Whole Haag (picspicspics)

Last Friday Hunter had the day off. On Thursday, he messaged me asking about going to The Hague for the weekend. I thought it was a great idea because we hadn't gone anywhere since our London trip in July. It's about a 3.5 hr train ride, which Sadie handled pretty well. This time, I managed to get us a hotel near the train station. This is super convenient for us; since we usually leave our bags at the hotel on the last day, it's easy to just pick them up and walk to the station when we are ready to go.

On the first day, we went to the M.C. Escher museum, which is one of the reasons I had wanted to visit The Hague in the first place. The cost was a little steep for a pretty small museum, but it was pretty cool. They had one of the wood blocks he actually used and a ton of his prints. It was pretty cool to look at the prints up close. They also had a few sort of interactive things: a glass ball you could look at your reflection in and things with weird perspectives where if you took pictures would look cool. I was hoping the gift shop would have like, a small kids puzzle like the Magritte one I got for Sadie, but there wasn't really anything like that. The only puzzles they had were huge ones. I didn't get any pictures there, because the camera was still in the suitcase and my phone battery was dying.

We went back to the hotel to rest and decide what to do about dinner. By this time, I had a pretty bad migraine. I'd had a headache since the night before and had managed to power through but it was getting to where I couldn't do that anymore. I took a bath and rested and then we decided we should think about dinner. We wanted to try Indonesian food again. We had it in Amsterdam and it was pretty tough with Sadie because the restaurant was really crowded, as was the table. This time we went to a place that actually had a high chair and we had a 4-person table so there was plenty of room for everything. It was pretty delicious. I didn't get any big pics, but here is one I posted to Instagram of Sadie eating some Bami Goreng. It's comparable to chow mein, if you've never had it. Indonesian food seems to be as popular in Holland as Chinese is in America. If I understand correctly, it's also the main place in Europe where peanut butter is a thing that people eat. In the German grocery stores, there are two jars of peanut butter, one creamy and one crunchy, and the jar has an American flag on it. There was also a fried banana thing that Sadie liked. I don't even like bananas and I liked it, but I let Sadie eat most of mine.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel. We watched some Archer Vice on Netherlands Netflix and drank a couple of beers we had picked up at the grocery store.

The next morning, Saturday, I got up and went out to get some breakfast for us. We had seen a few bakeries the day before. It was about 8:00 am when I went out. The bakeries were closed. Of the ones that were open on the weekend, they didn't open until 9:00! In Germany, you get there at 9 and stuff is gonna be pretty picked through. So I got stuff at the grocery store. It was pretty dead out there, I guess The Hague is not a city of early risers! Our plan for the morning was to go to the Mauritshuis, which is the major museum in The Hague. The most famous painting they have is "Girl With a Pearl Earring" and they have some other major works as well. I also wanted to see "The Goldfinch," since Hunter and I both read the Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel earlier this year. They also had a bunch of my favorite thing, which is the sort of grotesque still-lifes with lots of food in them and probably a clock. There was a surprising lack of paintings of religious scenes with the patron inserted into them; I only saw one confirmed. Really there wasn't as much religious art as some of the other museums we've been to. I was able to get Sadie a children's book featuring most of the art in the museum as well as a rubber duckie with a pearl earring!

After that, we decided to walk around and check out a few sites. There are a few churches, that you can't really go into, and a palace.

There was this canal with a big fountain; I figured we should get a picture by it.

In front of the palace. Sadie is asleep in these last few if you couldn't tell.

I wanted to get closer to this statue to figure out what its deal was. Getting closer didn't help.

We had fries for lunch, walked around a bit more, then stopped for a drink and a snack. We got Sadie some "poffertjes," little Dutch pancakes with lots of butter and powdered sugar. She enjoyed them, as you can see from the pictures!

Saturday night for dinner, we continued our tradition of eating Ethiopian (well, ok, in this case Eritrean) food in cities around the world. I called to make a reservation, because it was a Saturday night and I'm used to Germany where like, the burger place around the corner takes reservations. So, we got there and it was completely empty. But really, that's probably better for Sadie, so OK. Also, they were out of several of the things we wanted, so we ended up just getting some pretty standard stuff. It tasted fine; my theory is that the taste was partially affected by our perception of the place and its emptiness. I had hoped that Sadie would have a bit more fun with the injera, but she wasn't super into it. The proprietress was really nice; she showed me the kind of baby carrier they use in Eritrea and even gave us an umbrella since it was POURING outside. We planned to bring back the umbrella the next day, but the wind kinda ruined it so... oops.

Once we got home we watched some more Archer Vice, but were too tired to finish off the season, sadly.

Sunday, we had two things we wanted to do: walk through this park that was across the street from our hotel, and visit the beach. 

View of the park from our hotel room

We walked through the park and I had thought there might be cows there, since I had heard something like a moo-ing a few times, but it was actually what I think was a bull reindeer--I can't be certain because I couldn't get really close. Here are the best pics I was able to get:

I'll be honest, I didn't know deer made noises.

We saw some other wildlife as we walked through. I felt like a person from the city who had never seen an animal before! (For those of you who don't know, I'm from the country. I grew up with deer in my backyard. There is nothing really new about these animals to me, yet I was still compelled to take pictures. I don't even like animals, so it's a bit confusing even to me).

After the walk through the park, our plan was to go look at the nearby beach and eat some pancakes. We took the tram up and walked down to the water. I felt it because it looked super cold, but it wasn't that bad. I mean, for those of you who are used to the gulf, yeah, it would be pretty frigid but I'd say it was comparable to a California beach.

I'm not typically a beach person. I would never, like, choose to go to a beach for vacation. But if I had to, I'd probably go to this one. It was nice and cool and everyone was wearing long sleeves and pants, even the little kids wading in the water.

The artsy shot, courtesy of Hunter.

After the walk down the beach, we continued one of our more shameful travel traditions. We ended up eating an overpriced meal at a touristy place. We kinda messed up knowing where the pancake place we wanted to go to was, and it wasn't anywhere nearby, so we ate at a place that was right down on the beach. So, that was cool, but it was nothing special. We basically always end up having one meal like this. We got Sadie a pancake and of course I couldn't resist taking a bunch of pictures.

Since Sadie slept through our first foray down the shore we took her down to play in the sand. I took off her tights and sweater so we could put them back on and they wouldn't be sandy. 

Another collage, since I took way too many pics.

She seemed to like it. She was pretty unsure what was going on at first; I guess it was a new texture for her little feet. She also was eventually shivering, which was pretty much the first time I'd ever seen her visibly cold. As you can probably tell from the pictures of me, it was pretty windy.

I have a few other random pictures of things I saw.

Several views of the giant bike parking facility outside the train station.

 Some skyline

 Our hotel

Public library. It looked super nice on the inside, too.

We had a pretty good time. We don't feel like we need to go back; we saw the things we needed to see, but it was fun and probably a little more relaxing than some trips. Sadie was so good and she didn't really start fussing until the train ride home. I wore her on my back during the trip, which is easier than on the front now that she is getting big! Hunter said every time I put her into the backpack people looked at me like they thought she was going to fall. Honestly I didn't think it would be possible to put her in the backpack myself, but I'm getting pretty good at it. 

I'm not sure when our next trip will be, but Hunter has a lot of vacation days. Like, a lot. Like, he thought he had 29 that would expire at the end of this year, although they probably won't. So even though he doesn't have official time off until Christmas, we may take another few days to go somewhere cool. We both really want to see Vienna, so that's an option. Anyway, until next time!

Cows, Hops, and Potatoes

Last weekend, we went to Belgium again. You might be wondering, why would we go to Belgium? I think the relevant question is, why wouldn't we go to Belgium? Even though we have been there twice before at this point, there were still some things we hadn't seen. Since some of the places we wanted to go were a bit out of the way, we planned to rent a car. I wasn't sure if it would be allowed, since I don't have a German driver's license, but I called twice and was told I could rent one with my American license. I was still afraid that once I got there, they would tell me I couldn't take the car, but everything ended up fine. I also was a little scared since I hadn't driven in Europe before, but ultimately, driving is driving, so it wasn't bad. One kinda funny thing happened at the rental car desk: the clerk saw my license was from Alabama and said, "Oh, they are very good at football." That alone would have been weird to me, that a European knew that. Then he said, "They are the Crimson Tide. But I like Oregon Ducks better." Which, I mean, obviously.

We left on Thursday, and the first thing we planned to do was go down to Chimay, which is near the French border. Chimay is a Trappist beer, made in an abbey, which you aren't allowed to visit, but there is a cafe where you can taste the Chimay D'oree, a beer that is only sold there. I liked it much better than the other Chimays, because it's just a style of beer I prefer. We also got to taste a bunch of the Chimay cheese. I would have bought some to take home, but I wasn't really sure how well it would keep. We learned that there is a little bit of the abbey you can walk around in--the gardens and the cemetery, so we did that. It was peaceful and beautiful. I didn't get any pictures because I forgot to bring my camera in, but it probably would have been a little bit frowned upon anyway. We drove back up to Ghent and decided to have fries for dinner, because Belgium. I also got some chicken nuggets, which I would describe as mediocre but I think that would be an insult to mediocrity. Hunter's fries had Stoovlies sauch (I really have no idea how to spell that, but it's like Flemish beef stew) and they were really good. I also learned that I like Belgian Cola Light much better than German Cola Light.

Friday morning we got up to go see the Ghent altarpiece, a pretty famous painting housed in St. Bavo Cathedral. No pictures are allowed, a rule which I followed despite many other visitors' shameless flaunting, but you can Google it to see what it looks like. Parts of it are being restored--I'll talk about that later. The cathedral itself is free to get into, you just have to pay to see the altarpiece. After we saw that, we walked around a little bit.

Sadie and I next to the Cathedral

Li'l further out

Li'l closer in

The middle figures in the statue are the Van Eyck brothers, who painted the altarpiece.

Since we wanted to have a more fun dinner, we figured just a quick/cheap lunch would be good. We grabbed some noodles and took Sadie back to get her fed, changed, etc. before the next activity: a brewery visit! 

We were able to schedule a visit to the Gruut Brewery. This was the only "official" visit we managed. Many of the breweries require either several weeks advance scheduling, groups of at least 10 people, or both. This is a fairly small, new brewery, but the most interesting thing about them is that they don't use hops! They use a mix of herbs to get the same effect as hops. It was very interesting to learn about the process, and the beer was quite tasty. The guide shared my opinion on German beer: it's well-made, but there is very little variation in it. We had a fun time tasting the different beers!

We also had a fun time posing for pictures with Sadie.

We went home to take a bit of a rest, then looked up where to go for dinner. I was thinking Belgian food, because it's good, so we found a restaurant off the main square with pretty reasonable prices. I got an amazing thick steak, which you really can't get in Germany, and Hunter got the stew. In addition to the food being really good, Sadie behaved herself so well, at least until the end of the meal when we were waiting for a dessert we thought would never come. I mean, who doesn't want to cry when that happens? We made it, though.

The next day was one of the most exciting parts of our trip. We were heading to the western side of the country to try a beer that many refer to as the "best in the world." It is made in extremely limited quantities and only available at the abbey where they make it, and the cafe they have there. To buy cases, you have to call a few weeks ahead of time and give them your license plate number, then you can't buy more until 60 days have passed. We had tried calling after we got the rental car, on the off-chance we could reserve some, but weren't able to get through. We figured we could taste it at the cafe, assuming they hadn't run out. When we got there, we were pleasantly surprised! They were selling bottles of the beer, in a set with glasses. So of course Hunter got one! I tasted the beer and I will say, I don't usually like abbey beers, but I would drink that one.

Hunter tastes the beer

Sadie tastes her hand

In the nearest town to this abbey, there is a hops museum, because I think it is where a lot of the hops in Belgium come from? Anyway, we had heard it was cool but it was late afternoon by that point, and we figured it would be better for Sadie if we just headed to Brussels, which is where we'd be spending our last night. We did drive by a giant statue of a hop, though!

Saturday night might have been my favorite meal of the trip. We found a Tunisian restaurant, and it was so good! Plus, they had a high chair for Sadie, so we could eat in peace while she... tried to pick up food and then dropped it on the ground. We were sitting outside, of course, so it didn't worry me too much. Every time people walked by, her little head would follow them and I'm sure she got more than a few smiles. So this trip, we had two meals that weren't just passing Sadie back and forth between bites!

So that's basically it. Renting a car wasn't scary but there is one thing I will keep in mind if we do it again: planning. We didn't use the car at all on Friday; we would have done better to just return the car in Ghent and then get another one on the last day, since we were paying for car and GPS. We also probably could have just returned it Saturday night and that would have cut down on parking charges. Often our travel is kinda spontaneous, but if we get another car, I will try to maximize the efficiency there. Otherwise, it was a great trip! Of course we came back with more chocolate; we had just finished our box of Neuhaus from our last trip to Belgium. Maybe next time we'll go somewhere a bit farther...

Sadie Eats

About a month ago, Sadie first started tasting our foods. It started because we were out eating and she grabbed my piece of bread and tried to put it in her mouth. At first we would just let her taste a bit of sauce, or something mushy if it's what we were having. I pureed some cabbage for her also, and now we are giving her rice cereal (it's called griessbrei here, I don't know if that's exactly the same thing) and fruit type baby food. She really loves eating, and making a mess. Last night she started doing something so cute that Hunter ran to get the camera. We realized after a few pics that she is basically Barney Stinson--she can't take a bad photo!

 The picture that started it all--she grabbed the container and tried to eat right from it!

Dill Potato Salad with Smoked Trout--Food Post

Not sure how interesting my cooking is to anyone but myself, but at the very least I can put this on my Pinterest board of recipes I've tried for next time I'm deciding what to make. This recipe comes from a German cooking magazine called Lecker, which basically means "tasty." I think. Anyway it's been edited based on personal taste, ingredients I could get, and my reading comprehension, so here it is.

Ingredients:
~500g small potatoes (I think we would call them new potatoes? This probably would be good with those little potatoes that are all different colors, like some of them are purple inside?)
1 Onion--I think I used red, as that is my preferred onion type
4 Tbsp Oil--I most likely used rapeseed, I think vegetable oil would be fine, or Olive Oil for the part you aren't cooking. EVOO might have too strong of a flavor, at least the ones you can get here.
5 Tbsp White Wine Vinegar
1/4 Tsp Vegetable Bouillon
Salt, Pepper Sugar
1 Heaping Tbsp Mustard--I think the recipe calls for the kind with like big seeds in it, but I didn't have that I just had some spicy mustard and then I put some mustard seeds in also
5 Pickles--I don't really know what these are called in English. The little pickles that are maybe 2-3 inches long.
The recipe called for a Tbsp of capers, but Hunter doesn't like them so I omitted them
250g smoked trout filets. I don't know the exact weight I used, I just got two filets. These are a standard and inexpensive item at the grocery store here; I imagine if you have trouble finding it you could substitute regular cooked fish. I think the taste of smoked salmon might be too strong, though.
1 Bunch Dill.

1. Wash the potatoes and put them in boiling water with the peels on for 15 minutes. Finely chop the onion. Cook the onion in 1 Tbsp oil (or just however much you want). Add 6 Tbsp Water, the vinegar, and the bouillon. Cook for a little bit, then stir in salt, pepper, 1 Tsp sugar, mustard, and 3 Tbsp oil.

2. Cut the potatoes into halves or fourths, depending on size. Put in the "marinade" you just made for at least an hour.

3. Finely chop the pickles. Chop the capers, if you are using them. Break the trout filets into pieces. Finely chop the dill. Put everything together with the potatoes, season with salt and pepper to taste.

The result:

The conclusions:
I would definitely make this one again. However, if I make it again I will have to use cooked fish because Hunter really isn't a fan of smoked fish. He thought the potato salad was really good, though. I generally prefer smoked fish, so I usually have it for lunch. We could also make the potato salad and add cooked fish to his and smoked fish to mine, or just have it without fish as a side to something else.

A Day in the Life

Today I kinda kept track of what I did during the day, just to give people a general idea of how things go around here. I don't necessarily have a "typical" day, but this is pretty indicative of my general routine.

First things first: Sadie wakes me up around 7:30, while Hunter is getting ready to go to work. I feed Sadie, then get her dressed and changed, and a little after 8:00, I'm ready to eat my breakfast: muesli and yogurt. Before I start, I throw a load of diapers in the washer. While I'm eating, I throw on an episode of Supernatural, and then when I'm done I work on my grocery list. After the episode, Sadie is falling asleep on the couch, so we take a nap or go back to bed, depending on how you look at it.

Sadie wakes me up again at around 11:15, I feed her, and then we get ready to go get groceries. For me, the hardest thing is getting out the door. I have to buy groceries every few days, and sometimes I would really rather just lie in bed with Sadie. But I force myself to get dressed and put on makeup and everything. Usually once I start getting things done I will end up doing more than I thought, but at the bare minimum today I have to get groceries, since we don't really have any dinner food.

Before I go shopping, I stop to go to the ATM, and mail a DVD. We get Lovefilm, which is basically like Netflix. While I'm in that area, I grab a Red Bull and a pink donut. There's this one bakery, the pink donuts taste just like a Dunkin' Donuts pink donut so I'm getting them every time I walk by.

Today I'm hitting up the Asian supermarket. There are a few different grocery stores I go to, depending on what I need, and tonight I'm making Kao Soi. While I'm there, I get a few other things, too. They have imported Arm&Hammer baking soda, which is the only place I've seen it here, as well as sesame seeds. I also got Chaokoh coconut milk and mirin (cooking sake), plus a few kinds of noodles. I picked up some bowls as well, since the only bowls we have are "soup plates" and just don't have the volume/height for a noodle soup, as I learned last time I made Kao Soi.

My bag isn't as heavy as I thought it would be, so instead of taking a bus, I decide to walk. I had been meaning to buy a lighter jacket. The coat I have is really nice, but heavier than I really needed for the winter here (it's been really mild). I have only worn it out a few times, usually at night, because during the day it's just too much, especially when I go into a store and they are blasting the heater. So I swing by H&M to get a coat, and grab a sweater while I'm there. They have these great fair isle type knit sweaters, and the one I bought today is my third one, but at least it was on sale.

Since I've done so much walking and it's right there, I treat myself to McDonald's for lunch. I eat McD's more than I expected I would, but German McDonald's has so many things that the American one doesn't! AND they have the McRib year round (and don't bother giving me a lecture about the McRib. I don't care what it's made of, only that it's tasty). So I grab a burger to take home and at this point Sadie's carrier and the shopping bag is getting a bit heavy, so I hop on a bus. I basically just got on the first one I saw, because all of the buses from that stop go in my general direction, but I realized when I got on that it wouldn't take me as far as I needed to go. No problem, at the place where I switch buses, there is a drugstore so I popped in and got Sadie some baby spoons, now that she's starting to taste real foods.

When I get home, it's about 1:45. I eat my lunch and watch another episode of Supernatural. After that, I feed Sadie, put away yesterday's dry clothes, and hang the diapers up to dry. I also order a new carseat, since ours was lost on a plane. Hunter told me today he is going to take an extra day or two off this weekend, which means we'll be going somewhere (TBA). I want to make sure we have the seat in case we need it. That's pretty much as long as Sadie can entertain herself, so we head back to the couch to watch some Downton Abbey while I do some knitting.

Here is where I intended to put this cute picture of Sadie shoving yarn into her mouth while I was knitting, but my phone apparently didn't take the picture. Sorry.

At around 5:00, when that episode is done, I'm feeling pretty exhausted. I really want to take a quick nap with Sadie before our Skype with my sister at 6:00, but there was something else I wanted to do today: mop the kitchen and bathroom floors. This is one of those jobs I hate because a day after it's done, it's like you didn't even do it, but then if you don't do it pretty frequently, it gets gross. I decide I'll work on it as long as Sadie will let me, in other words, as long as she'll play quietly herself. I'm able to get the kitchen floor done and then she's pretty much wailing, so we go lie down for a few minutes.

Hunter gets home around 6:00 and shortly after that, we Skype with my sister for about an hour. I make dinner, which we eat while watching a few episodes of Community. Last night for dinner, we had some cabbage salad, which I heat with water and puree for Sadie. She only tastes a little bit, and I put the rest in an ice cube tray in the freezer. At this point, Sadie was doing her exhausted cry, so I put her pajamas on, fed her, and now she's sleeping so I can write! I'll probably go to bed within an hour (so around midnight) and I don't think I'll have any trouble sleeping tonight!

My First Pinterest Recipe

My usual MO on Pinterest is to just look at it for awhile and pin a bunch of stuff that I'll soon forget about. The other night, though, a recipe popped up that looked like it just might be easy enough to make in the German kitchen. Here is the link to the original recipe.

When I got to the store, I realized I'd need to make a few changes. The recipe calls for vegetable broth, and nowhere in the grocery store could I find anything resembling broth. They had tons of soups, but I couldn't find just plain broth. I didn't, at the time, even know the word for broth and didn't want to be like, clogging up the aisles looking at my phone. So I decided to go with this onion soup mix and figured then I wouldn't have to buy additional onions.

I also had trouble finding fresh basil. The only fresh basil they had was in the form of a basil plant, and while it wasn't too expensive I didn't really feel like carrying the plant home. So I compromised and instead of just getting dried basil, I got the kind packed in oil because I thought it would be more flavorful.

The thing I thought might actually be hard to find, canned diced tomatoes, was actually pretty straightforward, although I think I actually got crushed tomatoes. I mean, they'll still taste like tomatoes, right?

Google translate tells me stückig means lumpy, so...

I also halved the recipe since it says it's for 4-6 servings and Hunter and I are only two people, plus we don't currently have a great way to store leftovers. I left out the oregano and red pepper because I don't want to spend money on a bunch of herbs I'm just gong to have to move in a few weeks. Here it is all in the pot:

You can't tell from the picture, but the pot isn't that big. It's probably about the size of a 2 quart pan, but it's the biggest we have. Also... may have accidentally poured in too much of the onion soup.

When I was cooking it, I was a bit nervous because it seemed to be sticking to the bottom of the pan when I tried to stir it, although it came off easily enough. I kept stirring as instructed by the recipe until the water was gone. Here is the finished product (the lighting in the kitchen is not great for phone pics):

In addition to the parmesan on top, I added a mozzarella garnish also since I figured it goes well with tomato and basil. Anyway, it was a success! Hunter and I both liked it and now I can say I've actually completed something I found on Pinterest!