HO HO HO

 

ho ho ly shit, is it that time of the year already?

What Christmas is all about

One of the funniest series I know is the BBC's Gavin and Stacey. This is a clip from their Christmas Special, in which Gwen, Bryn and elderly neighbour Doris explain to you what Christmas is all about (Doris also mentions Scott, who is her toy boy lover).

Makes me laugh every time.

Good as new and I can now reveal what I’ve been busy with lately

 

So I braved the snowstorm and went on my way to the dentist this morning. It took me about 50 minutes to get there, which isn’t too bad if you live in the USA or another huge country and everything is a minimum of a one hour drive away from your home, but when you live in the tiny Netherlands, where almost everything is right on your doorstep, a 50 minutes drive to get to your dentist is considered to be rather excessive.

However, I got there, told the receptionist it was me that had arrived, she told me to take a seat and as soon as my posterior touched the comfy waiting room bench I could get up again because they were ready to admire my damaged molar.

The dentist looked at the molar, said something like: “Oh, no worries. It isn’t rotten and I’m just going to do some supergluing”, and before I knew it I had an iron casing or form (I’m not sure what the English word for ‘bekisting’ is) around the damaged molar. Then he went to work with electric files and brushes and blue gooey stuff and bright blue lights and white stuff and warm air and cool air and he did a bit of moulding and pressing and 15 minutes later I had a molar as good as new. It’s a miracle. Then his assistant took away a bit of yuck and muck that had nestled itself between some of my teeth and lectured me about flossing EVERY DAY (yes Miss) and I was sent home again. Uncrowned. I think. I’ve never had a crown, but I don’t think I have one now. Do I?

So… it wasn’t all that bad. If only everything in life would be that easy.

And what have I been so busy with lately that I didn’t have much time left to be a blogger? Remember I shot the buns in the ovens? Well, I’d made so many photos of both expecting mothers and they almost all were pretty nice ones, I decided I’d make some photobooks as presents for the mothers to be. I had never made a photobook. But I did a Photoshop course this last Autumn and the photographer who taught us all we now know about Photoshop said that www.blurb.com was a great site for good photobooks.

So I downloaded the blurb-make-your-own-photobook-software, watched the online video about how to get started and the one about lay-outs and so on and then I went to work. Now… I do have gorgeous friends, but in one or two shots they both had a little bit of a double chin, you get that when you look down, it can’t be helped but it can be photoshopped away, and in some shots you could see some electrical wires or a socket on the wall. You know the sort of things that can be a little bit disturbing in a photo. And I wanted my friends to be able to look at their photos without focusing on the wrong things. Therefore I did some crafty photoshopping. Nothing too much, but just enough to make the shots that little bit nicer. I was pretty happy with the result. But it took me quite some time, being a novice Photoshopper.

Then I made the two books. Such fun! I loved it. Thinking about lay-outs and backgrounds and colours. I totally went into ‘creative-Brinkbeest-mode’. But as I am quite a perfectionist with that sort of thing, again it took some time to get both books exactly right.

And since both friends didn’t know about the books, I couldn’t tell you before I gave them to my friends. They both read my blog now and again you see. It would have ruined the surprise.

Yesterday I gave both friends their books. They were happy. I was happy. We were all happy. Now we only have to keep our fingers crossed for all babies to come out quick and healthy and happy too. One of the twins will need surgery after his birth, so that is quite worrying. Please send positive thoughts and energy towards friend. It might help.

Thanks.

One dentist too many…

 

Yesterday the dentist came to our house. Yep, this one does house visits. He brought a bucket full of files and an old towel. Oh, and some pliers. Hmm. I wasn’t worried though. It wasn’t my ivory he was going to file and cut.

He came to do the horses’ teeth. This was the first time we had a real horse dentist over to do the job. Normally we ask the vet, but we heard about this guy living not too far away from us, so we decided to call him. The horses’ (am I using the ...’ correctly?)  teeth generally need filing once a year. So, he came, filed, chopped a little bit off Willem’s corner teeth (Willem looked highly surprised, but it obviously didn’t hurt a bit) and he looked at Evie’s teeth for fun, because they didn’t need doing. He was really taken by her. Said how beautiful she looked and that he could see she was an intelligent horse. Evie liked him too. Well, who wouldn’t?

I’m not a big fan of the dentist for humans. Not that ours isn’t a nice guy, he is, but I just don’t like going. I find going to the dentist an inconvenient hassle. Takes hours (because we’ve kept the dentist we had where we lived before) to get there and back again for 5 minutes in the dreaded chair. Usually not much needs doing.

Unfortunately this morning a piece of one of my molars broke off. So I have to undertake the journey tomorrow for a bigger operation. Hmm. Nów I’m worried.

Oily balls (100 things I love about the Netherlands: 14)

 

I knew oily balls would get your attention. And since I need ‘things I love about the Netherlands’ to get to 100 one day, I’ve included them in the list. Even though I don’t really love oily balls. They give me heartburn.

They will no doubt resemble something your country will have in it’s culinary assortment too. If not… lucky you!

Oily balls are made of a yeasty dough, filled with currants, raisins and/or candied lemon-peel (shock horror) and they are deep-fried. It is tradition to eat ‘oliebollen’ (that’s what we Dutch call them. It literally translates into oil balls, but somehow oily balls sounds better. Makes me think of the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show. Why? I don’t know.) on New Year’s Eve. With a generous dusting of icing sugar. (Demonstrated here by hubs, who gave the granite worktops a generous dusting too.)

I’ve never really liked oily balls, especially not the ones filled with the disgusting candied peel and such. So my mother used to bake some ‘blind’ ones for me. Oily balls without the raisins etc. are called ‘blind oily balls’. Or my mother baked ‘appelflappen’. I did like ‘appelflappen’. They are made by dipping whole round apple slices, with a hole in the middle where the core has been removed from the apple, in the yeasty oily balls dough and then deep-frying them.

Years of being subjected to peer pressure on the oily balls-subject (“these are very good, you háve to taste one”) resulted in me actually preferring the raisin filled ones to the blind ones and éven to the ‘appelflappen’. As long as they do not have candied peel inside them.

In December ‘oliebollenkramen’ (stalls where oily balls are baked and sold) pop up in parking lots near shopping centres and in villages and city centres all over the Netherlands. During the rest of the year they are probably found at fun fairs, where oily balls and waffles with whipped cream are very popular ‘food’.
I’ve googled ‘oliebollenkraam’ and came across this questionable ‘singer’ with his ode to the girl in the oliebollenkraam. It makes me very ashamed to show it to you, and I assure you this is not an example of the best Dutch music (although certain people in the Netherlands do like this kind of music, but I’m all for keeping them in gated communities and not allowing them to interact with people who have taste) but it also made me giggle. It truly is a horrible song, but the video gives an impression of a Dutch ‘oliebollenkraam’. So my advice will be to turn off the sound and simply watch it for a short while.

(I díd warn you.)

I’m sorry for being such a bad blogger lately Been busy with other things.

Serial baker

Remember I told you about my friend who is expecting two babies and that I was supposed to take photos of her big belly and of hér big bellied friend? If not, you can read about it here.
Well, the bun shooting was scheduled for Thursday before last, but when the day came, friend of friend decided to have her baby that afternoon. And I had cleaned the house, washed the windows, painted some walls, all for the occasion, but then they didn’t arrive because just before they were coming my way, the baby announced that it wanted to leave the oven. Exciting stuff. (It’s a healthy boy.)
Friend and I rescheduled the shooting of the remaining bun to yesterday.
And yesterday afternoon, the belly entered my reasonably clean and freshly painted house. Really. First the belly entered and somewhere behind that my friend followed. She’s a serial baker. She already has two cute little girls and now she’s carrying two little… boys.

(Do you like the new colour of the wall? It makes a change from white. We love it and so does everyone who’s seen it. Or they just were being polite.)

Yep. I only have beautiful friends. They must pass the gorgeousness test, otherwise they are not allowed into ‘the inner circle’.
And yes, we do also have a black wall. In fact it is a huge blackboard that divides the kitchen from the dining area. On the kitchen side of it we write down recipes and other important stuff. The dining room side we reserve for drawings by visiting children of serial baking friends and the occasional scribble of our own hand.

Crazy friend (she is very crazy in a fun way) tucked the cute sheep in her ‘bellywarmer’. Why not.

Very entertaining…

Somewhere underneath this funky hairdo…

…you’ll find a little pony called Jimmy.

He belongs to our very dear friends and their two little girls who were willing to demonstrate their pony handling and riding skills to us last Sunday. The lady in pink, yes, the one wearing the helmet, was supposed to show us how incredibly well she can ride Jimmy so she got all dressed up for the occasion. But she kindly offered to let her little sister go first. She actually said: “can my little sister go first mommy?”, which I though was very sweet. (If it had been me, my little sister probably wouldn’t have been allowed to even look at MY pony without me screaming and punching my little sister on the nose! But then again I could only dream of having my own pony and I don’t have a little sister. I’m slightly jealous of little people with little ponies.)

And then she showed us how to ride up and down steps…

…and her mom showed that she can ‘run like the wind’ while preventing daughter from bouncing off her little pony. Very entertaining.

Meanwhile, in the sky directly above us…

… an ultralight airplane was doing some stunts.
Also very entertaining. At first we thought something wasn’t quite right when we saw the black smoke coming out, but we heard the pilot shout ‘WHOOHOOOOO’ and it didn’t sound like a terrified scream.

And on Saturday we had a visit from the vet again. This time because Naloma managed to get a very big hole in her bottom lip. How? I don’t know. But it needed stitching. Not so much entertaining in the fun sense, but it certainly kept us busy for a while. Fortunately it wasn’t a hole through her lip, but it certainly was a gaping wound. And the top bit had a couple of smaller wounds and was really swollen. I put clay on it, the whitish stuff, because it disinfects and cools.

See how swollen it was? I took these photos on Sunday. It looks much more normal now. In about a week or two the stitches can come out. It will heal nicely the vet said (while probably mentally working out what kind of new car he’s going to buy).

Who shot the bun in the oven?

 

OK, I admit. It was me. Or actually, I just shot the oven. Not the bun. I don’t have the equipment for bun-shooting.

Let me clear this up for you. You see, I have a couple of friends who are heavily pregnant. One is expecting twins and one is expecting just one baby. The one who is carrying the twins around until they are done and ready to come out of the cosy round oven, already has two little girls. She suggested that it would be nice for the other friend, the one who is carrying her first baby, to have photos of her big round belly to show her offspring where it came from. When the little child is past the cabbage or stork stage, these photos will act as proof.

So I offered to do a photo shoot of the oven with the bun in it.

Last Monday I went over to friend’s beautiful house to try and make some decent photos. Fortunately friend is gorgeous and always looks good on photos, so that helped. We carried all kinds of lamps around for the best light and had great fun.

I’ll show you a couple of shots. There are lots more. What do you think? Beautiful mama to be or not?

 

I was so happy with the way these photos came out that I’ve phoned the other friend (the one expecting the twins) and asked her if she’d like me to take photos of her big belly too. “Oh yes please”, she said, “but my very best friend is also pregnant and I’d like her to be in the photos too. Do you mind?” I don’t know her very best friend, but I didn’t mind, so next week another photo shoot is planned. This time at my house. Oh sweet mother of Elvis! I need to clean my house. Especially the windows. And paint two walls that once were white, but the dogs love sitting against them and now they are white with brown/grey stains up to human knee level. And those are the best walls to use as a background for the photos. I’m going to paint one wall a very different colour. Hopefully it will be the right choice. Exciting stuff. We’ll see.

Evies collection of funny faces

 

I’ve published these photos of Evie, doing her camel-impressions when she was just a couple of months old, before. But I think they are cute and I have some new friends who probably haven’t seen them. And since a lot of you enjoyed Naloma’s funny faces in the previous post, I thought you might enjoy to see these ones of her daughter (again).

 

Hard to believe that the ugly duckling above turned out into this pretty 1 1/2 year old filly.
Well I think she’s pretty anyway. But I’m biased

I’m probably going to bother you with more reruns of funny Evie photos this week, I have lots, unless something happens that is interesting enough to blog about. Who knows?

Boost

 

Leaving Blogworld unannounced for a couple of weeks is really very good for your self-esteem. I can highly recommend it. All your beloved Blogfriends tell you how much they miss you. It’s good to know that you mean something to them. Whatever it is.
(Just between you and me, that’s why I disappear now and again. I need a confidence-boost from time to time. But don’t tell anyone. They might just stop caring.)

(Actually, that’s a lie. What I told you yesterday is the truth. Honest!)

So, what’s been happening while I was neither here nor there. I mean, I was here but not hére. And from my point of view I’m never there. Not even always here. Are you still following? Good for you! I’ve lost the plot totally. Where was I? Oh yes, I wasn’t here, nor there, but here. And what happened here? Not much.

Main event: Evie had a colic. God knows why. She’s alright now, but I can’t for the life of me think of a reason why she suddenly was constipated. We are always careful about what we feed the horses (their intestines are very sensitive to variations in their diet). As soon as I noticed something was wrong I gave her a dose of Colosan (sadly not known in other parts of the world as a medicine for horses with a tummy ache), which usually does the trick within 10 minutes or so but this time it didn’t work. So the vet came and gave her an injection to ease the pain and get her system working again. Vet even tried to do an internal examination, but poor Evie was highly surprised someone tried to push an arm into her… erm… arse. She didn’t agree with such impertinent behaviour and made that very clear to vet and me. She didn’t kick, but jumped around a lot and tried to stand on her hind legs, which you can imagine isn’t funny if you have your arm somewhere up there. (Well, it is funny to watch if you are an innocent bystander perhaps.) So vet abandoned the idea and said: “I’ll just give her the injection then…”, and that worked. Non-horsey-people probably don’t understand why you’re doing a happy dance when you see a pile of your horse’s poo.

We also did some obstacle training when I wasn’t in Blogworld. Horses sometimes consider the most normal things to be horribly scary, so it’s important to show them that not everything is as frightening as it may seem. An umbrella for instance makes Naloma snort like a pig. She does that when she doesn’t trust something. I know. It’s weird. She’s weird. I’ve done ‘umbrella-training’ before and it took Willem about 2 minutes to destroy the umbrella I dropped in the paddock. He isn’t scared of anything. He picked it up, shook it, dropped it and stood on it. Dead umbrella. Naloma however… totally different story. Her first reaction is WHAAAAAAAA SNORT. Her second reaction is SNORT and keeping a safe distance from the weird object. I did some work with her and eventually she dared to touch the umbrella, but she still wasn’t convinced the thing didn’t want to attack her.

So I thought I’d introduce an umbrella to Evie. She had much the same reaction as Willem, but the umbrella survived this time.

Then we introduced a sheet of plastic and tried to make them walk over it.
Willem didn’t care. He didn’t even raise an eyebrow. So no problem there.

Evie thought it was an exciting thing, but she’s very curious so she couldn’t keep her distance for long. She walked over it in no time and when we let her do her own thing….

…she tried to eat it. Not a good idea. We saved the plastic (and Evie) and…

…then we introduced the plastic to Naloma. She snorted a lot…

…but about half a bucket of treats later…

…she accidentally put one foot on it, which she regretted soon afterwards…

Don’t you just love her?

Eventually she walked over the plastic a couple of times, after I took over from hubs, but there is no photographic proof, because I’m silly and rather not have my photo taken. 

So my lovelies… that’s about it for today. I’m off to rake up the leaves. I love Autumn for its light and beautiful colours, but all those dropping leaves… Can do without that!

Oops

 

Hi there! Time flies when you’re having fun doesn’t it? I mean… it feels like it was just yesterday when I posted about Tompoezen. Anyway, I’m still alive and still kicking. Well, not so much kicking, but definitely alive. I haven’t made time for reading your blogs or writing my own posts (as you may have noticed). Actually, I don’t even read the newspaper most days now. Lack of energy. Being busy outside for most of the day leaves me with just enough energy to cook dinner for hubs and me at night and eating it. After that the light upstairs more or less goes out.

But today hubs is mucking out the stables, so I have a couple of hours to wander around in Blogworld and see what’s going on with all of you. Looking forward to that. So… I’m off to visit you now…

100 things I love about the Netherlands: 12 & 13

12: Tompoes (or tompouce)

I loooove tompoezen (one tompoes + one tompoes = two tompoezen). It is my one weakness one of my weaknesses. And especially the tompoezen that are made and sold by the HEMA. Love them! (Although the whipped cream version made by a bakery in a nearby village isn’t bad either.) So, just for you, dear blogfriends, I went to the HEMA yesterday and got you four tompoezen.

Only for the photos of course.

A tompoes is made of two layers of puff pastry with a vanilla pastry cream filling and pink icing on top. Its shape is always rectangular. Around Queens Day (the day our country celebrates the Queen’s birthday) and when our national football team has to play an important match, the icing on the tompoezen isn’t pink but orange. (Orange is our national colour. Our Royal family is called Van Oranje-Nassau.)

The difficulty with tompoezen is ‘how to eat them in a civilized manner’. You could try to prick your pasty fork into the top layer of puff pastry. It won’t work. You’ll either press the top layer down, making a mess of the whole thing because the cream filling will ooze out, or the whole tompoes will shoot off your plate and land on the floor or against the wall or in the lap of someone else. So pricking your fork in the top layer of pastry is not the best way to attack a tompoes.

The safest and easiest, but perhaps not the most elegant and civil way is to use your hands to take off the top layer, eat that first and then use your pastry fork to eat the rest. Or take alternate bites.

I wonder, how does the Queen eat a tompoes?

Somehow the tompoezen I bought for photographic purposes only ended up on saucers. With pastry forks.

Irresistible.

And the other two we ate that evening. Oops. Weak flesh and all that. (Even weaker with the calories of two tompoezen each added.)

 

13: HEMA

The HEMA (an acronym for Hollandsche Eenheidsprijzen Maatschappij Amsterdam, ‘Dutch Standard Prices Company Amsterdam’) is a chain of department stores. The first HEMA opened in Amsterdam on November 4th, 1926. Everything on sale had a standard price of 10, 25, 50, 75 or 100 cents. Quality goods for a low price. They still sell good quality products, but the prices are no longer standardized. To see the range of products they sell you can follow the link below (Mara from Weighty Matters tipped me that this site has a fun chain reaction going on):

http://producten.hema.nl/

The HEMA is also famous for its ‘rookworst’ or smoked sausage.

Since the 1990s, HEMA has also expanded into neighbouring countries. Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and France have HEMA’s too.

The HEMA organizes yearly competitions for Design students. The winning design will be produced and sold by the HEMA. This year’s briefing was ‘design an authentic HEMA product, which makes it easier and more fun for people to get out and about’.

You can see the winning design of this year here.

100 things I love about the Netherlands: 11

Dikes

Because if we didn’t have dikes, we’d drown.

Yesterday we went up to Kleine Huisjes, a little village in the north of Groningen, to get access to one of the dikes that keep us safe from the sea. Kleine Huisjes literally translates to Small Houses.

“Where do you live?”

“In small houses.”

“Why do you live in more than one house?”

“No, I live in Small Houses.”

“Why not buy one big house then?”

“No, I live in SMALL HOUSES!”

“I don’t get it…”

Not to mention the problems people in Vierhuizen or ‘Four houses’ will have. Or the people who live in Broek. Broek in English is ‘trousers’.

“Where do you live?”

“In trousers.”

“No, I’m not asking what you’re wearing. I’m asking where you live.”

“I live in trousers.” 

….etc.

 

But this isn’t about funny named villages. This is about dikes. Dikes that keep the sea on one side and the land on the other side. A large part of the Netherlands (about 20%) lies below sea level. So you can understand why I love dikes. Very important constructions they are.

From this point of view the sea is on the other side of the dike. The sheep are employed to keep the grass short and fertilized.
They do a good job.

 

The Waddenzee. View from the dike.

 

And the view towards Broek on the landside of the dike.

The Waddenzee is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. To read more about it I’m going to refer you to Wikipedia. I will post more photos of this part of the Netherlands on my photoblog.

Carrot Cake

No Thursday’s Trifles this week. I’m sorry. Didn’t have (or make) time to read the newspapers this week.
And I don’t even have a ‘100 things I love about the Netherlands’-post ready yet.

What I dó have however, is this:

 

I hadn’t baked a carrot cake for ages. A very funny post by Don’t Bug Me reminded me of carrot cakes (and while you’re there, you can also go to her previous post - it’s about insects - and nominate her blog to be awarded Best Canadian Blog), but I couldn’t find the recipe I used to use. Fortunately I found another one and added a little bit of my own ideas to it. So this is my recipe. I’m giving you both grams and ounces, but I believe English and American ounces differ slightly. And when I cook I use the ‘about-method’. So I measure ‘about’ 200 grams of grated carrot, not exactly. It usually works for me.

6 eggs (I used 8, because our chickens produce small eggs)
250 gr sugar (9 ounces)
2 of those small sachets vanilla sugar, in total about 20 grams (nót, I repeat NOT, the baking powder)
1/2 teaspoon salt
250 gr plain flour (9 ounces)
200 ml vegetable oil
125 gr pecan nuts (4.5 ounces)
200 gr grated carrots (7 ounces)
2 handfuls raisins
250 gr icing sugar (9 ounces)
100 gr butter (3.5 ounces) 100 gr cream cheese (3.5 ounces) (I used Monchou)
lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 175 Celsius.

Beat the eggs with the sugar, vanilla sugar and salt until it has a light yellow colour and creamy consistency (it should form a ribbon if you let it run off a spoon). Sift the flour above it and beat the flour and 200 ml of vegetable oil (bit by bit) through it (I used an electric hand mixer). Spoon the carrots, raisins and the pecan nuts through it. Poor the mixture into a greased cake tin and bake it for about 60 minutes. Remove from the oven (good tip!) let it cool and then….

….beat the butter and the cream cheese until soft (I used a wooden spoon). Beat the icing sugar and a little bit of lemon juice through it until it is a creamy consistency and spread it on top of the cake.

 It turned out pretty good. Very light and soft texture, nice with the nuts and the raisins.

 

Do you have a great carrot cake recipe? Would you like to share it? Please? Pretty please?