Mung bean belly

Jonny has been telling me for days that we needed to do another belly shot for posterity. Future generations might, however, be just a tad disappointed by the lack of a distinct pregnancy belly. At almost 23 weeks I can still conceal my belly. Which is getting a bit boring really, since I would love to flaunt it. Some more patience is needed I supose...

Or more food? Eating small amounts every two hours seem to work for me to keep any cravings at bay (and blood sugar levels steady I hope). So tonight's food choice of spinach, mung bean and lime casserole was not really the result of a craving. I mean, does anybody ever crave mung beans?

Personally I cannot remember eating them before, but I was feeling adventurous and looking for something new to try (never too early to introduce new foods in the kid's diet!). Jonny said the mung beans stank. Which they did. But the casserole actually tasted okay, it gave me a nice food belly (and a Kodak moment) and Jonny something to look forward to tomorrow.

Junk Food

Since becoming pregnant, I've banned Flo from eating McDonald's or Burger King and as a result she's been craving a good burger for weeks now. However, we're yet to find a place here that makes a really good burger. (I've been instructed to point out that Flo only occasionally indulged in junk food and that the burger craving is a recent one and probably a pregnancy craving. I on the other hand unashamedly indulge at least once per week in some variant of junk food... the guilt afterwards usually spurs me into doing some exercise to compensate).

Chinese take-away is also on the banned list. We had some the other week and we both felt a bit sick afterwards, so we agreed not to eat any more until after the birth.

Pizza is still on the list fortunately. However, we only buy these from the little restaurant around the corner. There the ultra-thin crust authentic Italian type and you know they're fresh since the guy who makes them stands at a table in the window tossing the bread and making a spectacle out of it to entice customers into the restaurant. And by all accounts his strategy is quite successful, since the place is usually pretty full when we pop in to pick up our order.

The remaining fast food treat is fish and chips... very common in the UK (although decreasingly so), but not so common in the Netherlands. However, there's a great fish shop in Den Haag located in the harbour in Scheveningen. They sell a large selection of fresh fish and related products, but also have a very down to earth restaurant where you can order, amongst many other things, a fish supper! Admittedly, the deep fried batter isn't the most healthy, but we blindly assume that the healthy fresh fish part of the meal more than balances out the fatty bits. And what the hell... it tastes great and we only do it occasionally! I'm sure the little one appreciates it.

Home alone

Of course I don't normally eat on the sofa. And of course I don't let our cats lick our empty plates. But with Jonny away on business and being home alone, I let my otherwise very high standards slip a little...

Apparently tomato ketchup is really good for you, it contains lots of lycopene. Boris liked it too.

A Christmas food tradition

I first got acquainted with panettone when I lived in Brazil and I loved it from the start. Best described as a sweet yeast bread chock-full of plump raisins and candied peel, it is aromatic and elegantly sweet, the perfect companion to a cup of milky coffee.

Northern Italian immigrants brought panettone to Brazil, or panettoni as it is pronounced there. Like in its native Italy, panettone is traditionally eaten around Christmas and New Year.

With its popularity on the rise here, it is quite easy to find panettone in the shops. In fact our local deli has shelves and shelves stacked high with original Italian panettone. Tried and tasted of course. Nice enough, but not so fluffy and not so melt-in-the-mouth as the panettone from Brazilian brand Bauducco. Of course, purists might disagree.

So you can imagine my happiness on the day that Jonny picked up some Brazilian panettone from a Portuguese shop not far from our house! Absolutely scrumptious! And this year we've bought extra stock - who can resist panettone bread and butter pudding on a cold January evening?

Posher than plums

I love late summer. July was a bit of a washout, but it seems summer is here now. I love how the weather is sunny and warm, enabling you to still walk around with bare legs and on flip-flops. I love how there still seem to be endless opportunities to enjoy the warm weather before the days really turn shorter and colder again. It is not too late for a BBQ yet!

But what I love most is the fantastic variety of fruit and veg at the moment. We have been gorging ourselves lately on beetroot, blueberries, corn, peas, plums and runner beans, to name just a few. I get so enthusiastic about all the different seasonal produce that when I go to my local stall, I end up buying enough to feed a whole family. Which usually means me practicing to be a domestic goddess and filling up the freezer since there is no way we can eat everything.

When shopping this morning I couldn't resist the look of the damsons on offer. Friendly, if a bit sour cousins of the common plum that benefit from cooking. That is what the owner told me. Since the damsons and I are yet to get acquainted, I am still contemplating what their best purpose would be.

I am toying with the idea of turning them into a chutney. There is something really good about home-made preserves. I love how you can just boil up some fruit with sugar and feel that all is right in the world. Perhaps I could bake a tart to congratulate myself with the purchase of the damsons. A surprise plum tart for when Jonny comes back!

What is your cheese rating?

Your name is: Jonny
Your cheese rating is: Oszczypek

Oszczypek is a very old, smoked cheese, made by shepherds living in the Tatra mountains of Poland from unpasteurised sheep's milk. It has a distinctive, slightly salty taste, and its colour varies from pale yellow to brown, depending on the duration of smoking.

Wow. Not far off, at least the Polish bit, Jonny being half Polish. :-) I am quite a cheese lover (I am Bleasdale - a marbled cheddar- myself by the way), but by no means a connaisseur. I have never heard of this cheese and I don't think our local deli stocks it. One of the few Polish shops around here might have it though. Have to ask my mother in law how to pronounce it...

Enter your name here and get your personal cheese rating!

Korzystac z zycia! Enjoy!

Spinach

Flo and I have been informing family and friends of the virtues of spinach ever since reading/watching the book/television programme "The Truth About Food".

Well, I've finally got around to uploading the relevant episode of the television programme. I've uploaded the entire episode, so you'll either have to be patient and watch the entire episode or wait for it to all download and then scroll through it and try and find the spinach bit.


Enjoy... and eat lots of spinach!

A little pot of heaven

What beautiful and sweet nieces we have. This is of course not only the slightly biased opinion of a proud aunt, it was confirmed by the couple that own the vegetable stall where magic beans are sold.

The owners love kids. And kids love them. So last weekend when the two girls stayed with us, we went to the stall. I don't know who was more enchanted, the owners or my nieces. Dana and Julia were admired and then given some strawberries. Dana was particularly impressed by their names: Auntie Apple and Granddad Pear. She wanted to know whether they were really called that. They had their names embroidered on towels, so it had to be true!

The strawberries were a success and the pots of yoghurt later also went down a treat. Especially Julia liked it, ademant to enjoy every single drop of the dessert. And what better tool than your hand to get the last bit out of the pot?

Try baking!

We have friends and family living all around the world. In Hong Kong, the United States, Britain, South Africa, Brazil, Norway, Spain, Qatar and Canada to name just a few locations. The great thing is that it gives us a good excuse to visit them whenever we have the chance and get to know some exciting places. It also means we don't get to see our loved ones as much as we would like.

My cousin Miriam for example lives in Toronto, Canada. She is such a great person and I would love to see her more. Last year she came over here to attend the Yad Vashem ceremony for our grandmother. She stayed with us for a couple of days. And although we have not seen each other that much over the years, it felt very familiar. Literally! We talked for hours, both keen to catch up on both sides of the family gossip. And just catching up in general.

She told me she likes baking when she needs cheering up a bit. The whole process of measuring, mixing and baking helps take her mind of things. And if that alone is not enough to make one feel better already, there is the sweet result at the end. A garantueed recipe to cheer any person up. And friends and family will love it too. I wholeheartedly agreed with her!

Fortunately the baking occasion today was a happy one! I decided to bake Jonny something to take to work for his birthday tomorrow. Muffins as per his request (it was between muffins and cake). On the above picture you can see the result. They look a bit lobsided, but if past experiences are anything to go by, that won't make a difference to the taste!

I also got Jonny some 'Happy Birthday' napkins to go with it, so now I am just hoping it will entice his colleagues to sing for him. As it happens I am slightly tone deaf, so I'll give it a miss this year....

The colourfull paper cups are from the Danish brand Rice by the way.

Happy New Year!

First of all, appologies for not adding any posts for the past few weeks... it's not because we don't care or that the novelty has worn off, simply a technical problem with Blogger, but I won't go into the technical details.

Fortunately, my smart, techie wife sorted it out today... after scanning through the internet she found a reference to try something that she hadn't done before and made one last attempt to sort the problem out... and it worked!

So, time to catch up on what's been going on over the past few weeks! First of all, we got our new kitchen counter top installed just in time for Christmas!


It's looking nice and new and shiny in the picture above, but already after a few weeks of use it is inevitably covered in scratches and marks... but this just adds to the character and soon it will look like it's supposed to look like that!

Also just before Christmas, we had some blinds installed in the upstairs bedroom, upstairs hall and bathroom.


The upstairs bedroom has now become the guest room, so the installation of the blinds was just in time for my parents coming over from the UK and visiting us for Christmas. They arrived the Saturday before Christmas, which was just in time to help us prepare for a large Christmas Eve dinner, with Flo's parents, her two brothers and their families... fourteen people in total! So the kitchen was put through its paces and to feed so many people we bought a huge 8kg turkey! Turns out that this was more than big enough, since we're still eating turkey curry now! We did a quick calculation last night and figured that we're going to get about thirty meals out of that bird!


We think the party turned out well... we enjoyed it at least and hosting dinners like this is exactly what we had in mind keeping the space at the front of the house big and open... one of my friends that saw the house for the first time a few weeks back commented that we have the perfect party house! We just need to make an effort to host some events over the next couple of years... the next one should be the house warming!

For Boxing Day, we took my parents to the Lucent Danstheater in Den Haag to watch the Kirov Ballet of Saint Peterburg perform The Nutcracker! We weren't so keen on the first half of the performance, but the second half is breathtaking and was well worth the visit. It felt like a very special way of spending Boxing Day evening and we felt very privileged to see the performance. We'd certainly recommend going and seeing it, if only for a spot of people watching, since there was certainly a large cross section of the people that attended!

Christmas turned out to be pretty busy this year, so by New Year we treated ourselves to a quiet night in, catching up on the second series of Prison Break whilst drinking champagne and eating fresh sushi from Simonis in Scheveningen (where my parents enjoyed probably the best fish and chips in the Netherlands on the day that they departed back to the UK). At midnight we ventured out into the street and watched the local inhabitants put on a loud and quite spectacular fireworks display on out little plein down the street.

So all in all we had a very pleasant and memorable festive period, so much so that heading back into work took quite some effort! But things are about back into full swing and both Flo and myself seem to be as busy as ever! But there's plenty to look forward to in 2007...

Taking the baby project to Belgium

We have a plan. We are taking the baby project to Belgium. In January we have an appoinment at the university hospital in Gent. For a second opinion and maybe even to do the treatment there.

It is a little bit out of the way. But after getting the kitchen in England and the cats in Friesland, we think nothing of making our baby in Belgium.

I chose the hospital in Gent because they have experience with treating low responders. In general Belgian hospitals are more technically advanced and they are willing to try out more and different things. That might just be the right approach for our case.

To get in the mood we have another "matinette" at breakfast. Little thin slices of chocolate, that Belgians eat like we eat our hagelslag. But posher. There is a certain joie de vivre about the whole breakfast experience.

It feels good to have a plan. And it is almost January.

My first Christmas hamper

When I was little, my dad used to get a Christmas hamper from work. On the day he brought it home, I eagerly waited for him, excited with anticipation.

He was always sweet enough to let me, the youngest child, help him unwrap the package and scrutinize the contents. The box of After Eight! The jar of paté! The Christmas napkins! Regardless of the contents always being sort of predictable, I thought it was so much fun!

Now I am all grown-up (well, sort of) and today I got my first very own Christmas hamper. Not bad after only a week at my new job! It was good fun opening it, but the contents remain unopened for the time being. Our stomachs are still a bit feeble after the mussel adventure...

Don't force things- especially closed mussels

My paternal grandmother was born in the Dutch province of Zeeland, the coastal province famous for it's oysters and mussels. She loved all fish and seafood. Her love for oysters skipped a generation, but both my dad and me like mussels.

Add the fact that Jonny mentioned only last weekend that I never make mussels. Pronto, enough reasons to make Zeeuwse mussels for the alternative Sinterklaas dinner with my parents. We did last Tuesday. We are all still struggling with the aftermath.

We all know not to open closed mussels when cooked. And ALL mussel recipes stress the fact that mussels that don't close when washed should not be cooked. Let alone be eaten. That is true, very true indeed. In fact, it is one of life's important lessons.

However, the guy from the reputable fish shop in Scheveningen insisted otherwise. Upon my phone call saying there were lots of mussels that wouldn't close when washed, he said that is a widespread misconception. It is just important to not force any cooked mussels open. Or so he said. Our stomachs proved otherwise.

Funnily enough, the mussels a la bouillabaisse tasted quite nice. The effect of the little bacteria with the tongue-twisting name that came with it, was a lot less nice. The four of us got sick. Symptoms varied a bit, as did the speed at which they developed (we compared notes). I will not bore you with the exact physical details, but it was not pretty. And a bit messy.

I always thought that symptoms of food poisoning would occur within 24 hours after eating contaminated food and would only last a day or two. That must also be a widespread misconception. We still feel weak five days later. Weak and a little bit embarrassed.

Lekker Hollands

A Dutch girl at heart, I like Dutch food. I don't necessarily mean pepernoten, drop and stroopwafels, although I like those too, but proper food. Nothing beats slowly stewed red cabbage with apples in the winter or double-shelled broad beans in June.

Chef cook Yolanda van der Jagt worked abroad for four years. She was one of Jamie Oliver's colleagues during his early days at the River Cafe and worked at Chez Panisse in the States. She came back here and wrote a cook book: Lekker Hollands. She likes to work with typical Dutch products and seasonal ingredients.

Her love for (preferably organic) vegetables shows in Lekker Hollands. Grilled chicory with a bacon vinaigrette, roasted hutspot with white beans, stewed leeks with aniseed.... The recipes are sort of a re-interpretation of the Dutch kitchen. Despite what cultural pessimists might say, we do have a culinary heritage we can be proud of. This books shows it.

Our favourite icon

In case of any of you wondered about the sudden appearance of the favicon that came with the updated design of our blog, it is a Summerbird Fløderbolle. We came across this delightful Danish delicacy when we were in Copenhagen last September.

The handmade Fløderbolle is a very distant relative of the snowball. It consist of two layers of the finest Trinidad pure chocolate, homogeneous marshmallow cream and a marzipan base. It looks like an oddball, but it leaves its cheap mass-produced relatives light years behind.

It is made by the small Danish Summerbird boutique. They adhere to the principle of quality over quantity. No glitzy interior design, no elaborate marketing campaigns, no flash in the proverbial pan - just pure, freshly made chocolates and marzipan prepared tastefully and presented simply.

As I completely endorse the quality over quantity principle, I was in Flø heaven!

Lovely Sunday

Who can ask for a better way to spend a Sunday?

The clocks went back this morning, which straight away meant that we didn't have to feel guilty about having a lie in this morning. What would normally have been 11:30 am was instead 10:30 am... a perfectly respectible time to get up on a Sunday morning!

And then for breakfast, we treated ourselves to a cafe latte, freshly squeezed orange juice, the last of the season's raspberries and a cheese and ham toasty! I then treated myself to an eagerly awaited new toy... a MacBook on which I'm now writing this post (feeling very smug that I've got it all updated and running nicely after spending a day or so getting our new wireless network and ADSL connection sorted).

I'm actually feeling a bit merry. I've recently started to treat myself with an occassional glass of wine or a gin and tonic after spending about a year almost T-total (except for the occassional glass of champagne). I therefore allowed myself to attend the bi-annual wine tasting event organised by our excellent local delicatessen, Gransjean. With approximately 130 different wines to taste, it's difficult not to get a little tipsy, despite only tasting a small sip at a time. We tried about 20 of the wines, since we're admittedly a little snobby. We did try some new world wines though and were pleasantly suprised with some Argentinian and even some Canadian wine! And to top things off, the wine is complemented with a fine selection of cheeses and meats from around the world. For only €7.50 per person, it's a real bargain and such a nice treat!

So, do I feel guilty about this little endulgement in light of the fact that we're trying so hard to create our little Flonny? Not at all. I've been thinking long and hard on this subject for a few weeks now. I know that drinking alcohol is probably not the best thing to do when undertaking ICSI. But I know that I limit my consumption to very sensible quantities, no longer feeling the urge to binge drink like I used to (and, I must say, I was very good at it). But having an occassional glass of wine makes me feel relaxed and warm inside. To quote the great Brit-pop band "Blur", it gives me a sense of enourmous well being. I personally think that this positive state of mind will more than offset any minor detrimental physical effects that an occassional G&T may incurr. And this is my new tantra. As much as I want to have a child, I am not prepared to sacrifice my life for it. I refuse to be a slave to this urge to reproduce. As much as I want to bring another life into the world, I can't do so at the expense of my own, else what's the point? Surely this is just substitution... one life for another. I want my child to experience what life has to offer, to be wrapped in it's rich tapesty, but to do so I need to be familiar with it myself. I need that will to live life myself so that I can enthuse my child with it and give my child the opportunity to prosper.

I'm so happy that I went out and enjoyed myself with Flo. I'm happy that, despite the shit that we've been through and the troubles that we're having bringing a new life into the world, that we still have the energy to live our own lives. It's these moments that make me feel like life is worth living! It's these moments that give me the strength to play natures games... despite being dealt a crappy hand, we're still going to win this game.

Autumn break

When I was little my mum used to take me shopping for a winter coat in the autumn break. It was easy to remember when the autumn break was since my brother's birthday was always somewhere in that week. So for me the autumn break always marked the proper beginning of the autumn and it getting colder again. The first day after the break I always cycled to school proudly showing off my new coat. With the buttons still undone, since invariably it was still slightly too warm for the new coat with toggles. Or whatever closing method was in vogue that season.

The last time I got myself a new coat was when we still lived in Rotterdam, what now seems like a lifetime ago. A long green duffel coat with deep pockets and a long zipper. It has done a good job over the years, protecting me from the cold in St Petersburg and seeing me through New Year's Eve on the Red Square (Jonny's arms around me also helped or was it the vodka we consumed?). By now the zipper has stopped functioning so it would only keep me warm those first few days after the autumn break.

Unlike yesteryear, not everybody in the Netherlands has the autumn break in the same week. When you break is now determined by the region you live in. So I am not sure if our region now officially has the autumn break or whether it is next week. Regardless, since it is my brother's birthday this week, I think it is time to go out and find myself a new winter coat.

I will then cycle, with the buttons of my new coat undone of course, to the lovely vegetable stall where I get our fruit and veg from. They now have wonderful big pumpkins on display, a large variety of mushrooms, cranberries and many different apples. Bye bye to salads, hello stews and soups!

Wine, food and retail therapy

Before we started the second round of IVF, we were well aware that there was a chance of the treatment not working out again. The chance of getting pregnant with IVF (ICSI) are quite slim. Yet we chose to keep positive throughout it and deal with the emotions when the time was there. That worked for us.

Men and women deal differently with emotions, so also with a failed IVF cycle . Men - I am well aware that I am generalising here - talk about it once and feel they have dealt with it. They find it of limited value to go over the whole thing again and again. We compromised: we agreed that we would talk about it for no more than three days and then move on.

I used these three days for crying my eyes out. We used these three days for feeling truly sorry for ourselves, talking to each other and doing some serious comfort eating and drinking. Jonny told me that drinking a whole bottle of wine would probably not make me feel better, but most likely worse. One glass of nice red wine was divine though, after almost a month of prohibition.

A serious bout of retail therapy finished off the mourning period. Not only do I have almost my complete winter wardrobe ready, but we are ready to move on. It is okay now. We will be okay. Looking forward to enjoying some September sun today and meeting up with our friend Miffy, who we have not seen for ages.

We loved the kind emails, sweet phone calls, the warm thoughts and prayers, crossed fingers and good energy we got from you throughout and after the treatment. Thanks for that, it did us good! We certainly hope there is a lot more where that came from since we might be needing some more soon.

Magic beans

Since fertility treatment is a whole-body event, we are trying to mostly eat wholesome and nutritious foods to make conception more possible. That means as much natural foods as possible, complex carbohydrates (wholemeal bread, potatoes and pulses), lots of fish and loads of fresh fruit and vegetables. And a long list of foods better to avoid... :-)

I firmly believe in organic food. Jonny and I both think that especially organic fruit and vegetables taste better, but that is of course subjective. However, organic food is relatively free of pesticides and additives. Pesticides are known to be 'hormone-disrupting' chemicals, while organic fruit and veg are believed to contain higher level of minerals. Pesticides have to be metabolized by the liver and so are an added burden to the system. So eating organic food also helps to reduce the stress on Jonny's liver, helping him to cope better with the effects of his Gilbert's syndrome.

Having said this, a lot of foods are hard to find organically grown. I am even forced to go into grim looking health shops where the people look miserable. Maybe not surprising since most of them seem to think that 'good' food means environmentally sound and nutritious food (think murky dishes like buckwheat and lentils), forgetting about flavour, looks and fun. Whilst I fully endorse the afore-mentioned qualities, I also believe that food is supposed to be tasty and fun. Jam without sugar is not funny and certainly not tasty.

Luckily we have a little vegetable stall on a square a few minutes from our house. It is a run by a middle-aged couple who drive around the Netherlands to get the best locally produced (mostly organic) fruit and veg. And they do a wonderful job, especially since I always seem to leave with a lot more than I originally came for! They sell seasonal products only, so lately we have been munching away on the sweetest cherries, the tastiest cherry tomatoes and the most delicious broad beans. Last week they proudly told me they had 'magic beans': dark purple beans that turn green once cooked. Of course I had to try them! They tasted a lot like green beans, but with a slightly different, and definitely a lot more, flavour. My five year old niece Dana can confirm this, since she kept asking for more when she was over for dinner last weekend. Let's hope they work magic in our bodies too!

Alles zonder met*

My old colleague Andrea had an ingenious method of being able to sleep at work. Rest your elbow on your desk, bend your head slightly towards the computer and point with your finger at the screen as if you are checking some immensely complicated Excel file or other similarly boring document. According to her a sure way of being able to take a short kip whilst hiding behind your computer. I don't know if the method is tried and tested by her personally, but if the fact that I have never seen her sleeping at work is anything to go by.....

Today was one of those days that I would have liked to point my finger at the computer, but since I am now officially a SAHW, there are better ways for a short nap. Being so tired must have to do with the yoga class I attended yesterday. The first since my operation. The first since a long time to be honest.... And it was really good, but resulted in a total lack of energy and a body screaming for carbohydrates. I was wanting to use this beautiful Wednesday for writing my thesis, taking pictures of the stuff that we want to sell on Marktplaats (the Dutch eBay) and lots of other really useful things. Instead I decided to make some dairy-free sugar-free muffins. Unfortunately they turned out like they sound: not very appealing. A woeful little pile of not-risen dough that does not come off the paper cup.



Mental note for the future: some things are not better without. Pizza without cheese, wine without alcohol, jam without sugar, cream without fat or muffins without anything. I think I should have invested my energy in an inspired dinner, especially since Jonny was telling my mum today (who popped by because she was in the neighbourhood- gezellig!) how he has been spoiled with nice dinners recently. Maybe I can persuade him to take me out for dinner tonight... :-)

* "Everything without with" - a song by the great Dutch artists Van Kooten en de Bie