Then we were offered drinks and a proper bag of crisps, not a tiny doll house version. And - wait for this! An actual hot towel - I thought maybe we'd flown through an Einstein-Rosen bridge (yes, I have seen my Thor films, thank you husband for my astrophysics education) or some other kind of time warp wormholey thing and ended up in the 1990s.

After landing (and a landing-sweet) and getting to the terminal there was a lovely gentleman who wanted to carry my bag up a flight of stairs even though I didn't ask. I think he may have heard my "for fuck's sakes" when I spotted the stairs (I have a ham string injury which doesn't add to my perseverance with physical challenges). Anyway, the independent, strong woman that I am, I tried to say that I was ok and that my trolley bag wasn't heavy. He just looked at me, maybe spotted tiny signs of volatility and said "Please let me help you" and I thought it was the most wonderful thing.

Why do we sometimes fight so hard. Accepting a bit of help won't mean they will take away our vote, make us take notes in shorthand and chain us to a cooker (I'd be quite happy actually chained to a cooker and with the politics these day, who do you actually want to vote for anyway, the shorthand would be a problem though). Sometimes maybe it also just makes an individual feel good to help another, and it's not a gender thing. All these wonderful philosophical ponderings were rushing through my brain as I walked out of the Newcastle International Airport.

After that it went downhill. Without going into detail I'll just bullet-point the key issues:
- My mobile died, so it took me a while to find my prebooked cab, because the driver details were on the phone.
- It was raining.
- That's pretty much it.

So once I finally located the taxi driver, I am ashamed to say, I was not the dream customer. Mainly I was cursing my stupid Samsung phone. Which really is by far the shittiest phone I have ever had(company policy to have those), but obviously it is not completely Samsung's fault if I don't charge it and then subsequestly the battery dies. But it is such a stupid phone in most other ways, that I don't feel bad about blaming it for that too. But I felt bad about being a grumpy customer, when the driver had done nothing wrong. So I burst into tears (elegantly and silently and not snottily and hiccuppily) in the back seat of the cab feeling awful for not being nice to this man who was after all just doing a late Monday evening job in rainy Newcastle. So after calming down a bit I apologised to the him, and thank God he just laughed and told me not to worry about it.

But of course I do because I don't want to be an awful person to innocent people just because my job is busy and I'm tired and possibly a bit menopausal. At another point of my northern trip this week I nearly burst into tears in the ladies toilets worrying about husband dieing while I was away and how I could face the happy Christmas polar bear and our other Christmas decorations, and I started thinking who I would need to get to come and take them down and pack them all up. Then obviously I had to stop myself before I got too hysterical and get some kind of a grip because I had to return to the meeting to listen to the quarterly Quality Update which is almost as riveting as the Health and Safety Update that followed. But we did get a good lunch with cheese and crackers for dessert which cheered me up remarkably. I think cheese is important element of looking after one's mental health. Cheese and crackers both.

Anyway enough of moaning, just wanted to make a point that in these dark months let's look after ourselves and our loved ones. That's what I have been doing this weekend. We've made sure to sleep well and relax. We had a lovely Saturday afternoon nap, a nice walk and fresh air by the river and even some gym time. But mainly I've made sure to cook lovely food for husband and me.

Friday I cooked a beautiful Ghormeh Sabzi, a Persian lamb and herb stew with dill and saffron rice, a true comfort meal. Saturday morning I made a Persian inspired breakfast with a very tasty tomato omelette with some onions and a hint of turmeric, sabzi khordan herb, nut nut cheese plate and barbari bread, Saturaday dinner was a gorgeous flame smoked salmon and mussel pasta. And sometimes it just has to be pizza, so reindeer pizza it was for our Sunday treat.


Smoked reindeer pizza

Cold-smoked reindeer meat
Reindeer popperoni (You can replace the meat with normal salami and chorizo and/or other meat)
Red onion
Mushrooms
Tomato
Bell pepper
Grated Parmesan
Grated cheese (mozzarella, cheddar, emmenthal)
Chopped fresh or dried rosemary, basil, thyme and oregano

Slice the smoked reindeer meat and the salami. Slice the vegetables finely and grate the cheese.

Heat some vegetable oil in a frying pan. Add the mushroom in the pan, season with salt and pepper. Fry for five minutes on medium heat and then add the onion, bell pepper and the herbs. Add more salt and pepper if needed and fry on medium heat until the vegetables have lost some of the moisture and softened a bit. Don't overcook.

Heat your oven to pretty much as hot as is goes, 220 - 240C.

The dough will make two round pizzas or a big baking sheet square pizza. Flatten your dough either just by hand or using a rolling pin to the desired shape and place on the baking sheet or pizza trays (you could preheat these or use a pizza stone for better effect).

Spread the tomato sauce on the pizza base. Add the vegetables, reindeer salami and smoked reindeer. Top with tomato slices, parmesan and grated cheese.

Bake until cheese is bubbling (12-15 minutes) and the edges start to colour.

This authentic and traditional Finnish pea soup is very different from the light green, fresh and elegant pea and mint soup that we eat here in the UK. This is almost mustardy dark, thick and potent stuff you could use to hang wallpaper with. In Finland it's traditionally eaten on Thursdays followed by flatulence oven pancake for dessert.


This is what I had for lunch at school every Thursday. Only we didn't get the pancake. And the soup was a bit watery, not the kind of rich stewlike thing mum used to make. And the meat floating on the green liquid was kind of grey and fatty. We were never sure what animal it was. If indeed it was of the natural world.

I didn't mind the soup too much. I had been trained to be a non-fussy eater by then. I wasn't naturally, I had to be chased around the house with a spoon.

Here's dad helping me to appreciate new tastes and textures.  Actually I think he might be checking my teeth.

But proper Finnish pea soup can be a lovely winter warmer, slow cooked, well seasoned and made with proper meat, not the neighbour's cat. It's not a difficult dish to do, but a bit fiddly. First you have to soak the peas overnight, which is easy enough. Then you naturally boil the peas removing foam and the skins that float to the top. There can be a lot of foam and you probably want to keep an eye on it rather than, say, go to the other room to do a late conference call to US. Once the foam stops er... foaming so much, and you have cleaned the half an inch of sticky green slime covering your cooker, you can leave the peas to simmer on low heat. And once you've done the soup, you should actually leave it to cool overnight and heat next day. That's when it's at it's best, thick and full of taste. So not your quick 15 min everyday soup, but cheap, healthy and comforting if you can be bothered
.

Traditional Finnish pea soup 

The original recipe uses cured ham, but as we don't eat pork I used a chunk of beautiful smoked moose.

250 g dried peas
4 cups water
salt
1 tsp dried marjoram
1 carrot
3/4 - 1 cup of chopped smoked meat
1/2 tbsp dijon mustard

Rinse the peas, cover well with water (about 4 cups)  and soak for about 8-10 hours or overnight.

Boil your peas in the soaking water. Keep peeling the foam and skins that float to the top. Add salt and marjoram. Once the peas are soft (this will take about an hour and a bit) chop the carrot and onion and add to the soup. Add water also if it looks very thick. Cook until the carrots are done. Add the mustard and the meat and cook for another 10 minutes. Check the seasoning and add salt and mustard if needed.

You can eat it immediately, but it improves if you leave it to cool and refrigerate overnight. When heating up the next day add a little bit of water. It is supposed to be quite thick but still a soup not a mash.