It has come to my attention recently that I am apparently a lazy blogger. I tried explaining that, well, we're boring. I doubt anyone really wants to know about how I walked the dogs this morning again or that we want to rent a carpet cleaner from the shoppette on post, but the people who rented the two that they have are never ever bringing them back. Or that I vacuum every day and Ben is still training for a triathlon. This is boring stuff.

But as much as I know that I am, in fact, boring, I would hate for people to be bored with the blog due to lack of updates.

So for those of you who may be accusing me of slacking in the blog department, let me take you on a virtual tour of some things I love about the Netherlands. This episode of "Why I love the Netherlands" comes to you straight from my refrigerator. One of the most exciting things about being in a foreign country, at least in my opinion, is exploring foreign grocery stores. I never cease to be amazed by all the cookies, pasta, frozen meals, and types of bread that I have never seen before. If I could, I would spend our entire time here eating. And then traveling and eating some more.

So let me share with you some of the exciting things that we keep in our kitchen now.


Okay, yes, I know that everybody has fruit. We are not special. But I wanted to show you the fruit first because it is fresh and declicious and cheap from our local market. Every Saturday we go and load up on all sorts of yummy produce for mere pennies (or euros, whatever).

And also at the market you stumble sometimes on something unexpected and wonderful, like mini bell peppers

I knew they existed because Martha Stewart has used them in recipes, but Martha uses a lot of things that normal people don't even know exist, so the mini peppers seem ridiculous to me, in a tasty sort of way. They're delicious stuffed with feta, tomatoes, and a few herbs. Yummy.

And next we have the Smoeltjes, or "Smilies" as I call them.

They taste kind of like Fig Newtons and come in several different flavors. And they really are assorted little faces, some smiling, some screaming "No no no! Don't eat me!". Fantastic.

Next, you knew it was coming, the chocolate.


Just a few of the kinds that are currently living in our refrigerator. How can you not love a candy bar called "Wunderbar"?

And finally, the pièce de résistance... poffertjes!

They're like miniature pancakes!

I sprinkled mine with cinnamon and sugar like the bag suggested

And they are delicious!!!

Mmmmm.

We have a Friday night ritual that started way back in Arizona when we discovered the joys of making our own pizza. So now every Friday night, we make a pizza, change into pajamas, pour some wine, and watch bad movies, usually Lifetime Original Movies, although those are harder to come by here. Occasionally we watch a good movie on Friday night, but we try not to let that happen very often.

Last week we were really looking forward to pizza night. We had a bottle of wine that we had saved from our trip to Italy and we had decided to go ahead and drink it for pizza night. We had a real movie, not Lifetime, that we had checked out from the library. It did, however, star LL Cool J as an FBI profiler so we thought it would be suitably dramatic and not too intellectual (no offense to LL, of course). We had mozzarella cheese aplenty. The night promised to be fantastic in only the way wine, melted cheese, and LL Cool J could be. Or so we thought.

It was going so well. Before pizza, I was making a dessert to take to a friend's house the next night. Ben was playing video games. Then, he made the mistake of coming into the kitchen to help unload dishes before pizza-making. Big mistake.

How big? Well...


Here is Ben at the ER of our local hospital with his thumb wrapped up because (squint your eyes and grit your teeth here if you're squeamish) he broke a glass and sliced his thumb all the way to the bone while putting dishes away. Eeeeek. I feel icky just thinking about it. There was yelling and frantic cleaning of broken glass and a drive to the hospital.

So at the hospital they poked, prodded, wrapped it up and told us to wait. So we waited and waited, and looked at pictures in Dutch magazines, and waited some more. Finally the real doctor was ready to see us. He poked and prodded and poked and just about got Ben to hit him. He thought it would be no big deal to go poking around inside the wound to see if the tendon was cut at all. In case you're wondering, it apparently hurts A LOT when someone pokes your tendon. And no, Ben had no serious damage.

So then an "intern" gets to do the sutures. I put it in quotes because I'm not sure if "intern" = medical degree, or if "intern" = med student, or if perhaps it was just some guy who was interested in maybe being a doctor, because he had ZERO knowledge of how to do sutures. The real doctor had to tell him how to open the packet containing the needle and thread. And he was shaking the whole time he was sewing up Ben's thumb. On the plus side, he looked almost exactly like Napolean Dynamite, so at least I was able to find the whole situation slightly funny.

I tried to take a very covert picture, but unfortunately the "intern" is hiding behind Ben.


Finally, we got out of there and got to make our pizza. Luckily there were no more major incidents and LL Cool J lived up to all our expectations, as did our pizza. Ben now claims an inablility to unload the dishwasher, but we'll have to see about that. Maybe we can thumbwrestle to decide.