And obviously I burst into happy tears when he finally walked through to the arrivals at Heathrow. But other than that and maybe a few too many glasses of red wine to calm my nerves I was a picture calm resilience. 

So in a way this week having husband back to me safe and sound has been a happy one. But naturally the ever more worrying news from around the world have taken the shine off things. 

I know it's only been a week and there will be so many more. But days already blur into one.  One day I was on a conference call wondering why no-one else was joining. I started messaging people possibly slightly accusatorially asking if they were planning to join. They said they were, the next day. I had been looking at the following day's calendar and had actually missed another call earlier in the morning, a really interesting training session on mobile gas detection (!?!) so I was gutted. 

The other day husband was asking me if he had had a shower that day. I said I thought he had, but couldn't be sure. So he took a peak into his lounge pants and noticed that he seemed to be wearing a new pair of boxer shorts, so he took that as a sign that a shower had taken place.

Toilet paper hoarding left me with this delightful option.

We are well stocked for food. My freezer and cupboards are always full. I just came back from Finland with more lovely game meat and some fish and smoked goodies. I also have a substantial stock of tinned smoked mussels which of course is essential in a global virus lockdown situation like this.

And before husband got back I went out to get some things to prepare, because we can't visit shops until we know he hasn't caught the virus on his travels. It's starting to look likely he hasn't, we are on day 10 now.

All the supermarket home delivery slots have been booked up in our area, but I managed to order 15 bottles of wine from Aldi this week which will keep us on a cheerful mood. And eventually I found a company delivering food boxes and ordered a delivery because we were running low on milk and fresh veg. There was milk, eggs, bread and butter and all sorts of fresh fruit and veg. I was particularly delighted to find a little carton or fresh raspberries and an avocado!

Add caption

For some reason I seem to have accumulated lots of potatoes. Probably because I have bought lots of potatoes. And there were some more in the box. I love potatoes. A potato to a Finn is the same as pasta to normal people. A meal is not really a meal if there aren't any potatoes. I pretend sometimes with my rice dishes and orzo and other silliness. But in my heart I know a proper dinner table needs a pan of boiled potatoes and a jar of pickled herring. 

My mum, who is my cooking inspiration and idol used to make a dish called Sailor's Steak. It's a traditional Finnish dish, although Swedes obviously claim it as their own and I suppose it's possible. I'm usually up for these fights but now I'm thinking it doesn't matter, whoever came up with it should be knighted. The dish is a brilliantly simple but tasty bake with beef, onions and potato. I actually have never made it before and if turned out perfect. I made it with lamb leg steaks because that's what I happened to have and it was amazing. But next time I will do it with beef, that's the original way.

Sailor's Steak or Sailor's Beef (Swedish Sjömansbiff or Finnish Merimiespihvi)

(serves 4)

700g beef or lamb (topside, brisket, lamb leg steaks or similar)
2 yellow onions
4-5 large potatoes
Vegetable oil
Butter
Salt
Black pepper
330ml bottle of beer (lager)
300ml beef stock
Bay leaf

Cut the meat into approximately half an inch / 1 cm thick small steaks across the grain (around the size of a match box). Flatten them with a meat tenderiser. Some recipes call for dredging the meat in flour, but I don't bother with that.

Heat oil in a pan and brown the meat on both sides. Season with salt and pepper. Remove to a plate.

Peel and slice the onions thinly. I used a mandolin for ease. Do the same with the potatoes, although you can leave them unpeeled if you like.  Sauté the onions in a pan until they soften, don't brown them. Remove to a plate. Sauté the potato slices until they start getting some colour.

Take a large baking dish and start layering the ingredients. You can use a large dutch oven if you like. It does't really matter how you want to layer things, but maybe start with some potato, then meat, onion and another layer of potato. Finish with a layer of potato.

Pour the stock and beer in the pan you have been using to fry the ingredients. Warm it up, season with salt and pepper. Pour in the baking dish. It should come to about 1cm from the rim. Add water if you don't have enough or if you have too much reserve to add during the cooking if necessary.

Add a couple of knobs of butter on the top of the potatoes. Cover with foil and bake in a 180C oven for 2 hours. Then remove the foil and bake for another 30-40 minutes until the potatoes on the top are brown and crisp. Check the liquid during the cooking a few times and add if it looks it's getting too dry. It's not supposed to be a soup in the end, but there should be some sauce left.

Let rest a little before serving.

I have had some feminist ponderings lately so I thought why not share them on this International Women's Day, eh?

I want to add a disclaimer here. I am very aware that there is much more serious and violent discrimination that women in many parts of the world face compared to our fairly cosy existence here in the reasonably enlightened Europe. But we must continue the fight because we are the example for the world and even here we are not at parity with men regarding equal pay, or political or economic power. And whilst we have achieved equal basic rights in many ways, there is a lot of prejudice that we have to endure in our everyday lives. 

I have let my feminism hibernate. I was quite a passionate feminist in my younger days. My sister and I used to make sure our brothers did exactly the same amount of house work as we did for example. The oldest two escaped quite early, but I remember we used to lock our youngest brother in the house until he'd hoovered the floor space allocated to him. We challenged our parents about every gender biased comment or behaviour until they learned to at least hide it. They weren't particularly bad, just products of their time.

And during my early career it wasn't always easy and I had to fight quite a bit to command equal airtime in meetings and make progress in the male world of business. And maybe lately I have become a bit too comfortable thinking we have made so much progress. But we are not there yet

It's the same with my vegetarianism. I quit before the job was done! But I'm glad the woke millenials are veganing it all the way, so I can be a bit more flexitarian (= total meat eater).

So recently I've started to think about the gender issues again. Diversity is one of our company's key values and we talk about it a lot. Of course it is a lot broader an issue than gender encompassing topics like culture, ethnicity, disability etc. But let's stick to gender for now

As one of the few female leaders in the business, I was asked to mentor some of our company's female talent. There is a hypothesis that some probably unconscious bias exists that may hinder the progress of these women. My first question when I was asked was why is it these females that need the mentoring rather than the discriminatory managers who are stopping the progress of these women?

But apparently there are behaviours that make it more difficult for women  to succeed in job interviews or internally building their careers. Women are probably more realistic about their abilities and maybe more modest in communicating their strenghts, they are more polite in meetings and don't interrupt people or force their opinions down other people's throats and so forth. Again I wonder if it really is the women who need the mentoring.

Like with Hitler, should we have told the Jews to just not be quite so Jewish, or the disabled to try to hide their disability, the gay to just try to like the opposite sex, or should we actually have told Hitler to stop being a horrible maniac. You might think this is a harsh example, but looking at what women have had to endure through the course of history, and still are in many countries, including mutilation, rape, stoning to death for having been raped, it is not an unreasonable comparison. The point here is: Don't blame the victim. 

Another lighter example, me and my boss were discussing my communication style in my annual performance review meeting. We all love these precious opportunities for unsolicited feedback. We were discussing the very subject of diversity and he told me that my communication style on a man would be an asset, a sign of a strong individual with passion, conviction and drive. But in a woman these traits can make the person to come across as a bitch.

Yes, he really said that. I told him that surely this is not my problem, it is the problem of the bigoted people who think this way. To his credit he fully agreed. But this is what we have to change.

In the beautiful Finnish language there is a special word that we use for women like this, "difficult", opinionated women. We call them "Riivinrauta". A man would never be called a Riivinrauta. Riivinrauta literally is a grater, but is often used to describe a woman who has strong opinions, who stands up for her rights and has the balls to disagree. Even that saying is sexist, you don't need balls to have courage. Sometimes I think it's probably easier to have courage when your genitals aren't hanging outside your body. 

Most recent example of this was my Dad calling Nancy Pelosi a Riivinrauta. My poor dad is an old man now and isn't particularly misogynistic at all. Maybe I should have let him get away with this one. But old habits die hard and he also enjoyes a bit of a debate, so I didn't. I pointed out that she was no more difficult than any of the male politicians around her and that he wouldn't call her Riivinrauta if she was a man. "This is the world your daughters live in" was my emotive campaign punch line. And then we went to cook some blinis together.

Nancy Pelosi

I attended a media training session at work last week. These are about as much fun as an autopsy. You discuss what messages you want to convey, do a couple of practice runs and then you are put in front of the camera to be interviewed by a journalist. You are filmed and then reviewed and critiqued by everyone in the room. To add to the fun you will also look at least 10 years older and a stone heavier than you thought you did.

The journalist asked me about our company's market leading position and I gave an answer talking about our research and development investments and how we stay a step ahead of competition through our strategy and focus. He suggested I put a bit more female energy to the answer.

Excuse me?

He wanted me to talk about the lives we are saving and protecting, babies and incubators. And those are important things, reasons why I work for this company and worthy topics to talk about! But why is that female. Releasing my inner Riivinrauta I confronted the man on this. Would he have asked the same thing if I was a man? He said he would have (fake news!) and then he went on stuttering about Jung and his theories about male and female energies. I suggested he let go of Jung and look for some more contemporary reference points.

That's just a small example that shows that women are still today expected to be conciliatory, demure, caring and calming, while men are allowed and expected to be assertive, confrontational, factual, technical, commercial, rational.

I am not saying men and women are the same. We are not. But we are not just men and women. We are individuals. These stereotypings do harm to both parties. What about my soft-spoken, non-confrontational husband who cries at Cinderella when the step mum is mean, what about all the fathers who would give their lives for their children. Is it fair to them to say caring or showing emotion is not a masculine trait. And what about the women who care and love till their hearts bleed, but who also have intellect and courage and the ability to kick ass in politics, science or business.

From now on I will make sure I will help my sisters to navigate this still misogynistic world. I will make sure that I and my colleagues, male and female, recognise the prejudices and often unconscious  bias that still exists.

And because women love chocolate (a gender stereotype I immediately could thrash by telling I'm not too bothered and know at least two other women who could take it or leave it) and because my mum raised two hell-raising daughters I will share her super easy milk chocolate mousse recipe in honour of the International Women's day.

(makes 4 fairly small servings)

100g milk chocolate
100 ml whole milk
100 ml whipping cream

Heat up the milk. Chop the chocolate and add to the milk as soon as it reaches boiling point. Mix until chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth. Add the cream and leave to cool in the fridge for a couple of hours. Whisk until it's a fluffy mousse consistency.