then it has been easy to play it and works excellent. Below is a video explaining the game.
If you do not have a “loteria mexicana” I assume playing bingo might work as well. 😉
If you know how to play it and one of the players have the cards, then you only have do download the board from internet. There are many board available online.
We play la loteria mexicana in confinement as follows: one of us “sings” the loteria, while the other players fill the boards. It plays exactly as if we were physically together.
GAME #2: BASTA
This is a common game we played as children in Mexico in the 80s. Maybe earlier, I have no idea about this. The following video explains how to play the game in English:
As with the loteria mexicana (previous game), this game plays exactly as if we were in the same room. One player starts to go through the alphabet silently, while a another player indicates when this player should stop. Next, the player who was stopped let us know in which letter was the last one he thought. With this letter, all player start writing words, that begin with this letter in different categories which have been predefined. In our group of players, we are using the following categories:
Name
Animal
Flower or Fruit
Country or City
Thing
Once a player finalizes the whole categories, says “BASTA”, and counts to 10. This is a time that allows the other players to finalize their writing. Once the time is up, we review the words writing and give scores for each one. If no-ones wrote this word, receives 10 points, if 2 have the same word is 5 points, if 3 have the same word is 3 points and if all have the same word is 1 point. It is 0 points if you didn’t write a word.
It has been fun, and we are LEARNING words constantly! 🙂 Note: it is not valid to look words up in internet.
GAME #3: HECKMECK
Another game we have played and it works very well is Heckmeck.
In our case 2 household have this game physically. For the third household, the player made her own “domino” pieces in paper as we indicate which pieces are needed. The game is played with 6 dices, which have a worm instead of a number 6. Hence, the player without the original game uses 6 normal dices and the number 6 is the worm.
As the game is played by turns, each one of us follow the game at home. Also one of us broadcast in her turn the general board to keep everybody in tune.
NOTE: it is appreciated when in one’s turn we rotate the camera of the phone to see the result of throwing the dices. We trust the player, it also makes you feel more “present” when you see the result of the action. Hence to have a smartphone where one can easily switch the front and back camera comes handy in here.
A screenshot of our game. Below showing the current situation, after the German playing is finalizing her turn. Mexican playing observing the situation
GAME #4: YANTZEEN
This game also works well. All of us know how to play it, and we have the same “list”. Each time is our turn, we try to “turn” the camera of the phone, so the others also see what the player have through.
GAME #5: TOSS UP!
It is the latest we have played. The 3 households have the dices making possible to play this game. 😉
Screenshot of our game play. In this case, Finland was starting the game while Germany was switching her camera back to the players, but i do not have permission to show the face of the players, so we keep it in this way 😉
Based on this experience, I assume that:
turn-based games work well for players in this type of set up.
games that have dices as a main game component are easy to “synchronize” while the players are in the distance.
it is important to keep a strategic aspect in the game to avoid to be only a “chance” game, as we know already, and it is important to addressed when we are playing in the distance.
Also I am discovering the need to design games for players who are located in different locations, and want to play together the same game at the same time without being this a video game. Will be this a new type of games? something I need to reflect further.
I will keep reporting about what games are we exploring in this configuration, and maybe even we will even design new games.
If you have any idea of games we should try, in this setup, please do not hesitate to let us know! We are open to explore more games! 🙂
