Comfort Food

Now that the weather has turned the corner and has decidedly committed to a fall forecast, we've shifted our menu to one better suited for sweaters and early evenings.  Something about those first crisp days just makes me want to get my soup pot out and warm up the oven.  In general, fall foods are just a bit more comforting--probably because they employ the use of a lot more butter and heavier meats.  Unfortunately, we've had other reasons to need a little comfort food around here lately.  Our wonderful dog was rushed to the vet a week and a half ago, and after undergoing a battery of tests we learned that his kidneys were not operating well.  Despite the grim news and an overnight stay at the vet, he returned home much happier and more vital.  We were told that he could live many years with his condition, but it was not to be.  He died very suddenly on Monday.  I didn't know it was possible to feel so heartbroken, and Niek and I have had a very difficult week.  We're sad that he's gone, and we're especially sad that our daughter will never get to know him.

Newborns, I have learned, leave very little time to wallow in grief; diapers still need to be changed and hungry babies wait for no man.  For all the seemingly mundane tasks of early motherhood I am grateful.  Even with a little one capitalizing on all my waking hours, I felt compelled to take the time to make at least a little food to make us feel better.  That is why I forced my tired self into the kitchen yesterday to put on a huge pot of chili.  Even more importantly for me, I found the time to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies.  While a good friend of mine sat on the couch holding my baby, I stood in the kitchen baking cookies with my imported supply of baking supplies.  It all felt so wonderfully calm and normal to make such an easy recipe even if I also felt rundown and sleep-deprived.

Making recipes from my childhood did make me wonder what the Dutch consider comfort food.  The day we took Dantes to the vet, my father-in-law came over and made stewed rabbit with egg noodles.  I would put that in the category of comfort food (definitely amazing food) but I wouldn't call the recipe typically Dutch.  I asked Niek about this last night, and he couldn't come up with a single dish.  I thought it might be something like stampot, the dish of mashed potatoes with kale and smoked sausage.  Maybe a nice apple pie?  Whatever the Dutch comfort foods might be, I'm not sure I will ever turn to them in a time of crisis no matter how long I live here.  When I have an emotional emergency, I'm pretty sure I'll always turn to the foods of my youth.  I'm surprised I didn't make a casserole.  If they sold condensed cream of mushroom soup here, I probably would have.  If there were to be a cornerstone ingredient for American comfort food, I do believe that would be it.

While we miss our sweet pup, our lives continue to be very full and busy.  I am grateful for all the good things in my life, and I'm grateful for my kitchen when I need a little cheering up.  

American Chili and Netherlandish Beer

A dear, dear friend has been visiting me this week, and we have been having such a great time together despite a few days of dreary weather. She lives in California, which makes the overcast skies, daily bouts of rain, and the long winter nights a little difficult for her to handle. We've made the best of it and have had relatively little rain and, thankfully, for the first time in a few weeks no howling wind. I should be grateful, really, for the cold and the short days, because it forces me to stay inside more often to do some writing. She and I both managed to cram in at least a few hours of quality work most days, and while I didn't reach my number of goal pages, I'll take what I can get.

It's been quite fun to have a writing buddy again, and you can't beat the motivation an outside source provides. Working in a café is infintiely more enjoyable when "writing breaks" consist of actually talking to another human being instead just typing to one on gchat (although the girl watching her YouTube videos next to us at the café would probably disagree with that statement). Besides our attempts to put in the work the world and our advisors expect of us as graduate students, we have spent plenty of time biking around the city, visiting my in-laws in nearby Utrecht (i.e. partaking of my father-in-law's excellent cooking skills), and...and...drinking beer.

Oh yes, this is mostly a post about my love of Netherlandish beer. Beer, how I love the many variations you take on in the Low Countries. My quick survey of the internet informs me that the term, "Netherlandish," most often used in nerdy, art history circles, is not really used to categorize beer, and that really is a pity. I understand that Belgian beer and Dutch beer aren't exactly the same thing, but I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility to lump them together for cataloging purposes. The Belgians may get all the attention, and let's be honest here, those accolades are well-deserved, but there are some pretty good brews north of Flanders, too. We tried some more obscure ones on Sunday just for fun. Here we are at a smaller brewery, Brouwerij de Molen, where the flavors can get pretty exotic, but that just makes it more of an adventure:



There is my husband attempting to play some sort of bowling game set up in front of the hearth. More important for this post are the list of beers on the blackboard behind him and further back all the bottles for sale in the shop. I had a coffee flavored stout, which was...interesting...and quite good.
Here I am with my friend finishing my husband's beer, because he thought it was, "disgusting." We were not in accordance with that sentiment and we left the brewery feeling all warm and tipsy from our extra half glass of strong beer. If you don't know already, I really like beer, but I'm a lightweight, so an extra half glass will push me over the edge.
The rest of the week saw us drinking pretty standard bottles at home. We mostly drank Palm and seasonal varieties from Grolsch. Yesterday, my friend informed me that her visit would not be complete without a visit to Gollem, one of the first Amsterdam bars that really made me love beers from the Low Countries. So, while chili was cooking in my imported Crock-Pot (another lovely wedding gift), we were off consuming these:

Whoops! How did those delicious delicacies get into the picture? I meant to show you this:

Because when it's raining and nasty outside, nothing will make you feel quite as lovely as some fried carbs with a side of liquid carbs. Mmmmmmmmm...carbs. The guy behind the bar let us sample all the beers on tap before ordering, and now I love that place even more. I would ask about a beer, he would begin to explain it but then just couldn't be bothered, so in the end he just poured us a sample of them all.

As the title of the post implies, we fit in time to have a bowl of American chili for dinner. The recipe is straight from the Heartland, my mother's kitchen. My chili here tastes the same as it did back the U.S., although you should have seen the look on my face last fall when I realized this crazy country doesn't sell canned beans. That's not entirely true, but the vast majority of them are canned in tomato sauce and/or use a ridiculous amount of sugar in the canning process. That is when I learned the joy of cooking with dried beans. They are cheap, keep forever, and weigh much less in the shopping bag slung over my bike's handlebars. What, besides their long soak time, is not to love?

Yesterday morning, I took the beans that had soaked overnight, dumped them into my Crock-Pot, added some canned tomatoes, garlic cloves, diced onions, browned hamburger and a crazy amount of chili pepper, and then I walked away for about six hours. This was the result, my lovely American dinner coupled with a nice cold Duvel and made complete with a side of good conversation.