Today I walked to the Groot Gelderlandplein shopping center a few blocks away. No rain today, which is a welcome change. The sun even peeked out for a bit! There are many stores at the Gelderlandplein mall including Hema, Blokkers, Albert Heijn grocery store, and a chain restaurant called La Place which serves a lot of fresh food. There are also many clothing stores, shoe stores, and high end home good stores. It's a nice, comfortable place to shop as it's all enclosed. It's nice when you want to get out of the weather.
I went to Blokkers and Hema to buy a few things for the house. Their prices are very reasonable. Then I went to a couple of home good stores because I was looking for a bed pillow. The only decent ones I found were goose down and the least expensive one was 199 EUR! Needless to say, I did not buy one.
While at Albert Heijn the other day with Natasha, she got me a discount card. So now whenever I buy something that is on sale I hand them my card and it will register the sale price on items. For dinner tonight I bought some geschoonde spruitjes (brussel sprouts), aardappel puree met boter (mashed potatoes with butter-I think!), and speklapje a la minute varkensvlees (translated-pigmeat) for dinner and a Italiaanse lasagne bolognese for dinner on Sunday. Oh, and of course, I bought something sweet-some mini-choco stroopwafels! They are delicious!
Today for lunch I had Wasa bread, sardinesfilets (marinaded sardines), and Beemster extra belegen kaas (some kind of sharp cheese). I hadn't had Wasa bread or sardines since I was a kid growing up in Minnesota! Yummmmm!
I thought I'd share some pictures of the kitchen in our apartment. The Dutch make the most of limited space so things are quite small compared to what we're used to. The refrigerator is very small. Having just one refrigerator in the U.S. was good training for me-it won't be too difficult to adjust! The oven/microwave is small. No turkeys for us! I had brought a rack to bake a chicken upright, but it's not going to fit. The washer/dryer is quite small also, I can wash about 1/2 of what my U.S. washer could do. It all works great....it just takes a little getting used to.
Tomorrow we plan on driving over to Haarlem for the day. I just got a call from Natasha and it is looking pretty good for us being able to rent the house we like! We will be meeting with the landlord and her agent at the house to take measurements and look at the furniture they have available. We can rent it "semi-furnished" which means it has a kitchen, appliances and lighting available. Or we can rent it "fully furnished" which means all of the furniture would be put back in the house for us to use. Of course, that costs more money per month. You can also rent houses or apartments as a "shell" here. That means it comes completely empty-not even a kitchen in it. Some people when they move bring everything, and I mean everything with them-including the kitchen sink!
Well, time to finish the ironing and get dinner started. I think I could get used to this! Too bad I can't retire from my job till May 2012.
Ok, so, I cooked the speklapje a la minute varkensvlees (pigmeat), just like I would American bacon, and voila-mystery meat! I'll have to work on finding out how to prepare it, the way I cooked it it was terrible....so in the garbage it went.
Lessons learned today:
1. Enjoy the sunshine, even if it's chilly outside!
2. Look up food on-line that I don't recognize before I buy it and try to cook it!
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