"Remember to eat well", says the guide before having a dinner. She is right, because skiing more than 400km requires many calories. However, in Border to Border Ski, food is more than just a fuel that keeps you going. In this article, we tell you about the event’s eating times, common Finnish dishes as well as specialities you should try on when visiting Northern Finland.
Breakfast and the doggy bag
In Border to Border Ski, every day starts with a good breakfast. One dish you are likely to see in the breakfast table, is porridge. Finnish people absolutely love their porridge made of oatmeal. Try porridge with berries, jam or a small lump of butter, and feel like a Finn. In addition to porridge, Finnish people love bread and to be particular, dark bread. If you want to keep the hunger away more than few hours, dark bread is an excellent choice. For those not a fan of the dark bread, there is always also white bread served.
Other dishes you might seem in the breakfast are smoked salmon, scrambled eggs, fruits and vegetables, yogurt, ham & cheese and sweet buns.
Every morning, there is also a doggy bag to take with to your ski. The bag is either prepared beforehand or you can prepare it by yourself from the ingredients in the breakfast table. Make sure you have enough food for the whole day!
Soup for lunch
The most common lunch during your skiing day is a soup. In Finland, we love salmon, so you will get to taste it in the form of soup. The salmon soup contains normally the salmon, potatoes, carrot and onion mixed in the broth made from cream and fish. What could taste better than a warm soup in a cold winter day? The other traditional soup is a meat soup. It has normally at least the same vegetables as salmon soup but the broth is clear. Some days you might also get a sausage for lunch, which is a very traditional lunch in Finland while spending a day outdoors.
For vegetarians, we have also vegetarian options. To serve you as good as possible, inform your special diet to the Border to Border Ski organization as early as possible! We are able to organize different diets if we have the information early enough. Because all of us have our own favorites, please take your best snacks with you for those moments you really need to boost your ski!
In addition to the soup, there are several service points during your ski. From those points, you will most likely find smiling people and hot juice, raisins, the best chocolate in the world (at least according to Finnish people) and pickled cucumbers.
Dinnertime
In Finland, we serve the dinner relatively early, normally at 4 to 6 pm. In Border to Border ski the dinner differs according to the type of the accommodation. In bigger hotels, you will have a choice of multiple dishes and in small hostels, there are likely to be only one or two options.
One dish you are likely to taste is Carelian stew, which is a very traditional Finnish dish particularly in the eastern part of Finland. Carelian stew is normally made from cow, pork and lamb and it is kept in an oven for hours. In some accommodations, you might find flat rounded white bread, which is traditional bread in Northern Finland. In Finnish, we call it “rieska”. If possible, try rieska with smoked salmon. This combo is delicious!
The evening snacks
Because the dinner is served early, in Finland we need evening snack in order not to wake up hungry in the middle of night. The evening snack reminds breakfast. In fact, the evening snack contains same elements but it has just less options. Most likely, you are going to have bread, ham, cheese, vegetables and yogurt.
All in all, the skiers get plenty of good food! If possible, taste also the following things while visiting in Finland:
- Reindeer meet: during summer, reindeers roam freely in the forests of Northern Finland. Some of them stay in the forests also during the winter time, so you might pass them while skiing.
- Fazer chocolate: Finland's own chocolate made of genuine milk.
- Salty liguorice: salty black sweet loved by Finnish people.
- Berries and mushrooms: we have them plenty in the woods during summertime!