Picture: Sammeli Juntunen

Kapustaukot (“Kapusta fellows”) and Tosikokit (“True cooks”) are good examples of grassroots volunteer work that has a rather clear impact on the participants’ everyday lives. In both groups, older men cook together and, if interested, provide catering for various types of events. On the side, they benefit from peer support in different life situations. Pertti Nousiainen (88) has been active in Kapustaukot for nearly five years. He finds that the cooking club offers a sense of community and provides a meaningful pastime that helps alleviate loneliness in daily life.

Kapustaukot and Tosikokit are cooking clubs for older men. The groups meet at the Sääminki congregation centre and Linnala activity centre, respectively. Both are led by Jarmo Kasanen, an active self-educated cook.

Kasanen’s efforts are wholly voluntary and locally oriented and, therefore, both the Savonlinna congregation and the Linnala activity centre put their kitchen facilities at the groups’ disposal for free. The club members share the costs of the ingredients.

“I have been an avid cook all my life, even though I don’t have any formal education in the field. The Kapustaukot group saw daylight five years ago when a widowed friend, knowing my background, asked me to host a cooking club,” Kasanen explains.

“We started off with fewer than ten members, many of who knew hardly anything about making food. These days, we have 25–30 men at each meeting, and all of them know how to cook.”

Joint learning and peer support

Kapustaukot and Tosikokit are practical proof of adult education not being restricted to the working-age population. Adult education offers very concrete benefits for seniors facing a new life situation, for example, after the death of their spouse.

“Thanks to our club activities, many widowers can now do their own cooking at home,” says Kasanen.

Moreover, both clubs clearly help to ward off social exclusion.

“We support one another, with all kinds of things, not just in cooking.” Each session lasts for around four hours — long enough for the men to also sit down and talk about things.

Participation in the Kapustaukot and Tosikokit groups is very informal. Being a pensioner is a must, of course, but loneliness or limited cooking skills are by no means required. Kasanen himself considers imagination to be a basic ingredient of delicious food.

In addition to making food together, the group members also do some catering. When a church welfare unit from Hungary, which had heard about Kasanen’s volunteer activities, decided to visit Savonlinna, Kapustaukot treated the visitors to creamed whitefish, a traditional Karelian meat stew, mashed potatoes, gratinated vegetables and unleavened barley bread. For dessert, the group had baked a sandwich cake.

“The Kapustaukot members have compiled their recipes into a cookbook which will be completed this summer if all goes according to schedule. The book contains a great deal of humour too, reflecting our approach to what we do.”

Wide range of personalities

Pertti Nousiainen (88) from Savonlinna joined Kapustaukot early on. He wanted to learn to cook so that he could make food for his wife. Now that Nousiainen’s wife has passed away, he finds the group even more significant.

“When you get together with familiar faces around a common hobby you forget about loneliness. Our cooking club is a great place for learning new things and building a sense of community,” Nousiainen muses.

According to Nousiainen, there is an obvious need for groups such as Kapustaukot and Tosikokit, seeing as new members continue to flock to both of them. In fact, the groups have grown so much that their present facilities are beginning to be somewhat cramped.

“Kapustaukot and Tosikokit draw participants from a variety of backgrounds: farmers, painters, public officials and automobile experts, just to name a few examples,” says Nousiainen.

“Sometimes we opt for entertainment. In winter, we might arrange ice fishing competitions and, in summer, we might serve our famous whitefish soup to the locals.”

Text: Juha Wakonen