Newport News Fall Festival

This weekend there was a fall festival of folklife in Newport News! And you know us, we always follow any crowd...

... and are always in for some cultural immersion. Case in point: we did not know the NRA was so cute.



Nor did we know that rednecks make awesome fries: we ate this local delicacy called redneck fries, which featured melted cheese and barbecued pork.

Sometimes I am just at a loss for words.



Seriously at a loss.



Anyway, lots of interesting arts and crap, and fried foodz to enjoy.



And even a ventriloquist with jokes that were older than Methuselah.

Conclusion: we have not fully completed our integration process here yet.

Five Guys One Cup

I love the fries at Five Guys!

Richmond Foodz

Richmond is supposed to have good foodz. We did not find it yet.



Still we enjoyed this restaurant's home cooking.

Genießen geblasen!

It's another beautiful spring here, so, despite the cold, we went biking this weekend. Because our favorite little restaurant along the way to Blieskastel has closed for unknown reasons, we now had to make do with the sunny terrace of the Waldhaus.





A made the right choice by ordering the Saumagen and Leberknödel.



The Schnitzel and fries was okay too.

Das war wieder genießen geblasen!

Fries and Chicken

Chicken and Fries:

And today, as an added bonus: a sandwich with a zesty chicken salad.

Fries!

And mayonnaise:

And That Concludes Our Visit

So it's goodbye Tuncay (and Chad, of whom I neglected to take a photo --- oops!)...



... goodbye US...



... and hello Germany.

Healthy Lunch

Lunch time is not part of pasta week.

Hamburguesa

With blue cheese and arugula. And sweet and normal potato fries. And mayonnaise. Yum.

Moules Frites

We realized that it's Septemberrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr already.

Biking

Yesterday we went biking again. We started with a hearty brunch, consisting of a real German specialty: Curry wurst. This consists of sausage (of virtually any kind), with a sauce of ketchup and curry powder, dusted with more curry powder. A very misunderrecognized flavor in any cuisine, but the German: powdery.



We had beer along the way. Anke was so smart as to take the train at some point, but I stupidly soldiered on. I finally got home at around 8, and was not really able to bike, walk or even move my neck or shoulders. Anke somehow knew this was coming and had already prepared a wonderful quiche.

Frietjes!

Back in Saarbrucken, we immediately stopped at the healthiest looking snack shop we could find.



Falafel and fries with mayonnaise. Yum.

Fries

No More Ms. Holiday Gal

Getting rid of the back log, and getting ready for research of the cutting edge kind.



Apologies for the rather awful picture quality, but these amuses-bouche were too good to not post them. We had an amazing 4 course meal at De Moerbei in Warmond with Liesbeth. Excellent food! Even though Liesbeth treated us, we had a peak at the bill, and I think it will be very hard to find a better deal than this in the Netherlands. Highly recommended!



We then went to Amsterdam, where we stayed in Wim & Rietje's house. They actually weren't there for most of the time we were there, so we had the opportunity to see whether we were still able to cook. We made this Normandy Chicken for Willem.



And the next day we had veal liver with potatoes and spinach. Mission "Cooking with the Oars that We Have" accomplished.



Next up: saying "Auf Wiedersehen" to Ellen and Christiaan by preparing this lime marinated chicken with Mediterranean bread for them (third Cordon Bleu recipes in a row!). I think they did not really expect our bread to rise, so it was a pleasant surprise that this did not come out too badly.



And then the moment was really there: we said goodbye to the Netherlands, picked up our rental car and drove to our new homeland, Germany. As soon as we entered Belgium we stopped to have a local specialty: patatje stoofvlees (fries with stew). The "frietkot" that we visited turned out to be a little on the raunchy side (smelly, the stew had way too much cloves and the serving lady was a little bitchy --- but that is kind of normal in Belgium for Dutch people I think), so we were happy to drive on to Germany.

Homemade foodz

After too much meat and drink this weekend, we decided to make our own dinner on Sunday:



Moroccan ratatouille (eggplant, peppers, courgette, beans, onion, garlic, tomato, cumin, turmeric and cinnamon) and fried potatoes (pictured in the background, even though they may have been even awesomer than the ratatoille).

Today, we did ate the leftover ratatouille, as well as leftover stew, as well as some freshly made fries.



Our life may suck at the moment, our food does not.

Team Franke scores!!! China still way ahead...

We are back on the internetz!

We have been suffering from slow connectivity for a while, and recently it became so bad that A had no connectivity at all, and F had to renew his IP every 5 minutes or so. We were worried that the Great Firewall bastards were onto the fact that we almost exclusively visit the interwebz that are on the other side of their leaky wall, and that maybe this was part of a targeted campaign.

Yes, we suffer from delusions of greatness and paranoia.

The China Unicom people were not very helpful (how could we expect anything else) and told us we did not have a problem. When that did not work, they told us it was our problem, not their problem.

Somehow, we still convinced them to send someone over with a new modem/router (our third one in just 6 months -- hurray for quality). And lo and behold, the internetz opened its jade gate for us!

Intoxicated by this unexpected success, F called the water workers for the 100th time in the past fortnight. This morning, they had concluded there was no problem -- they arrived after we had ran the water for 30 minutes (this turns out to be sufficient to get it to turn hot), and since nobody else complained in the last two days, it was clear that we were confused and there was no problem.
This afternoon, the worker turned on the tap, and after waiting 30 seconds, the water turned lukewarm. "可以" was his reponse (meaning "it is OK"). Right. Who doesn't love showers that are colder than your own pee.
Then the worker found the problem, after disappearing for 30 minutes: who can expect hot water at this hour of the day?! We must have been confused.

To be continued...

Also, we ate a hamburger.

Western Food Weekend

This weekend we ate no Chinese food whatsoever. On Saturday we went to The Tree for Belgian fries, bitterballen and steak tartare with more fries. Here is a tacky picture of the Belgian fries with mayonnaise:



After this late lunch, we headed to White Nights, a Russian restaurant. Obligatory borscht:



Eggplant:



Chef salad, which was nice and crunchy because of small pieces of bacon:



Then we skipped the main course, and went directly to the desserts, milk pancakes and Russian cake:





The milk pancakes really consisted of milk that was cooked until it was solid-ish, and then deep fried.

On Sunday we went to Cafe Konstanz, to indulge in Muesli, yoghurt, Flammenkuchen and Weihenstephan. For dinner we completed our tour of European countries, and went to Morel, a Belgian restaurant, where we ate a crayfish bisque, mussels and fries, beef stew and finished with a waffle with cherries and whipped cream.

Obviously, we are planning to go hiking next weekend.