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Well, dang, it's a bee-youtiful day outside and I would love to traipse around taking gratuitous food porn photos for you guys but I've got to go track down this inconsiderate boob so I can pick up some apartment keys. Hopefully I'll get to make dinner at some point.

I mentioned EuroShopper mayonnaise during my fridge excavation...it's really my favorite store-bought mayo of all time. I used to be a Hellman's man, but I really can't eat it anymore, the kind of airy texture freaks me out and I don't love the taste of their soybean oil. EuroShopper has a tad more vinegar and a bit of sugar and also lists mustard as an ingredient. Don't know why it works so well for us, but it does.

Hey Sandy, I did see your ketjap question, AND answer it, but it was lost in The Great Post Loss when I inadvertently closed my browser this morning. I'll definitely re-answer it at some point (because it's important), hopefully tonight! The short answer is yes, ketchup came from ketjap....but it's a pretty long answer, done right...

A change of plans may be afoot: some friends who are out of town for the summer had a vacation renter who bailed on them and now they need someone to feed their cats. Since it's on the other side of town and not incredibly convenient to pop in a couple times a day, one of us may go live over there for a couple days, they've got an amazing LP collection and it's a nice apartment...I'll decide by tonight or so. Nonetheless, catfish for dinner after I run some errands.

I guess that means basically tomatoes and fresh bread. But she makes a really exceptional tomato sandwich, and from her I've learned that there are three things that can make it great even if your tomatoes are not worldbeating: And those things are: A healthy dose of good mayo.... salt on your tomatoes... and a significant amount of freshly cracked pepper. +++

Catfish is defrosting, looking more and more like dinner instead of lunch. Mara has returned, and she came bearing sandwich fixins from the Turkish guys:

OK, sleep achieved! Time to start thinking about food. +++ In the meantime, here are the requisite pet photos. We have two calico sisters, Macka (pronounced Motch-ka, it's Croatian for "cat"), and Jo3n. Here are their baby pictures: Macka: Jo3n: Such pensive fuzz bombs. We'll check out their grownup pictures after lunch.

Hey Sharon, I think that's pretty correct, or at least that's my understanding of it. Maybe Chufi can confirm or deny.

Insomnia Boy is hopefully going back to sleep for a little bit right now, but he's trying to decide between chicken Achar (kind of a sour Indian chicken preparation) and cornmeal-dusted catfish with pecans for lunch....any preferences?

ETA: post removed due to its sheer dumbness content.

"Keuken" actually rings a bell in the kitchen. On nights when there's only music (and no restaurant), this bell would not be hearable, so the "Zaal 100" bell rings in the music spaces. Zaal 100 is the name of the music venue on the ground floor (website here). If you follow this link, it takes you to a sign that says they're closed for the summer (and maybe to put the flowers out? Chufi...colloquiallism?), but will reopen in September. There's a weekly Tuesday night "Jazzcafe" (again, ever-so-slightly ironic...free jazz is the base from which these sessions are built) that is webcast, you'll need a torrent player, but months from now should anyone stumble across this post on a Tuesday afternoon (USA time), here's the link for the webcast.

Yes! And no. One of the most interesting things about the Indische kitchen is the use of Caribbean chiles (with their very distinctive flavor profile) in a very Asian cuisine. I think it works really really well, and it's definitely something I hadn't tasted much of before I got here. Maybe occasionally some Jamaican food would approach these kinds of flavors, but this cooking is clearly more deeply entrenched in Asian territory. I didn't....I will. This changes all the time, but most recently I've started to realize that I really miss Georgia food. Buttermilk biscuits. Chicken-fried things. Mrs. Winners. BBQ. Waffle House. Cornmeal in general. Pecans. Peaches. hot Krispy Kremes. BBQ some more. I make catfish about once a week here, and every week it seems to get more and more Southern...maybe I'll do that for lunch today. I also miss Mexican and Southwestern food dearly dearly dearly, I'll probably talk about that a bit more later...but my mom lives in Phoenix and sends me lots of chiles and assorted other supplies (tomatillos), so I cook in this style rather often. Yeah, you got me...I was there when you guessed it, and I was like "oh shit"! I was trapped. Great guess, though!

Thanks Abra, and just give a holler if there's something I can send you...I definitely now take my access to Indonesian ingredients completely for granted....and do give a(nother) holler when you get to town!

Thanks for the research, Mukki...I thought this for awhile as well. They are absolutely related, but I'm not convinced that they're exactly the same thing. If they're not the same thing, I do think taro would probably be an at least interesting and potentially appropriate substitute. Here is another expat American in Amsterdam writing intelligently about pom from a more Jewish perspective. She may appear in this blog later this week.

Aw, crikey. I just had that awesome experience where you spend 15 minutes writing a post, carefully choosing your words just so, and then you somehow accidentally close your browser b/c you've turned off the message that helpfully reminds you: "are you sure you want to close all these browser windows?", etc. etc. etc. Thanks for the kudos, Sandy...I should clarify about the music: I was using the word "alternative" slightly ironically (but literally) above...what we're involved with is probably most easily filed under avant-garde or experimental music, for better or for worse. Amsterdam's challenging, historically important, and currently creative underground music scene is one of the primary reasons we moved here....our particular pocket is interested in post-jazz improvisation in general, with a healthy dose of minimalism and drone, hopefully without being anywhere near as up its own ass as this description makes it sound, but yeah...further elaboration will definitely require some excessive non-food geekery...I'll just post some links for further listening and reading when I get around to talking about "what we do for a living". But to answer your question, no I don't write any lyrics (that don't suck). Warning: I have been consciously underexplaining and undertranslating food terms for the sake of keeping things moving and not including redundant info. Please continue to stop me or pester as soon as there's something that needs more light shed upon it. Thanks Makan King! Yes, this is char siu, slow roasted pork with a serious 5-spice flavor, balanced by the richness of the meat and the honey or sugar in the marinade. I believe that the "smoke ring" is actually the result of a little food coloring in a long marinade. This meat is really really an ideal pairing with the lightly pickled cucumbers served on the sandwich. As for the rest, you already know fa chong: it's the chicken sausage that I had for breakfast, glazed with maple syrup (there was not any on my moksi meti sandwich, however). Fo lam is a bit tough to find information on...it seems to be a Cantonese spit-roasted piglet, maybe with an oyster sauce element? If anyone can shed any light on this, fire away.

The Condiment Doors, continued... I think it's a requirement that every eGulleter has at least one Lee Kum Kee product in their fridge at all times: I really like the Szechwan Noodle Sauce, it's a nice mix of roasted peanut and shrimp flavors. And here's a sparky little fireplug: Superb Dutch mustard, wickedly strong without being harsh...it's a great thing to pick up if you're visiting the Netherlands, I think it's .79 cents at the grocery store. Last but not least: The Hot Ketchup, as I mentioned, is not really discernably different than normal ketchup. Has anyone else tried this? Sriracha we all know and love. The banana ketchup was actually really good on something but I can no longer remember what. Ah well. It's not my fridge if there's not at least one useless condiment in it. OK, off to bed I think...check y'all later. +++

These are the Indonesian sambals...again, impressive that I'm down to 2: You can get these at most larger supermarkets in Amsterdam, they're pretty ubiquitous at this point. Sambal Badjak is a paste of onions, garlic, chiles, galangal, candlenuts, tamarind, and a little trassi (shrimp paste). Sambal Trassi, well...has substantially more trassi in it as well as a more citrus-y profile. Even though it's the same brand as the Badjak, it's a little less likely to show up at the grocery store...this might have to be a toko purchase.

The Condiment Doors: Like many of us, I have a weakness for buying unfamiliar Asian condiments. At the moment, however, since I just cleaned out the fridge recently, I happen to know what every single condiment in my refrigerator tastes like! How often can we say that? Here are the Surinamese sambals: I love the homemade look of these sambals...I normally have a couple more than this, but I've been trying to restrain myself of late. The one on the right is brand new, quite mild, a good general-use sambal if you're looking for habanero-style heat. The one on the left is the hottest thing I've ever put in my mouth. I think it may be pure habanero. When Mara had an abscessed tooth last month and we couldn't find an oral surgeon on a weekend, the only thing that lessened her pain at all was to dab a Q-tip in this sambal and rub it on her gums.

It could very well be my ironing in the freezer, except that I only very rarely iron. No, my friend, I believe that what we're looking at there is the last of my frozen corn tortillas, wrapped in superprotective grocery store bags. I could go downstairs and check but I'm kind of cosy in bed at the moment. I have the place to myself tonight so I can do things like blog in bed without having to submit to any snide remarks.

Fridge 2: This one's a bit harder to suss out because the door doesn't open all the way. It's all about priorities, I guess. Anyway, what we're looking at here is: some uncooked chicken breast I bought today "just in case" I got ravenously hungry and didn't feel like leaving the house; some Heinz Hot Ketchup (do you guys have that over there? It's not especially hot....actually I don't really get it); my trusty tub o' maple syrup; some (ahem) KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce my mom sent me (forgive her); a head of cauliflower ready for roasting, which we do at least once a week; half a sweet onion; a tub of fresh basil; a jar of beets, some lemons; and after that it's kind of hard to tell what's in there, isn't it.

So...in my defense, let me say: it's not as bad as it looks. Two weeks ago these fridges were spotless. Then we had some dear old friends come and visit us for a week, and then we all went to the beach for a few days....let's just say that refrigeration management sunk to the bottom of the to-do list. Here they are: They came with the apartment. And they're fine, really...if you don't need to freeze anything. There's not a whole heck of a lot of freezer space, as you can see: Even less when you let the ice buildup thing happen like I like to do. Do take note of the best mayonnaise in the world, EuroShopper mayo, reclining peacefully there on the top shelf. Let's take a closer look at Fridge 1: What we have here, descending from top left: the aforementioned beetroot/apple/herring salad; a homemade cranberry compote or jam that some friends who work on a farm left with us; an avocado that must be quite ripe by now; an exposed bowl of leftover grated romano (bad Mark); a vat of Turkish yoghurt; two nice beers, Orval and 't IJ Zatte; aging spinach and celery; a 6-pack of Grimbergen Blonde in cans (on sale for 2.99!); and some yellow onions.

Hey Nina, thanks tons for the nice words, may they sustain me through my ImageGullet trials and tribulations. +++ I lied about not eating anymore. While trying to gather strength for the whole fridge pic ordeal, I had some herring salad with beets and apples on a whole-wheat melba toast:

OK, back to food. It's just about time for the dreaded refrigerator pics. Please feel free to shout out any other requests, I'll see what I can do. +++

I don't think I can spend too much time on this since it's not really food-related...but I imagine that Catriona's not the only one who's curious.... +++ A fundamental difference between America and other countries where squatting occurs (besides the property laws themselves) is population density. I should have some figures here, but I don't...trust me: the Netherlands is a very dense country, population-wise. In the Netherlands, there has essentially been an urban housing shortage for at least the last 50 years. The situation became a politically charged issue in the 60s because of uncontrolled speculative purchases by corporate developers, which resulted in a significant housing crisis in the city while many unused buildings stood empty. Here, if a building is not in use for twelve months and the owner has no urgent need to use it (like...there's not a rental contract that starts imminently), then it can be legally squatted. Forcing entry into a squattable building is NOT legal. But essentially, there is a very well-defined protocol for how to legally squat a dwelling here. I think you can even still see a how-to video on YouTube. Anyway, what happens in a few cases is that the larger squats become pretty exciting places where creative artists converge, and where they can try more experimental things in a low-risk environment...and gradually a breeding ground sort of develops. Ideally the squat integrates with (and grows into a beneficial part of) the community, as a low-cost arts/culture outlet, and the city government recognizes that it is a benefit to the entire community if the squat stays. At this point, the city negotiates a rent contract with the squatters and the squatters are the new legal residents. This year the other squat I work at/with amazingly won the Amsterdam Cultuurprijs (Culture Prize), which is a much-needed 35,000 euro from the city government, our share of which will help with a lot of renovation and repair that needs to be done.

Welp, I'm done eating for awhile...I thought maybe I'd show you around our digs. Our little HQ is in a nearly ideal location on the NW outskirts of the city center. We are a two minute walk from the lovely Westerpark, which you'll hopefully see later this week; a 5 minute walk from the Jordaan, and the tramline 10 stops right outside our door. So, we are very nicely situated in that we have everything we need at hand, but it's MUCH quieter than our last apartment, which was 1 block south of the red light district. Remind me to tell you about how loud this place was if things start to drag during this blog. +++ The last 5 years have been an amazing experiment in, well, f*ck, just about everything, frankly...but one thing we've become especially adept at is paring down. A couple weeks back, David Ross mentioned how interested people seemed to be in how big or small other people's living spaces are. In case that's true, I'll go ahead and share: we've gone from living in 3300 sq feet in America to about 300 sq ft here, from 2 cars to none, from 7 couches to 1. It was....not easy. In retrospect it would've been much more efficient to scrap everything and start over, because whittling down your possessions gradually is tough work philosophically. We complicated the process considerably by opening a record shop when we first moved here, which we'd never done before. So while we were jettisoning personal belongings left and right, we were simultaneously accumulating this whole other raft of stuff we would eventually end up trying to get rid of. It was complicated. But the bottom line is not: back in 1999 our monthly expenses in the US were at least 10 times what they are now, as was our footprint, and we're extremely pleased to be living a lower-impact lifestyle. +++ We live in a legalized squat called the Witte Reus that has been occupying this space for 30 years or so. The building itself is a 100-year old school building, our apartment used to be a classroom. There are 9 private apartments in our building, along with a dance studio, restaurant, bar, 2 performance spaces, art gallery, and 4 small businesses (record label, booking agent, graphic designer, and art studio). We share a toilet and shower with one other person. Here are some photos that a French journalist took a few months back for an article he is doing on European squats (actually I took a couple of these too): downstairs bar during the day: the little performance space (audience view): I love how horrified the guy on the right looks ("I can't believe I just played that...I'm not even on the right PAGE!!!") the little performance space during the day, viewed from the stage: the same room when it's a restaurant twice a week: the kitchen of the restaurant: the big performance space: our apartment, bed upstairs where I am typing this from: the rest of our apartment: our friend Andy's apartment down the hall, and me having a funny hair moment: Andy's (among other things) a very good cook, he's in the UK at the moment, but hopefully he'll invite us over for dinner when he gets back on Wednesday. our roof terrace: a nice dinner we had on the roof last month: The front of our building: +++