The Finnish-American-Greek Feast

And then it was time for dinner. There was Greek salad, and home-made (by the Finn's Mother) rye bread, which they ate with margarine,
the smoked salmon of course,
and the mushrooms and steamed vegetables. Everyone had a ton of the main dishes and then it was time for dessert. For dessert, the Baker had baked her famous cinnaminnies. There was also 'bread cheese' (which squeaks in your mouth) and cloud berries (a Finnish specialty that only grow in swamps and must be harvested by hand.) These were all served with a vanilla cream sauce.
Suffice to say that after this meal, the Baker and the non-baker were both very happy and very full of delicious food. It was a perfect last meal in Finland.

The non-baker cooks

Since they were having a feast, the Baker and the non-baker decided that they should each contribute something to the meal. Since the non-baker is often an unambitious cook, she decided to cook her go-to meal, reduced vinegar mushrooms.

She bought some button mushrooms at the Finnish supermarket. They were huge, especially in comparison to American button mushrooms, which are much smaller.
She cut them up, poured some olive oil in a pan, warmed up the pan and took all of the mushrooms and placed them in the pan. After they had warmed for a bit, she began pouring in the vinegar.
Then she let the mushrooms cook, occasionally, and as need be, adding more vinegar to the pan and letting it reduce - coloring and flavoring the mushrooms.
After cooking them with more and more vinegar for 40 minutes or so, they had turned a beautifully dark color and were quite delicious. And, at this point, they were ready to be eaten.
The perfect side-dish for a Finnish-American-Greek feast.

Smoking Salmon

So, on the last day that the Baker and the non-baker were in Finland, they (and their hosts) decided that they should have a wonderful meal. So the Baker offered to- what else- bake and the non-baker offered to cook one of her specialties.

But they weren't the only ones contributing food. The Finns decided that they would have smoked salmon and, being Finns, that they would be smoking it themselves. The first step of this process was to soak the pieces of raw salmon in water that was 10% salt for six or so hours so that the salt would disperse evenly on the fish.
Then the fish was ready to be smoked. So, the elder Finn's boyfriend filled the smoker with wood chips (a particular sort that are good for smoking fish.) He also added a few sugar cubes in order to color the salmon.
Then, they put the salmon onto aluminum foil and onto a grill and into the smoker.
Then the Finn's boyfriend broke up some kindling in the outdoor woodshed and put the kindling underneath the smoker and lit the wood with some bark scraps which he lit to start the fire.
The wood burned up, creating the smoke that would smoke the salmon. And once the smoke had cleared, the Elder Finn's boyfriend carefully pulled the smoker off of the bricks and opened it.
Then, carefully the Finn's boyfriend pulled out the hot smoked salmon.
It looked fantastic, but this was only one of the courses that the Baker and the non-baker would have for dinner that night.