Thanksgiving 2012

**I wrote this post a week ago with the intention of adding the pictures later in the day.  Unfortunately my computer had other plans.  No pictures for now, but I'd better put the post up about Thanksgiving before we get too deep into December.  Besides, I have a Sinterklaas party to blog about.  Let's all hope I can post pictures for that one.**

Oh, yes, it was that time of year again already.  As always, there was no way to celebrate the holiday on Thursday.  This always depresses me a little bit, and I think even more so now that Facebook and Instagram light up with a million posts wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.  My mood was also not helped when I stopped in for coffee in my regular café and ended up talking to a Notre Dame fan.  The man was obviously American and had a Notre Dame jacket on, so I asked him if he was from Indiana--just to be nice.  He was, in fact, but had about three words to say to say to me after learning that I was not from South Bend and not a Notre Dame fan.  Ugh, that man only served to reinforce my stereotypes about Fighting Irish fans.

The rest of the day was fine and busy with prep work.  A quick call to my father-in-law that night confirmed that the bird had arrived and was big enough for our group of ten.  The only questions in my mind were weather the roasting pan was big enough and if I could just squeak it into the oven.  My father-in-law assured me that everything would fit with room to spare.  He was half right; it all fit, but I had to take out my oven thermometer to get it to fit.

I took Martha Stewart's advice this year and did as much prep work before the actual day arrived.  She was right, I was less stressed on Saturday, but it didn't dissipate my stress, it merely redistributed it.  At least I had help in the kitchen on Friday: two babies (mine and my friend's) and a good friend doing all peeling and chopping that I hate to do.

And for the first time, I felt very good about the bird.  I resisted the urge to take it out early since I, yet again, failed to insert the instant-read thermometer correctly and got a skewed reading of the internal temperature.  Fifteen-pound turkeys don't cook in two hours, they just don't, so I turned off the temperature alarm and kept my eyes on the clock.  All in all, a great success.  I miss my family and friends and get a little homesick, but this year really felt like a Thanksgiving day.  Maybe it was the mass chaos caused by the kids, or maybe it's because I feel more at home here now.  What's really helped make it feel like Thanksgiving are the massive amounts of leftovers we have in our fridge.  I think I may have one more turkey sandwich left in me, and after our turkey soup tomorrow-oh God, there is enough soup for Thursday's dinner--I'll be ready for a break until next November.

Thanksgiving abroad

Unlike in America, I did not get to celebrate Thanksgiving last Thursday.  In some ways I wish the American cultural imperialism that Europeans are so fond of disdaining would also apply to Thanksgiving.  Who wouldn't want to celebrate such a glorious holiday?  Maybe it's because they don't like to watch (real) football here.  Turkey and family with a side of Packers/Lions is a nice way to spend a cold, Thursday afternoon.  Our big gathering was Saturday instead, and it turned out pretty well.  Preparation only involved one trip to the American store this year.  Buying canned pumpkin cut down the time it took to make a pie by at least half, thank goodness.  Have you ever tried baking two pies with a ten week old?  Try explaining to a baby that no, mom can't pick you up right now or she'll overcook the eggs for the custard filling.  It did not go over well.  But we both survived and got some pretty good pies out of it, too. 

Despite assurances from the poelier that there would be a turkey ready on Thursday for pick-up, my father-in-law was sadly informed that some other person had bought his reserved turkey earlier in the day.  Confusing to all involved, unless there is some other Dutch guy with the same name wishing to have Thanksgiving at the exact same time.  Instead of twelve pounds of turkey, we ended up with a 15 1/2 lb. turkey (the only one the poulterer could arrange on such short notice).  I'm not opposed to a bigger bird, really I'm not, it's just that they don't fit in the oven.  The one we got fit, but just barely.  And I mean that--the breast roasted about half an inch from the top of the oven's heating element.  I'm shocked the white meat didn't turn into a dried out, jerky-like disaster.  I supposed I have tin foil, a little bit of luck, and plenty of butter to thank that it was a success. 

And thanks to the mysterious stranger, who bought our turkey, we had plenty of leftovers for the next day (and the next, and a carcass for soup too!).  Niek wanted to know the proper protocol for making a sandwich for lunch.  I'm not one  to smush all the side dishes between two pieces of bread.  Just give me a little meat with some good mayo and I'll call it a day.  Lets all praise the deliciousness of Dutch mayo.  So good!  Do you see Niek diving into the mayo jar?  Yeah, just as it should be.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  I can't believe it's almost December.  Did someone say cookie recipes?

Gobble, gobble

Two years ago I didn't make any plans to celebrate Thanksgiving.  I didn't think it would bother me, and I didn't think it was possible to find a turkey here.  I was completely wrong on both counts.

Last year thinking that I had prepared enough in advance, I ordered a 10 lb. turkey from a butcher at the Albert Cuyp Market three weeks before the big day.  The day I went to pick it up, I had my choice between two birds: a 7 lb. turkey or a 17 lb. turkey.  What oven in the Netherlands is big enough to fit a 17 lb. turkey, I would like to know.  So there I was, two days before our meal, stuck with the scrawny one.  That butcher will never get my business again.  The meal was a success, but there were no leftovers for sandwiches, which everyone knows is the best part.

This year, my father-in-law and I started making provisional plans in August.  Yes, in August.  He buys his chickens from a fabulous butcher, who specializes in poultry and wild game.  The word in Dutch for such a butcher is a poelier.  According to my dictionary, it's called a poulterer in English, but I'll admit that I've never used that word before.  Before moving here, I never had the need to go to a butcher to buy a turkey, although I sometimes bought chicken from my "chicken lady" at the farmer's market.  I guess I should have called her my poulterer.  Anyway, my father-in-law's poelier assured him that she could get us a good bird, guaranteed to be the right size.  Here I am, then, three weeks away from our big feast, making my shopping list and remaining calm as the "to do" list for the day keeps growing.  Yea for Thanksgiving plans!

Food and Pregnancy

As I have navigated the waters of prenatal care in the Netherlands, I have made my mental comparisons with with food suggestions/restrictions found in the U.S.  Of course, my knowledge about the U.S. comes solely from my friends with kids and the sometimes scarily paranoid women from thebump.com's message boards.  So, I try to make my comparisons with a grain of salt.  During my first visit with my midwife (pregnant women don't see an OBGYN here unless there is a medical issue) and again during a less than entertaining "Enlightenment Evening" program I was required to attend in my first trimester, I learned what it was that the Dutch medical community, not to mention the Dutch government, thought it best for pregnant women to eat.  I translated some of the highlights from the government website (kind of like the USDA) for the blog:

General guidelines according to the website:

·       Eat according to the “Disk of Five.” *It's like the food pyramid, and I love how important bread is.  I was told at my meeting that pregnant women should aim for six pieces of bread a day.

·       Drink 2 to 3 glasses of milk and 1-2 pieces of cheese per day.  Instead of milk you can have buttermilk, a yogurt drink, chocolate milk, yogurt or vla (kind of like pudding).

·       Get enough iron, for example from whole grain bread and red meat.  Eat foods rich in vitamin C during meals to help with iron absorption.

·       A vegetarian diet is fine.  Make sure you get enough B-vitamins and iron.

·       Artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame, are not harmful during pregnancy.  *Women on thebump.com freak out about this all the time.

·       Too much vitamin A can be harmful to a fetus.  Therefore, don’t eat more than 3000 mcg of vitamin A per day.  This pertains to animal products and supplements.  Because there is so much vitamin A in liver, it’s best not to eat it during pregnancy.  *My Dutch pregnancy book notes that the vitamin A found in things like butter or margarine doesn’t pose a risk.

Here are the things best avoided:

·       Sandwich toppings: don’t eat more than one sandwich with liver products, like paté, per day

·       Coffie: the maximum number of cups of coffee per day should be 4 because of the caffeine.  Tea and cola also contain caffeine, but from these products you shouldn’t drink more than eight glasses (assuming you don’t also drink coffee).  *I should note that a glass of soda here is about 8 oz., which is way less than what you would get in a restaurant in the States.

·       Fish: Fish is very healthy.  But don’t eat:

o   Vacuum-sealed fish found in the refrigerated section like smoked salmon, eel, mussels (these can be eaten if cooked first)

o   Raw fish or shellfish, like oysters *Although the website states this, I was told by the midwife that raw fish is perfectly fine if I know that it’s fresh.

o   Swordfish, Bluefin tuna, shark, or king mackerel.

o   Eel from Dutch rivers *What does that say about Dutch rivers?

o   Fatty fish no more than twice a week, because of the dioxins *During my "Elightenment Evening" we were told that fatty fish, like herring, is good to eat.

·       Meat: no raw meats (like steak tartar, carpaccio) and liver

·       Licorice: Don’t eat too much licorice or drink too much licorice tea.  *Gross.  I promise not to eat too much licorice.

There were other things on the list that I expected to see, which I didn't include here (just the usual suspects, like "get enough folic acid," and "don't drink alcohol or consume drugs").  All in all, however, the list feels less restrictive to me than what I've observed in the U.S., but as I said before, I'm looking at the American dietary suggestions from afar.  I do think that the most striking differences between here and the U.S. were the suggestions for bread and dairy products (so many!) coupled with the much more lax attitude about caffeine consumption.  In fact, it feels to me like it's a more lax attitude about consuming potentially harmful things (like *gasp* sushi) than what I've gathered about attitudes in the U.S.  I don't really know how restricted pregnant women feel in America, but I do know that I was once chastised by a pregnant friend during a chat session for suggesting she get a cup of coffee when she said she really wanted one.  Seriously, I got a mini-lecture about caffeine and low birth weight.  There are plenty of suggestions for diet here, but most of them verge more on moderation instead of complete exclusion.  Again, that could be my interpretation of it, as that corresponds more with my philosophy about healthy eating during pregnancy.  If I were in the U.S., I'd probably eat the same way I do here, regardless of my health provider’s suggestions.

I do wonder if the seemingly more permissive attitude about diet during pregnancy has to do with the fact that healthy, pregnant women are monitored here less in general.  During the first half of my pregnancy, I have seen my midwife twice, never had an internal exam, been weighed once, and have already had the last of my two routine ultrasounds.  Other than that, I've pretty much been left to just go live my life.  Obviously, I can call my midwife at any time if I have concerns or a problem, but I was told that there really is no need to see me if everything feels fine.  As the weeks go by I'll see my midwife more, but she won't weigh me (I haven't come across a single weight gain recommendation beyond the standard, "don't eat as if you are eating for two"), and I won't have another ultrasound unless there appears to be a problem.  I happen to like this hand-off approach but could see plenty of women not enjoying it, and there have been a handful of times I have wished that it was routine to see my midwife more often, if only just to listen to the heartbeat.  (Sidenote: I was told by the midwife at my last appointment that I could always call and make an appointment to do just that if it would ease my mind, but I've never felt that I truly needed to do it.  Trust me, I would call if I wanted to or felt I needed to.)

One of my friends jokingly asks me if I get in my six pieces of bread a day, and I'm afraid to let the Dutch authorities know that that usually doesn't happen.  I guess as long as I stay away from the raw meat and keep it under four cups of coffee, they won't send anyone in for me, but that would be true no matter where I lived.  In the end, they are only suggestions.

Doing Dutch Things and Eating American Stuff

 
In the past week, I've done a bunch of things that have made me feel really Dutch, or at least have given the appearance that I am becoming "integrated" (ugh, I shudder at the use of that word to describe immigrants in The Netherlands, but that's a different post, a really different post). Here are a few of the things I have done after which I realized I would do almost none of those things in L.A.

1) Right before catching the train home from my day at an archive, I popped into the drugstore at the train station and bought candy. I stood there at the buffet of candies just like all the other Dutch professionals looking for a nice sugar fix to get them home.  I even tried again to like black licorice, going so far as to sample one while I was stuffing my pointy bag with gummi bears.  Blech, big mistake.  It was a harder, salty kind that at first lulled me into a false sense of security.  In fact, I almost liked it and thought that would be my turning point moment.  I could write a post about the day I taught myself to like anise.  But then as I was standing in line to pay, still chewing on that piece of candy, because it took like five minutes to chew completely, the flavor went from slightly salty licorice to the taste of ammonia.  It was like I had bleach flavored candy in my mouth.  That was it, I'm done with the black menace for at least another six months.  The other candy was heavenly to eat as I sat in a train and watched the Dutch landscape go by.

2) My bicycle got a flat tire a few weeks ago while I was riding it in the rain (super Dutch thing to do), and I finally got around to fixing it this weekend.  Never in my life have I fixed a flat tire on a bike.  Before coming the Netherlands, I don't think I had been on a bike in years, and I had somehow gotten through my entire childhood without ever getting a flat tire. Niek isn't a fan of fixing his flat tires; he usually takes the bike to the bike shop down the street when there's a problem.  However, I was feeling a bit embarrassed that I didn't know how to solve a seemingly simple problem.  I went to the bike supply store, which is kind of like going to NAPA Auto Parts except this time it's for your bike, and had the nice gentleman behind the counter help me locate a tube repair kit.  It was obvious I had no idea what I was doing, so he told me to bring it in if I couldn't figure it out.  Lucky for me Niek is Dutch, meaning he was born with the knowledge of basic bike repair, even if he doesn't use that knowledge very often.

Seriously, I am beaming at my newly found ability to perform a simple task, and also that I did it in a skirt and a white sweater without getting dirty.  When I told my in-laws that I patched my tire, they told me I am now qualified to be a Dutch citizen.  I somehow don't think tire repair is a portion of the citizenship examination, but it's still a good skill to have.

3) I ate appeltaart...Not really necessary to expand on that since I've made it quite apparent how much I love this food.  Eating it on a terrace on a beautiful summer day is what made it even more of a cultural experience.  I have been waiting patiently through all the cold and rainy months to talk about terrace culture in The Netherlands.  I don't know if terrace culture is really the right word.  The outdoor space a café, bar or restaurant has is always referred to as a terras in Dutch, so I'm just anglicizing the word.  When it is sunny and warm here, which it is maybe 10% of the year, the Dutch flock to outdoor cafés to enjoy the sunshine and a good witbier, or in my case this last time around, a good coffee.  They just sit for hours, talking and watching the world go by.  I love how busy and full outdoor spaces become in the summer, and it is by far my favorite summer activity.  You've got to soak it up and enjoy it while you can, because before you know it, the days will be shorter and it will be too cold and wet to be outside.  Niek was just excited to finally try the cinnamon ice cream.  He was pretty jealous that I had been here with Regan but never with him.  Yes, the ice cream and appeltaart did warrant such an enthusiastic response.  We sat and talked about politics and the economy since those things were on our mind with the big election for parliament coming up, and we basically just enjoyed ourselves.

Those were the three things I've done in the past week to make me feel really Dutch.  When all is said and done though, I can't help but still feel pretty American, especially in the kitchen.  Yesterday when I wanted something sweet, I still pulled out one of my American cookbooks and whipped up a concoction Niek had never heard of before: blondies (kind of like brownies minus the chocolate).  I had never made them before, but a few recipes for them have come up on my favorite baking blogs, so I figured I'd give them a try.  These particular ones called for brown butter, which I had also never made before.  I made sure to get a shot of my excitement after I had successfully created clarified butter, a lot of butter:

Oh they are so good.  Totally worth using up the last of my vanilla extract.  They go really well with Dutch coffee.

The smell of home...

A while back, maybe a few months ago now, I bought a bag of barley.  I bought it for no other reason than the fact that it looked nice in the packaging.  When I first picked it up in the store I don't even think I knew what it was.  The grains sold at the Moroccan market usually come in plain bags marked only with the name, and I'll admit that my Dutch vocabulary doesn't always extend very far when it comes to agricultural goods.  Lucky for me, our house guest at the time is a historian working on the correspondence of a sixteenth-century merchant family, and he has been forced by necessity to learn the words for bulk-trade goods of the early-modern period.  Not me, though.  I work on overseas trade routes, so I can only tell you the Dutch words for luxury goods like pepper or nutmeg, or obscure medicinal plants.  Last time I checked the weren't selling Dragon's Blood at my local grocery store, so learning that word hasn't really helped me out in my daily life.

That package of barley has sat in the back of my cupboard all this time until yesterday.  Cooking has felt more like a chore lately than a joy, so I have done very little of it, and it's been pretty uninspired.  I think I'm just tired of pasta and rice, so tonight out came the barley.  When I opened the bag, I was struck by the smell.  It was wonderfully sweet and deep, and it reminded me of something.  It kind of smells like the steel cut oatmeal I like, but that wasn't really what it reminded me of.  Maybe beer?  There's a lot of barley in beer, but that wasn't the smell.  What was it?  Then it came to me...it smells just like a barn.  That's right, the food I made for myself last night reminds me of hay and manure, but totally in a good way.  In fact, the smell reminds me of my childhood. My hometown is tiny and located at the corner of pig farms and soybean fields, so suffice it to say, I know what the inside of a barn smells like.  I think I've mentioned that fact before, but I felt the need to mention it again, since it seems to have had such a profound impact on my sense of self. 

The sensory experience got me thinking about what I can define as my home.   Should I have really asked myself that last night.  Maybe it would have been easier to just enjoy my dinner, but then what would I write about on this blog?  The Midwest hasn't been my home for some time, although I've got a huge collection of childhood memories that will always tie me to it.  L.A. never felt very permanent, such is the transient nature of graduate school, although I always look forward to the visits that take me back to friends and good food.  Does that make Amsterdam my home now?  I mean home not just in the sense that it is the city where I live.  I also don't mean it in the sense that Niek and I have made a home out of our house.  I'm talking about feeling comfortable and at home in the culture.  Is Amsterdam my home because the experiences I have here and the relationships I build give me a sense of place and belonging? Furthermore, if you settle in a place as an adult and don't have all of those memories from your childhood to give you cues and references to the culture in which you are living, can you really feel like you belong?

I occasionally need to remind myself that I'm not just visiting Amsterdam anymore; I actually live here.  I speak the language, have a bank account and Dutch health insurance.  I read the Dutch newspapers and ride my bike to run my errands.  Dutch culture can be confusing to me (one of the reasons Regan and I started the blog was to explore some of our encounters with our new surroundings), but the Netherlands doesn't feel like a completely foreign place anymore.  Unfortunately it hasn't completely lost its edge of foreignness, either.  It does make me wonder if I will ever feel like I belong, or if I should even strive to feel that way.  Is a feeling of belonging required to create a sense of home? It's not the worst thing in the world to feel like an observor if you also love the place where you live.  I do love it, even if my oldest memories don't bring me back here.

I'm pretty sure these kinds of questions and ideas are pretty common for expats, and they're nothing new.  I like the adventure of living in a foreign country, frustrating situations included.  I also love my husband very much, and I gladly stayed here to be with him.  There are times, like last night, that I wish just for a second that I had never had the desire to leave the place where I was raised.  It would be so easy to have my family and friends close by.  I could know the place I live in a way you only can once you've lived there forever.  I did wish that for a second, because I liked the smell of barley so much and the wonderful associations it created.  That feeling passed, because I am who I am, and I never wanted to stay in a small town in the Midwest, even when I was living there.  I like being here in Europe with my husband and my dog.  I like the canals and the cheese the beautiful Dutch sky.  Maybe the next time I'm back in the States I'll smell something that reminds me of Amsterdam, and I will comment without thinking, "oh that smell like home."  I don't know what that smell would be, but I'll let you know if it happens.

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.