What is this?

a)    Excrement

b)   Mud

c)    A traditional Finnish Easter dessert

And the answer is c)!

Mammi is truly the stuff of legends, every visitor to Finland needs to try it at least once because I can guarantee you will never find anything else like it anywhere else in the world.

Like the blood pancakes I had heard of this odd delicacy. People were asking me if I had eaten it yet. Told me that it looks repulsive. I had heard mixed reviews about its flavour. Some said it was sweet some said it was not. The most positive thing I have heard about it is it is quite nice and most of my classmates had said they hate it.

But with Easter looming I knew Mammi day would be coming up.

According to Petri (my host father) Mammi is traditionally served in the sauna and can be enjoyed with Jegermeister. This is a complete lie (which I believed at first-not the Jegermeister part because this serving suggestion came after the lie had been uncovered).

Mammi is served with cream or milk. Made completely out of rye flour and water, cooked for a long time at low temperatures I was told to eat it with a lot of cream and to minimise how much Mammi I put in my bowel.

SO today it was Mammi-day. I had put it off over the Easter long weekend (Mammi is a good friday food) but no longer. After Easter lunch we went outside (because it is now warm in Finland) to taste the Mammi.

It smelt like rotting yeast and is the consistency of ultra thick treacle. I placed a spoon into my bowel. It slowly glooped off the spoon and into the bowel. 

I tried it first plain, found it was ok and then poured on the cream as recommended. I golpped it down quickly, really enjoying the strangely sweet goop. Then I had excess cream so I decided to finnish it off with some more Mammi (because Mammi is good I though) and then it hit me. The taste of Mammi was no longer good. It was bad, really bad. I cannot describe the taste at that moment but it was not pleasant. 

So overall Mammi is good to a limit, and in moderation, once a year.