JFF-Lifestyle

Me and Joona went to a well known area outside Gothenburg. As we drove to the fishing spot we listened to our new “not-yet-made-CD” in the car. It sounds really hip! Joona also filmed some weird stuff in the car with his brand new super secret camera. He is filming everything (all the time) and since his camera is very small, you cannot see it. I must destroy the content of that camera, otherwise thera will be problems. Hmmm…

Anyway, it was a beautiful day, the first warm spring day this year. We were aiming for the sea trout. We found the sea trout. We caught the sea trout. A NICE sea trout! My biggest so far actually. You see, here along the west coast of Sweden, the trouts in the sea doesn’t get very big. The average size is around, let’s say 37 cm. If you catch one around 50 cm, it is a quite good day. This trout that bit over my fly today had the length of 61 cm! The rod was bent to an o, I was screaming and Joona was (of course) filming. What a day. Later Joona caught a couple of nice trouts.

In the evening I made a nice and easy done fish soup. I have to say that sea trout is one of the best fishes on the dinner table. Some white wine, homemade bread, the soup, jazz music and a bunch of good friends made that evening really nice. It is the JFF-lifestyle.

Freedom Jazz Dance

It’s been a long time since I posted to the JFF blog and the reason for that is that I needed to finish my school that is the Helsinki University of Technology. The process of making the thesis took me one whole year, and after finally returning the small black book I was a bit burn out. I even began to look a little bit like a mad scientist as you can see from the before/after pic. Fredrik finally pushed me to write something of what has been going on for past months after the unforgettable JFF tour.

The Thesis was about Ballistocardiographic measurement chair which is a device that measures hearts function by measuring reaction forces caused by the pumping of the heart according to Newton’s 3rd law. To say the same in more understandable way, I will cite my little sister who asked me few months ago: “Are you still working on the thing that measures your heart rate from your ass?” As the device measures the heart’s pumping force with sensors under a chair while subject is sitting on it, I have to say that it is kind of an accurate descritption of the device.

I was in Barcelona for a one week holiday and it really hit the spot! It was over 25°C many of the days and the seafood dishes really got me inspired. One of the days we went to beautiful Cadaqués, where we saw a lot of big fish just from the docks as you can see in the pic. And of course didn’t have any equipement to fish with. Some of the fish was estimated over 3kg’s and chasing the smaller 1 kg fish away! Needless to say I soon felt the urge to make a few casts even with spinning rod. We went to buy one from a local fihing store, but being in Spain, the store was of course having a siesta, so we had to helplessly wach those big fish in crystal clear water. When we finally got one it was already stormy weather, but me and Johanna did a few casts anyways, without luck…

Now that I’m free from any institutions for once in 21 years, I’ve been really enjoying stuff, such as preparing fish meals such as marinara soup, fried flatfish with lime-butter and prawns with garlic. I also moved to Copenhagen from Helsinki. Danish language seems at the moment impossible and im still trying to pronounce the name of the street where we live right. I was out socializing last nite with the jazz musicians from Rytmisk Musikkonservatorium and I was introduced to the danish tradition of snaps drinking. So I’m a bit tired, but I feel that tomorrow will be freedom jazz dance all over again.

Painting and cooking in Gbg

I have been painting a little bit; it was a while ago now! In the beginning it went really bad, and a destroyed paper after paper in furious anger. After a while, I started to get the hang of it. Will continue and see what will come. I uploaded some of the latest paintings. I think that daily practice will pay of!

Today it is Sunday and I’m having two friends for dinner. One of them is Prince, the bass player from South Africa. He was supposed to fly home yesterday but he didn’t find his passport (!). The other one is Leon, an old friend to me who is very hard to please when it comes to cooking. But this time it is cool, I have already planned what to cook! We are going to start up with a very nice swede soup, not Swedish but basically made of the rout fruit swede. After that is says calf schnitzel, roasted root fruits with fresh herbs and a sauce made of mushrooms from the forest and red wine. And the dessert… well, have not planned that yet, lets see! As I am a friendly man/boy/santa/trout/drummer, I am now going to share the nice recipe on the soup! Ingredients:

A generous piece of butter

Some olive oil

One big onion

One swede (about 500 – 600 gr.)

Some garlic

Cream, 3 dl (real crème, not the fake ones!)

White wine, 2 dl

About 6 dl water

Black pepper

Broth after the amount of juice

A small piece of fresh chili

The soup is very easy to make! Do like this:

1. Take a big pot with a belonging lid…
2. Put butter and olive oil in the pot
3. Shell the onion and the swede and chop in big pieces
4. Put on the heat under the pot, not to hot and mot to warm!
5. Add the onion and the garlic after the butter has melt
6. Wait 5 minutes
7. Add the swede and put the wine on top of it!
8. Raise the temperature and let the wine reduce
9. Add water, cream, pepper, chili and broth – place the lid on the pot. Lower the heat!
10. Let it boil in about 25 minutes. Meanwhile you can read, run or tie some flies (nothing else!)
11. Take a blender and blend the substance in the pot.
12. Taste and add what is needed in order to make it rich. If the thick soup feels a bit “thin”, I mean the taste of it… then add some (not much) scratched Muscat nut (is that the right word?) and taste again.
13. When you eat, it can be nice to squeeze some fresh lime over the soup. Enjoy!

Fever, The Kitchen Monster And The Autumn

I have had a touch of fever now for two days. I find it extremely boring! After one day of sporadic practicing on the practice-pad and the piano I had to do something else. Started to bake and cook as a true maniac. My furious hands took over and I became the kitchen monster. No one can stop the kitchen monster from doing it’s work. It has to cook. When the food (Italian meatballs with lots of garlic, parmesan cheese and lot’s of other stuff plus pasta and bread) was done, the kitchen monster ate almost everything. Slowly I began to feel like a human again except from the the fact that I couldn’t hardly walk. Still, I decided to take a slow walk with my camera to catch the autumn before it’s gone. It looked like this. By the way… Soon, when the fever is gone, There will be some fishing for sea trout! /F

The JFF High Life

The tent woke us up automatically after the temperature in the morning sunshine reached 55C. It was good to take a morning swim in the river although the water was way too cold. Finally, we had the time to do some serious fishing without too much hurry. Did we catch anything? Yes we did.

On the last days eve in the tundra we had a concert and a fish feast at the base camp. We weren’t expecting any audience, but something nice happened, you’ll hear about it later.

Ransarån

This area holds some beautiful fishing waters that all have more or less the same name: Ransan, Ransaran, Ransarån, Ransaren…  We took the boat at lower Ransarån  to get across the lake Ransan. Our target was to go to the river-mouth of the upper Ransarån and hike upstream to find a good camping spot.

Taking the easy way across the lake

It was a very nice hike by the reindeer trail. Looking at the pools and streams our anticipation for the fishing was quickly building. Fredrik took the time to pick up some mushrooms. We ate them.

Håvard doing the Bear Song

The border of Sweden and Norway is amazing when it comes to scenic views and good fishing. The upper Ransarån is a versatile river in a bigger water system. The wildlife here is still very abundant, and during the boat trip I heard some stories of encounters with the bear. Since the area is one of the most densely populated bear territories in northern scandinavia, the stories were not hard for me to believe. But we weren’t here for the bear. I had a feeling we could easily spend two weeks exploring these waters and finding the best holding spots for the trout.

Fredrik's trout

As the sun went down, we were ready. And when it comes to fishing, night is the time when things really start cooking.

Saxnäs, Sweden

We arrived in Saxnäs. Before heading off to the Ransarån river we had a special gig in a fishing shop. The fishing shop in Kultsjögården was a real treat after a long drive. They served excellent coffee and food right next to the fishing gear.

Relaxin'

The concert was soon to start when we realized that we would have to do some improvising; we didn’t have neither a drum set or a working guitar amp. Håvard used an acoustic guitar and Fredrik made the drum kit using Trangia pots and parts of the furniture. Still, we felt at home. Probably because we have had so much practice with odd setups while jamming in the car. The audience seemed to like it after-all.

Jazzin'

After the concert it was once again time to blow up the contents of the JFF-car on the parking lot and re-packing most of it in our backpacks for the next day’s hike. With the amount of equipment, personal clothing and all the food, it usually takes 3-4 hours to get it done. I wouldn’t call it exactly army style, but somehow we managed to divide 160kg of stuff between the four of us. The rain that started in the middle of it didn’t help at all, but since the forecast for the next day’s expedition was looking good, we maintained a “cautiously optimistic” mood.

Packin'

Flyin'

Smoke on the Water

Driving, driving, driving. It’s a long way from Northern Norway to Middle Finland.

As usual, we were jamming a lot in the car, and today the repertoire consisted of rock classics like ”Smoke on the Water”, ”Enter Sandman”, ”Back in Black” etc. Fredrik´s singing is fantastic. He is very skilled at coming up with alternative lyrics for the tunes, and although most of the lyrics are about the usual topics – you know – the genitalia and so on, he always manages to come up with new, funny combinations.

The conditions for fly fishing were perfect today, like they always are when you have to leave. Typical… However, we managed escape the film crew and squeeze in 20 minutes of fishing in one of my secret lakes.

Immediate success! A stunningly beautiful, big trout took my dryfly after 10 minutes. I´m in 7th heaven now!

In the middle of the night, Tapani and Fredrik decided to go fishing for salmon in the Torneälven close to Haparanda. They caught a small pike.

Swingin’ at the Skansen

After a good night’s sleep in Kilpisjärvi, we headed for Tromsö and the Skansen café, where we played what must be our best concert so far. The interplay is getting more creative with every concert, and we’re really having a good time with the music now, playing with the songs and challenging each other. Great success!

After the gig we went to the Mystic River. The river was very kind to us, and we caught several beautiful trout and arctic char while sight-fishing in the crystal clear water.

Four Guys – Four Million Mosquitoes

Our gig in Kalott Jazz, Tornio, went really well. Lots of screaming happy people that actually wanted us to sign our fresh-sounding EP. We did not have time to stay to long though, since we were in a hurry to the next fishing trip. Joona, Håvard and Tapani drove the bus while I tried to play the guitar and sing crappy tunes. It worked, and finally we reached Kilpisjärvi. The helicopter took off 20 minutes later and… off we go. After the landing we walked for about 3 hours while preparing the rods. The first cast resulted in a huge grayling, by the way an excellent fish for cooking. Next cast, another grayling in the same size. Next cast – another big grayling… and so on. The top fish off the trip was 62 cm! We lost count on how many huge grayling we caught. Between the fanatic fishing-sessions, we rehearsed some new tunes – Jazz played live in the wilderness and some whisky to keep up the beat. After two days, casting on the same spot, we got tired off all the graylings. It was too easy. Life can be cruel sometimes. Then the weather became windy and cold as ice. We made a very nice fish soup and headed up to catch trout and char… Wrrrrrr…