Life etc, moving to Rotterdam!

After a few days of anxious waiting, we got the house in Coolhaven. I'm very excited to move, but it seems like we first have to complete an endless amount of paperwork. I'm guessing that it will take us another week before we get the keys to the kingdom. I already packed some bags and have been rearranging furniture in my head.



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I will miss my roommates, and I'm sad that I will have to say goodbye to this great blackberry patch I only recently discovered with Inga and Alexander. The result was 3 occasions for blackberry-pie-bars: cooking with Inga, for Peet's 60th, and for my roommates.


I recommend this recipe from Buns In My Oven

Other than that, the weather has been extremely nice for the past couple of days. On Tuesday, I finally fixed my bike and biked to Rotterdam with Inga and Yulia for a yoga class. It's good to be friends with architects :] Wednesday, I tagged along with Yulia, Onno and their friend, Kamala on an evening trip to Wijk bij Duurstede. We walked around the old city center and ate Chinese food on the floor of an empty 500 year old house. The house was amazing, with nicely proportioned rooms, a charmingly overgrown garden, a small gnome sized window overlooking the garden from upstairs, and thick clay walls keeping out the summer heat. We stayed there until it got dark, scaring ourselves with ghost stories. I will post some more pictures, if I get them from Yulia...



Windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede: the only one in the world that you can drive under and located on a dijk, according to Onno

This weekend Marcel is coming back from Columbia, and we'll be going to Solar Festival in Roermond. I'm excited for my first camping-style festival. In exchange for tickets, we'll help with building up the Pleereef and we will be required to wear ridiculous/awesome outfits. We leave tomorrow morning by bus...

2/365 Days: A Match

May 02, 2009

Following the theme of dreams, I drew a scene from one I had this morning...

I was in a large hall with a sparring ring. A multitude of scissors were suspended from the ceiling at different heights; they were very sharp to the touch and I already cut myself several times on them before the match had even started. My friends and I were evenly matched, but I was chosen to go represent us against our mysterious rivals.

It was customary to eat a bowl of rice with tea before starting. As I gulped down my rice, I saw my opponent watching me avidly. That was when I sensed something was wrong. There was poison in my food...but that wouldn't affect me. I communicated with my eyes to let my opponent know that I knew about his tricks, and that he was still going down. I ended up winning, but the thugs weren't satisfied. As they pressed in on our small group, we dashed out of the hall and and drove off into the horizon in a stolen car...

Part 2 of this post:
I spent my whole day in R'dam today biking around with Inga searching for a new house. Afterwards we had tea with Tessa (where I bumped into Gas and told him about the 360day project), checked out the state of our garden (we saw bunnies!) and went to a dinner with MoMo guides. The dinner was delicious and in the studio of 2012Architecten. We then biked back through the fog to Delft in time to see Alex play at Ciccionina. When I got home just now, I found this in my mailbox...Gaspard submitted a drawing for this project!

pheasant + dimsum

A few nights ago I prepared pheasant for the first time in my life. Michiel was on his way to Rijswijk to buy one and I came with him for a mini adventure, deciding at the last moment to also buy two for experimentation (on Meike, Katrin, Dries, and Jorn). The way was 45 min each way and we even took a little ferry for one leg of the journey for 2 eurocent each. It was a good thing we decided to bike!

To prepare the pheasant, I wrapped it in bacon and stuffed a lot of garlic and bay leaves up its butt before I realized there was an opening near the neck. We also made some mashed potatoes (aardappel puree) and stir fried veggies on the side. hmmm...though I had high hopes, it didn't turn out as deliciously as I had wished. However, the gravy we produced was pretty awesome. The meat was very gamey, which I don't mind, but the meat was dry and kinda tasteless. I think next time the bird should only be put in the oven for 30-45min.

The next day I made soup with Jorn from the leftovers and it turned out really well. We dumped in "asian spices" from the C1000, some chinese kool?, onions, garlic, salt, and pepper to taste. The whole thing was totally consumed by nightfall.

Additionally, because Lanna and Erika were in town this weekend, I took them to dim sum in Rotterdam Saturday morning. We went to Dong Hai, a place recommended by Yu Fang. It took us awhile to find the place, though it was only across the street from Tai Wu, another joint I'd been to previously. I just asked random Asian people on the street, and eventually found it. It was slightly embarrassing when I found myself asking a Chinese man where Dong Hai was, to have him point to a sign right in front of us with the name written in Chinese (then you know it's really authentic?).

A good sign walking in was there were no white people to be seen in the whole place and that the menu wasn't in picture format. The downside was I didn't know what/how to order. We tried to explain what we wanted in a mixture of broken Chinese and generalisms. Anyways, the food was pretty good; much better than Tai Wu. I miss having dim sum carted out on trolleys where I can point to what I want. The benefit of Tai Wu was the color plate images for each dish.

I have to say I am still looking for that perfect place for dim sum for brak Saturday and Sundays.

dim sum reviews (so far)
1. Dong Hai, Rotterdam - 7.0
2. Tai Wu, Rotterdam - 5.0

to try
1. Qi(2) Ling(2) Ge(2), Den Haag
2. Huang(2) Shang(4) Huang(2), Rotterdam
Growing list of some more dim sum/Chinese food recommendations from Yu Fang and other Chinese people.


Note: Have to remind Lanna to buy me dim sum flashcards. Next time I will know how to read everything on the menu.

Chinese hot pot

Jorn asked me Sunday morning while we were eating left over Thai food whether or not we would be eating exclusively with chopsticks at my house in less than two weeks. His comment made me realize how close I am to being home, and how much I have missed Chinese food this year. Nothing I can make personally compares to the diversity of my mom and grandma's home cooking. Speaking of food...

Sunday night after a whole afternoon of practicing for the St. Bavo Christmas concert, I finally got to sit down and start stuffing myself full of hotpot. Maybe one of the only good things to come out of the boatweek was that I got to know this girl Yu Fang, and two other Chinese guys Xiao Ye and Zhi Fang. We went over to Yu Fang and Ambeika's (sp?) nice apt, and Xiao Ye who is an expert cook set us to work preparing the hotpot. It was Jorn and Daniel's first experience with hotpot, so it was fun to see their reaction. We ended up eating 1kg of pork, a lot of beef, white asparagus, nian gao (new year's cake), tofu, cabbagey stuff, little sausages, sliced potatoes, and white fish. It was so delicious I thought I was going to explode. I kept rationing water for myself (to fight off the spiciness) so I would have more room in my stomach. Afterwards we ate ice cream and dispersed into the night..Ambieka promises to make Saag Paneer or some Indian dish from the south next time. HOORAY.

I realized that not only do I miss Chinese food, but I also miss sitting around the dinner table for hours taking small breaks in between gorging and talking. There is a social aspect that is too short to be satisfying in my normal eating habits.

Next time it's gonna look like this:


Also, my new resolution is to learn how to play badminton.
Note to self: ask Xiao Ye where to get hotpot stock.