Dutch food

Once in a while I get the question; "what are signature dishes in the Dutch cuisine?" and often I don't have a very good answer. But since my father always delights us with fresh asparagus when we are in the Netherlands in springtime, I thought it would be a good idea to share with you how we like to eat them.

After peeling the (white) asparagus they are preferably cooked while standing in a pan that leaves their heads out of the water, so they don't overcook. They are sprinkled with a bit of nutmeg, served with cooked potatoes, hard boiled eggs, melted butter and diced ham and salt and pepper.

Yummy (lekker).

Springtime in the Netherlands (and Belgium)

Dutch landscape - polder, cows, geese, sheep - where Michiel grew up

The last month in the Netherlands has treated us (and everyone else) to the sunniest, warmest, driest spring ever. We've spent lots of time running, biking, cooking and enjoying the company of the family and friends. We've interspersed the pleasant with the necessary - medical and dental visits for physical qualification to return to the ice...this time in August.

Spring streetscape

We've spent a huge amount of time on the computer - catching up on the blog (finally), researching houses in France, re-learning French (I highly recommend the Michel Thomas audio program for those who learned French in high school and just need to re-learn/re-fresh), re-learning trigonometry to help tutor our nephew, and wasting oodles of time on Facebook.

Some Spring highlights: meeting our ice friends, Patrick and Liisa in Brugges for wonderful talks, bike riding and beer and chocolate sampling; helping our friend, Sandra, paint her apartment and our drinking and eating tour of Amsterdam on May 5 (Bevrijdingsdag - the celebration of the end of WWII); meeting our ice friend, Sully, and his friends in Amsterdam; the family reunion in Belgium in a "castle" (the castle was a bit less finished and luxurious than the internet photos suggested, but the company was wonderful); lambs, ducklings, flowers, and blossom trees (it's been an unbelievably gorgeous Spring); and being utterly spoiled for one month in one place with great food and drink, few responsibilities or costs and lots of reading material.

Local wildlife

Indonesian feast at the castle

Man v. Cow - the cows are let out into the fields for the summer

In Bruges

   

Beer, sunshine, wind mills and friends!

Drie Molenloop 10,5k - the Three Windmills Running Race 10.5 K

On a gorgeous, and I mean gorgeous second Easter day (the Dutch celebrate the first and second Easter days - ask someone else for an explanation....), Michiel joined me for a running race through the polders and the village of Aarlanderveen, a sweet little place where his sister and her family live.  The sunshine, the windmills, the green fields, the lambs, geese, cows and their little ones, the paragliders overhead and the spirit of the crowd made for a perfect race day.  Getting water during the race from our niece, Marilyn May and enjoying an after-race brunch in Almamia and Perry's garden were additional perks.

Most importantly, my pace was a respectable 5:52 per kilometer with a finish time of 1:01:40.  I'm fine with being a slow runner as long as I'm not last!  In this case, though my slow start had us in last place for the first 3 kilometers, we passed 18 people along the route and I managed to get 121st out of 141 (20th in the ladies division).  To be fair, though, Michiel was 122 and I'm sure he would have run faster if he was by himself.  Thanks for the support, Michiel!

Sorry...no photos except for those on the official website.  Here is a link to the results:  Results
Scroll down to the 10.5K results or do Ctrl F and type "Sheri" to find me.

Biking through the tulips

When the weather is good, there is no better place to be in April than the Netherlands. When I saw the weatherman doing his weather forecast from the tulip fields, I knew what we needed to do. We took a bus with hundreds of giddy tourists to the Keukenhof, the most famous flower garden in the world. From here, we rented bicycles and biked around the periphery of the gardens which is a terrific way to see the fields full of tulips, daffodils (earlier in the spring) and hyacinths. These pics were incredibly hard to choose as Michiel got at least 70 beautiful shots. (I took a couple of nice ones, as well!)

We´re fine

Just a quick note for anyone who has read about today´s sad incident in the Dutch city of Apeldoorn in which a driver plowed through a parade on Queen´s Day. The driver apparently was attempting to hit the Royal family, who were traveling in an open air bus on the parade route. Instead, he hit several policemen and marching band members, 4 (now 7) of whom died. The driver is a white Dutchman, so they are not considering this a terrorist act at this time. For more info, check out this article in the New York Times (if you don´t speak Dutch): http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/04/30/world/AP-EU-Netherlands-Parade-Crash.html

We were nowhere near Apeldoorn today. Luckily, we aren´t real fans of parades, crowds or Queen´s Day.

More Family Time

We've just left the Netherlands after three weeks of (mostly) family time and probably the nicest stretch of weather I've ever experienced in the country. It was fantastic to be able to go out for long bike rides in the country and really get to see the farmland and lovely homes in the area near Rijnsaterwoude (where Michiel grew up and his father still lives). For much of the time, the skies were blue, the sun was shining and the storks, herons, swans, ducks, goats, cows and sheep were frolicking - a glorious time to be in Holland!

For one week of our time there, the entire family rented a couple of bungalows in a holiday park. We played lots of games (including laser tag, a newspaper fashion show and casino night), ate incredible ethnic food (prepared each night by one of the siblings) and celebrated Bonpa's (my father-in-law) 80th birthday with a day out in the Biesbosch National Park. Our day in the park included a horse and cart ride and a boat tour of a water area that has long been managed by dikes.

Here is a collection of photo highlights:


Celebrating Marilyn May's 6th birthday



Bonpa and his sister, Marion


Ton and Oneida on Queen's Day (thus the orange shirts)


All contestants in the newspaper fashion show



Team one: Seneca, Wilbert, Gwendolyn, and Ton


Casino night: Seneca, Marilyn, Joey, Gwendolyn and Tonny


Marie-Birgitte and Anne-Charlotte


Cocktail hour: Marie-Birgitte, Wilbert, me and Chantal


Ethiopian food!



The brothers-in-law: Bart, Perry and Ton

Back to Holland / Terug naar Nederland

After a short visit with family in Los Angeles and San Diego, we got on another set of airplanes for a long trip to the Netherlands. The purpose of this trip was to visit family and friends and to sort out our affairs there, which is to say - to move out of our apartment and officially emigrate from Holland to the US.

We had surprisingly sunny weather during the month of April and it was a real treat to get back on the bicycles and enjoy the canals of Amsterdam. We spent lots of time in various parts of the country visiting with family members and particularly enjoyed being out in the countryside at a time of year when all the trees and flowers were blossoming.

Bedankt lieve familie en vrienden voor jullie gastvrijheid! Wij missen jullie!

The following photos were taken in Rijnsaterwoude, the small town where Michiel grew up and where his father still resides.







At the end of our stay, I finally did what is required to be called a REAL Amsterdammer - I participated in moving our furniture from our 3rd storey apartment to the sidewalk using a block and tackle. Almost all traditional Amsterdam apartments are narrow-fronted with steep, narrow staircases. In most situations, it is nearly impossible to move things like couches down the stairs...so most of these buildings have a big hook on the gable (just below the roof) on which to hang a pulley.

Here is Michiel's brother, Wilbert, and I managing the ropes from the sidewalk on our first practice run with a light load in the net. Michiel is in the apartment loading the furniture into the net and pushing it out the window of the living room. Well, actually, he's the one who took this photo. Heel erg bedankt voor je hulp, Wilbert!

Dutch Citizenship

Sheri is now a Dutch American! We received a most excellent email from Michiel's sister telling us that I got my official letter from Queen Beatrix. I am a dual citizen of both the Netherlands and the United States. Yippee! or Joepie! (in Dutch)

Just another day in California

Isn't it great to have nice family?
In our great journey across the States we have set up camp in California. Sheri's cousin, Liz, has allowed us to make use of her house in Santa Monica, Los Angeles. At this moment Sheri has returned to the Netherlands to file for Dutch citizenship. Unfortunately, this could only be done after April 26, which is the date that we have been together for 3 years officially (in reality, we yesterday did a phone-celebration of our 4 year anniversary of knowing each other.) We felt it would be wise to apply as soon as possible as you never know what rules could change to foil any attempt at becming a Dutchie. The allowance of dual citizenship for instance; Sheri being an American married to a Dutch person will at this moment allow her to keep both passports. Handy for travels to places where Americans are not the flavor of the month and handy to be able to work throughout the European Union. The process will take about one year, resulting (hopefully) in a letter from the Queen in which she welcomes Sheri to the Netherlands. (earlier Sheri received a letter from the mayor of Amsterdam, congratulating her on her succesful completion of the integration classes).

So what does one do while waiting for the wife to return?

Internet, sweet internet.
At this very moment I am on the roof patio of Liz's building (see picture) enjoying the sun and working on this blog. The internet is unwittingly provided by some neighbor who has not secured his wireless signal. As a matter of fact there are 7 wireless signals within reach of which 1 (one!) is secured. I am very thankful and amazed. The bright sunlight makes it a bit of a challenge to see anything on the computer screen, but that is a luxury problem.


The beach,
The apartment is very close to a lovely strip of beach. I haven't done any swimming or lying on the beach yet, but I did go for a jog - all the way to Muscle Beach (the place where all day long people work out in the sun and work even harder at showing off their bodies). Running in the sand is exhausting.
I've discovered that in the video arcade on the pier there are pinball machines!! It has been ages since I played one so I will be sure shoot some balls later.

Reading,
I finally know who the father is.....
I've just finished; "I Know This Much Is True" by Wally Lamb. Great book, very "unputdownable". Now I have started "Shantaram" which already from page 1 is funny and gripping. Sheri loved it, but has already warned me that the end is not so funny.

Cooking,
Even though I will mostely be eating by myself this week, that doesn't mean that I don't cook. The leftover I freeze for our journey up north.

Tivo,
A great invention that I don't think exists in Holland. I don't need to describe what it is because others have done that enough: See Wikipedia description