A Valentine's Dream

Has this ever happened to you? You wake up to the sound of the street organ outside and discover it is snowing.


So you jump on the closest transportation you can find and suddenly there are windmills every where.


While you are gawking at the buildings and doorways, your lady love is watching the horses and wanders off to talk to someone.





A huge sailing ship comes up and they take you captive, but you escape and run down the street.


For some reason your feet feel heavier than usual.

You pass some righteous ducks walking on the water, pass a warning sign that you don't understand, and head down the canals through town until you finally find your true love.




You say this hasn't happened to you? I guess it was just a Valentine's dream in Amsterdam and Zaanse Schans.

A Dutch Treat

This is a picture of our first attempt to cook Dutch. The bowl in the middle has the famous hutspot, usually called hodgepodge in English. It's a different way to do mashed potatoes to make it a complete meal. Of course, we're just guessing at the measurements since they use the metric system here, but here's how you make it:

2 cups diced or chopped carrots
2 cups diced or chopped onions
2-4 cups diced or chopped potatoes
1 or 2 bratwurst/polish sausage or similar

1. Put the potatoes on the bottom of a pot. Layer on top the carrots and the onions and put the meat on top. In the stores here, the carrots and onions are already chopped up in "hutspot" packs. Cover with water and boil for 20 minutes.

2. Most recipes say take out the meat and drain the pot. But you know that we hate to waste anything so we took out the meat and then with a large slotted spoon took out the potatoes, etc. and put them in a bowl so we could use the liquid to make the vegetable soup you see in our bowls by adding chopped veggies and a whipped egg.

3. Add a lot of butter (half a cup?). With a fork or masher mash the butter, potatoes, carrots, and onions together. Add milk if needed. Salt and pepper to taste. We did a course mash.

4. Cut the meat into bite sized pieces and put them on top.

5. Eet smakelijk! (sounds like "ate smock a luck") Enjoy your meal.

Note: You can use other veggies (such as spinach or stir fry) or meats to mash together, but they say that this is the usual. They say it is even good cold. We'll find out tomorrow.

Hunting for Gators in Utrecht!

Of course, someone from the University of Florida has to go on a gator hunt when living in Utrecht in the Netherlands. After Joe, Heather, Joseph and Blake left us at the airport in Savannah, we took all kinds of transportation to get to our apartment at Campusplein. We've learned to dodge the bikes everywhere.




On the way to church to get spiritually prepared for the hunt, we saw snow angels, a good omen.


Of course, we had to fortify ourselves with plenty of fries with mayonnaise, Dutch style.

We looked in the canals near my classroom building, even went just outside the city center to where the canals widen out for the house boats and ducks.


Finally we found one just above our nose in the center of town near the tower of the dom (cathedral).

Now that we know where the gators are, we feel right at home. Don't forget to click on the pictures for a closer look.

New Year's Camping--2008-2009

Caroly's brother Larry, his son James and grandson Jonas made their first Florida visit. So of course we took them horseback riding, camping, shark's tooth hunting, manatee watching and swimming in the springs for a nice December three days at New Year's. Remember that springs in Florida are always 72 degrees. Here we are at Manatee Springs on the Suwanee River. See how many people you recognise who tagged along for the fun. Remember to click the pictures for a closer look.

Hong Kong--December 2008

Glitzy and glamorous best describes Hong Kong. We spent almost two weeks there, getting home just in time for Christmas. You have to look hard to find anything that looks Chinese except for the writing on the signs. We got around on subways (MTR), escalators (outside on the hillsides), ferries, and double decker busses. I gave a couple of papers on Filipino English and pop culture at conferences held at two universities. Mom went crazy with the pictures--over 180. I chose a small sample to show below. Remember to click on the picture to see the details better.