Chufi

It was so very nice to wake up to all these lovely birthday wishes. Thank you all for reading along, following my week, and your encouragement and kind words! I'll be off in a minute. Plan for the day: First I'm going somewhere where I can think about, and plan my party. The logistics for this one are tricky... On Friday, I have to work, and Saturday is Queensday, when all the shops will be closed. So my only chance to do the shopping is Thursday. Everything on the bike, remember, so that's numerous shopping trips.. I really have to make lists now and decide what I'm going to make! These are my plans so far: appetizers: cheeses, some meats like ham and salami, olives, etc. Some other stuff.. has to be simple. Pork sandwiches made with the coddled pork from Paula Wolferts Slow Meditteranean, with tarragon mayo Chickpea rosemary soup some kind of coleslaw Homemade potatocrisps Dessert.. ?? I was going to make 1 or 2 large cakes, but it turns out people won't be arriving, leaving and eating at the same time. So now I'm thinking of doing individual things for sweets.. cupcakes maybe, or those pistachio macaroons from my new cookbook.. Any other ideas? I do want it to look pretty, and I'm hopeless at cutting things into neat squares, so no brownies or other traybakes I tend to over complicate things when I give a party.. I always start out thinking I'll keep it simple, but then I'll go on adding dishes even at the last minute.. but I am really trying not to do that this time.

If I remember correctly, in the shop it was labelled: Balangoda Ceylon Orange Pekoe (this was on the label of the big jar he poured it from). There were a number of other Orange Pekoes there.. I must confess I don't know enough about tea to answer your question.. I must also confess I only bought this tea because I liked the word Balangoda... Today, I'm not going to cook! the stuff inside the stroopwafel: I'm not sure.. we call it stroop.. I'll try to find out. I was toying with the idea of ging to the harbor this afternoon, and you may have convinced me now! That is if it doesn't rain.. it's typical of the Dutch weather that yesterday the girls were in flipflops, and today they bring their umbrella.. Fiets kopen! (wanna buy a bike??) The Melkweg is still there. Did you also go to Paradiso, just around the corner? It's my favorite venue for rockmusic. It used to be a church and it has great atmosphere.

Good morning! Breakfast looks like yesterday, but it's different: a banana, some oatmeal and milk whizzed up with the stickblender. In the other glass is nothing edible, although it looks a bit like whipped cream in the picture - they are 4 white roses.

It's getting late here and I'd better get some sleep See you all tomorrow!

actually, that's just my lazy typing yes, well, that supermarket. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the Albert Heijn supermarket chain. They are everywhere. I mean, everywhere, on every streetcorner. This means that there are a lot of them, but neither of them big enough to have a really good selection. They sort of monopolize the supermarket business. They have their housebrand. ..recently they came up with this thing where they print a symbol on specific foods to make the customer aware that this particulal food item is 'healthy'. Ofcourse these symbols are only printed on their own brand items. As if yoghurt from another brand would be less healthy than theirs! (but it would be cheaper). Another thing is that whenever they expand, and stock new things, it's always in favour of convenience foods / ready made meals etc., and never in interesting fresh foods like vegetables or fruits, organic meats, a good brand of pasta, etc. So they have a huge display of Jamie Olivers spicemixes but you can't buy decent salt... all kinds of flavoured rice to cook in the microwave, but no risotto rice.. I could go on and on.. This is a picture I took today of the poultry section. If you look close (left of the very badly photoshopped arrow ) you see a pack of chicken with a green label. This was the only freerange chickenbreast available Almost that entire display is big fat watery chickenbreasts. If you're lucky you can find a whole chicken or some thighs somewhere on the bottom shelf. That said.. I still come here often.. it's 2 minutes walk from my house and it's just so easy to stop by after work and pick up a few things. But, I am lucky that I work part-time, and have the luxury of being able to go all over town to get the groceries I want. I try to shop at other supermarkets as often as possible - better choices, and much cheaper, too.

Foufou was actually named after a food-item - the African dish of mashed cassave. And btw, Chufi was the name of my first rat, named after the spanish drink horchata - which was exactly her color - Chufi was a brand name of that drink we found in southern Spain.

Final food item of the day: a little cheese platter for 2.. a bit of port salut, raw milk brie, mixed nuts and raisins.

I went to my kitchen supply store and inquired about these smokers.. they have the Cameron as well.. Now I'm debating what size I need.. Anyway, my question is about the woodchips. On the Cameron website they have all these different kind of wood and they claim it changes the flavor of what you smoke.. in the store today they only had one kind, big bags of something cheap, and they said it doesn't matter what kind you use.. the flavor comes from marinating, and herbs.. so I'd like to know what are your experiences, indoor-smoker-users?

i think these peanuts are very popular in asian cultures as well. sometimes they have some seaweed strips outside on the crunchy coating, some are seasoned with hot peppers and some are "seafood" flavored...shrimp or squid...very asian. but of course there are plain ones as well. ← I know what you mean, we get those here as well, but the ones I had today are not the same .. Maybe they really are uniquely Dutch? not that they are a thng to be particularly proud of

Here are the rats. This is what they looked like when I was blogging February 2005: they grew up! Here's Mimi chewing away on one of her favorite vegetables, belgian endive: and Foufou grabbing a treat: They have weird tastes. They love cucumber, tomatoes, endive and lettuce. They hate carrots. Carrots will just rot away in the cage without being touched by them. They adore frozen peas, but won't eat green beans. They love banana and avocado, but will eat apple only if I leave it in the cage long enough - "okay, we get it, you're not giving us anything else!" They love all things starchy, especially when hard and chewy: raw pasta (the sound of them nibbling raw pasta will go through 2 doors and keep you awake at night..) raw rice, and raw oats. Oh, and they are great pets, and I love them ... Enough about pets and their eating habits... Here's dinner, or at least the ingredients for dinner: and here's most of it chopped up: Then it got really hectic with stirfrying and lots of pans going on at the same time.. I fried the baby squid with ginger, garlic, chili, lemongrass, red peppers and red onions. Let them cool and mixed them with coriander and mint, with some fish sauce and limejuice mixed in. It made a tasty salad: I recently discovered the unbelievably good flavorcombo of duck and hoisinsauce. I fry the duckbreast until some of the fat is rendered out. Then slice it up and warm through in a mixture of hoisinsauce and sambal badjak (a rather mild, fried sambal) and some water to thin it. The paksoi was fried with ginger, garlic and chili, and tossed with the noodles. Duck on top: I should have ironed my placemats before this blog started

I don't think so, but likely a lot of foodcoloring

Don't worry, the rats are anxiously waiting to pose... they will appear shortly! So, I did some balcony gardening and then enjoyed the last bit of sun with a glass of South-African rose and some borrelnootjes.. (don't know if they exist elsewhere.. peanuts with a kind of starchy crunchy coating.. very popular cocktail snack over here..) while scribbling a bit in my food-notebook.. just musing about my party on Sunday, what to serve, what to buy.. and then it became quite chilly, no balcony dinner tonight I'm afraid

Thanks everyone! It's really great to come home to all these encouraging replies! well, not always, you know.. you should hear me cursing when food doesn't turn out the way I want it.. just ask Dennis.. I'm saving my bad moods for him

I took this picture for you Michelle in the supermarket: an entire display of ginger and spicecakes. They are called ontbijtkoek (breakfast cake), because a slice of this was traditionally eaten for breakfast or with an early morning cup of coffee.

I went back to the market to get some plants for my balcony and look who I found? The stroopwafelguy! Here are the nuggets of dough waiting to be pressed between the waffle-iron (you can see the iron on the right, it's closed) He takes the thin waffle from the iron and quickly slices it in half horizontally (this is half) ...smears it with stroop (thick and gooey syrup) puts the other half on top and hands it over! He really enjoyed my documenting the process.. he even forgot to ask for money and I almost forgot to pay him (1 euro for the wafel). (the sign on the back wall is a typical display of Amsterdam humor. The fanciest shopping street in Amsterdam is called P.C. Hooftstraat, named after a 16th century Dutch poet - here the name is transformed to PC Stroopstraat...)

Hi rachel.. what you see in my shopping basket are not turniptops, but spinach and paksoi (bok choy?) These are the turniptopgreens I bought recently are they greens? A mess of them ??

I'm going out for a bit, do a little more shopping. Sandy, a trip to an Ahold supermarket (Albert Heijn) is on the schedule for this afternoon..

Dankjewel Michelle! Do you mean a spicy gingercake, shaped like a loaf? I think I've donme one of those in the Dutch cooking thread. Or do you mean something different?

well, I think the Dutch are a little more intent on celebrating their birthdays then what I've gathered from Americans/Canadians. That said, I have some friends who don't celebrate theirs at all, and the way I do it is a bit over the top even for Dutch tastes I don't know why I love it so much, I just do!

I can't promise you any windmills.. there will be jenever though! The season's new herring arrives early June. Last year I reported about it here

The major necessity for anybody shopping in Amsterdam:

Oh, Marlene, you're good! Yes, the 30th of April is Queensday. We celebrate the birthday of our Queen, but because queen Beatrix was born in January, we still celebrate it on the birthday of her mother Juliana. But, to complicate things a bit, this year the 30th is on a Sunday, and apparently that's not a suitable day for a nationwide celebration, so we celebrate this year on the 29th instead. I'll talk about the day, and what we will do, later. But here are some signs of the approaching queensday I saw in the shops today: Orange is the color of our royal family and generally associated with The Netherlands (as any of you who have seen Dutch crowds at international soccer games or at the Olympics, will probably know..)

.. and after that, a stop at the coffee & tea shop for some tea. Dennis, my husband, does not drink coffee but is a bit of a tea-freak. I think we usually have about 15 different teas in the house. We were running low on green tea, his favorite, so I went to pick some up. He asked for Sencha, so I got that, and another green one and also some orange pekoe: Home and hungry! I have some leftover tomato fennel soup, and some grilled vegetables. Together they become soup. With some fresh bread with cured ham and some more Nigella-reading:

I'll answer questions in a bit, first I'll report about my morning. There are 2 places in Amsterdam that I love above anything else. 2 places that can cheer me up no matter what's going on in my life, and also the 2 places that make me feel even better, when I'm already pretty happy - like today! This is the first one, I've talked about this place many times on EGullet before. It's right in the middle of the Vondelpark, only a 5 minute bikeride from my house: Het Blauwe Theehuis (the Blue Teahouse). I'm here year round, but today was really special as it was such a lovely morning and the terrace was already pretty full at 10am! This is what we call 'koffie verkeerd' (wrong coffee) over here, it's a latte but even weaker, with loads of milk. This is the second one: the Albert Cuyp market. It's open every day except Sunday, and it sells everything! Look here how the incense and glittery shawls are right next to the tomatoes: First, another cup of coffee. I'm not a Lady Who Lunches, but I am definitely a Lady who Drinks Coffee. there's nothing I like better than to sip a cup of coffee somewhere, read the paper, write a bit, think a bit. This place is in a little street just off the market. I have to say it's coffee is not really the best, but I still come here often because it's such a great location and atmosphere. Inside was pretty empty today.. because everybody was out here: Across the street is Tjin's Toko, a foodstore with foodstuff from all over the world. They have little areas for every cuisine. It's about the only place in Amsterdam where I've seen Crisco.. they also have Jiffy.. it's also where I buy mexican peppers, Thai curry pastes, japanese rice, chinese hoisin sauce, vietnamese fish sauce, and indonesian sambal, and everything 'ethnic' or exotic I might need. When they don't have it, they'll always order it. I have a bit of a noodle fetish Their sambal and hotsauce selection: Back to the market. This is a great vegetable stall that sells things you don't see much elsewhere.. like parsnips, parsley root, turniptops, chard, etc. usually I do my vegetable shopping a bit earlier, especially in warm weather. The letuuces are already a bit droopy.. here's what I got: On to the fish guy

Thanks everybody for the kind welcome! I don't make them myself, you have to have special equipment, and besides that, hot sugar scares me If I see the stroopwafel guy at the market i will take pictures for you! I'll try to give a report sanrensho! I just had this for breakfast: The big box in the back is Brinta, a breakfast cereal mainly eaten by children. It's wheatflakes that you stir into hot milk for a kind of porridge. A couple of years ago they came up with an even quicker version: powder that you whisk into cold milk. It makes a slightly sweet drink, not very substantial, but I like it as a light breakfast after excercise (or, when you know you have a day of eating ahead of you) 'Eaten' while browsing through one of my early birthday gifts, Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess... I had planned some household chores this morning, but the weather is so glorious, that I hear the park calling my name. Chores can wait, after all, this is supposed to be a week of festivities!