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!

Vijf bij Vijfeest

Another year rolls by. I hope I'm this suave by the time I'm 26...

Eve: I’m Eve Kendall. I’m twenty-six and unmarried. Now
you know everything.
Roger: Tell me. What do you do besides lure men to their
doom on the Twentieth Century Limited?
Eve: I’m an industrial designer.

--

Lieve vriendjes,

Ik ben bijna een kwart eeuw oud!! Daarom wil ik graag mijn verjaardag vieren op een fijne (hoop ik) zondag in mijn nieuwe buurt.

Programma, Zondag 23 Augustus
- 17:00 Eten (Rochussenstraat 297A, Rotterdam)
- 21.30 Klassieker North by Northwest (I <3>

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

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?

Rotterdam Market and Mussels

Naomi visited me last week marking the, ashamedly, first time I have gone to the Rotterdam market since moving to the Netherlands. On market days (Tues, Thurs, Sat), the giant square at Rotterdam Blaak is filled with hundreds of stands. There we acquired fish and several second hand granny sweaters each.

Today, I went to the Rotterdam market again together with Inga, and some others. We bought some mussels for dinner.

A Mussel Recipe (from Inga's mom)
mussels for 3-4 persons (~2kg)
4-6 cloves finely chopped garlic
2 shallots finely chopped
2 sliced tomatoes

1 bunch chopped coriander
2 cups creme fraiche
1 chopped leek

1. Sautee shallots in olive oil with garlic
2. Add the mussels with ~1/2 liter of water (?)
3. Steam the mussels
4. Remove the mussels onto a serving plate
5. From the left over water, add the creme fraiche, leek and tomatoes
6. Heat and reduce
7. Add coriander and serve on top of mussels

IFFR

Last year I volunteered for the IFFR, International Film Festival Rotterdam as a member of the bouwplug. Under the dreads supervision of Waheed, I became one of the little minions who run around building things up before the festival i.e. stringing fiber optic cables across buildings and painting insides of warehouses). Unfortunately, I was so busy at that moment with school (damn you PAP), I didn't even go see one movie even though I had free tickets. I still haven't seen I don't want to sleep alone or various other movies that were on my "list" for last year, though the aforementioned has been rotting away in C:\ for ages now.

This is my one and only chance almost this year to see a foreign film (not English or Mandarin) on the big screen and subtitled in English. I regularly call the Filmhuis Lumen in Delft to ask if their sneak preview is in English or Mandarin. This is how I came to see the Marriage of Tuya in Delft. My other gripe is that films come so slowly to the filmhuizen here. Any independent English film takes half a year after its release before making it to theaters here (i.e. Scoop)

This year, I have bought some tickets though many movies I would like to see were sold out. To remind myself what I will watch at the festival or must download later, I am listing the ones that sounded interesting here:

1. De Stille vor Bach - Feb 1st
2. Le voyage du ballon rouge
3. Secret Sunshine
4. Flower in the Pocket - Feb 2nd
5. Naissance des pieuvres
6. Shanghai Trance
7. Hotel Chevalier
8. REC
9. This world of ours
10. Tout est pardonné

Also watched recently: Flodder - 4.0, Flodder in Amerika - 3.5, There will be Blood - 8.5, Bender's Big Score - 6.5