Kristian

I've been to Tallinn only once (although I live just next door - in Finland) but I have to tell you that there are some great places there to dine in. Some great mediaeval style restaurants in the Old City as well as great scenery! I've got a few pictures of our trip on my hope page, here: Estonia pictures There's also some pictures of one of the local Old City restaurants.

In Finland, salt is very much one of the basic ingredients in cooking and is used in practically everything. In fact, I've read somewhere that we Finns use about twice as much salt in dishes compared to other Europeans. I don't know the history of it, but the health officials have been campaigning for less salt use for several years now. That is because we Finns also suffer from all kinds of health problems, like high blood pressure etc., (because of our genetic profile) that are made more dangerous (or likely to appear) with too much salt use. I'm one of those people who has a tendency for high blood pressure and so I have learned to use as little salt as I can.

Ah, I meant they are supposed to clear up the slots from 75 to 100 every month for new applicants. It does not seem to have happened, though...

I have babbled about anti-bacteria things in the General Forum earlier on, but I thought it might do some good if I said something about this in this one as well: About sponges: In Finland we use dish brushes to wash our dishes, not sponges, and they are easy to keep clean. And since we have those nifty drying cabinets over the sink, we do not need to dry off the dishes with anything after washing them either. However, for wiping the sink and tabletops etc. a kind of a spongelike rag (some five millimeters thick and spongelike thing) is often used (if not rags). I usually just rinse it thoroughly with hot water right after wiping the tabletops (the dirt does not have time to attach to the thingy if you rinse it that soon after using it) and throw it out when necessary.

One (more) thing bothers me in this ranking list. As far as I can say, they have NOT removed the 25 lowest ranking sites from the end of the list during this time that we have been voting. Weren't they supposed to that every month?

I just voted for the fifth time this week. Counting my vote, eGullet should be no 68 within an hour. BTW: Have you noticed that eGullet has got almost the furthest on the list with least votes given (at least compared to the sites in the near vicinity on the list). Average vote given to eGullet is now almost 4.82 (my vote counted). Only PassionateAboutFood.net (no 67) seems to have a higher average vote (almost 4.93).

Hi Mark! To find Cavalier Antigua rums, you should visit the following site of the Antigua Distillery: http://www.antiguadistillery.com/network.html The page gives a list of their distributors around the Caribbean and the world (as far as they have them). BTW: You should use Microsoft Explorer while browsing the above site. For some reason some parts of the site don't work well with Netscape (at least with the version I use)...

The number of votes for eGullet is quite low at the moment. If we want to keep it on the list, we all have to vote for it furiously for the next few days. After all, they drop the lowest 25 from the list every month. I have voted for eGullet twice now (don't know if it counts multiple votes, but I'm trying...) BTW: the average vote given to eGullet is 4.8. Quite good! Congrats!

Eh.. harrumph... I didn't realise my better half would actually enter the rum forum... :confused: In my defence, I have to say that my Halloween mix was perfectly fine for the occasion. True, it did contain lemon soft drink and apple juice as the main ingredients, small portions of both brown rum and Amaretto, as well as a drop of red currant concentrate(?) for colour (added last, after the soft drink and juice so that it did not mix into the drink too well). But does this sound so bad? I called it the Werewolf's Fang, but the exact name is still under consideration... (Perhaps Werewolf's Drool might have suited it better...) PS. Another version replaced the lemon soft drink (carbonated yellowish stuff, a bit milky in colour and tastes very lemony, probably not available outside Finland in the same form or taste (delicious!)) with apple cider and was better received by my dearest. Perhaps this one should be the 'Bite' version...

John! Thanks for the tips on judging the rum even before buying it! And thanks to Ed and Jason as well for your valuable insight! For my current needs on glasses, and considering the fact that I'm only beginning my journey into the world of rums, I'll probably settle on a set of tumblers for now and find a nice set of snifters later on for my more valuable purchases, if it becomes necessary. After all, the great spirit of rum tastes mighty fine in any glass. :)

:) Indeed, I opened the bottle over the weekend and tasted it. I even compared it to Clement's Rhum Vieux, which also follows the French tradition. I found the Guadeloupe to be a very easy on the tongue, and an enjoyable experience. The smell is full and rich. In comparison to Vieux, Guadeloupe had a more mature taste and was far smoother than the younger rum, which was rather smoky. Kaniche Guadeloupe is definitely worth a try and I'm happy that I took the chance (despite the label). As far as my better half goes, she seems to be very intolerant when it comes to rum's taste in other drinks. I mixed some drinks for us when we celebrated Halloween (admittedly, I used Captain Morgan for those) and her drink had only half the amount rum I put in mine. She still complained about its taste when she got to the bottom half of the drink (The rum had settled down by then as I had forgotten to buy straws oss. to stir the drinks while we drank)... However, I'll continue to try to turn her head. She already agrees with me that rum is better than whisky, so I'm rather positive about my chances in the long run... I'll look forward to your experiences about the rum glasses in the other thread!

Well, based on all your opinions, I'll definitely give the brandy glasses a try. I don't know why, but tumblers have thus far seemed the more traditional choice to me personally (i'm a puff for traditions and history, in a way). Still, I won't put anything down until I've tried it and anything relating to rums is worth trying at least once, if not thrice. Jason's idea to use snifters for prized old rums sounds like a good idea...

Well, I had to buy the bottle by and for myself (which isn't all that bad, when you think about it). The one drawback of being a rummie in Finland is that there aren't that many of us around to share the experiance with. I have tried to get opinions about my rums from my better half but all she ever does is grimace and give an ugly expression... :shocked:

Well, I got the half litre bottle of Kaniche G. yesterday and I'll give it a try this weekend. It cost me only about 16 dollars which is quite a small sum to pay in Finland. I'll try not to look at the back label and I'll tell you how I liked it next week! :)

Yes, the label was misleading enough to make me not buy the bottle. I will go after it the next time I visit a liquor store, however. And yes rums cost a lot in Finland. The bottle of Clement's Rhum Vieux that I purchased last time cost me around (I don't have the current exchange rate handy, but I'll questimate) 28 dollars and that's for 0.7 litres. Furthermore, the prices are partly dependant of the alcohol contents, for tax reasons, so a better brand of rum can sometimes be cheaper than some awful variant simply because of its lower alcohol content... Of course, brand names bring their own effect to the price also and Rhum Vieux was one of the more expensive rums in the shop...

Actually, the page from which I took the pictures for my message, referred to the tumbler-type glass as a 'rummer'. That doesn't make it a rum glass though, but at least the name is a start... :) I have used a tumbler type of glass (and smaller shot glasses when tumblers have been unavailable) to sip my rums thus far and I have not warmed the stuff up in any particular way (other than the normal transference of heat from the hand holding the glass, that is) and I was wondering, when I wrote the original question, which kind of glasses I should look for in the future for my, hopefully extending, rum tasting experience...

Another nice movie 'about' a restaurant is I Love You to Death (1990), starring Kevin Kline. At least there's a lot of food and cooking in it... :)

What kind of a glass do you use to enjoy your rum? I have been surfing a plethora of sites and seen rum in two kinds of glasses. What does everyone here think? Should rum be enjoyed in the traditional brandy snifter shown in the image below, which aids the nosing process: or perhaps the more traditional tumbler type of glass shown here? Which do you prefer? (the pictures come from http://www.eshopone.co.uk/cgi-bin....ondpres)

Wow! Thanks for the great links! I had briefly visited the RumShop site before, but I hadn't noticed the newsletters. I bet my better half will be letting out a long sigh tonight when I start reading these in bed...

Well, this is an international one: A Fly in the Wine A group of people of different nationalities had arrived into a restaurant. They all ordered a glass of wine and sat down. When the wines were brought to the table, they all noticed that there was a fly in their glass. * The Swedishman demanded to get new wine into the same glass. * The Englishman demanded new wine in a new glass. * The Finn took the fly out of the wine and drank it. * The Russian drank the wine with the fly. * The Chinese ate the fly but left the wine untouched. * The Jew fished out his fly and sold it to the Chinese. * The Gipsy drank two thirds of the wine and then demanded to have a new one. * The Norwegian fished out the fly and left to see if he could catch a fish with it. * The Irishman crushed his fly and mixed in into the wine and gave the wine to the englishman. * The American sued the restaurant and demanded 65 million for emotional suffering. * The Scot grasped the fly by the throat and screamed: "God d**n, throw up every last drop you swallowed!" (Edited by Kristian at 6:21 pm on Nov. 12, 2001)

Hi! I'm planning a trip to New Orleans next April (all the way from Finland) for a conference and I was wondering if anyone in this forum could tip me of about restaurants or liquor stores that I should visit? Since Kaniche Guadeloupe is the only aged rum available in Finland (Clement's Rhum Vieux is being removed from the selection), I'd like to find some place in which I could spend a night or two to taste a variety of brands (eh, perhaps only a couple since I'm not really keen on getting drunk) and then buy a bottle or two to bring home. Any rums (premium and aged, preferably) that you would recommend? Any bars with a good selection and a bartender who knows his business and doesn't start offering me rum and coke? :)

Thanks for the great idea, franklanguage! I have a long way to go with posting, though... Actually, as a foreigner I had no presumptions about the word 'foodie' and the discussion in this thread is my only clue to its semantic meaning (above the basic ingredients from which the word is constructed). When I saw the word for the first time (beside my first post) it made me think of some kind of a fast snack. Now that I am more educated about the connotations, I can start posting to get rid of it as well! But, please, if my opinion counts at all, I don't want to get rid of such descriptors. They make the forum that much more colourful!

Hi! I'm a new face in this forum as I only recently found rums. In Finland we have only two aged rums available: Kaniche Guadeloupe and Clement's Rhum Vieux. I bought a bottle of the latter, but I was wondering if the Kaniche would be worth a taste. I noted the other thread about kaniche, but since my interest lies in the diffence (which is better) of kaniche and vieux, I started a new one. I was a little put off by the text in the kaniche's label, mistakenly referring to the old method of making rum in the island even before Columbus found America and thus I did not buy it. But should I? Or should I stay with vieux? (Edited by Kristian at 8:11 pm on Oct. 26, 2001) (Edited by Kristian at 6:08 pm on Oct. 28, 2001)