Last week Marco and I walked through V&D to look at their deals. They had a sale event going on called Prijzen Circus. Â According to Marco you can also (sometimes) get some interesting things in the bakery during this time.
Lo and behold, I found pigs made out of marzipan:
They looked quite cute if you ask me. And full of sugar… In the background you can see other treats – everything in that display case was made with marzipan. Crazy!
Time has definitely got away from me. It’s only 17 days until the wedding (!) and tonight I begin my next Dutch class (B1 level). It meets every Monday and Wednesday night for three hours. For some reason I am not that nervous about it, and I’m not sure why. But there’s still at least 4 more hours to get nervous!
A few weekends ago Marco and I went to Hema to work on and discuss wedding details. We were pleased to see that Hema again sells the white chocolate cranberry cookies (and amusingly labels them as “Amerikaanse koekje”, or American cookie). Probably because they are jumbo sized!
As the cookies are made fresh by Hema (I presume) they are nice and soft. They are also very delicious with black coffee…
And now I want another one.
Tonight Marco, Roger and I went to Sumo, a sushi and grill restaurant, one of our frequent places to eat. But this time we went to celebrate Roger’s awesome grades on two exams he was doing for his work. Two 9/10s! I think he only needed a 6 or 7 to pass… but of course he went above and beyond and studied his brains out. đ Go Roger!
Sake and chopsticks
This was also the first time that I ditched my practice chopsticks (oefenstokjes, you can see a random image of them here). The practice chopsticks are held together with a small bundle of rolled paper at the top which causes the ends of the chopsticks to have a bit of spring or bounce to them. Simply squeeze them together and you are good to go for grabbing something.
But nope – this time I forgot to ask for oefenstokjes and decided to shrug and try it with normal chopsticks. It wasn’t that hard, but I admit that I stared quite closely at Marco and Roger’s hands to see the placement of their fingers and try to copy them. It mostly worked!
At work a coworker offered me mint tea. With fresh leaves! It is the first time I have ever had it. It seems to be really popular in this country – not something I had seen before in America though I probably didn’t go to the right places.
The wedding stuff is going along well for Marco and I, although the stress has started to hit with trying to make the invitations out and get them sent to the printer. But it’s almost done…
Yesterday I went with Marco’s mother for her birthday to Popcatepetl (nickname Popo, since they are smart enough to realize no sane person can pronounce that). I first blogged about the restaurant last year, but it seems like the service has been getting worse since then. This is my third time there since I have moved to the Netherlands and usually the problem is the service.
Granted, it was kind of busy for a Tuesday night and we chose to sit outside on the patio (with the ants, but that’s another story!) but it was still a bit too annoying for us. For instance, a couple came in about 5 minutes after us, and managed to get their food before we even ordered. Yeesh! The only thing we didn’t have to flag someone down for was the drinks when we first arrived. Total time at the restaurant was about 2 hours, 15 minutes, and we didn’t wait too long after finishing the meal to ask for the check.
The food was decent, though. Not spectacular, but decent. I had the nachos with chicken and she had the “Popcatepetl ensalada”, with a lot of different items: salad, bacon, chicken, kidney beans, olives, corn, avocado, a filled jalapeño pepper and some paprika.
chicken nachos (chicken is hidden in the middle, but there was enough)
Popocatepetl Ensalada
We both had a lot of leftover items on our plates that we had no interest in eating, unfortunately.
Another food related post… I know, I know! But this one is… just, sweet.
Here’s a slice of mocha cake from Bakkerij Toebast. Even the design of the plastic surrounding the slice of cake was quite well thought out. And yes, it tasted just as good as it looked…
I was actually a bit amused by the Mocca name plate on top, just in case you forget the flavor. I had a choice of this or apple pie. While I have grown a bit more fond of apple pie since I moved to the Netherlands (especially if the cake is put in the fridge for a bit to let the apples inside chill a bit) this choice was a no brainer. Lekker!
I had a meeting at the neighborhood library today. There was also Turkish pizza available –Â lekker! (yum). The pizza was from Restaurant Meydan in the Hobbemaplein.
The reason it is called pizza is because it resembles a pizza before you wrap it up. Mine was half of the pizza. Each box seems to contain three or four dough bases (with a thin sheet in between) so you do get a fair amount per box.
It comes with thin dough and a thin layer of meat. You can add knoflooksaus (white garlic sauce), a bit of salad (I should have added more!) and sambal (the red sauce). I definitely should have added more sambal, as it is nice and spicy. Though it was a bit messy, as it kept dripping out the end that I wasn’t holding. I had a napkin underneath on the table but it soaked right through. Easy to wipe up though.
Lekker!
Here’s what Marco decided to bake today. Cinnamon rolls!
If you’re Roger, you should be happy since that means you get to eat some during coffee tonight!
Yesterday, Marco, Roger and I ordered dinner from Warung Mini. Marco had to be on pseudo stand-by for his work for 13ish hours, which turned out to be even more annoying than he could have imagined (though it all worked out) so he definitely didn’t want to think too much about what was for dinner.
It was my third time ordering from this restaurant but my first time trying there apparently world famous (!) saoto soup, which has chicken, egg, bean sprouts, vermicelli noodles and potato bits. The bean sprouts are actually the most interesting addition to the soup since it does give it a bit of a crunchy texture.
Oh, and we mustn’t forget about all of the spices – halfway through the soup it felt like the bottom of my throat was on fire, although my mouth was fine. I went through a lot of water!
Dessert was bakabana – bakked banana. It was pretty good (even cold) but alas, I did not get a picture this time!
Last night Marco, his mother and I went to La Lanterna in The Hague, for an appetizer, entree, and dessert. His mother and I both had minestrone soup, while Marco went for “inferno soup”, so named for its spiciness. (Helaas [unfortunately], the soup wasn’t an inferno!)
For dinner, I had pizza primavera, with tomato, cheese, ham, salami, mushrooms, and green/red peppers. I just had to take a picture of it because it was so colorful…
My tastes lean a bit more towards thick pizzas (as I love the dough), but for a thin pizza this was great.
And then there was my dessert:
Yum! So sour. You have before you a lemon which has been hollowed out. They stuffed lemon ice cream inside, placed a bit of whipped cream on top, and then replaced the “top” to make it look like a hat.
Marco’s mother’s dessert. More ice cream!
Marco’s dessert. Even before you took a bite, you were definitely drawn in by the plate. The bottom of the plate had a thin layer of glass covering the real bottom of the plate, with a tiny bit of space in between. This caused nifty looking shadows with all of the little pieces they threw around the dessert itself.
All of the dessert portions were big. Of course, I kept scraping on the inside of the lemon searching for more ice cream, but had to stop when I realized I was really just eating the innards of the lemon!
Life in the Hague 