Recently we had an all-staff meeting at work. One of the benefits of going to said meeting (which is held 3-4 times a year) is the coffee and cakes afterwards.
Talk about a sugar rush…
Food
Lemon cake part two (Or: Marks and Spencer)
A while back I had taken a picture of the lemon cake at Marks and Spencer (which opened this year in The Hague). However the lighting wasn’t that great. So here it is again, as Marco and I went back last weekend…
lemon cake, small coffee, large cappuccino
The lemon cake is actually quite sour, especially the top layer. The trick is the slightly wet-looking area just below the icing and dark brown layer. Quite sour! Definitely recommend trying it out if you enjoy sour items.
And now I want lemonheads…
Lay’s potato chip flavors (Or: Stokbroodje met kruidenboter)
A few weeks ago Marco brought home a new Lay’s flavor for their ‘Do us a flavor!‘ contest. Of course, flavors are different depending on the country the chips are being sold in. The four flavors for America this year were cappuccino, bacon mac and cheese, salsa mango, and wasabi ginger.
The Netherlands have their own flavors, of course. A few weeks Marco brought home one of them:
The flavor is french bread with garlic butter. Unfortunately you don’t get anything that tastes like bread in the flavor, just garlic butter (which comes across nicely).
Of course this is the country that has ‘normal’ flavors of barbecue ham and of patatje joppie (a sort of Dutch sauce that goes well with French fries apparently).
Categories: Food
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Roger’s 40th (Or: Birthday party at Paraplu)
A month after Marco, Roger also turns 40. We celebrated the event by going to Paraplu in The Hague – the first time for me. As usual, I had the kipsaté (chicken on a skewer with peanut sauce). Yum! Also the first time I ever had kroepoek (the white disks) paired with peanuts and peanut shavings directly on top.
As a surprise, a family member had ordered a birthday dessert for Roger (and the table). Quite spectacular:
Good times en lekker eten!
Tasty Fridays (Or: Cheesecake Company in The Hague)
A few Fridays ago some of my coworkers and I celebrated the impending weekend by getting some cheesecake from the Cheesecake Company in The Hague. Officially it was a cheesecake tasting – everyone took a little bit from each piece.
I don’t remember all of the fruit flavors, but ones I do know are: plain (lower right side). Directly above that is razma-limey, with the lime on top. Definitely my favorite fruit flavor. To the left of the plain one was double chocolate-chocolate chip. Dreamsicle (a sort of orange and vanilla swirl, based off a cream popsicle) was in the 9 o’clock position. Lastly, next to the strawberry up top was mango (with all of the yellow pieces on top).
Other fruit flavors that were there included blackberry, blueberry, bosvruchten (forest fruit), and more that I can’t possibly remember. But it was delicious! They are right next to the Grote Kerk in The Hague, on Torenstraat.
Time for chocolate (Or: Homemade rice krispie treats)
As mentioned in the previous post, on Thursday night I had a barbecue at my teacher’s house. I decided to make rice krispie treats (Marco and I had a lot of fun in the kitchen making them!)
Above is a photo of one of the pans of rice krispies, after pouring the melted chocolate but before spreading it. Lekker!
My classmates definitely enjoyed it. Marco took most of the leftovers to work on Friday for his coworkers. I heard it was also a hit there (although one of them said he wanted to run up and down the hallway repeatedly after eating all that chocolate).
Success (Or: I passed the B2 Dutch course)
Today we received the results for the B2 course I have been taking at ROC Mondriaan. I passed all four sections – reading, writing, listening and speaking – with no problems. I did ironically have some comments about how to work on my writing, but it was mainly due to a lack of time to check over my work when I was done writing. I tend to write a lot – a bit too much probably!
When I got home I saw a small gift on the table from Marco. The message he wrote on it makes me wonder what I should have done with it if I hadn’t passed the tests. Burn it?
“open me if you passed the exams – Marco”
If you know what ‘Jamin’ is (what it sells), you can already guess what the gift is. ;p
Chocolate! geslaagd = successful, in the sense of success at passing a test (a school exam, a driving test, etc).
Dessert in a glass (Or: Strawberry slush)
Here is one of the items we had at De Gezelligheid (a restaurant in Leusden) a few weeks back. A strawberry slush drink. Yum!
Of course the drink would have gone over even better today, as it was officially shorts weather after getting home from work. Heat wave!
Old commercials (Or: “I feel like posting tonight”)
Back when I was a kid we had commercials for a product called “Chicken Tonight”. Small world I suppose – it was originally sold in America under the Ragu brand, but Ragu is owned by Unilever, a Dutch company. According to Wikipedia (same article in Dutch) it is no longer sold in America, but it is still sold in the Netherlands.
Of course the flavors are quite different in this country – while in America you had flavors such as Honey Mustard and Country French, here you have flavors like kerrie met ananas (curry with pineapple) under the Knorr brand. So we made that tonight, just to have a blast with the past type feeling.
Best part, of course, was the ridiculous commercials from the ’90s where people would say “I feel like chicken tonight, like chicken tonight” while flapping their arms like chickens.
Categories: Food
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Who are you referring to? (Or: B2 Dutch course #16)
There wasn’t much in my notes from Thursday’s class – we did a lot of practice exercises it seemed. One thing I did write down was this exchange:
Pretend someone calls you and asks Is Mary daar? Is Mary there?
How do you refer to ‘Mary’ when you answer? Nee, …. is niet hier. No, … is not here.
In English it would generally be ‘she’ or ‘he’ (ze/zij or hij). It’s possible in Dutch as well. But in Dutch you can also say: Nee, die is niet hier. die refers back to the question, rather than the person itself. (This is much like my last post about Er, where I said er could refer to an entire idea/phrase/statement.)
And since this wasn’t the most comprehensive post, here’s a picture of dessert!
cinnamon ice cream with chocolate sauce and whipped cream
It’s from Spize, a Thai restaurant in The Hague. We went there back in January. Yum!
Life in the Hague 