Chufi

Klary, Sorry 'bout that. It was just my jovial way of saying that based on an educated guess on where Shelora would suggest you visit, a lot of that would require a car. You'll love Vancouver Island, with or without a car. It's just that without a car you'll be spending most (if not all) time in Victoria. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that there's so much more to see on Vancouver Island, especially from a fodd-lover's point of view. Perhaps another trip? A. ← and I'll keep on adding to the confusion by editing my own posts yes, another trip, definitely. I love travel planning but it is also very difficult, deciding where to go and where not to go! There's only so much you can do in 3 weeks Thanks everybody for thinking along with me. It is a great help!

When shelora mentioned a one-day itinerary I was just wondering if Dennis and I could happily spend a day in Victoria without a car... After all, we are tourists.. it's not so bad doing the touristy thing every now and then.

Tuesday or Wednesday, probably. Okay, Victoria is back on the travel plan

Oh, I love kebabs. Perfect summer food! I had some really good chicken kebabs in a restaurant recently, where the meat wasn't cubed chicken breast but boned chicken thigh meat, which made all the difference, they were very succulent. Sri Owen has a recipe for ground duck satay in her book New Southeast Asian food that I have been longing to try. Also this might be a good time to make some of my favorite peanut sauce!

Nishla, what kind of cheese do you like? mature, young, cow, goat? Blue? There is an excellent Dutch blue cheese called Bleu de Wolvega.. I love it. Ofcourse you can't go wrong with some good aged Gouda as shown above..

Yes, you eat them. They are somewhat mellower from aging in the cheese, but still have a very pronounced aroma, which is why this cheese is not to everyone's taste! from the looks of it, I would guess it's a quite young gouda-style goats cheese. It should be rich, smooth, buttery and tangy. Please report when you've opened it up!

could we do that without a car? I'm thinking of leaving the car behind in Port Angeles, seems rather expensive to bring it over for just one or two days.

Oh, that's my favorite food magazine.. I have every issue from 1999 till now, and I still use every copy on a regular basis. Lots of seasonal recipes, and the most important thing is that every recipe really works!

cheese parties, how wonderful. This is going to be a great thread. My feeling would be: Don't worry about that, just post the cheeses. There are other members in Europe, and if the rest of us can't find the French cheeses in our necks of the woods, we'll just know what's waiting for us the next time we go to France! ← Indeed there are. Some members live in the Netherlands.. where you can get excellent cheese by the way : Friese nagelkaas, Frisian cheese with whole cloves (from the province of Friesland) And these: The one on the right is 2 years old, it's made in the Dutch province Noord Holland (where Amsterdam is). The one on the left is 3 years old and made on the farm Elisabethhoeve in IJsselstein, a town to the east of Amsterdam. You can see the crystallization in the cheeses.. both are delicious, with a salty but mellow flavor, very rich and buttery in your mouth. The 3-year old has a slightly more concentrated flavor and the texture is a bit harder and drier. (as posted in the Dutch Cooking thread)

hi markemorse.. before I joined eGullet I had never even heard of Pho.. I really don't know if you can get any in Amsterdam.. but according to the IENS restaurant guide these are the Vietnamese restaurants in the city: Cambodja City, Albert Cuypstraat 58 Hamy, Marathonweg 10 Ming Dynasty, Amstelveenseweg 1158 Vuong, Korte Leidsedwarsstraat 51 Wellcome, Zeedijk 57 Good luck!

markemorse, welcome to eGullet and that is an incredible first post! Thanks for sharing your favorite Amsterdam food. I really like the mentions of Surinamese food.. this has sadly always been a bit below my radar.. maybe I should go and try out some of your recommendations! Kismet (the Abert Cuyp location) is great. terrific baklava! I think you might mean Da Portare Via. They have two locations: Leliegracht 34, and a recently opened one in the Frans Halsstraat. I seem to remember that the leading Amsterdam foodcritic Johannes van Dam pronounced these the best pizza in Amsterdam (not that I feel his word is always gospel - I often disagree with him ). I haven't tried them out yet but will report when I do! I see your point.. I personally feel more inclined to eat cheese in cooler weahter.. just wait, Kef won't go away I think... Keep your recs coming markemorse! They are a great contribution to this thread.

Kristin, what a fun blog. very interesting to read how you experience the food-differences between Japan and the US! And I love that you eat your nostalgia-foods. I guess they become even more nostalgic when you don't have access to them most of the time. Oh and your kids are even cuter than they were in your last blog is that lychee juice in the small packets? I love that!

We always want a combination of city and nature. We have the cities covered with Seattle and Vancouver (3 days Vancouver, probably about 3 days in Seattle). The trip as I have planned it in RandMcNally is about 1200 miles. I would really like to visit the Okanagan.. I have read wonderful things about it. Going there, and then south, and then west again through North Cascades seems logical. I guess we could skip Bellingham and go straight to Seattle after North Cascades NP. I really want to go to the Olympic Peninsula. I have read some great trip reports and seems to have such a diversity of landscapes (ocean, rainforest, mountains). I suppose that if it gets too much and we want to take it easy, we could also skip the trip to Victoria. What we like is to visit small towns.. hang out in the local diner and watch the world go by.. go shopping in local shops and supermarkets... go hiking for a couple of hours... check out lots of restaurants to decide where we're going to eat.. sit in a coffeehouse and read the paper.

Ann, everything looks so good but the chicken breast especially. Can you buy skin on chickenbreasts, or did you have to cut them from a whole chicken? One of the shopping-mysteries of the Netherlands is that you can't get skin-on chicken breasts here.. I have no clue what peameal bacon is (although I feel that it has probably nothing to do with peas or meal ) but that sandwich looks delicious. And thanks to your blog, I have decided that Vancouver Island has to be included in our trip!

do you think it's too much? It's about the same distance we did 4 years ago in California and 2 years ago in New England, and both those trips were very relaxed, where we often spent a couple of days in the same place. We don't want to drive too much. It is about half as much driving as the usual trip Dutch people take when going to the US. But, maybe I need to check distances again. Thanks mizducky for the info about Sep. 4th. Yes, I was aware of Labor day, but I assume, like you said, that the airport will be open as well as the car rental office. Other than that, we'll just want to drive to a motel near Seattle for the night and sleep off a bit of the jetlag. I'll probably book that first night, just to be sure we have a place to stay. And, great info everybody! keep it coming please

(sort of crossposted with the Western Canada froum) On September 4th, my husband and I will arrive in Seattle to start a 3-week roadtrip in British Columbia & the Pacific Northwest. Nothing is set but our plane tickets, the first couple of nights in Vancouver, and the last couple of nights on Bainbridge Island. But, even though we want to be open for anything, I have spent the last 6 months planning this trip, reading about the area, doing my homework on eGullet, and dreaming about this vacation.. so yes, we do have an itninerary mapped out. here's the plan sofar: arrive in Seattle, pick up the car, and drive to Vancouver. ( I posted about that part of the trip in the Vancouver forum here) After Vancouver and the Okanagan, we enter the US again. The rest of the trip: Twisp/ Winthrop North Cascades Bellingham Seattle (couple of days there) Olympia Tour the Olympic Peninsula Port Angeles from there, (day?) trip to Victoria on Vancouver Island Bainbridge Island Seattle (to fly home again). So. I know there is a ton of info on eGullet already and believe me, I have read a lot! Still I'd love to hear some (new) recommendations. We like to eat well while we travel, but, if possible, on a bit of a budget. Not that we can't have the occasional splurge but it has to be occasional. Even at home we aren't very glamorous people and I doubt we will bring our high heels and ties respectively, so nothing too fancy. Also, any info on foodrelated activities.. that one special winery.. chees farm.. market.. something so special that it could make us change our traveplans.. etc that you can think of, would be much appreciated. Thanks!

On September 4th, my husband and I will arrive in Seattle to start a 3-week roadtrip in British Columbia & the Pacific Northwest. Nothing is set but our plane tickets, the first couple of nights in Vancouver, and the last couple of nights on Bainbridge Island. But, even though we want to be open for anything, I have spent the last 6 months planning this trip, reading about the area, doing my homework on eGullet, and dreaming about this vacation.. so yes, we do have an itninerary mapped out. here's the plan sofar: arrive in Seattle, pick up the car, and drive to Vancouver. Spend a couple of days in Vancouver. I am slowly eating my way through all the Vancouver threads! One thing I know is that we want to have a really good Chinese meal, because we don't have good Chinese in Amsterdam. from Vancouver, go west. Hope, Kelowna, the Okanagan, Penticton, Naramata, Osoyoos. We'll have a couple of days to explore. From there, go south. Now we are entering the US again so I'll go and put up another thread in the PNW forum here. We'll end up on the Olympic Peninsula, and from there I want to go to Vancouver Island. Probably as a daytrip to Victoria and leave the car behind in Port Angeles. So. I know there is a ton of info on eGullet already and believe me, I have read a lot! Still I'd love to hear some (new) recommendations. We like to eat well while we travel, but, if possible, on a bit of a budget. Not that we can't have the occasional splurge but it has to be occasional. Even at home we aren't very glamorous people and I doubt we will bring our high heels and ties respectively, so nothing too fancy. Also, any info on foodrelated activities.. that one special winery.. cheese farm.. market.. something so special that it could make us change our travelplans.. etc that you can think of, would be much appreciated. Thanks!

it's really easy, from Jane Grigson's Fruit Book: equal weights of currants and sugar - heat slowly until the sugar melts - then boil hard for 8 minutes. That's what I did and my jelly is a little liquid, so I think I should have boiled it a little longer. I threw in a star anise and a piece of cinnamon (one each per 500 grams fruit) and that gives it a lovely, almost mysterious flavor.

Greek yoghurt with homemade redcurrant jelly. I flavored the jelly with staranise and cinnamon and it's wonderful, even though it's a little too runny

95 F in Amsterdam today and it's getting hotter tomorrow. Maybe not as hot as what some of you are experiencing, but for Dutch standards, this is HOT. No AC anywhere, accept for very large stores and new offices (of which mine, unfortunately, isn't one). 2 people died from the heat this week at our national hiking event the Nijmeegse Vierdaagse (4 days of hiking). It's hot. me too. And, I crave fried and deep-fried food! I also crave spicy food, with light and lively flavors. I tend to cook what I fancy, and not pay much attention to how hot it is in my kitchen. Oh and yes I know it's best not to drink alcohol, but it's so hard to resist a nice glass of Pernod with lots of tinkling icecubes on my balcony after work...

Ann, this is going to be fun! beautiful pictures and good food await us! And how timely to have another BC blog, while I am planning our BC vacation. We still don't know if Vancouver Island will be on the itinerary.. maybe your blog will help us decide!

I made a hazelnutcake with zabaglione cream filling today, for a friend's 50th birthday. I've made it before but it came out better this time. And yes, there are 50 hazelnuts on top. Nobody noticed but I thought that was very clever

mrbigjas, the fact that it tasted good is much more important than the fact that you have no good pictures! Potormo, the baked risotto is from Marcella's Italian Kitchen.

Awesome dinner, Ling & Henry! Oh those arancini look soooo good. I have to make some this week! I made the baked risotto with eggplant today, based on Marcella's recipe (I added all the tomatosauce to the risotto instead of keeping some back to layer with the rice). It was very good, we kept talking about how such a simple dish with so few ingredients (some vegetables, rice, a bit of cheese and some herbs) could be so satisfying, and have such a deep and complex flavor. Really excellent. And dessert. I recently found a deli that sells fresh ricotta (wonderful stuff! very different from the plastic supermarket tubs!) and since my cassata plans got canceled, and I'm not going to fry cannoli tubes, but I still wanted to do something with a ricotta/candied fruit/chocolate mixture, I came up with this. may I present.. cannoli tarts! I made some small chocolate pastry shells and filled them with a mixture of ricotta (beaten with a little cream to loosen it), candied orange zest, orangeflower water, sugar, a little bit of candied fruit, chocolate and pistachios.

Elie, the baked rice looks delicious. and... congratulations! Ling, I can't wait to see your dinner. I didn't have dessert tonight. I want some cannoli