The Day has come.

This morning I waited anxiously in my kitchen, awaiting the arrival of the delivery truck that would bring my newfound food freedom. I was nervous because they had forgotten to put the "B" after our house number, meaning they would be ringing my neighbor's bell. I called them and they assured me they had changed it in the computer.

So when I heard the tell tell sound of a diesel on our otherwise quiet street and saw the top of the truck through my window, I knew IT had arrived.

I made Dan rush downstairs to make sure the guys knew to bring it to us before I had to jump out the window onto their truck to prevent them from driving away with my oven (and as is usually the case with Dutch customer service, they had in fact NOT changed our address in the computer and the guys were in the process of calling someone to find out if there was a mistake). They brought up our new oven, much more efficiently than we could've ever gotten it up ourselves, and placed it in our house.  I then went to work on cleaning it and polishing up the steel. When all was said and done, I had a beautiful, new working oven in my kitchen/dining room.

Now, since most "ovens" (and by that I mean a microwave/oven combo,the size of a microwave) are built into the cabinet, ours has found a new home between our kitchen and dining room.

So what's a girl to do when she lives in a foreign country and has a brand new oven? Bake American style chocolate chip cookies of course!!!  So I set out to the store in search of a mixing bowl, vanilla, and white flour. Mixing bowl was easy, white flour was easy (although do you know that I had to get the flour at the Organic store because the grocery store by my house only carries flour that has a leavening agent in it? hence why they don't use baking soda). Finding the vanilla was a bit more difficult.  I went to three different stores in search of it. In store number one I got a weird look when asking about it but I'm pretty sure the girl did not speak much English. The second store I found "vanilla sugar" packets, in the baking section and no liquid vanilla anywhere.

As a sidenote, the grocery store is where I get the most frustrated with the cultural differences between here and back home. I often wonder around lost, frustrated and on the verge of tears. Such was the case today.

Store number three, the organic store. I asked a worker who has been helpful to me in the past and he said they did not sell liquid vanilla and didn't know where else I could find it. However, they did sell powdered vanilla. I had never heard of such a thing! But I got it, googled it, and found that 1heaping teaspoon of it is  equivalent to 1 teaspoon of liquid vanilla extract. I rushed into the kitchen to begin my new adventure.

The new mixing bowl with the dry ingredients (note the dark brown powder--vanilla)

This is the tiny tube the vanilla comes in. While it may be equivalent in potency, the prices are not. This cost 2.75euros, which is $3.80 for about 2 teaspoons. Send Vanilla please. :)

"Softening" (I prefer melting) the butter. Be thankful you guys have microwaves.

Adding the chocolate chips,which naturally includes tasting the batter.

The dough is on the silpat.I brought it from home. As you can see, it doesn't quite fit the smaller cookie sheet that they have here. I have seen smaller silpats around so I will be on the lookout for one of those. They really are an amazing baking tool.

 Cookies are in the oven. Note how not wide it is. This is large by Dutch  standards. We had two requirements when picking out an oven; must be able to fit a cookie sheet and must be able to fit a turkey. Ours accomplished both.

The great thing about our oven is that is has multiple heat settings. It can be a convection oven as well as a conventional oven. These cookies cooked in less than 5 minutes on the convection setting. It was great!!!

And Voila! The finished product!!  They taste as good as they look!!

VIctory is MINE!!

Taco Salad it is!!!

Last night for dinner I had planned on fixing burritos with chips and salsa. However, plans were altered after finding out the tortilla shells were moldy (which in and  of itself is odd because I don't think I've had tortilla shells back home go moldy and I've had them around for a long time.). So I improvised and made taco salads using tortilla chips, the taco meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and shredded cheese.

Dan refused to believe that it was taco salad and kept saying it was nachos. Granted, I did not have it piled high with lettuce and tomatoes because i had not prepared that much for burritos, however, there was no question about it--it was taco salad.


Dan of course, is having a difficult time admitting defeat. We had agreed that we would poll it on the blog and let the readers decide and just as I suspected, I was right.

Dan says, "8 pieces of sliced lettuce does not a salad make.  I admit, lettuce is not generally found on nachos, but meat, tomatoes, cheese are all common nacho toppings.  And I was not saying that these were quintessential nachos but they were more nacho-like than salad-like. "

I believe this quote speaks for itself.

Thanks everyone for weighing in, I knew you wouldn't let me down. And to Lisa and Chris who were on the nacho side, you are Dan's new best friends. :)

Taco Poll

Please help Dan and I settle a marital dispute.

Would you describe the food items below as a taco salad or nachos?

* Tortilla chips with ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese and salsa. (the amount of lettuce and tomatoes on top was substantially less than the amount of chips on the bottom)


We need as many votes as possible to prove who is right. If you know about the dispute already(Brandy) don't say who believes what.

The Polls are now open.


*Helpful tip: Many people have told me they don't know how to post a comment without a google account. Click on comments, then under post comment, there will be an empty box to write your comments. When you are done, there is a drop down box that says "comment as" . If you don't have an account listed there, go down to the bottom and click on "name/url" and it will allow you to put your name in there. Just ignore the space for a url. You can also post as "anonymous" and sign your name in the comment itself. Sometimes after you click post comment, a box will come up wanting you to verify the letters. People often navigate away from the page before doing that and it won't post your comment. After you verify the letters in the box, hit post comment again.

Tozer

Today was a rough day as I found out that my little dog (seen above) is going to have a difficult time getting to us. He has been staying with my parents since we left, with the intention of coming over about now. I found out today it's going to cost  $550 to ship him over. We have a small window of time before it gets too cold to ship him. It looks like we're going to have to wait until the Spring, after I find a job. I am comforted to know that at least he is in good hands and gets to hang out with another dog while he waits.

Yesterday while talking on Skype to my family, my little niece (who is 3 1/2) was trying to get Tozer to look at the screen to see me. Tozer was not cooperating and she said "Aunt Sam, I don't think he likes you anymore". Oh, out of the mouth of babes.
Dan said he probably thinks I died but was trying to make me feel better by saying that he will be so happy when he finds out I'm alive!

So for now I remain dogless and my poor dog either doesn't like me or thinks I'm dead. Either one is not a great scenario for me. If you're in the neighborhood, feel free to drop by my parents and take Tozer on a walk, give him some love, show him my picture and reassure him I'm alive and am coming for him.

More excitement!

Today begins the first day of the rest of our lives. Well, Wednesday actually. And I suppose it's not actually the first day of the rest of our lives. Maybe I should rephrase that--first day of the rest of our cooking lives.

We bought an oven!!!!

It is not a tiny Dutch oven but a real, honest to goodness, almost American size oven. It is just in time for the holidays. Since money's a little tight, I plan on using my oven as my Christmas present to all(within a 20km radius). Meaning, I will be baking up a storm closer to Christmas.

Dan has used his God given authority to request chocolate chip cookies when he gets home on Wednesday and I have never been happier to oblige! :) Thanks to Dan's mom, we have Nestle chocolate chips here! You can't find chocolate chips here otherwise.

I will post pictures on Wednesday once it arrives.

Pedal On

Today I toppled over 3 separate sets of bikes. Parking your bike can be quite difficult here because where we park, our bike is in an alleyway. Everyone parks at an angle (see below but imagine an extra bike parked in between each of these and at a little more of an angle) so it can sometimes be rough maneuvering your bike out of it's little parking space.

 Today I had trouble doing this. On my way to class this morning, I knocked over two bikes in our alleyway trying to back my bike out. I grudgingly re-parked my bike, set my basket down( because I can't put my basket on until after I get it out of the parking space) and set their bikes back up. 

Later, Dan and I were leaving to go look at ovens...BAM! Nearly knock over another one. I am holding my bike with my knee and holding onto the seat of the bike about to fall over, calling for Dan to come grab one or another.

And third and finally, I was leaving the grocery store with my 32 pack of toilet paper(hey, they were having a sale and it was only 5.99euros!) stuffed in my basket, my saddle bag full of groceries and I did it again. Although this time it was in front of a busy grocery store with lots of people milling about. I just got the bike up and re-parked and my bike moved away when the owner of the bike came out. It was a close one.

Bike riding comes at a cost. Sometimes it means being humiliated as you knock over a row of bikes. Sometimes it means your legs are black and blue from banging them on the pedals as you try to get started. Sometimes it means you ride down a busy street, barely able to see ahead of you because there was such a great deal on toilet paper that you'd rather crash and burn than miss out on the sale. 

I will get the hang of this "bike riding as my car" situation, mark my words. But for right now, I slowly pedal on, narrowly missing (or sometimes hitting) everything in my path.

Random thoughts

1. I'm sad I'm missing the MU/OU game. It comes on at 7pm, which is 3am our time. I did wear my MU sweatshirt today in honor of the game.

2. Bring on the comments Farbers. :)

3. I made dinner for our Italian neighbors who just had a baby. They asked if it was a special American meal. I don't know, is potato cheddar soup an American meal?

4. This made me wonder if they would even like potato soup or consider it dinner material. You have to think about these things ya know when living internationally. What if I offended them? Or what if right at this minute they are downstairs pouring out my soup? 

5. Hmm, I'm sure they liked it. 

6. At the grocery store today I saw what appeared to be a cardboard juice container with a picture of Mary and baby Jesus on the front.

7. Speaking of stores, customer service is pretty much non-existent here. But that is a whole other post in and of itself. 

8.  I have talked to two people now who are from a different country and who have had babies recently in the Netherlands. Good comments, baby having over here might be back on the table. (You're welcome moms!)

9. But still not for at least a year, if not two.

10. I keep forgetting that they don't celebrate Thanksgiving over here. They don't sell pumpkin in a can. How am I going to make pumpkin pies? I'm not even sure they sell turkey's. 

11. Whoops, I forgot I don't have an oven. Guess the lack of pumpkin and turkey's are a moot point.

12. Still on the hunt for non-aerosol can deodorant. Dan is starting to get frantic now because he didn't believe me when I said they didn't have it and now he's getting low on deodorant. Hmm, must put that on the list to bring back when we come home.

13. Or if you are coming over, throw some Secret deo in your suitcase for me.

14. When ARE you people coming over?Everyone is welcome.


15. Well, looks like it's about time to start cooking my own dinner. Yummy/cheap pasta!


16. And possibly a s'more for dessert. Dan had two last night. That's how good they are.