Chicken et al.

Apropos of nothing, check out this "funfair" in North-Korea.

Most important meal of the week

I just found out that we had an extra hour this morning. This explains how I was able to clean the oven, cook breakfast, eat breakfast, and waste lots of time on the internetz, all before noon.

Breakfast was great btw, and easy to make: fry some leeks in lots of butter until soft, add smoked trout and some cream, leave to cool. Put in ramekins, break egg on top, add some cream and chives, and put in the (clean) oven in a bowl of water at 170 Centigrade for 20 minutes.

This Week's Food

We had another week of great foodz. First of all: Blanquette de Veau.



We put a few too many fava beans in this otherwise not too bad pasta.



Extremely simple and tasty: pasta diavola.



Blackeyed peas and sucuk from one of the Turkish store in Saarbrücken.



And here are two of our favorite Chinese dishes (that we can make ourselves) again: five spice pork and yu xiang qiezi.

Time for Therapy

I thought I'd try another one of those love-hate posts, since it has been a bit of a challenge again to get used to being back in Saarbrücken.

I hate/love living in Saarbrücken, because:

hate: the neighbor's dog that is out in the yard barking all day
love: the fact that the only other noise we hear is the birds

hate: everybody has a scowl on their face
love: streets are quiet, so you don't have to see that many people

hate: we can't afford a cleaning lady
love: the water and air are very clean, so things don't get dirty after just one day like in Beijing

hate: Saarbrücken is the most boring town on earth and cultural offerings are non-existent
love(?): it must be good for our research output if we get so bored each Sunday that we decide to do some research

hate: most restaurants in Saarbrücken serve mediocre food, and the service is awful and unfriendly
love: we get to do all our grocery shopping in France, which is awesome!

hate: everything is SOOOOO slow -- one month for getting a phone connection, four weeks for getting the dishwasher repaired, one week for getting our heating fixed
love: you may have to wait for ages before a German does something, but when he does, he does it really well

hate: my employer pretends to care about women's careers, but refuses to put any effort into helping the rest of the family
love: my employer gave me a big bag of money for travel

hate: we cannot afford a car
love: we get loads of exercise on our bikes, and the bike trails in Saarland are beautiful

hate: the general unfriendliness of people (yes, I know I already said this more or less)
love: I found a great yoga teacher whose knitting projects put a smile on my face

hate: the lack of imagination of everyone who is not my yoga teacher -- we see all the same ad campaigns, events, and even the exact same posters advertising these events, reappearing from last year
love: we took our bikes on a train to Pfalz yesterday and biked to Königsbach where we sat in a huge shed at a long table with loads of pensioners and drank new wine

hate: the winter is ridiculously dark and depressing
love: our balcony is right next to the Kaninchenberg and is a really lovely spot to hang out in summer

hate: sausage
love: sausage

Home Biking

Yesterday we decided to check out some local wineries (on the German Weinstraße), and were pleasantly surprised! Not only was the weather beautiful, but some of the wineries were lively (with senior citizens in RVs) and had some decent wines as well! We especially liked the winery in Königsbach, where we had fresh wine and a good chardonnay.





Here is a somewhat less lively winery, which had a soup that made A smile.





We ended up in Bad Durkheim, where we had local specialties for dinner.



Surprisingly one of the specialties was sausages!

Home Foodz

Suddenly we had to cook again. We improvised with this salmon that we found in our freezer.



And the other day we made endives.

Some Final Pics from Amsterdam

A went to a stock sale twice, during our visit, and bought more clothes than she had in the previous 3 years. Sadly, she did not buy this wonderful bear suit, however, but I managed to take a picture of her wearing it so you would not miss it!

Two more pics from the cellphone:





Great African food in restaurant Abysinnia. I don't know what happened to the colors. It really looked quite appetizing in real life, not like... Let me stop right there.

Almost as good as breakfast at Tuncay's sister's

On our last day in Amsterdam, we took our rental bikes for a final spin (not that easy, considering that the Amsterdam marathon was blocking our every move) and went for lunch at Köşebaşı, recommended by Ellen.









Everything was awesome, except that we're not quite sure why you'd have to pay 5.75 extra for take out.

More Pictures of Chinese Food in Amsterdam

For our penultimate lunch in Amsterdam we were joined by Ellen and Christiaan, who wanted Asian food that they can't get in Hilvarenbeek. We first sat down in Nam Kee, but their menu seem to consist mainly of Dutch-Chinese food. So we went back to Sichuan on the Warmoesstraat. It was even better than the week before.



These spicy dumplings are awesome.



The fire fish was great.



I was not too fond of their yu xiang qiezi. We also had the same pork as last time, which was again really good.

In case this blog post has you longing for more pictures of Chinese food in Amsterdam, you are in luck, as Ellen just blogged about this as well!

Wim & Rietje

After staying one week in Oegstgeest with Lies, we stayed another week in the Netherlands, this week with A's favorite aunt and uncle, Rietje and Wim.



This meant many opportunities for sitting down together (with optional additional guests that A invited) and having dinner.



Here are just some of the foods that we enjoyed:

Occupy Amsterdam

Chinese in Amsterdam

We were very pleased with this Chinese restaurant on the Warmoesstraat in Amsterdam called Mandarin Sichuan. We just ordered what the waitress recommended, which turned out to be great. As a starter we had spicy dumplings. The main courses consisted of cabbage (not pictured), fire fish (above) and some pork dish that we forgot the name of.

Pasta a la Mama

Even though Lies never made this before, we have christened this dish "Pasta a la Mama". She even went to the shop twice to get ripe avocados!

Leids Ontzet

Hutspot with beef rendang. (Thanks to this site for the suggestion.)

Spider Feasting on Ladybug

This spider makes a ladybug look tasty.

Kefta

We are staying in Oegstgeest with Lies this week. We are having all kinds of wonderful foodz, among which these great kefta!

Visiting Wolfert and Saskia

After a great concert yesterday in Rotterdam, we were taken home by the pianist of the group!



Ok, I have known him for many years. Still I think it's awesome!



Here are some photos of his family.