I’m a little slow. This just made it on my radar. Even though it was already on my mp3 player.
Author Archive for Abacus
And so without any fanfare or photographic evidence, tonight we ate the first harvest of the year from the garden in our pasta salad. There were some green onions, some cut-and-come-again lettuce and the first of our asparagus harvest.
The onions and the lettuce were fresh but otherwise unremarkable. The onions are a perennial, and we’ve had them for years. This is a big year for lettuce for us, so more on that when there’s more than six leaves. The asparagus was pretty tasty. All one stalk of it. That took two years to grow. Certainly I’ve never eaten any fresher, and you can taste that subtle difference, the one that comes from having harvested it just a few hours ago, from a healthy soil and no pesticides.
I can’t wait for the next one.
Last night we went out for dinner at De Peper with some friends. It’s in a building that used to be the film academy. The building itself was rescued from being torn down and made into a bicycle path by squatters who now own the building and for all intents and purposes have turned it into an independently run youth and culture center. There are actually a few restaurants like this and I think we’re in for a run of checking them out.
It takes a bit of planning to eat there, as they don’t serve dinner every night and you must make reservations. But in return you get a tasty vegan meal for cheap. Everyone gets the same thing, a soup and a main course, and you’re asked to pay between EUR 7 – 10, plus extra for your drinks and dessert.
Last night’s dinner was Jerusalem artichoke tempura, a vegetable curry and black beans on short grained rice, and a bit of sliced beet and lettuce salad. It was well executed and filling, but just a bit boring. It will be worth a try again.
Then on to the entertainment. Tuesdays are ping pong night. There’s a well lit open room with two tables where they were playing some trance, and there are paddles and balls and you just go at it for a bit and then let the next guy have a chance. In the other room it’s darker, and there’s a bar. There’s one table in this room and they were playing a big group game. It went thusly: everyone has a paddle and stands all around the table. The first person serves the ball across the table and then steps to the right. On the other side of the table they try to return to ball and then step to the right. This gives you a large group of people moving around the table in a big circle, each hitting the ball in turn. You miss and you’re out. As the numbers dwindle it gets a bit hectic. The last two play a five point game to decide the winner. And of course you can stand around and drink a beer and watch if you’re not going to play.
We’ll do it again for sure.
These shoes mean an awful lot to me. So what were they doing in the bottom of the armoire, getting moldy?
Mom, these are the shoes you bought me for college graduation. I remember I knew what I wanted – a pair of Birkenstocks. Expensive shoes they were back then, to me, and even though I certainly could have bought them myself, they always seemed to be more than I was willing to pay for something that was a luxury and just for myself. That habit I still have. It’s why I don’t have a Wii yet. Well, one of the reasons. Anyway, thanks. They were just right.
Dad, I remember those loafers of yours you kept patching together. Sorry I made fun of you for doing that. These have a lot of glue keeping the cork together now. I can probably make them go another twenty years. Well, if I clean the mold off.
I seem to do things a bit bass ackwards. I moved to the Netherlands, and then sorted out staying here. I got a job and then took a class on how to do it. I’ve been to a blog meetup first and met some other expat Amsterdam bloggers, and now I’m getting started on my blog. It was good to catch up with Andy, who I used to work with and haven’t seen in years, and to meet Anita, Angela and Mats, Hannie and Jason, Haley and her boyfriend, and John. Thanks to Amanda for setting things up. We only talked briefly with everyone else who was there. Next time, I’ll have to mix it up! The Gollem has great beers, but it is tiny and I was happy caught on the bench.
My new beginning is to crawl out of my shell a bit and get back into doing things in the world. It’s not like I’m a total hermit, but the things I do besides work eat sleep, repeat, have been dwindling. My routine needs a bit of shaking up. Or at least added to. I’d like to add the following: lap swimming, more house cleaning (really), two more things in the what-to-cook-for-dinner repetoire that don’t involve pasta, work on my French vocabulary a bit more, bake things, blog. One down, kind of.
Recent Comments