Posts Tagged With: Drinks

Weird purchases (Or: Who wants flaming hot Mac’n cheese?)

Here are some photos of possible weird things to purchase here in The Hague:

Above: Flaming hot Cheetos Mac’n Cheese from Kelly’s expat shopping. I have heard of combinations, but this might take the cake. It is interesting that it has a different pasta shape than mac’n cheese normally does (more fusilli-like). I am sure this version will stain your lips red…

Not quite an energy drink. They are so full of sugar they will probably make you crash right away. These “candy drinks” were spotted at the local Action not far from The Hague Central Station. They are apparently popular, as there weren’t many left.

Okay, a bag of Oreo crumbs could be very useful indeed (make a bit of vanilla bean ice cream, mix these in–yummm). Perhaps one doesn’t need a 300g/10.5oz bag of crumbs but saying that sounds a bit like heresy…

Random news of the day: Dutch-themed ‘Holland Park’ to open in Spring near Berlin from brusselstimes.com. I don’t get the impression that this park will be a hit with Germans, but who knows.

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Random find at the Asian store (Or: Instant coffee with…wait, what?!)

Have you ever had instant coffee?

Sure, we all have.

But have you had instant coffee with added vitamin C and collagen for clear skin?

No, I didn’t think so. Although a Google search for collagen coffee does lead me to believe it is more popular than I am thinking… So if you have, leave a comment with how it tastes.

In other news, I just read that the annual New Year’s Eve bonfire is cancelled again this year (omroepwest.nl, in Dutch). Same with the local Christmas market, which was cancelled a few days ago (royalchristmasfair.nl, in English). It is what it is – although it will be weird once we get a “normal” holiday season again.

Eindhoven [a Dutch city] has a creepy announcement warning people to keep their distance from dutchreview.nl. Eindhoven has promised to turn down the sound and play the message less frequently – at the busiest times of the day it was every 15 minutes!

The Dutch are testing a weirdly cute robo-dog in Rotterdam Centraal [a train station], also from dutchreview.nl. Very cute, even if it is expensive, priced at €100,000. Yikes.

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Lunch by Little V (Or: Time to drool a bit)

Marco, Roger and I decided to have lunch by Little V over the weekend. Little V is a Vietnamese restaurant in The Hague’s city centre. Thanks to corona we’ve only had takeout once, a temporary option they put in place when restaurants were forced to close last year. I forgot how much I missed the food!

Little V is well known for their cocktails, both alcohol and, in this case, non-alcoholic. Marco had a “spiced lemon and rose”, a spicy lemonade with rose petals, red peppers and spices. Roger had a “ginger breeze”, with fresh ginger, lychee juice and jasmine tea. I had a “Little T Mix”, a mix of ginger, lemongrass and jasmine tea. Yum.

Some of our appetizers were fish cakes (on the left) and chicken spring rolls (on the right). We were pleasantly surprised that even though the menu says that some items are two pieces, you can ask for three. No sharing necessary!

And our lunches (which sort of replaced our dinners as well). I had a delicious, delicious, delicious bánh mì sandwich with chicken. It was spicy, packed with red peppers, but also sour, packed with pickled vegetables. It really hit the spot – I am a huge fan of spicy sourness. The Vietnamese bread itself was also perfect. As usual, my only alternation was removing some of the coriander stems (but keeping the coriander leaves themselves).

Roger’s dish on the left was Bun Bo Xao, with beef tenderloin, while Marco had Bun Heo, with roasted pork belly. Both also received rave reviews from the boys.

I am drooling a bit thinking about the next time I can order that sandwich again. Good stuff!

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Hot chocolate (Or: The case of the disappearing cookie)

Yesterday Marco, Roger and I made a cup of hot chocolate before sending Roger off back into the cold. Hot chocolate, whipped cream, chocolate powder, and a piece of speculaas cookie (Albert Heijn link to the cookie).

Keep your eye on that cookie…

… by the time Marco noticed, it was gone. Marco did say the bottom of his hot chocolate did taste rather speculaas-y, though.

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Work “goodbye parties” (Or: Corona time addition)

One of Marco’s coworkers is leaving, so Marco’s company has scheduled a virtual goodbye party later this week. But, it isn’t just any goodbye party – each participant received a package in the mail today to give the person a “good send off” during the virtual party:

That’s right, a nachos and beer package! The nacho chips, potato chips and salsa are all Spanish products (or are labeled as such) while you have two Dutch beers from Jopen, a brewery in Haarlem. Apparently there is also an aioli dip, but I didn’t find that until after taking this photo. All the straw underneath reminds me of the leg lamp unboxing from A Christmas Story (link to YouTube).

The gift package itself comes from charles.nl.

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Fuze tea (Or: Free treats in the city centre)

Today Marco visited the city centre to do a bit of shopping. Lucky guy had the day off! But he did take a photo for me (thank you). It turns out he found a fuze tea stand handing out free samples:

He chose the blueberry jasmine flavor and remarked about how they tried to make the giveaway corona proof. Normally it’s a chaotic group of people standing around, cutting in line, hoping to get in and out quickly. But today they had a line (see above) with self-service – you reach into the display case and grab your own tea. Which had the nice benefit that they don’t open the drink and then hand it to you to drink right away.

Today’s weather in short: sudden buckets of rain that fall onto your head without warning, lasting about 5-10 minutes, while a blue sky shines mockingly above you. And cold weather. Much colder. Apparently we went from an extreme heat wave to lower-than-average temperatures. Hmph.

Have a good weekend everyone!

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Today’s special guest star (Or: The sun)

As you know the Netherlands is experiencing a bit of a heat wave this week. This is the first one of the year (the other two times it was warm it only lasted a day or two).

Here’s a look at all of the sunscreen and similar products by Etos, which is a drug store like Walgreens or Rite Aid in America. No food products or prescriptions, though.

That is a lot of sunscreen! But a lot of people are heading to the beach this week (nltimes.nl), so it is needed.

Marco made some lovely sour lemonade yesterday. Lots of lemon slices, lemon juice and water. Yum yum yum. Not to be confused with the Dutch “limonade” which is water with concentrated syrup. I actually had no idea until I read a post from another Dutch blog, Invading Holland, where the writer accidentally orders a limonade. And while I’m here, I’ll also link to his post from yesterday entitled What would it take to melt hagelslag? Hagelslag being the Dutch chocolate sprinkles that are usually put onto buttered bread.

Now I want some chocolate…

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Terrace of green (Or: Grand Café at the Haagse Bluf)

Today’s photo is from the terrace at the Grand Café at the Haagse Bluf, where some colleagues and I had some socially distanced drinks recently.

It’s not the best photo in the world, but I didn’t want to get anyone in the photo. The restaurant/terrace is actually above the Haagse Bluf shopping area, so you’re looking down into it. It’s a pretty nice terrace and larger than you would expect considering its location in the city centre. Everywhere you look you see green – bushes, plants, wall vines, you name it.

Check out this article I read this morning from The Guardian: ‘We were the luckiest people in the world’: our month on the last lockdown cruise. Spoiler: no one gets corona on this cruise ship and the supplies don’t run out, so it’s more about how people spend their time on the ship, especially when some ports on their agenda do not allow them to dock. It is about how the last remaining group of passengers begin to band together to find news ways to pass the time.

For the most part it is a relaxing atmosphere, somewhat free of the pandemic raging around them. Example: a few days before they finally docked, they were reminded they should get their hair cut or their nails done on the ship, because who knows when they would be able to do so once they were back on dry land. Of course, the pandemic is still there, a slight tinge to everything going on around them on the ship. But it’s also outside of their world, for a time.

Anyway, I enjoyed the read. Have a good Saturday, everyone!

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No corona here (Or: Sign outside a bar)

Check out the sign that I spotted outside a local bar:

Perhaps I should have stopped for a craft beer. Sounds good!

(What’s with the weird lining in the word ‘here’ though? The rest of the words only have one line.)

In other news… did you know we live in a banana republic now?

You can click the link in the Regio15 tweet to see the article in Dutch, but the general summary is: some people are still not happy that the Viruswaanzin demonstrations were banned two weekends in a row, so they went to the Paleis van Justitie (Justice Palace) and left bananas to signify we now live in a banana republic.

So yeah. I guess I need to update my address now.

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Beer and chicken (Or: Zwarte Ruiter in The Hague)

Today Marco and I went to the Zwarte Ruiter in The Hague. It is one of the bar/restaurants on the Grote Markt. Since I took a vacation day today we were able to go a bit earlier in the day when it wasn’t too busy yet.

My beer (the Blurred lines on the left) was definitely fruity! It had citrus, passion fruit, peach, pineapple and mango.

In other news:

  • Do you remember the country-wide issue with the emergency number 112 last year? They released a report this week about what happened and the unique set of circumstances that made it even worse. You can read about it in English at nltimes.nl or in Dutch at nos.nl. One of the worst mistakes? They sent an NL-Alert to everyone which said the police were contactable on WhatsApp via <phone_number>. That phone number was incorrect; it was actually a number for the tip line by De Telegraaf, a Dutch newspaper. Yikes!
  • Van der Sar: play big Eredivisie games in second half of season from dutchnews.nl. It’s a good article if you’re into football/soccer – it talks about moving the big matches to after the winter break to adjust for a lack of home advantage, since stadiums will not have fans right away.
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