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SpiZe (Or: First time back in a restaurant)

Posted on September 10, 2020 by Niki

Well, Marco and I can add “went back to a restaurant” to our lists – on Sunday we met up with Roger and his mom to enjoy Thai food at the SpiZe restaurant. Yes, the Z is officially capitalized in their name.

I had Keng Massman: The menu description is: Tender sliced beef in Thai brown curry with coconut milk, potatoes, cashew nuts and onions. I can definitely recommend it.

Above is Marco’s dessert – spekkoek (Indonesian layer cake) with pandan ice cream. Yum!

And how was our first trip to a restaurant in these corona times? Not too bad, actually. The official rule in the Netherlands is that two or more households need to keep 1.5 meters distance from each other inside a restaurant. SpiZe requests that if you fall into this category you should send an email to them (versus placing an online reservation). That way they can seat the party at one of the tables by the window. These tables are definitely wider which helps you keep your distance.

Between each table was a glass shield, although I can’t remember if they were always there. There were also arrows on the floor telling you which direction you could walk in. Roger also received information and a QR code to scan so that he could register the group online and answer the obligatory health-related questions.

It’s not perfect, but it’s probably as close as you can get while still having a relatively normal restaurant experience. I’m definitely glad we went as the food and company was good.

Categories: Food, The Hague | Tags: , | Leave a comment

New use for the old PostNL location (Or: Another Amazing Oriental in The Hague)

Posted on September 9, 2020 by Niki

Yesterday while waiting for Marco I spotted a new addition to the grocery store scene: another Amazing Oriental location would be popping up in The Hague. This one was going to take over the space left vacant by PostNL:

Amazing Oriental is an Asian supermarket with over 20 locations in The Netherlands. At this point I can’t imagine doing without it. For instance, tonight we had wokgroente (vegetables in the wok) and the sauce we chose was ponzu sauce. It is a thin citrus-based Japanese sauce with a tart aftertaste. In this varation we added a bit of lime juice, sesame oil and soy sauce to spice things up a bit more. Yummmm.

The interesting thing about PostNL (the Dutch postal service) is that this location was literally the last remaining post office in the Netherlands (article from ad.nl in Dutch). It closed in November 2018. Unfortunately these days all PostNL locations are mini locations found in other, existing stores. It does make it easier to pick up packages, though. Speaking of which, I do have to go pick up a package tomorrow…

Categories: Everyday purchases, The Hague | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Aged cheese (Or: Jokes at a local Albert Heijn)

Posted on September 7, 2020 by Niki

Here’s a silly joke about cheese for you, spotted at the local grocery store, Albert Heijn:

In English: “Age isn’t important, unless you’re cheese!” Haha. Such a silly joke. But a bit of personality at a chain grocery store as big as Albert Heijn is always nice to see.

Here is an interesting article spotted at The Guardian: Slowly does it: chord changes in John Cage’s 639-year-long organ piece. Or check out the article in Dutch over at at nos.nl.

The name of the work is As Slow As Possible (ORGAN/ASLSP) and it started playing in 2001. According to the Wikipedia article, there have been 14 chord changes to date, with the previous chord lasting 6 years and 11 months. Chords are changed by adding or removing organ pipes.

The performance is scheduled to end on September 5, 2640… It’s hard to imagine that.

Categories: Daily Dutch living, Everyday purchases | Tags: , | Leave a comment

A bit of cuteness (Or: Practicing for his new job?)

Posted on September 4, 2020 by Niki

Today’s story can officially be labeled “cute” – a boy in a nearby town decided to pretend he was also a football referee. And get his exercise in at the same time, apparently.

The full article at omroepwest.nl (in Dutch) can be found here. In short, it talks about how the five year old ran down to the edge of the stands with about 10 minutes to go in the game and started following the movements of the referee. He even had a whistle he was using. His mother tried to get a photo with the referee after the game, however the referee hadn’t realized what was going on so he declined (he was busy with end-of-game activities after all).

After the referee went home he saw the viral video and realized what the mother had been asking. He then got in contact with the boy and brought along some football related items (a shirt as well as autographed red and yellow cards). And just to mention what kind of world we live in in 2020: the mother also mentioned that he politely took photos with her son at the door, rather than going inside. If you click on the article I linked to below the video you can see pictures of the items the boy received.

And, yes, the boy said he now wants to be a football referee when he grows up. Awwww.

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One holiday closer to the end of 2020 (Or: Halloween spotted)

Posted on September 3, 2020 by Niki

Okay. I’ll admit Halloween is not that big in the Netherlands. Each year you see one or two more stores with a small selection of items. And why am I thinking of Halloween you ask? Marco took some photos of a new Halloween display at the local Xenos:

Of course the best part of Halloween is the candy, but Marco said those display shelves were still empty and hadn’t been filled yet. Here’s hoping it happens soon!

And thanks to the Halloween display I’m transported back to our 2017 Disneyland Paris trip (Marco, Roger and I) where Frontierland was decorated in the style of the Pixar film Coco for Halloween:

Here’s a “Hmm. I never thought of that.” link for you:

Grounded beef? Airlines sell in-flight meals to earthbound travellers from theguardian.com. No joke. It even talks about the company GNS Nuts selling their first class mixed nuts to consumers at a discount. This company normally services American Airlines and United Airlines.

Oh, and the first commemorative coin featuring the Dutch King Willem-Alexander with a beard (nltimes.nl) has been released. I must admit I was shocked when I first saw him with a beard after last summer’s recess, but it’s hard to think of him without one now.

Categories: Holidays | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Brownies? Spinach? (Or: Commercials are weird)

Posted on September 2, 2020 by Niki

Let me paint a picture for you. In the Netherlands you will see this pattern frequently:

  • commercial #1 (normal length)
  • commercial #2 (normal length)
  • commercial #3 is the first commercial, reprised; shorter, about 5-7 seconds

I will admit that I have gotten used to this oddity. But a few days ago I found myself in a confusing situation.

  • commercial #1: Iglo spinach commercial
  • commercial #2: Dr. Oetker brownies commercial
  • commercial #3: a few more seconds of spinach
  • commercial #4: a few more seconds of brownies… and now I’m just feeling confused and slightly put off by the thought of making brownies. Ew.

Side note #1: I don’t think I liked spinach as a kid. But as an adult I like spinach, and enjoy having it every month or two. My favorite is deep freeze cream spinach, since it’s hard to clean fresh spinach.

Sie note #2: I have been in the Netherlands too long. I can easily type spinazie, the Dutch translation, but need to Google the English and triple check it to make sure I am spelling “spinach” right. Hmm. It still looks wrong.

Categories: Everyday purchases, Food | Tags: | Leave a comment

Let’s just skip to Christmas (Or: Kruidnoten spotted!)

Posted on August 31, 2020 by Niki

Marco spotted some kruidnoten (Wikipedia) by the local Albert Heijn today. If you’re keeping track, today is 31 August. Traditionally they appear in the grocery stories by 1 September, although we spotted them on 23 August back in 2018. So we seem to be on track this year.

Flavored kruidnoten are also available already. Caramel sea salt, white chocolate, truffle, stroopwafel…
And some speculaas

Marco was sweet and bought some gevulde speculaas (Albert Heijn recipe) for us. It is speculaas cookies filled with almond paste. Yum yum yum.

Of course you can’t blame anyone for wanting to skip to Christmas (and New Year’s, and 2021…) in these crazy times. Give me a shout when you put up your Christmas tree. Good riddance to 2020, I say!

Categories: Food, Holidays | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Finally (Or: Weekend!)

Posted on August 29, 2020 by Niki

I always joke that workdays go by really fast – but weekends go by even faster. I’m glad when they finally come around again, but just about the time I start to relax it’s time to start work again.

Today we made okonomiyaki (Japanese pancakes, you choose the filling) for a late lunch/early supper. Even though I was not the one julienning the carrots, I still managed to cut myself on the device while trying to clean it. Ow! Typing with a band-aid can be a bit difficult at times.

But I’ll still leave you with a feel good story – Pierre the rockhopper penguin, rehabilitating at a zoo in Perth. Apparently he passes his time in isolation by watching penguins on an iPad (from far away zoos like in Kansas City in the US and the a zoo in Scotland). He also spends his iPad time watching Pingu, a clay animation TV show about a family of penguins. Awww.

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Of course there’s a book for that (Or: The first corona novel is spotted)

Posted on August 24, 2020 by Niki

Here in the Netherlands we already have at least one corona related novel, a novel that I spotted earlier this month at the library. The theme is about two strangers, both writers, who meet each other at a vacation park and start to fall in love amidst the chaos of corona, social distancing, quarantine and hoarding. But I decided not to check it out, thinking that anything written that fast can’t be good. And I’m not a big fan of romance novels anyway, even if it’s only a side theme.

And you know what the crazy thing is? When I was looking up a review of Quarantaine I found one dated 15 May 2020 from Het Parool. 15 May! That’s just over two months, three at the very most, from idea to publication – that’s insane. The reviews over at bol.com (like Dutch Amazon) are a bit better, at least. It gets four stars over there. But still. Romance? No thanks.

If you read Dutch, I’ll recommend instead Het Station by Joris van Casteren. Joris spends some months at Amsterdam Centraal back in 2014 or so, gathering stories of conductors, security guards, passengers, cleaners, the homeless and more. It was quite interesting but that’s probably because I’m a fan of trains and trams and metros and… you get the idea.

Categories: Culture | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Thai workshop (Or: First time at FOAM – The Kitchen)

Posted on August 23, 2020 by Niki

Last week Sunday Marco and I went to FOAM – The Kitchen to attend a Thai cooking workshop. This was the first cooking workshop that I have attended in my life, so I was a bit nervous about how things would go. But it worked out nicely and we had a lot of fun!

Due to the corona measures there were less participants than normal, only 8 this time. Each participant was in charge of one recipe. Marco and I took the okonomiyaki recipe (a small Japanese pancake) and a pineapple with nuts recipe. Check out Marco cooking the okonomiyaki (yum):

The base is cabbage, with shredded carrots, spring onions, sesame seed, flax seed, fresh garlic, fresh ginger and more. It was also my first opportunity using a Magimix machine which shredded the carrots and cabbage in half a second. Crazy!

We also made a pineapple dish, topped with a paste consisting of: walnuts, red peppers, onions, sunflower seeds, tamari (a type of soy sauce, in this case gluten free) and more. The topping made it hearty, so it isn’t quite a dessert.

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Categories: Food, Marco&Niki | Tags: | Leave a comment

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