Parisian Weekend (a.k.a. pictures of food)

Niek and I just got back from our mini-vacation in Paris.  As we packed up the car, I was filled with this sense of amazement that I actually live close enough to drive to Paris.  We usually pop down when some good friends fly over.  This time, our friends happened to be working with a group of college students for a study abroad program.  That left them quite busy but with just enough time to squeeze in a few socializing days with us.  We didn't make it to any of the big art collections this time, but if you're in Paris and you're in the mood for a different kind of museum, I can recommend the Musée des arts et métiers (or as my friend likes to call it, the museum of arts and meters).  We're all big nerds, so we enjoyed looking at the air pumps on display and the recreation of Lavoisier's laboratory.  The highlight was supposed to be a working model of Foucault's pendulum, but someone at the museum was too lazy to set up all the metal cylinders along the perimeter.  Still, who doesn't like to see the earth rotating?

I have a tendency of only taking pictures of food while on vacation.  I think that happens because I'm usually so busy enjoying myself, I only pull out my camera while sitting and resting.  Sitting only seems to happen at restaurants or bars.  Hence the lack of pictures of anything other than us stuffing our faces.  I think though, that you can really appreciate some of the amazing food we found in Paris. 

Niek and I were both in the mood for some Asian cuisine, and Paris did not disappoint.  Our first night we went to Happy Noodle, a tiny establishment packed with customers dining on gigantic bowls of soup.  The noodles are made by hand and were probably the best I've ever had.  When we arrived the guy was rolling dough out by the window and cutting it into noodles.  I didn't think to take a picture until we were finished eating, and by that time he was finished.  

The last time I was in Paris all I wanted was an almond croissant, but I unfortunately never got one.  On our first morning, we made it priorité nombre un to get a croissant and a cup of coffee.  Oh, sweet heaven, that was some good almond paste wrapped up in buttery goodness.

On Friday we got to tag along on one of the study abroad program's walking tours of the city.  I wasn't at all sure what to expect, especially with a group of 41 students.  41!  They all seemed like such sweet people, though, and made our walk around the Bastille and Gare de Lyon even more fun.  Now that I live in Amsterdam and have no teaching duties, I miss interacting with twenty-year olds.  Halfway through the tour, we stopped off for lunch.  After consuming a savory North African pancake, I had no room left for the sweet pastries my friend bought with her lunch.  Don't they look so beautiful in the display case?

What would a trip to Paris be without a bit of French cuisine?  I'll just let the photos speak for themselves.  Amazing, cozy restaurant with the friendliest wait staff and great food.  We got there around 7:45 on Friday night and just beat the dinner rush.  Lucky we arrived when we did, or we would not have gotten a table.

Niek ordered one of the house specialties as his first course: Foie Gras de Canard

Amazing bottle of wine.  A little sad that I could only have one glass of it.

I did not know that my steak would come drenched in this creamy sauce.  It was pretty amazing.

My camera remained firmly in my bag all day on Saturday (the day we went to the museum).  That was also the day we hit the children's clothing stores in the afternoon, and I think I would have felt a little weird taking pictures of onesies and teeny tiny sweaters.  After an exhausting afternoon of oohing and ahhing over baby couture, we had our final dinner of the trip at a fabulous Thai restaurant.  No pics (too tired and ravenous), but I tell you it hit the spot.  I could go for some more of the squid salad that I ordered.

Sunday was our last morning.  Niek and I had one more almond croissant after we packed up our car.  We grabbed a few sandwiches for lunch at the bakery across the street from the hotel and hit the Montparnasse Cemetery as our final activity for the vacation.  I had no idea how many famous people are buried there.  Père-Lachaise gets all the attention, but this one is equally as cool.  Highly recommend.

There were too many graves we wanted to visit and not enough time, so we had to make a priority list.

My friend is a sucker for Baudelaire's poetry.  I'll try not to mock her for this.

My favorite grave from the inventor of a safe gas lamp.  See, he's reading in bed by the light of his own invention.

Au revoir, Paris and our amazing friends!  Although too short, it was an amazing vacation.  I can't believe it's over already. 

Taco Salads

The summer weather can be hit or miss here; some days we have sun and warm temps and other days, well…all I can say is that it’s the Netherlands.  I knew I wasn’t signing on for weeks of heat and humidity in the summer when I moved here, but every once in a while I have a craving for a sticky day.  I read this post, and it just brought back memories of taking my dog out to the breeder's property a few evenings a week in the summer to train him to hunt.  I loved those evenings in St. Louis when the heat of the day (although not the humidity) suddenly seemed to ease up.  Once I got home from training, I would pour myself a big glass of lemonade and be thankful my apartment had air-conditioning.

Oh, lemonade, just one of the things I can’t get here.  Also, no one believes in ice cubes.  For the most part, I don’t whine about the foods I can’t get here.  Wait, do I?  Maybe I whine here on the blog more than I do in real life.  During my first year in Amsterdam, I would get deeply upset about the unavailability of certain products—the hunt for cake flour was a particularly difficult moment.  As all ex-pats must learn, and as I've said before, you either learn to roll with the unavailability of certain goods, or you decide to fight against the “system.”  If you choose the latter, you will live in a constant state of misery and never truly learn to appreciate all the great things about living in a foreign country.  I might add that learning to love Dutch food—I’m not so sure that I would go so far as to say I love it—does not stop me from bringing back a suitcase full of the comforts of home every time I go to the U.S.  I already have a list for our trip to California in August, and you had better believe it includes such necessities as King Arthur flour, vanilla extract, and chocolate chips.

But what about all the foods I can’t transport in my suitcase?  What about all those freshly made meals that don’t seem to be available, because the Dutch don’t appreciate/know about them?  Anyone who has been around me in the last few years knows how obsessed I am with taco salads.  I blame Los Angeles for this.  All those Mexican restaurants spread out across the city can’t help but invite you in with their colorful tablecloths and fresh salsa bars.  If you then give me an amazing combination of crisp salad, creamy guacamole, beans, and steak all warmly held together in a fried tortilla bowl, how can I not help but fall in love?  I had never had anything like it before moving to SoCal, and I do miss it here on occasion.  A few weeks ago when the warm weather hit, I started getting really intense cravings for taco salads, and I have done my very best to create my own rendition here. What I have ended up making is like the imprint of an imprint of a taco salad.  It’s absolutely not the same, but it will suffice for the time being.  We use store-bought taco shells instead of making our own taco bowls, and I am ashamed to admit that I put shredded gouda on the salad.  To be honest, I accept my version of it because the avocados have been decent lately, and any sort of salad and bean combo tastes better when smothered in guacamole.  We've eaten taco salads for dinner at least once a week for the past few weeks and sometimes we eat them twice a week.  Man, do we know how to live it up, or what?

The rest of my summer cravings will have to wait for August.  In particular, I’m looking at you pitcher of lemonade and heirloom tomato salad with a side of grilled steak.  (Before someone points it out: I know I could make lemonade myself, but it would be expensive and would not flood me with childhood memories of mixing the concentrate with water in my mom’s special pitcher.  And yes, I’m sure some fancy market here sells heirloom tomatoes, but I guarantee no one here knows how to grill steak like an American.  Well, maybe someone does, but I have yet to be invited to that house for a backyard barbeque.)

Hollandse Nieuwe

It’s the middle of June, and that can only mean one thing (actually that could mean anything, but for a blog about food in the Netherlands, it means something pretty special)…it’s time for Hollandse Nieuwe.  Mmm, Hollandse Nieuwe.

This delicacy of the Atlantic is known as herring to the uninitiated, and more specifically, Hollandse Nieuwe refers to the first catch of the season. The resemblance to the herring of my childhood is negligible, not that I have a really clear picture of it in my mind anymore.  I just remember an unsightly gray mass always present at family gatherings next to the pickles and olives, a pile of pickled fish from a jar I consciously avoided on my way to the chips and seven-layer taco dip. Dutch herring goes through some sort of salt curing process and arrives to the consumer nicely filleted and in a fairly fresh state.  The season only lasts about six weeks, but they freeze a lot of the stock to sell throughout the rest of the year.  I missed the season last year, because I was back in the States for eight weeks.  No way was I going to miss it again this summer.  While most people in the line ordered it as a snack, complete with the requisite chopped onions, I got mine nicely packaged up for dinner that night.  Look at this adorable bag:

If you take a look at the first picture from this newspaper article, you can see the “traditional” way Dutch people eat herring—all in one go—but I have never seen it served that way here in Amsterdam.  The fishmonger usually cuts it up nicely for you so you can enjoy each little piece while sitting on a bench watching the bicycles go by.  That’s what the tourists usually do, anyway.  While some people may not think that pieces of herring with onions sounds good, it is actually pretty amazing.  The bite of the onions offers a nice contrast to the fatty fish.  Man, just writing this is making me want to go order one.  

Apparently it is a good year for the little fish.  The ones I bought were huge!  I bought two of the little suckers for dinner, but we ended up only eating one and saving the other one for our appetizer (yeah, like we usually have appetizers before dinner) the next night.  It’s one of those fresh foods I wish I could somehow bottle up and send to people so they could know just how good it is.  Since that’s not possible, you should all come visit me in the next few weeks before the season ends.

Summertime quiche

Is there something about summer that makes people want to be productive in the kitchen?  I have been on some sort of weird cooking/baking bender as of late, and I have plenty of pictures to prove it.  Too bad I haven't been posting those pictures.  After letting these sit in my camera for a month, I finally decided today would be the day I would finally upload them.

Is it a procrastination technique in progress?  You betcha.  I haaaaaate the chapter I am editing and want to avoid looking at the mess on the page.  I think I dislike editing in general, but I've returned to a chapter I sort of gave up on about nine months ago, and what I wrote then is not very pretty or even coherent.  The voice of reason inside my head tells me that avoiding my chapter is not going to make it go away, and it will probably make my anxiety worse.  That is so true, and I hate my inner voice of reason for that, which is why I'll suppress it for about twenty more minutes.

Back to more interesting things, like quiche.  I am totally in love with this recipe from Piece of Cake, and I just throw in whatever vegetables happen to look good at the market.  Lately, it's been things like carrots and leeks, but I'll see where the summer takes me.  Quiche from start to finish: as easy as 1,2,3,4

Ah, delicious dinner, brought to me through the joy of using my rolling pin and my pie plate.  I don't really know what I would do without my American pie plates.  How do the Dutch cope without them or regular cake tins, for that matter?  Actually, I'm pretty sure they bake 99% of their cake/pie/quiche concoctions in springform pans.  Finding a cake tin that does not come with removable sides involves some good sleuthing skills (until you find the large cooking store in Amsterdam, at which point you cry out of happiness and learn that all searches for baking supplies should forever after start there).  So I am sure that if your kitchen does not house the "exotic" pie plate, you could make this quiche, too.

Just out of amusement, I took a picture of our dinner menu for that week.  It looks like a love letter to the god of carbohydrates.  In case you can't read it, here is the menu:

Sat) Pizza

Sun) Vegetable quiche

Mon) Pasta with pesto

Tues) N[iek] not eating at home

Wed) Zucchini soup with puffed pastry vegetable tarts

Thurs) Pasta with vegetables

Fri) Black bean tacos

Is pasta twice a week overkill?  When I lived in L.A. I ate it maybe four times a week.  I suppose I can chalk it up to life of a student and all that that entails.  I'm still a student, kind of, so I see pasta twice a week as a major improvement.

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.

Finally, some white asparagus

The first time I ever tasted white asparagus—or even knew of its existence, for that matter—I was sixteen and just a few hours into my summer “study abroad” in Germany.  It was June, and I had arrived that fine summer day just in time for the midday meal.  My host mother, as good of a Hausfrau as I have ever met, always made sure there was a warm lunch on the table for me and her two teenage daughters when we would come home from school.  On that particular day I was jetlagged and confused.  My German, I readily admit, was not very good at that point, and every conversation going on around me felt confusing and unfamiliar.  I didn’t really understand what was going on as I sat in the kitchen watching Inga, one of the daughters, speed off on her bicycle only to come back about ten minutes later with a bag of spears that looked pretty much like this.

A little magic happened on the stove, after which we sat down to a truly delicious meal.  I needed to get over my initial feeling of, “What the hell?  Aren’t asparagus supposed to be green and much smaller than this?”  My hesitation lasted about five seconds, because there was nothing about these white stalks to remind me of the handful of times in my life I had eaten mushy asparagus from a can.  We had it a lot for the first few weeks, and then suddenly, it was all gone.  No more asapragus in the fields, no more white asparagus for me during my stay.  I bought it a few times at Whole Foods in Los Angeles, but it was always expensive and a bit of a let down.  Nothing really compared to my memories of German Spargel.  I should thank my lucky stars that I live here now.

I think most Dutch people would be horrified to know that I very clearly linked asparagus with German cuisine for years.  It was only two years ago, during my first spring in the Netherlands, that I learned how important asparagus is to Dutch identity, especially in the southern provinces where the bulk of the fields are located.  You can find biking and walking routes through the fields and a list of asparagus related celebrations here, if you're so inclined.  Don't think that I haven't looked at it already and planned an afternoon excursion.  Even if I couldn't make it to the fields, I wouldn't suffer.  The supermarkets, vegetable stands, and restaurants in Amsterdam all boast big signs for "Asperges."

There are a million ways to prepare asparagus, but since this week was my first foray into cooking with the real deal, Limburgse asperges, I felt I owed it to myself and Dutch cuisine to make it the classic way.  Oh, Dutch cuisine...I would say that lots of traditional Dutch dishes are not complicated (not a bad thing) and often involve boiling things to varying degrees of doneness.  

The traditional asparagus meal includes boiled asparagus spears, boiled potatoes, a hard-boiled egg, and a few rolls of thinly sliced ham all with a nice layer of melted butter poured on top. That's why I had three pots boiling on the stove and one tiny saucepan melting butter.  The asparagus has to be peeled before cooking, as the outer layers are tough.  The peeler in the picture above is a special asparagus peeler, and if you believe the description on the back of the packaging, you will learn that no household is complete without one.  Seriously, I had no idea my kitchen had been lacking in such an important tool.  I altered the recipe slightly to include the potato skins (because I like it that way), and we had a fewer pieces of ham on the plate.  Really, how many ham slices can one person eat?...Actually, don't answer that.  I probably could eat quite a few pieces if I weren't also consuming massive amounts of butter and starch.

Here I am, tentatively pouring butter all over our plates.  Apparently believing everything is better with butter is not simply reserved for baked goods:

 I asked Niek how I did for my first attempt.  He was pretty pleased with my mad skills (i.e. the ability to boil things), although I think I need to peel a few more layers off next time to make the bottom of the stalks a little less tough.  I could buy one of those fancy pots made only for cooking asparagus, but that seems like a ridiculous investment.  Here's a close-up of dinner and also a picture of Niek taking in the amazing smell while the dog looks on from his chair.

 

I couldn't eat like this every night, but it's fun to feel a little Dutch every once in a while.  Besides, the asparagus season is so short, I need to take advantage of it while I can.  Before I know it, it will be gone again for another year.

Mystery bag

I am so excited about what is in this bag, I can barely contain myself.

Tomorrow for dinner I am going to prepare asparagus that was picked fresh from the field.    Niek's dad brought back four pounds for us when he went to visit his brother yesterday in Limburg.  Four pounds!  I would make it tonight, but we just had asparagus yesterday at Niek's parents' house.  I'm trying to space out the deliciousness over the next few days.  I've been looking forward to this day since the last asparagus season.  Hooray!





And in something completely unrelated...My mom asked me last night if the tulips were blooming yet.  She asked because their winter never seemed to end this year, and I'm pretty sure most of her bulbs are just now brave enough to peek their heads out of the ground.  Sad to say, the tulip fields bloomed here while I was in California and London.  Instead, this is what greeted me when I took out the dog this morning.

 

 It's already time for the poppies here, a flower I personally associate with California...well, California and the illicit opium trade of Afghanistan.  I just love that they seem to sprout up wherever, even in the cracks of the sidewalk.  Hope this gives my mom hope that she, too, will soon have some flowers blooming in the yard.

Another Queen's Day

Saturday marked the third Queen's Day (Koninginnedag) I've celebrated in the Netherlands.  While we didn't escape the city and head to the beach like we did last year, we avoided most of crazy fun going on in the center.  We skipped the drunken parties on Queen's Day Eve and avoided the throngs of Holland's  orange-clad youth living it up in Museumplein.  Instead, Niek and I got up and enjoyed coffee on our balcony like the totally civilized adult that we are--or at least pretend to be when the occasion calls for it.  Honestly, I didn't want to waste a gorgeous Saturday morning, and besides it's finally strawberry season.  I bought my first pound of them at the neighborhood market this past week.  They were mostly small, and they were incredibly delicious.  I'm pretty sure they were grown in a hothouse, as most produce here is grown, so I guess it's a stretch to call it strawberry "season."  They were so much more delicious than the strawberries I've been buying from Spain (the California of Europe, as Niek likes to call it).  Paired with croissants, Intelligentsia coffee and a vase of spring's first peonies, you really can't go wrong.

 

I like to think that the dog agreed with my assessment of the morning, although he is pissed that our new balcony table takes up most of his precious lounging space.  He looks cute enough in this picture, but I think he really wants to give me the finger and push that damn table out of the way.

So I don't think that I have mentioned before that in addition to the crazy amounts of drinking that happen for Queen's Day, the other big activity for the day is setting up huge garage sales.  At first, I was excited about this aspect of the holiday, until I found out that the Dutch are much less selective about what makes it to their rummage sale piles than Americans.  I'm pretty sure most people just collect all the crap that has accumulated in their closet over the past year, set it on a blanket on the sidewalk and hope that someone will give them a Euro or two.  At the end of the day, they pack up all of their stuff in a box, and put it back in their closet until the next Queen's Day rolls around.

If you don't have sidewalk space of your own to claim, which you need to do at least the night before by using tape and chalk to mark your territory, you can head to one of the major selling areas.  Niek and I ended up in Vondelpark, the center of activities for children.  Here, you can buy children's clothing, really old car seats, books, beat up strollers, etc., etc.  

 There were also lots of kids performing musical numbers and tons of homemade carnival game stands.  All of that was very cute, but it was just so crowded.  I think we spent maybe half and hour walking around before our friends' baby felt totally overwhelmed and insisted on taking a break. Good call.

I did not sample any of the homemade delicacies lining any of the stalls.  Apparently, the thing to do is set up your own food stand.  This could be as simple as pancakes or as labor-intensive as loempias (Indonesian egg rolls).  Some guy even had his own cotton candy machine.  Niek told me that I could set up a stand with cupcakes and cookies next year.  That sounds like hell to me, so I think I'll pass.  I did love this boy's enthusiasm for his stacks of pancakes:

After braving the crowds of children and parents in Vondelpark, it was time for the real joy of the day: sitting out on a bar's terrace with a witbier.  Oh, wait, no witbier for me this year.  I comforted myself instead with a kroket sandwich (pulverized meat product that is breaded and fried).  Looking at the picture makes me wonder if a beer might have been the healthier option.  

All in all, a good holiday.  It is really time to get back in the kitchen and start blogging about cooking and food again.  It is, after all, spring.  Maybe I'll even convince Niek that we need to go to the asparagus fields.  Maybe.

California pining

Whew!  I am back from my conference in London and starting to feel a little more relaxed.  Well, I felt relaxed this morning, and then the panic about finishing chapter rewrites before the end of the month really set in.  All the members of my panel deemed the session a success, and it was fun to meet so many scholars and hear some great papers.  There were tons and tons of Nederlanders at the event, and I think I may have spoken more Dutch in London than English.
I would write about food in London, but considering the fact that I basically lived off of Pret a Manger sandwiches and Costa coffee for three days, there's very little for me to say on the matter this time around.  Instead, I will do a fluff post made up almost entirely of pictures of my time in SoCal.  Sadly, I didn't take that many pictures in California, I think because we were just busy having a good time with our friends...and oh yeah, getting ready for the conference.  Here are just a few things that made going back to the West Coast so great and just so different from my life in Amsterdam:

Beautiful views on a bright, sunny day at the Getty.  Regan still has a reader card for the Getty Research Institute, which means we got to park there for free!  Admission to the Getty is free, but there is a $15 parking charge, and it's pretty damn hard to get up there without a car.  That is why it pays every once in a while to be a graduate student.

Primo's Doughnuts.  Regan and James are regulars there.  Mrs. Primo even came out to give a goody bag of doughnuts to Regan's sister, who was leaving for Kansas after a visit out to L.A. I love a good doughnut.

Do not tell me that you wouldn't all do the same thing.  I look forward to getting a pedi before each and every visit.  Niek said he finally felt like he was on vacation after his pedi session.  The guy who did mine made a few comments about my runner's calluses, but he assured me that he had seen worse.  His words didn't seem to match with his facial expression, and I think we was relieved when I asked for the "extra" treatment.  God forbid my toes have calluses on them.

Ice cream isn't a food I really associate with L.A.; it's more of a frozen yogurt town these days.  However, if you're going to have ice cream, it will be fancy and made in small batches by cool hipsters somewhere near downtown.  I had some mocha Bailey's concoction and a scoop of a fancier version of cookies 'n cream.  The woman behind me in line asking which ice creams were vegan made it clear I was no longer in Europe.  Like the Dutch would ever consider a non-dairy based ice cream. 

Honestly, there is really nothing more to say about this.  Huevos Rancheros is an amazing dish!  Anything that combines breakfast with guacamole is a-okay in my book.  We went here twice for breakfast.  I miss you already, corn tortillas and avocados!

Last food picture, I swear.  Regan and James wanted to take us to a place in the Art District called, Wurstküche.  I love that the name of the place is in German but on the menu the sizes for the fries are written in Dutch, you know, because they're "Belgian" fries.  They actually weren't really Belgian style fries, but they were good with the handmade Bratwurst and the five kinds of mustard.
I laughed a little when I noticed the children's birthday party winding down in the private events room next to our table.  The cool parents were leaving with their little ones just as the younger crowd was showing up for happy hour.  I guarantee I never had a birthday party at a downtown hot spot when I was growing up.  I ate a lot of Usinger's Sasuage, though.  Does that count for something?




We did plenty of other things in between all the eating: Niek and I got to run up Runyon Canyon a few times, I went to a knitting store and spent too much on fancy types of yarn, we had plenty of good coffee, the conference presentation went fairly well, and so on and so forth.  A big highlight was the hike to a waterfall in the San Gabriel Mountains.

We hiked along the path of a 1920s camping resort.  The above sign was my favorite.  Regan is determined to rent the cottage pictured below for a weekend getaway.

James found a salamander, and then we proceeded to take about a million photos of the little guy before we let him slowly (ever so slowly, it was cold that day) take off for a more secluded spot.

I'll leave you with this slightly cheesy picture of me and Niek at the waterfall.  And before you start thinking, "Whoah, Diana, maybe you did have a few too many helpings of taco salads and french fries," I promise I have come by that little belly honestly.  It's only going to get bigger this summer, and hopefully in the fall I'll have a little person to show for all this gestating I'm doing.  L.A. was so much fun, and I miss all my friends so much already.  However, it's a good feeling to be home in Amsterdam.  I've got tons to get done in the next six months, and it's hard to write in L.A. on vacation.

The plural of conference is insanity

I have a piece of advice for graduate students:
Do not, under any circumstances think that presenting at two conferences in the span of one week is a good idea...ever.  This is especially true if you have to cross nine time zones to go to your first conference and then re-cross those time zones to go to your second.  If you find that you absolutely must present at multiple conferences, even though I have told you not to, at least don't be a procrastinator like me and make sure you finish both of your papers well in advance of the deadlines.
I was in L.A. last week giving a paper on a panel with Regan and our friend Naomi.  L.A. was awesome, and I can't wait to post lots of pictures of delicious food and one really fun hike to a waterfall.  The conference went pretty well, but it came at the end of our trip.  By the time we got back to Amsterdam on Monday morning, I was wiped out.  I have spent the last few days either sleeping off the exhaustion of jet-lag or freaking out about a paper for another conference that is so not near to being done.  I'm not sure I can put two coherent sentences together at this point, let alone an entire paper for a very important conference.  I'm terrified that I will embarrass myself and forever brand myself as "that woman who gave a shitty paper about intellectual networks in Asia."  Isn't that everyone's fear?
I have to get back to my paper now, even though I would prefer to be doing almost anything other than what needs to get done.  Stress makes me want to avoid that which I need to do most.
That was my advice to you for the day.  You are welcome.