– Click here for this recipe in Dutch -> Linzensoep met worst –
Oh boy… being pregnant in the US feels like a full time job… Sort of 😉 What a difference with the Netherlands, even though I obviously have no idea what it’s like to be pregnant in the Netherlands, but still!
For example health insurance is lousy
– Click here for this recipe in Dutch -> Kikkererwtensoep met spinazie –
You know it’s fall when you’re craving chickpea soup with spinach! This soup is one of my favorites as it has two of my favorites: chickpeas and spinach!
6-year old Ellen would have never thought that spinach would be one of 32-year old Ellen’s favorites 😉 I hated spinach, as well as lots
– Click here for this recipe in Dutch -> Doperwtensoep met munt –
Growing up at the east side of the Netherlands, my aunt and uncle had a huge farm, not too far from our house.
I can recall many happy moments there; playing with my cousins at the hayloft and finding a dead mouse, seeing a cow giving birth to a calf at night while we are watching through the video system how my uncle was assisting, camping in a little tent in the front yard, drinking really fresh
– Click here for this recipe in Dutch -> Kippensoep –
‘They’ are promising us rain later this week. And not the rain we had a few times now since our arrival in Los Angeles, no we are talking about the Dutch kind of rain. One to two inches (2.5 – 5 cm), that’s a lot! Especially for LA 😉
I have the feeling the whole city is preparing to cope with the rain and I’m also planning ahead. I just don’t want to leave the house if it isn’t necessary. It’s not because I’m made of sugar, come on, I grew up in the Netherlands where it always rains a lot!
Last weekend I went shopping with a friend, I left P and his mom at home and she left her husband and her cute toddler at home. Girl time!
I wasn’t really planning on buying something because I want to save up some money for when one of my sisters is coming to visit next month. She will be staying here for six (6!!) weeks and we have a lot of fun thing planned together: Disneyland (because that really ÍS the happiest place on earth I recently discovered), roadtrip to San Francisco (and back over the PCH – yay!) and a visit to Las Vegas (finally!).
My friend had some birthday money to spend so I just followed her around in the stores. Ok, and even though I was planning to buy something I did buy a cute cardigan and a new pair of sunglasses at LOFT (they were both on sale, does that count?) 😉
At one point we stopped by Sephora. Yikes! Those places freak me out, I feel so out of place there.
If you browse through my recipes you see a mayority of Asian recipes. Kinda weird if you know that I’m a 100% Dutch girl, with no foreign roots. I also grew up in a small town in the east of the Netherlands, near the German border with no oriental influences at all over there.
I do have a Chinese aunt, she married my Dutch uncle almost 12 years ago when I was 20. She taught me some of her recipes and three years ago I travelled with her to her home town in China for four weeks.
Two weeks (and a little bit) until Christmas! Waaaah, time flies! This will be my first Christmas in LA and -even though it’s cold lately- the weather will never be as bad as in the Netherlands. Christmas and sun, that sounds like the perfect combination to me 😉
This week I’m going to give you a full Christmas menu, first course, main course and dessert.
A while ago I promised myself to start cooking with ingredients I’ve never cooked before, like parsnip,
Los Angeles is such a great city, it has so much to offer and is really really big. So big that we haven’t seen everything yet so in the weekends we try to explore the city. I say try because we also have to go out for brunch on Sundays and go on hikes on Saturdays 😉
A few months ago we went to Silverlake on a sunny Saturday. We walked around, had some drinks and visited the cute boutiques.
And in one of those cute stores I saw it: the cookbook I wanted to buy for a long time but still hadn’t done it because of our move.
Last Tuesday I had an amazing evening with my LA Food Bloggers friends of the Meetup group. We where invited to a 8 Course Prix-Fixe Dinner at the Barbershop Pop-Up in Venice.
And boy, this was fancy! Chef Walter el Nagar served us delicious food, including the amuse it was 9 courses! I had foie gras for the first time in my life, ate some wild Scottish wood pigeon and fell in love with the candied eggplant.
It’s nice to have a dinner like this once in a while, but deep inside I’m more of a rustic food kinda gal 😉
A few weeks ago it was so cold in LA, I had to wear shoes -instead of sandals or flipflops- for the first time since living here. I also bought a few sweaters and I was looking for a coat.
P was laughing at me, “do you know where it’s cold? In Amsterdam!”
I also got a few texts from friends who laughed when I complained about the cold, “so what’s cold, 20°C?” they were asking. (fyi: 20°C is 68°F)
Well ok. I had to agree with them.