A thousand temptations – resisted

At the Helsinki Fair Centre, there was a dangerous combination of events this weekend – a Book Fair and a Food Fair. Two of my favorite things together under one roof, so it was obvious I had to go spend a day there.

One of the most interesting places on the food side was Hackman’s show kitchen where several events took place, obviously allowing the audience to taste whatever had been made – from there I picked up a couple of good reindeer fry recipes (and some frozen raindeer). Aki Wahlman was the host and he turned out to be a relatively funny guy.

There were several tastings of all kinds of things on the food side. What was interesting to see is that most of the people cooking “real” food (of whom there were too few) didn’t miss the essential step of tasting the food before serving the visitors. On the other hand, we had these other guys like the cook wokking stuff at the Blue Dragon stand. As their staple is selling prepared sauces and spices in a bag, they apparently don’t think it’s worth tasting what you’re serving. Subsequently and unsurprisingly, their food didn’t taste that great.

By the time I made it to the book side – the bigger of the two fairs – the halls were already packed with people. Visiting all the exhibitors proved an impossible task at this point.

One problem with having a book fair in Finland is that most of the books are either in Finnish or Finnish. For some reason most of the books I’m interested in aren’t originally Finnish books and as the message always suffers in translation, I prefer the original versions. In fiction, some things just don’t translate and in non-fiction, things always get published a year or two later than the originals.

Considering the theme of things, the most dangerous areas were the ones with books on food. Amazingly, I managed to restrain myself from buying a single book. Having quite a few books on the “to-read” (and, well, “to-cook”) list helped in that respect.

All in all definately two fairs worth a visit – and surprisingly easy on the wallet. I would’ve welcomed more wider scope on the food side and more English-language books on the book side, but this wasn’t bad either.