Food

Anyone up for some satay? (Or: Tasty Christmas gifts)

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Niki

Roger gave Marco a recipe book for Christmas: Indostok (bol.com, in Dutch). The title combines two words, “indo” and “stok” (stok=stick). The book includes many, many different satay recipes from Vanja van der Leeden.

Another skillfully posed photo by Marco

Satay (or saté in Dutch) was one of the few Dutch meals we made in Chicago for relatives. We brought along spices to make the accompanying peanut sauce (pindasaus) and then cooked and skewered some chicken. We also brought along a small jar of acar (atjar in Dutch – I had to look up how to say it in English, even), which is a vegetable pickle dish.

For me, the sourer the atjar is, the better. Consider this: one of my favorite random side dishes is cucumber with white wine vinegar, a bit of lemon juice and hot sauce. My mouth is puckering just thinking about it…

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Indian Dahl and naan bread (Or: Friday meal from FOAM)

Posted on January 8, 2021 by Niki

Tonight Marco and I enjoyed a meal of Indian Dahl and naan bread from the FOAM restaurant in The Hague – yum yum yum:

It was a tasty meal for a Friday evening and a great way to bring in the weekend. Generally they post their Friday FOAM @ Home offerings on their Facebook page.

In other (expected) news: Rutte: Lockdown extension decision to come on Tuesday from nltimes.nl. Spoiler: There is no way they will not extend the lockdown (where all non-essential stores are closed) due to the number of corona cases we have currently.

Oh well. At least we can enjoy the weekend in the meantime!

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Sushimex (Or: A new restaurant for those who can’t decide)

Posted on January 5, 2021 by Niki

Do you want sushi? Do you want Mexican food?

If you answered “both”, why not try the new restaurant in The Hague’s city centre? Sushimex (indebuurt.nl, in Dutch) opened last month on the Korte Poten. The menu at thuisbezorgd.nl (in English) lists poké bowls, temaki, burritos, nachos, spring rolls, mozzarella sticks… it’s so crazy that I might just be interested.

The Dutch ministry of health has released their vacation plan:

Living in the Netherlands? Find out when you can get vaccinated against Covid-19, and where from nltimes.nl. Spoiler: As a healthy adult under the age of 60, I have to wait a while. The vaccination location in The Hague is actually at the parking lot of the ADO Den Haag football stadium (adodenhaag.nl, in Dutch), although I’m not sure if other locations will be available in our area later in the year.

It’s possible to get to the stadium with public transportation (and a 10 minute walk) or by car, at least. I know that because a group of us went to an ADO Den Haag game back in October 2017:

Start of the ADO Den Haag game, back in 2017. The opponent was Rotterdam Sparta. Back when crowds were allowed…
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New beginnings (Or: A lazy start to 2021)

Posted on January 2, 2021 by Niki

The perfect kind of lazy – we got up after 10:00. That doesn’t happen too often, so when it does it is nice.

Here is a photo which sums up the new world we live in. It was taken outside of a McDonald’s in Utrecht:

Thuisbezorgd (Translated as something like ‘Delivered to your house’) is similar to GrubHub or UberEats in America. That was the line of delivers waiting to pick up their orders to bring to customers. Just from McDonald’s! Check out this article in Dutch from nos.nl – 1 januari was drukste dag ooit voor Thuisbezorgd – which says that yesterday was the busiest day for Thuisbezorgd ever. The NOS article also has a picture of that McDonald’s in Utrecht, showing an even longer line.

And since we all need a bit of cute, here is a video of two lion cubs going outside for the first time this week (at a zoo in Amersfoort):

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Good start to the New Year (Or: Homemade oliebollen)

Posted on January 1, 2021 by Niki

Happy New Year! Yesterday morning Marco and I made oliebollen (Wikipedia) to bring Roger’s. Plain oliebollen for me and oliebollen with raisins for Marco and Roger. Yummy!

Thanks to the fireworks ban in the Netherlands, New Year’s Eve was a bit quieter than normal, although there were still a a lot of fireworks right before midnight and for a half hour or so afterwards. Most likely people had an old stash lying around that they hadn’t used last year – or they bought fireworks illegally.

There were still some issues, of course. In nearby Rijswijk, someone set a camper on fire. The only problem? There were gas tanks inside. Several people catch fire after blowing up a caravan from nltimes.nl. (On the one hand, warning: you will see people on fire. On the other hand, no one turned up in the hospital and the victims were long gone by the time the police arrived, so it seems their injuries were minor. If you can call being on fire minor.)

Firework ban widely ignored, but police report fewer incidents during New Year festivities from dutchnews.nl.

However, the Dutch Health ministry did report two thirds less dust or particles in the air last night compared with last year so most people obeyed the ban on fireworks. See also this article from nos.nl in Dutch. Local hospitals were also thankful that the evening was relatively calm: Ziekenhuizen dankbaar voor rustige jaarwisseling: ‘Hele andere nacht’ (from omroepwest.nl in Dutch).

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Christmas men made of bread? (Or: More breakfast fun)

Posted on December 30, 2020 by Niki

Here is another breakfast item Marco bought at the local supermarket, Albert Heijn:

We decided to be funny and bake some bacon as well. That way they would have a scarf to keep their necks warm. What do you think? This bread was not that much different from the bread shaped like a Christmas tree we had earlier in the week. (Which, if I must admit, was a bit tastier. These weren’t bad, though.)

And yay, I have a day off tomorrow! I am quite looking forward to sleeping in. And later in the day Marco and I will be going to Roger’s for New Year’s Eve. It is hard to believe I haven’t been to his place since March (!).

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Christmas trees made of bread (Or: Breakfast time)

Posted on December 28, 2020 by Niki

On the second day of Christmas (December 26), Marco and I had a Christmas tree for breakfast:

A Christmas tree made of bread, that is! Marco found it at Albert Heijn, one of the local grocery stores. We ate it with the usual hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles) and speculoos paste.

In other news: you can legally turn in fireworks today and tomorrow in The Hague (omroepwest.nl, article in Dutch). Today 207 kilos (457 pounds) was turned in. You can turn in up to 25 kilos of fireworks, even fireworks that are usually in the ‘illegal category’, without being fined.

The reason the city is organizing this is because it is illegal to possess fireworks outside of the few days around the New Year’s Eve holiday (those are also the only days you can legally possess fireworks). This year The Hague said that setting off fireworks would be illegal to keep hospital visits low.

You don’t legally have a reason to have them in your house and you can’t legally set them off, so unless you want to illegally store them for a year, turning them in now is your best option.

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Lost chances (Or: Coupon for Restaurant SET in The Hague)

Posted on December 21, 2020 by Niki

Back when the first wave started in the spring, Marco, Roger and I ordered bento box take out from Restaurant SET here in The Hague. It was yummmmmy. We received two €10 coupons for use later in 2020:

It was an unexpected surprise! The coupons are valid for dine-in (everything except High Tea) through 31 December 2020.

Hmph. 31 December 2020? Opps. I guess we waited a bit too long there, since restaurants aren’t allowed to be open for dine-in at the moment. Regardless, the branches in The Hague and Rotterdam are completely closed anyway, with a potential date of reopening set for 19 January, if the lockdown ends on that date as scheduled.

Here is a look at the ice cream I ordered last year for my birthday:

Tell me you don’t think that is the cutest thing ever.

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Christmas menus (Or: Delivery and take out are all the rage)

Posted on December 10, 2020 by Niki

The good thing about the Netherlands in comparison to America is that you get two days of Christmas (25th and 26th) instead of just one. That means two days of Christmas meals. For one of the days we are planning on ordering from FOAM here in The Hague again. On the other day we will probably make something ourselves.

I did see an advertisement on indebuurt.nl that Food Hall MingleMush is offering their own Christmas menu (meat or vegetarian, 60 euros for two persons). They label it as a “around-the-world trip” of food since they have so many different restaurants adding food into that one box. The two menus are available at this link in English (getalacarte.com). It is tempting, and now I’m wondering if we can order it for the 22nd so that we aren’t completely stuffed anymore by the time Christmas rolls around. Hmmm. We haven’t been to MingleMush since before the corona crisis started, so it would be nice to see it again.

In other news: Non-EU citizens must present negative Covid tests at Dutch borders from Tuesday from nltimes.nl. I wasn’t aware that this rule was coming, although it doesn’t affect me personally. Most of the articles I have seen talk about the effect this will have on UK citizens, since they will no longer be EU citizens from January 1st.

And because we can always use a 1 minute video of lion cubs:

These two female lion cubs were born a few weeks ago at the zoo in Amersfoort. Cute.

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Beef stew (Or: A blast from the past)

Posted on December 7, 2020 by Niki

Marco and I make beef stew in our slow cooker about once a year. The beef stew recipe we used this time was from Allrecipes. I like any recipe that only has two steps, don’t you? This time we did it on high setting (4-6 hours) because I had zero interest in stepping out of my nice warm bed before 09:00. In the end it cooked about 5 hours, with the last 30-45 minutes on medium instead of high.

The beef was so tender you could easily pull it apart with a fork. And as you can tell I think potatoes are the second hero of the dish, so I definitely made sure I had a lot of those. Finally, the bread in the background is from Albert Heijn and is their Liefde & Passie spelt brood (Love & Passion spelt bread – a bit hardier to help with the dipping).

The nostalgia is high with this dish. I loved eating this in the winter as a kid. This and chili are Marco and I’s favorite slow cooker dishes. Third place for me is probably pulled chicken.

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