Food

We've been busy making lots of food since day 1 at Rochussenstraat. This was one of our first dinners:


Paella dinner with crayfish, squid, crab and shrimp


About to start our dinner

I have to say that I am glad that I pressured Inga into moving in a week ahead of her schedule...

For my birthday, we made way too much food. Marissa recommended that I make Le Gâteau Piège. As you can see, the cake got a little bit crooked, since *someone put the grill in the oven upside down, and I was too lazy to fix it. But, it turned out delicious and I am definitely making it again. I also found out that wide window ledges are good for something besides sitting.


Le Gâteau Piège on the drying rack

Alexander offered to make me a delicious cous cous dish as a present. In the morning, I made friends with my local Turkish shop owners by buying about half of the store, including three whole chickens for the spit.


Ingredients for cous cous

The dinner turned out really well. Everyone really liked the food. We walked fat and chubby to the outdoor theater. The next day, I had about 8 kilos of food left; enough for one school lunch, before the rest had to be tossed out :(

Birthday Menu
- Hummus + turkish bread
- 2 whole grilled jerk chickens
- Cous Cous (have to get recipe from Alexander)
- Vivian's famous potato salad

- Le Gâteau Piège
- Apple crumble (Vivian)
- Fruit salad (Kim and Cyril)

- Melon cocktails for North by Northwest (Fedde)
- Bathub cooled beer

The next step is to buy a recipe book to record all our favorite house recipes!

Moscow times

In Moscow we spent a lot of time in Inara's kitchen. It was our gathering point and home base. Every morning I woke up to a banquet of cottage cheese, berries and other delicious food. Yulia's friend Genya took some great pictures, and here they are, thanks to Yulia for scanning.


Inara


Yulia and tea cups

Nerds

Yulia and Onno

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.



View Larger Map

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...

House Hunt, Updates

We got a message from Marcel from Columbia that gives us the go ahead. I feel like we are on the brink of moving! Now we wait to meet with the owner...

--

WAUW!!! Count me in, chicos y chicas!!
I can afford it, looks really pretty... I think I like it...
And I have to say, I really love the idea of living with the four of us. We´re going to have the most awesome place evah! DelfsVeiligeHaven.. :-)
I check my email once in a while but not that often... so sorry that I didn´t respond earlier...

ciao!!

House hunt

I have been thinking about moving to Rotterdam for the last few months. After a slowdown in momentum, and some large disappointments, we finally got our groove back with Alexander's precipitous return to the Netherlands. We visited three potential houses in Rotterdam this week, and found one especially promising one on Rochussenstraat next to the Coolhaven metro station. 

The house is available for four people, and has a nice big living room, high ceilings, a balcony and lots of light. We are still waiting to hear from Marcel, who is in Columbia, as to whether he is interested in this house as well. Next Monday, we will meet with the realtors for more information. On the administrative end of things, to live with more than 3 people in Rotterdam, one has to start a living group. This involves a trip to an accountant and a registration at the Chamber of Commerce. 

In comparison to two other houses we looked at on the Burgemeestermeinezlaan (better location), this house is in great condition, cheaper and will house one more person!

Floor plan (Alexander has claimed rooms #1 upstairs and downstairs, Inga #3)

living room

balcony 

kitchen

I have already staked a claim on room #2, or should I take the room with the balcony?

8/365: Rehearsal Weekend

Tomorrow I am leaving to Someren for rehearsal weekend with Krashna, but I will try to keep drawing while I'm there and post them later. This is a drawing I made at my friend Danny's graduation talk on creative facilitation for novice facilitators...right is a bee drawn at lunch by Gas.

7/365: Flying Car

Ooeps, the day is actually over before I got a chance to post. Today was a long day for me at work, but I vented my frustration boxing in the evening and got recruited for fencing. I guess I will give it a try even though I am not too enthusiastic...it has been two years.

Biomimicry arrived in the mail today. I'm excited to start reading it even though I am still committed to finishing all the other books I half started...I watched Janine Benyus on TED in anticipation!

Last night I dreamed I was sitting on the porch of a flying car powered by a balloon. It couldn't fly too long on one balloon, so we were soon on the ground again.

4/365: Deflt details

Today was yet another day in my endless May holiday; the second to last. My feat for the day was that I played tennis with my housemates, Tim and Illhame. The weather was brisk but sunny, and we ended up at the Locus Publicus with Sierd and Inga after we finished a series of mini-tournaments. While sitting on the terrace, a for rent sign caught my eye, and eventually my gaze wandered onto a window detail (left).

When you live in a city for a long time, you become blissfully ensconed in everyday life while becoming more and more unaware of the details around the city. I was surprised to see so many stony faces around me where I had never looked before.

Tonight, Gas, Bart and I will practice for the first time in awhile. There is a band contest on Wednesday, and we have to fill 20 minutes...I'm going to try out my new pedals.

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!

Another Invite

Dear friends,

You are formally invited to the Halloween-madness-graduation-party-extraordinarie of Sander de Clerque and Shauna Jin on Friday, October 31st. We will be dancing the monster mash in celebration of our diplomas, kom jij ook?

Location: Tour Boot Delft (De Nieuwe Haven 5)
Time: 9 pm

Come decked out in your scariest outfits (check out the invitation for inspiration!) Hope to see you there!

Shauna & Sander

Lasagna and other cooking adventures

This previous week has been the week of lasagnas. I went from a sometimes almost never eater of lasagna to the "chef" or "sous-chef" of three different lasagnas. In general I find oven dishes mysterious, maybe due to my stir-fry Chinese food background. Also, I never had the ambition to try to learn any oven dishes in particular, liking my relatively 1:1 ratio of action time to cook time. Lasagnas belonged in the realm of Lynn, who I associate with lasagnas.

The first lasagna happened because Floris felt like eating "healthy." We made an oven full of lasagna out of ground beef, carrots, onions, and spinach. The result was simple but delicious. We cleared off the whole lasagna amongst the four of us and packed down some dessert as well. I felt inspired to make lasagna again in the future. It was much easier than I had anticipated or imagined.

The second lasagna was made for 11 people at JVB 15 on a Sunday. I needed to feed my sister who was visiting with her friend Emily, so I volunteered to cook with Joost for all the hungry Sunday bums. We made veggie lasagna out of tons of vegetables. I didn't like the result that much as it was less a lasagna than a oven fantasie (don't ask) with lasagna leafs and béchamel on top.

The third and final lasagna came about when Vaniek, who was present for the first lasagna, wanted to eat another one when I happened to be making dinner for a friend and had no idea what to make. I think that this is by far the most successful of my creations so far and I will post it here. This is a recipe I modified from an Epicurious recipe for Wild Mushroom Lasagna, by substituting porcini mushrooms for portabella mushrooms and adding spinach. From this recipe I also learned how to make béchamel sauce from scratch (which is surprisingly easy!)

Lasagna Recipe (for 4)
béchamel sauce from scratch or from a box

mushroom tomato sauce
2 cups chopped portabella mushrooms
1 cup chopped onion (1 medium)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 (14- to 15-oz) cans diced tomatoes in juice
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1 clove of garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt

lasagna noodles
parmesan cheese, grated

Instructions
1. Make the mushroom sauce by cooking the onions first in oil, and then adding the mushrooms. Add the tomato sauce plus the basil and garlic after awhile. Simmer.
2. Boil the lasagna noodles for 3min until soft and run under cold water.
3. Preheat oven
4. Spread 1 cup béchamel over buttered/greased lasagna dish saving some for the top layer. Arrange lasagna noodles over first layer. Spread mushroom tomato sauce layer and sprinkle with cheese. Repeat layering and on the last layer spread the remaining béchamel on top and sprinkle cheese.

In the future I will not be so hesitant to make oven dishes, but this is definitely the first of many small steps. I will still always think of Lynn when I eat/make lasagna, which is definitely a good thing.

Other cooking related things:
I made a successful chocolate mousse for meisje's avond last week after one failed attempt. My wrists still remember stiffening countless egg whites. Daniel and Jorn both thought I would fail, but helped me tons :D

I bought some Dutch cookbooks in the second hand shop today including: Wijn Etiquette (no translation needed), Fish, Crustaceans, and Shellfish from the French Kitchen, Soup as a Meal, and My First Cookbook for less than 3 euros! Now I can learn and practice the most important parts of Dutch...

Now I am happily looking forward to Christmas dinner at JVB 15 and Easter morning with Naomi who is visiting starting Friday!

Branding yourself

This morning was bright and sunny, leaving no evidence of the tremendous amount of snow that had fallen the previous night. After Michiel and I had both awoken, we made our way slowly to the market. We ate a haring a piece, the taste would continually haunt the corners of our mouths the duration of a Saturday, and drank coffee on the Beestenmarkt in the sun. Michiel later shopped for some tobacco for the pipe he had gotten from Alexander for his birthday and we trolled around in the used bookstore for some cheap books. I ended up buying two more books than I will probably read (The Debt to Pleasure and The Vesuvius Club).

I noticed that the common thread that punctuated our walk through this morning was how we often end up consciously and subconsciously branding ourselves to the outside world by gravitating towards the things we like or think we'll like. Michiel told me that he hoped that he would enjoy smoking his pipe because it would fit his image.

When I first met Michiel, he told me that he had branded himself one day a couple years ago as a mousquetaire moderne. Not being one myself, I can only say that in all appearances, being a mousquetaire moderne means living an understated, quiet, yet extravagant lifestyle of enjoying fine wines, literature, and having a greater than basic understanding of antiquated crafts, planting techniques, and history. Today, he reflected that the image of the mousquetaire moderne had fallen away slowly to reveal something new, and now he found himself needing a new name to call himself by (while I am writing this at my breakfast table, staring down at the canal a pigeon just rammed itself into my window. BOOM).

This topic of self branding has been on my mind these past weeks (although not those catch-phrase words until now). Now that I am done with all of my prerequisite classes and looking for the perfect graduation project, I have been busy thinking about how to present myself via resume/portfolio/website/blog to the outside world. How do you create a coherent image out of a mess of interests and past projects? How to display your strengths to an uncaring, bored world? How do you express to others who you are, when you don't know yourself?

Regardless of these questions, the importance of self branding cannot be denied and I will spend many more days thinking about this topic.

Lichtjes Avond

Yesterday Delft celebrated Lichtjes Avond, or Evening of the Lights, a kind of pre Christmas celebration. The canals and buildings on the Oude Delft were lit with colored lights and smoke (with the help of Frank?). There were street performances, food stalls, merchandise stalls, and small exhibitions everywhere. We* forewent a real dinner and opted to eat broodje rookworsts and rijst kip kerrie in disposable containers simultaneously chugging gluhwine from stall to stall pushing slowly through the crush. Anna, Lieke, and Heleen performed a belly dance in front of the Tango, shaking the little gazebo with their rhythms. It was a great success, but I hope they don't get a cold. We saw Vaniek (my new housemate!) pass by on a dinghy turned party boat, and the sfeer was generally gezellig. After watching a second showing of the belly dancing chicas, I drank a couple of beers in the Tango before going home to sleep early full of gluhwine and happy memories.

In other news, I have a new house right in the center of the city. Jeej. At the Tango I bumped into some people whose house I had been to for an instemming previously. It was probably pretty awkward for them to have to say hello to a rejected roommate. But it made me really happy I didn't get the room. Now I have prime location, awesome roommates, beautiful neighbors, and I can get used to living right next to the supermarket again! When 5:50pm Sunday rolls around I just have to roll out of my room and saunter down the street.

Totally unrelated: it's funny to watch Dutch people cycling and smoking at the same time. Reminds me of watching Senior Haus football games where the Romanians would look so badass smoking while running after the ball (or was it only Virgil??).

Photo: Duko and Inga outside of the Tango
*Michiel, Duko, Inga, Daniel, Michel and later Katrin, Meike + boyfriends

portfolio stuff

So, since I am lazy and procrastinating work.. I started this blog and also a web page on google pages after I found Janet's website the other day. The layout is frustratingly inflexible, but it is easy to upload content.

Anyways, to make a boring story short, I started making my own website for semi-professional purposes. Today I updated the graphic design section in it. I also lured poor Ellen into starting a website too to house her dramas. I'm going to help with photoshop! Muahahhahaha.