Edible Art 2

Whatever Annikki says or does it has a touch of art.

Pencil sketch (Annikki 1964)

Crayon still life (Annikki 1987)

Annikki did  pencil sketches, crayon and chalk paintings, 

Annikki designed house interiors,

 Annikki designed gardens, 

Annikki  designed cakes, 

Annikki designed children's education courses.

One friend once said that coming to our house was like coming to a personal museum! Not mine, but Annikki’s!

Another facet of Annikki which I highlight today is how she designed the way she served  food to me with a great touch of artistic humour.

She had an eye for art. For instance, when she saw this piece of ginger, she came running to show it to me!

When she was preparing salted salmon, our very traditional daily breakfast, she made these types of creations showing her amazing artistic touch.

Salted  salmon as a "butterfly".

Salted salmon as a Christmas tree,

 

Salted salmon as a bush!

Breakfast was always fun as Annikki would create a fun shape breakfast plate of healthy tasty stuff.

Fried egg and bread as a butterfly.

 with a sausage body

Omlette and sliced turkey as a butterfly.

Eggs, tomatoes, toast, sausages as an art creation.

Paprika, eggs, toast as an art creation.

A white mouse for breakfast?

Fried eggs and toast wing their way to  the breakfast table.

A ladybird for breakfast?

Butterfly of sausage and omlette for breakfast?

Toast, turkey slices, sausages, scrambled eggs, tomatoes keeps us interested!

Fried egg buffalo?

Fried egg on toast tastes delicious when served like this!

And she mixed her art as with the crochet work she created.

Sweets are sweeter from a crocheted basket

Eggs arrive in a crocheted basket

Sharon fruit are tasty from a crocheted basket and it comes along with the turtle!

Tomatoes are stored in a crocheted basket!

Crocheted duck carries the eggs

This was delicious! Anyone guess what it was?

Annikki was always surprising the family with the art she turned up with literally everywhere. 

I have shown just a few examples, but she always had something interesting and new for the children and me, even if it was just a cup of tea!

Life with Annikki for 56 years has been one roller coaster of fun! Amazing personality.

Edible Art 1

 

When we published Annikki’s book "Edible Art" about her history of cake designing, the cakes were designed by her, most of the photos were taken by her, the text was written by me, but the maximum hard work of making these photos ready for publication was done by our dear friend SRK, Sriradhakrishnan Polsetti, who was working in Oulu on deputation from Nokia in Bengaluru. 

Annikki’s coffee table book covers her 40 years of making all sorts of cakes from cakes for children, gingerbread houses, birthday cakes for me and herself, wedding cakes for family members, unusual mosaic cakes, cakes with ponds and fishes in them, mountains and many art cakes.

All her cakes were original and showed her talent as an artist. 

Before getting married, she worked in a small Italian cake shop in Shrewsbury near Birmingham in England. Today Sidoli is a huge enterprise.

The first designer cake, a train cake, she made for us a family was for a joint birthday party in 1970 for our two children, Susanna and Jaakko, in our small house in Defence Officer’s  Colony in St. Thomas’s Mount on the outskirts of Madras.

Her first gingerbread house was created in 1974 at our Velacheri Road house in Madras. She worked on it for seven hours. We stayed out of her way. When she was ready, she ran upstairs to call us down to see her creation. When we reached the living room all we could see was our golden retriever, Ruby, licking her lips as she had devoured the entire house.

Then I understood the meaning of Finnish ‘sisu’ as Annikki rolled up her sleeves and made another more beautiful gingerbread house and had  powder sugar floating down to cover the house and make it exactly as  snow covered!

We moved  to Bangalore in 1976 and she won the prize in the cake competition where she displayed her first vegetarian cake made using yoghurt.

Gingerbread house making is an art. Every piece has to be made on cardboard, and the gingerbread baked using these cutout shapes. They then have to be painstakingly stuck together and then decorated.

Annikki always was way above the competition, first to introduce interior lighting and then even fitting doors and windows which could open and shut.

When she was looking after her mother, she first designed the garden so that her mother could sit at the dining table and enjoy her garden. Then she designed a gingerbread construction replicating the garden.

From then it was one new dimension after another and she was winning every gingerbread house competition in Oulu till they finally stopped the competition.

She diversified from traditional gingerbread houses to make Finnish constructions as Lappish kotas and the straw store houses.

Annikki never lost her sense of humour. When she reached the tender age of 60, she created a gingerbread house which she called "ruins". The lighting was entirely the streaming of natural sunlight.

When our grandson, Samu, returned from India before his first birthday, he had learnt one Malayalam word for crow - Kakay.  For his first birthday Annikki made him a cake of a crow sitting on her nest with a lot of eggs, all on a cake pine stump base. Samu looked at the cake pointed and said “Kakay”!

When four young ladies from Aricent, India, asked Annikki to make them a cake, she deswignede one of a typical farm scene!

Annikki’s adventure in cake designing is truly one which was exciting as she tailored each cake to suit the individual she was making it for, especially me, our children, other family members and close friends. It was never a business - just art for the sake of art!

The Finnish vocational school from Espoo did an entire video of Annikki and her cake designing to motivate the elderly in Finland to show them life does not end at 70! (In Finnish)

The book Edible Art” represents all the talents of an unique personality, an artist, a cake designer, a wife, a mother and grandmother, a sister, a great friend of many, a daughter, and a daughter-in-law!

Above all the unrivalled talent of a Findian!

Sunday meeting of fate

Every Sunday, Annikki and I go to Linnanmaa Prisma to do our weekly grocery shopping and also to spend a couple of hours with our son, Mika, who has his studio apartment just opposite the Prisma.

I order a taxi for 15:30 and we reach Prisma at 15:40 and we return home by 17:40.

Last Sunday the taxi was late. I called to remind them at 15:35 and again at 15:45. It only arrived at 15:50.

We usually walk down the small hill to wait for the taxi near the gate. If it is sunny we go a few minutes early. Annikki sits on my walker while I sit on the wooden railing. 

Last Sunday, as we were waiting for the taxi, an elderly lady pushing a walker came into the compound. She started asking us about our history.

She laughed as heartily as Annikk does and was fascinated by our love story!.

She then asked me where I had worked in Oulu. I told her that I had worked in Oulu University. 

She then said she used to run the small stationary shop in the centre of the main university building.

It all came back as a flash as I had spent countless hours in her shop to buy paper, files, urgent office supplies for the labortory and even use the copying machine she used to have just outside her shop. 

When I published Annikki’s book “Edible Art”, I had made the master copy using the colour photocopiershe had installed outside her shop. She had given me a huge discount to copy the hundred off pages of the book and slso for the high quality photo paper I had used.

It was a truly wonderful feeling to connect with this remarkable lady who had been so much a part of my life in the University.

When I mentioned the fascinating character of Oulu University, Arpo Heikkilä, we both were in raptures as he had shared many hours in her shop as he did in my Office Room. Arpo had graced the cover of my book about Oulu University which I had published in 1994 and the maximum number of copies I had sold was through her little shop.

I was hoping that the taxi would never come as we were  enjoying the company of her effervescent  character. 

We had both moved on 40 years but it was like just yesterday that we had been together in the University.

As she lives in the same compound,  I am sure that our paths will cross again and we will talk about our old times together. 

Although both of us have aged the delightful memories have lived on.