Some Final Pics from Our Holland Visit

We are home after all our summer travels! So I guess it's time to finally post some (not so recent) pictures from our visit to Holland. Pictured above: a palpable hue of anticipation of the birthday of Poppa...



... and here the Mohn cake Ellen made for him (and us)! You can find more pictures of the birthday on Ellen's blog.

Then, for old times' sake (and great food), we went to Snackbar Bird in Amsterdam:





Still as good as we remember!

Also, Vennington in the Prinsenstraat:



Still famous for their BLT sandwiches and fruit shakes, and rightly so.

Soon: a few photos from the Zillertal. For a more extensive report look at Ellen and Christiaan's Bergvakanties blog. The first four posts are up, and can be found here, here, here and here.

Hard Work

We've finished giving our final exams, and there are huge piles of paper waiting for us to grade them. A also has a (part of a) grant proposal to write. But we are expecting guests! Time to get the house in order.

Last weekend, we bought a leaf blower and sucker, since it turns out our street is named after a very leafy  tree for a reason. This week, we bought a lawnmower as well.

F is really taking to working in the garden. This morning, he worked his hands to a pulp chopping wood for the fire place, reporting that "It is like golf, but more fun!"

 In the mean time, A assembled the dining room furniture, and our guest room is ready too! (It is most unfortunate that we did not buy our own bed yet, so our guests will be more comfortable than we are).

We don't have time or energy to cook, but fortunately Costco sells really good frozen pizza, hummus, mini quiches etc.

The last serious cooking we did was last weekend, when we made this:

 

Singapore!

I landed in Singapore about 4 hours ago, and I am loving it!

I've probably broken a dozen laws already (is there a law against jaywalking, because I seem to be the only one doing it?!), but this place does not seem half as uptight as I thought it might be.

My taxi driver honked and swore at another driver who made a right turn from the left-turn-lane, and then threatened to throw an egg at her. He had a plastic bag filled with raw eggs hanging from his steering wheel just for that purpose! (Unfortunately, the latter is not quite true, but it is a good story.)


My hotel for tonight is in Little India. Tomorrow, I am moving to Orchard Road, which is apparently filled with high-end shopping malls, but today, I am still paying for my hotel myself, so I am in a lively but somewhat seedier area.


At the recommendation of Damla, I had dinner at Banana Leaf Apolo. It was right across from this little field.
It was a great restaurant with long wooden tables shared by different groups of customers. The people next to me on the left were Chinese, and on the right were Indian.


Unfortunately, our old camera refuses to focus (and also, I am not Frans), so the photo really sucks. The food, however, was awesome! I ordered way too much, and had fish curry (slightly sour, very very delicious) and chicken masala (also extremely good, with really beautiful spices).


I tried to use lime juice to encourage my stomach to digest faster, but to no avail, and I only managed to finish about two-thirds of the food.

A nice stroll around Little India followed dinner, and now I am back in my windowless hotel room, getting ready to go to bed.

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:

Curry

We took James' eggplant curry recipe and ran with it.

Chicken and Sweet Potato Curry

... or the need for better asian spices.

Eggplant Curry

James Oseland's recipes rule! This curry was awesome!

Very Thai

We had Thai food in Beijing today. It didn't disappoint, in fact it was Very Thai, just as the name of the restaurant promised.

For the interested reader: we had seafood salad, green papaya salad (of course!), morning glory with shrimp paste, tom yum kung, panang curry with beef and red curry fish.

Lunch at some place that served some curry

Beef Curry

With spinach and home smoked... oh wait, no bacon.

Goat

Looks nice, tastes pretty aweful. Who knew goat had to cook for more than 1 and a half hours to become edible?

Fish Curry

Here's the fish:And this is the curry:

Viola! Fish Curry!