bietenstamppot.

stamppot of red beets in agrodolce, spinach, potato, gorgonzola, walnut. 

1 kg potatoes
2 handfuls fresh, washed spinach

3 large beets, roasted, peeled and sliced
3 tbsp raw sugar
3 tbsp red wine vinegar

1 handful good walnuts, toasted and halved or so
1 tbsp butter

butter or olive oil
freshly grated nutmeg
freshly ground black pepper

blue cheese, crumbled

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This was also pretty delicious as a red-wine risotto with roasted cauliflower instead of beets. And rice instead of potatoes.

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1001 things.

Yesterday, Christmas Eve, I had a couple of food revelations. The only one I can formulate clearly at the moment is this: Cheez Whiz is really pretty delicious on anything. I tasted it on Momofuku pork belly, cold shrimp cocktail shrimp, and even, yes, a chicken nugget...every time, I thought "man that's delicious". Way better than American cheese.

Anyway. So in my Christmas stocking I got this book, 1001 Things To Eat Before You Die. You know me, I like eating, I like nitpicky trivial things like this, plus the timing was right to take a peek at what someone/anyone had to say about Australia's essential eats, fortunately there are several pages' worth of stuff in there on Australia, New Zealand and Tahiti.

Well wait: for context and comparison's sake, let's also look at what they consider essential eating for some of the other places we're already familiar with. For example:

Dutch
Banketletters
Hutspot
Lamb's Tongues in Madeira Sauce
Nieuwe Haring
Eel in Green Sauce
Kroketten
Bitterballen
Haagsche Hopjes
Uitsmijters
Broodjes
White Asparagus

Et cetera. Not a terrible list, only the lamb's tongues seem really out of place on a list full of things you see all the time, though you see eel less and less.

And America, though a much bigger section, also gets a lot of things right: apple pie, biscuits, bacon, BBQ, baked beans, BLT, Brunswick stew, brownies, candy apples, Caesar salad, Cobb salad, cornbread, corn on the cob, crab cakes, deviled eggs, gumbo, jambalaya, key lime pie, lemon meringue pie, clam chowder, toasted marshmallows, muffaletta, Oreos, po' boys, saltwater taffy, fried chicken, shrimp and grits, Tex-Mex, Thanksgiving dinner, etc. I left out more than half of it, but those things all feel pretty nostalgically, uniquely American to me. Thus:

Australia
ANZAC biscuits
Barramundi
Abalone
Carpetbag Steak
Damper
Doyle's On the Beach
Emu
Granny Smith Apples
Kangaroo
Lamingtons
Macadamia Nuts
Pavlova
Peach Melba
Pie Floater
Sydney Rock Oysters
Tasmanian Leatherwood Honey
Tiger Prawn
Vegemite
Wattleseed

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the hideous vegetarian sausage roll project take 2.

This is the successful (-tasting, not -looking) version. It still needs a pinch of adventure somehow, but it tastes pretty great as is plus you'd never guess it was tofu.

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vegetarisch saucijzenbroodje.

400g tofu, frozen and defrosted

1 large onion, diced small
2 tbsp butter (i bet you could even make this brown butter for extra boom)

1 tsp, up to 2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg, to taste (important, this should be the top note of the end result, but juuuust barely identifiable)
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp paprika powder
1 tsp ginger powder
a pinch ground coriander
1/4 cup ketjap manis, or more, to taste
3 tbsp ketchup
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
salt to taste

1 egg, lightly beaten

8 sheets 5 x 5 puff pastry

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Crumble tofu with your hands until there are no pieces bigger than, say, a kernel of corn.

Spread tofu on a single baking paper-covered baking pan (speak English much?) and roast in 150°C oven for 15-20 minutes, or until lightly browned and dry and spongy.

While that's happening, sauté onion in butter until browned, 15-20 minutes.

Combine spices in a bowl and then add roasted tofu and sauteed onion. Mix and squish with hands until thoroughly combined. Then yeah assemble into sausage rolls (?) and bake for 15-25 minutes or however long it takes.

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the hideous vegetarian sausage roll project.

Take 1: pretty much total failure, except for the hideous part.

Things that worked: freezing tofu, pulsing the thawed version with seasonings, sauteeing/caramelizing in a pan, then roasting on baking paper to dry everything out.

Things that didn't work: the seasoning. Something went horribly wrong in the earliest stages, leaving a rather nasty aftertaste, and all signs point to either Worcestershire sauce or allspice/pimiento as the culprit. I've had this happen with allspice before, so that's my suspicion. Here's what I think did work:

400g tofu
3 tbsp ketchup
1/3 cup ketjap manis
2 tbsp mustard
1 tsp nutmeg
a lot of black pepper

and then some other spices that I haven't figured out yet.
sauteed in 2 tbsp butter

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also:

tostiproeftest.

As part of my wonderful new inburgeringscursus, I've been eating a lot of tostis. After years of no tostis. That is not a euphemism. Regardless: a mind like mine tends to compare things.

There seems to be some kind of direct correlation between the inclusion of a pointless and inedible garnish (unappetizing slices of unseasoned cucumber and tomato) and the badness of the tosti. Without exception the best tostis so far have come on a plate by themselves with regular tomato ketchup as their only companion.

OK, here they are, ranked:

APPROACHING GREATNESS
Caulils, Amsterdam
Cafe Atlantis, Groningen
Gambrinus, Amsterdam
Cafe Thijssen, Amsterdam (pictured above)

OK I GUESS
Cafe De Sigaar, Groningen. A perfectly good tosti demoted/ruined by using a weird ketchup.
Pilsvogel, Amsterdam
Kafé België, Utrecht

















ACTIVELY BAD
Moeke Vaatstra, Zuidwolde: giant and styrofoamy, like a stage prop served with curry ketchup, the whole thing was a conceptual mistake (pictured below)
Cafe De Oude Wacht, Groningen: zero effort except for the tasteless garnish of two-day-old cucumber slices
Huis De Beurs, Groningen: less than zero effort, also featuring a tasteless garnish. Ultimately worse due to its lack of, well, cheese, and its ridiculous €4.00 price tag (pictured above)

THE WORST
Cafe De Spuyt, Amsterdam: insultingly shoddy, not even in a funny way: less than zero effort but also stale, barely warm and completely tasteless, the ketchup was way better than the sandwich (pictured below).























TARGETS
Caulils, Amsterdam (more info, pictured below)
De Kat in de Wijngaert, Amsterdam (I've had it before, but that was a while ago)

spice channel.

Merry Holidays everyone. Today our plans revolve around some food prep for tomorrow, and then watching the The Spice Channel for a few hours, starting with either Assbreak Hotel (3pm) or Fuck Me In My Jeans (5pm), depending on when we finish cooking.

Oh nee, we're just joking. Nothing but wholesome activity around here: cookie baking, chili making, etc. But those two movies are actually on this afternoon if either of those titles sound like your thing.

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fryske dúmkes (Frisian thumb cookies).

1 1/2 cups butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp aniseed

This recipe makes a shitload of cookies as written. Here's Wikipedia's recipe.

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autentico mexicano.

Good news for the eight Nederland-based readers of this blog: there's finally a real soft corn tortilla maker in town. They're called Tortilla Factory, based in Halfweg, Mara met some of the folks behind it and yes they are very friendly and very Mexican. You can order their tortillas via their website, or possibly via some other electronic means but their website is down at the mo, I'll update with deets when it's up.

Also, good news for the two readers of this blog who live in this very house: I'm making stamppot for the first time tonight, using dear, trusted KK's eight-year-old eG guide as my own basic guide but taking a liberty or two. I'm doing a very non-traditional and kind of Southern onion and black pepper gravy, which is where more than half of the ingredients are coming from.

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stamppot (kale and potato mash with smoked sausage).

500g potatoes
500g kale, rinsed and chopped fine
water to cover
pinch salt
one knob butter
milk to moisten

300g rookworst or other smoked sausage

2 shallots, quartered
one small sweet onion, diced medium
125g lean bacon or lardons
2 tbsp water/stock/wine to deglaze
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp cream
enough milk to eventually make the right amount of gravy, I ended up using at least 1/2 cup
a pinch thyme
a dried sage leaf or two, crumbled
several grates of nutmeg
more freshly ground black pepper than seems prudent
salt to taste

So cook your bacon/lardons over low heat for 20 minutes or so, or until the fat is full rendered and meat is crispy. Remove from pan and set aside. Put the shallot and onions in the pan and deglaze with the wine, water or stock. Add butter and cook on low for 10 minutes or so. Add cream, milk, herbs and spices and simmer on low for 10-15 minutes or until sauce is appropriately thickened.

For the rest, cover the peeled potatoes with just enough boiling water to, well, cover. Add kale on top, and mostly cover. Simmer for 20 minutes or until taters are done. Now, you could apparently also put your sausage in this water and heat it up that way. When potatoes are done, remove sausage if you're doing it this way, then drain the rest and return kale and potatoes to pot. Mash together, add butter and enough milk to reach desired consistency. Salt to taste.

Serves 4 if you double the sausage.

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carrots like mom used to make.

3 cups sliced carrots (1/4-inch thick or so)
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp raw sugar
salt to taste

Steam carrots until almost the way you like them, for us this is about 10 minutes. Take carrots out of the pan. Melt butter in pan, add sugar, stir til sugar dissolves, adjust sugar and butter to taste, return carrots to pan, stir to coat, salt to taste. Served 2 as a side, but we ate a lot of carrots.

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west side story.

If you want a more Dutch/speculaas-tasting version of this, you can bump the ginger, cloves and cardamom up to 1/4 tsp each even maybe. I know that the last time I did this it was better than it was as written below and I used a little more of every spice except cinnamon.

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almond apple crisp with brown butter.

6 tbsp almond flour
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup raw sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp salt
5 tbsp unsalted butter, chilled, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
3/4 cup toasted almonds, coarsely chopped

3 lbs. apples (I used 8 apples), half sweet and half tart, peeled, quartered, and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 cup raw sugar
1 and 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp lemon zest

5 tbsp butter, browned to a beurre noisette

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Combine everything from the first group of ingredients except the butter and almonds in the bowl of a food processor. Add butter and pulse ten times, four seconds per pulse. Add almonds and pulse five more times, one second each. Refrigerate for 15 minutes while you put the apples together.

Adjust rack in oven to lower-middle position and preheat oven to 190C/375F. Add second group of ingredients to a big bowl and stir to coat everything thoroughly. Put apple mixture in a 9" square baking dish or similar, distribute topping evenly over top, bake for 40 minutes. Drizzle brown butter over top, turn up oven to 200C/400F and bake for 5 minutes or until everything looks properly bubbly and brown.

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hemaworst.

HEMAworst, €2 @ Centraal Station. Snap for days. Smoky as all get-out, but I still reaaally wonder what these would be like on the grill.

I wouldn't eat the whole thing at once if you plan on doing anything other than sleeping or drinking afterwards...I didn't (I mean I didn't eat the whole thing, I didn't even eat the bun, nor did I sleep or drink afterwards).

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Holy shit am I busy for the next few weeks. You'll probably barely hear from me until I'm in Brussels (nine days from now) or unless I can't sleep, which, yes, is entirely possible.

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baby it's etc outside.

Yes, that is snow outside. And a beer delivery truck loading crates and crates of beer into my house. And I have a sandwich in my hand that is, compositionally speaking, extremely unexceptional for these parts, but which many sandwich-eating people in other places would probably find worthy of comment: warm, toasted roggebrood (no real translation that makes sense, but it's a northern Dutch version of German-style pumpernickel: slow-cooked, very coarse-grained via whole crushed rye kernels, sweetened with beet sugar, and no caraway or other spices), with katenspek (cooked, smoked, thinly sliced pork belly), and Dutch coarse-grain mustard that until pretty recently was actually ground in a windmill.

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friday i'm at home.

This post could actually describe the whole week: I've been inside for four days. It's been pretty OK.

I finally ventured out yesterday and my weakened consumerism immune system immediately fell prey to some impulse-oriented marketing (see above). Lay's, which I normally don't even almost enjoy before my eighth beer, is having a "Limited Edition" promotion, and this edition's wild and wacky flavors are "Spicy Reggae Chicken" and "Whiskey Cocktail". They're only 0.99 cents each, so I obviously I had to buy some, those dirty fuckers.

I'm sure at least one person is thinking, "Mmm, say, whisky-flavored potato chips, why didn't I think of that, what a timesaver, two great tastes, etc" but I should explain for the non-locals that, all indications to the contrary, "Whiskey Cocktail" does not refer to an actual whiskey cocktail.

No, here in the wonderful country where my residence is permanent "whiskey cocktail" is a mayonnaise-based cocktail sauce for fried fish, shrimp, mussels, and occasionally frites and probably lots of other things under the right late-night conditions.

It's sweet, and orangeish-pink. Originally it was flavored with a splash of whiskey, but in the commercial versions I've tried, this taste has fallen by the wayside and whiskey is suggested in color only via the creamsicle-ish hue.

The chips, you ask. Not good. Yes, the Whiskey Cocktail ones taste like, hmm, yes, whiskey cocktail sauce, that's it exactly, but the chips are flimsy and boring and not hot like most of the things you would put the sauce on in its natural environment.

And the Spicy Reggae Chicken ones. Wblecch, and that's not a typo. They're coated with something that's supposed to resemble jerk seasoning, but they end up tasting like a cheap women's fragrance based on jerk seasoning, something I imagine Rihanna's chemists might come up with when they're not working on her personal weed crop, something called maybe "Scotchie" or "Mon". Avoid.

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Below, what I'm listening to. It's in code.

theeworst.

So, I go to the grocery store pretty much every day. It's kind of my one consumer-gratification outlet: we don't really buy any tangible goods these days other than food, books and DVDs. Well OK sometimes someone buys a pair of boots or an infinite reverb pedal or a replacement staff mixer, but generally speaking, grocery shopping is my one regular opportunity to "buy things".

This daily ritual means that I've probably been to our local Dirk van den Broek more than 1000 times. And somehow today was the first day I noticed something called "theeworst" (see above). Theeworst means "tea sausage", which was mysterious-sounding enough to where I had to buy some. Here's what it looks like with the lid off (brace yourselves):

Highly unappetizing. Something about its appearance is uncomfortably reminiscent of a modern sex toy called the Fleshlight (I'm not going to link to it here, but you should Google if you're not familiar with it). But yes, theeworst is essentially spreadable smoked sausage made from pork and bacon. According to Wikipedia, it originated in Poland. It tastes.........ok. Definitely of industrial origin. I bet a handmade version would be way more super.

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blindedarm A.

Above: view from my window yesterday.

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I've been eating a bit of turkey lately. As kind of a pork substitute, for ethical reasons. I'm pretty sure I'm working my way towards vegetarianism, ultimately I think. Or at least pescetarianism or whatever the fuck you want to call the diet where you only eat seafood b/c they're more alien-seeming and less cuddly than land mammals.

So in that spirit, and as you may know I'm refining the do's and don'ts of my 2012 eating policies: I think one of the limitations I'm going to institute for 2012 is: only eat land animals that I wouldn't mind killing with my bare hands. 

All birds definitely fit in this category. Cats occasionally do. I think that's pretty much it in the meat department. I don't have any aggressive or hateful feelings towards non-avian mammals. The occasional bromfietser maybe, but that's a whole nother kettle of fish innit.

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One of my favorite things about finally building a Dutch vocabulary is when I see a new word and spend some time trying to figure out what it means by looking at its parts. I'm taking a practice test and just came across the word blindedarm for the first time. I kind of have to know what it is b/c the subject of the question has to do with how long a person will be out of work due to an operation.

I knew both parts of the word:

Blinde: blind, dummy, ghost, phantom.
Darm: intestine.

But what the fuck is your phantom intestine? Dummy intestine. It kept seeming like utter gibberish, I was wondering if I was missing something. Now that I know what it is it makes (kind of) perfect sense: appendix.

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Holy shit! Actual sleep last night. Like 6.5 hours. I feel like a king today. Possible secrets? Take two passionflower and 0.8mg melatonin at 9:25pm. Oh yeah, and get like 4 hours of sleep a night for 5 days previously. ahahahahahaha. And no naps. In any case, I was yawning by 11pm and out by 12:30. Fucking faaaantastic.

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One of the episodes of Intervention I watched yesterday featured a very pathetic girl who would overmedicate herself via her chronic pain pills and just kind of habitually pass out on the floor of her sad suburban apartment. Family members would come by to pick her up for, say, her sister's baby shower, and she'd be unconscious on the kitchen floor, in her sweatpants, surrounded by broken glass and the food that she'd been trying to eat when she suddenly became "extra sleepy".

In preparing for her actual intervention the doctor tried to explain to the family that, even though they (the family) were horrified by this practice...he reminded them that "she is suffering. She's in pain, and doesn't want to live like that, so of course she doesn't mind being loaded. So 8 hours a night unconscious on the kitchen floor, as bizarre as it seems to you...this is comfort for her, this is the only time she feels comfortable."

My point is that my takeaway from this was....jealousy. Eight hours a night?

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aansprakelijkheidsverzekering.

Ahh....Dutch. In order to properly play Dutch Scrabble you'd need a board the size of a fucking swimming pool.

The title of this post is the word for liability insurance.

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Above is a diagram that attempts to explain the Dutch education system. I'm taking my exam for permanent residence in a couple weeks. It's kind of shit that 75% of the questions are going to be about things I've never done or had any plans to do here: buy a house and have a mortgage; join a labor union; become a doctor or hairdresser or veterinarian's assistant; have kids and raise them (which the sample tests make sound like the most complicated thing on earth); apply for unemployment benefits; apply for child care benefits; join a temporary agency; request a permit for a satellite dish; request permission to expand the toolshed in my yard; sell goods on the street; apply for financial aid.........

etc etc etc.

I don't even have any friends with kids. I don't know anyone who belongs to a labor union. I think I know one person with a mortgage.

It's true there are things I'm learning that I should've known long ago. For example, when Easter is (the Sunday after the first full moon in the spring). And because I never knew when Easter was, I was always surprised when Hemelvaart (The Ascension) came along (40 days after Easter, always on a Thursday), and even more surprised when there was another two-day holiday 10 days later (Pinksteren, Pentecost, The Feast of the Holy Ghost).

I mean and yes I should've known when the Afsluitdijk was built (1932), and how long it is (32km), and what the engineer's name was who thought of it (Cornelis Lely).

And how the government works. What the national anthem is called and who it's supposed to be about. Where the queen is when she reveals the budget for the coming year and what the name of the golden coach she rides in is (well actually, it's called "The Golden Coach", but...but...but did you know that it's not real gold? It's Javanese teak. I'm going to be SUPER FUCKING INTERESTING after I know all this shit).

But elsewhere in Nederland, other foreigners who do have kids and satellite dishes and permits to sell things on the street are frantically trying to memorize other facets of Dutch society, ones that I already know.

Some of the sample questions are so obviously not targeted at excluding my particular ethnicity/race ("are children allowed to choose their own marriage partner?"..."should men and women be treated in the same manner?") that, yes, I know if I took it right now I would be very close to passing it. I'll just feel better if my chances of failure are much, much closer to 0%.

Ect ect ect. So I'm kind of cramming.
What am I saying, I'm really cramming. I only get one chance to take it, it's in 20 days.

Unrelatedly: I would like this.

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lucky number 13.

Above: I'm listening to a Dutch podcast which is all about cinema, and the episode I checked out last night was an interview with the director of the above film, 170 hz, for which I found the sound design kind of potentially interesting.

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So, sleepless or not, this is one of the few days so far that I have started out as intended, by doing all of the things normal people do at the beginning of the day: make the bed, take a shower, straighten up, etc. It has a certain appeal, I can see that even through my insomniac coma.

Thusly engorged with success, I'm going to now try what for me has become one of the hardest things there is: do one uninterrupted hour of efficient work without stopping to press my completely worn-out dopamine button via any of the tiny distractions that normally end up derailing me. OK here I go wish me luck.

It's 9:49am.

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OK, I did have this one important consideration that needed considering, and I'm wondering how helpful this would be, considering this.

And can someone get to the bottom of the current state of research on THC/dopamine interaction? Opinions seem to vary widely, but as far as I can tell any interaction seems to be related to behavior/limbic reward rather than actual cannabinoid/neurotransmitter shit.

It's 10:17am.

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my birthday dinner.

These were actually the best bitterballen I've ever had. And not just because I was rabidly hungry. Our movie at Kriterion (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) started 20 minutes late and then had the gall to last 127 more minutes. Which meant that by the time we got to Cafe Maxwell (above) to taste their supposedly delicious 14-euro burger, the kitchen was closed.

But the deep fryer was open and my blood sugar was dangerously low, so we ordered some bitterballen, which we kind of expected to be the most pathetic and bad birthday dinner ever, but they were actually way more edible than your average bitterbal. There was a hint of curry to them and, I don't know, they were just pretty much delicious.  Then we had a couple more beers, then we came home and ate a bag of BBQ Baked Lays (which have somehow only just arrived in Holland) with sour cream.

snert, inburgering, vertrutting, enz.

For a table that consisted of four Americans and one Nederlander, we sure did spend a lot of time talking about all things Dutch last night. And yes, the tone may have been bordering on critical (bordering? critical? one of these words is not quite right), but maybe it's like that situation where, for example, a high school English teacher singles out one student in her classroom to always be Hamlet, or Macbeth, or whatever character has the most lines in whatever play the class is reading aloud, so that he'll (the student) have to stay awake and possibly even learn something about the play. Because she (the teacher) sees amazing potential in him that he is squandering away by enacting all kinds of petty, control-freak laws about where people can drink and smoke, what time of day they can do it, and whether or not they an sit or stand during the act. Etc.

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Pre-coffee mixed-metaphor experiments aside, last night's meal was pretty much the best Dutch meal ever, seriously. Plus we got to complain about all kinds of things you're not supposed to be able to complain about, like children and immigrants. Good times.

Above: Hollandse garnalen (tiny Dutch shrimp) with cream and chives in Belgian endive. Below: Goudse kaasbolletjes (Gouda cheese puffs), ambachtelijk osseworst (artisanally smoked beef sausage?), cornichons, and mustard; smoked eel on grilled toast (possibly my favorite bite of the evening); superlatively pork-y split pea soup; a delicious dessert pile-up of stoofperen, boterkoek with ginger, homemade advocaat, and whipped cream. Plus lots of beer and jenever. And wine? Jesus. But I really do feel totally fine today.

P.S: If you've ever wondered what the opposite of sympathy is, it's "fuck you".

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status.

Light at end of tunnel. Let's hope it's not the proverbial train. Off to Groningen for 10 days of hard work and a hopefully proportional amount of fun.

Above: my first (and probably last) frietje kapsalon. An unintegrated and kind of pointless mashup.

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small fry.

Last night (was it really only last night?) I did something highly unusual: I had frites. Not just any frites, but "the healthiest frites in the Netherlands", according to some kind of scientific survey/poll/test thingie.

More details as soon as I feel like parsing Googled info, but just know that the place I'm talking about is Bram Ladage at Utrecht's hideously mallish central station. Thus, neither of the places mentioned in the above video. In the four seconds of Googling I did do, I found out a couple of irrelevant but stimulating things.

For example? Well, there's a relatively new food item sweeping the nation, and it's called a frietje kapsalon that consists of frites, lamb or pork shoarma, garlic sauce, Gouda cheese, and sriracha or similar sambal. All baked/reheated like a lasagna. And then they pile lettuce on top. I would imagine this dish is also known as Imminent Naptime. It looks like this, which is not especially appetizing, and yet somehow I find myself thinking about this dish more than I would like....



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But back to my regular old frites. And? And? How were they. They were....salty, almost too much so, but not. Nicely crispy. Good, solid frites, worth having. Would have liked just a little better mayonnaise and actual Heinz ketchup, but....still above average. I think my favorite part was watching the guy peel and cut real potatoes at lightning fast speed and then when he got to the bottom of the pile he was working on, he yelled out "that's it", as in, they were out of potatoes, and the cashier said "Good, I'm ready to go home", and they closed up shop after another 30 minutes or so.

Now, as penance, I'm making a vegetarian version of that daikon/chicken soup I did last month, which has now been turned into a real recipe, by an actual food writer, by which I mean it now has accuracy and coherence going for it as well as deliciosity.

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circular.

So, I'm reading the weekly sales flyer thingie from our local grocery store, the Dirk (that's what we affectionately call it, Dutch people never seem to do this, or do they), because, you know, times are tough, things are tough all over, etc.

So I'm standing there like a 75-year-old man reading the sales insert, and...there are maybe...75 things on sale (75 is the only exaggerated random number I'm using today). There are two fresh vegetables on sale. One is escarole. The other is pre-chopped kale in a bag.

I know what they want me to do with these, but I'm not going to. Let's think of some other ideas for these two. Otherwise it's going to be a long winter. Caldo verde and white beans + escarole spring to mind, and sound pretty good, assuming I'm allowed a tiny grating of manchego on top. 

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(the next day)

I awoke after a TERRIBLE dream, one of these performance anxiety/fear of public failure dreams that I occasionally have, but this was the worst one in a while, basically revolving around me being unable to gather all of the equipment I need to set up for our theatre piece, and the clock ticking.

They normally last about 150 dream minutes (2 x 75), but these minutes seem to go on FOREVER, with me constantly struggling to stay focused and look for the things I need, constantly fending off obstacles, while I know someone is waiting for me at the venue.

This time the obstacles were mostly friends/acquaintances showing up out of nowhere wanting to talk, like "so, hey, man...how's it been going." And I'm like: "Hey, man...(rummaging around)...ehhhhhh.....it's....ah, OK....(rummage rummage) hey, sorry, I really have to find this tiny RCA-to-1/4-inch adapter, maybe you can help look for it? Actually, there are two of them. You don't have any gaffer tape, by the way, do you? I'm also looking for a yellow balloon if you happen to see one. And a watch battery for a kitchen timer."

And they're like, "Yeah...I can help you look, no problem....so, I just got back from London...and I ran into Gavin...do you know Gavin? He was that guy from the thing that what's-his-name set up over at, uh...um...the place, that place called, ah...fuck, with that asshole bartender! Jesus, that guy was a douche..."

Meanwhile, I'm (rummage rummage)ing and can't find ANYTHING, hindered dramatically by the sloth-like speed at which I'm moving. In my versions of these dreams, the 2 x 75 minutes in question typically span from just before the time we're supposed to be soundchecking to just past the time we're supposed to go onstage, normally ending with me miraculously only having half my gear and still not being at the venue yet.

So I woke up panicked and exhausted and realized we didn't have any milk for coffee, and I thought again about the kale. And I had a vision of a frittata, one with a kale-almond pesto, caramelized onions, and a little roquefort. I wish the cosmos would find a less traumatic way to tell me these things.

UPDATE: I made caldo verde for breakfast, minus sausage. It was totally delicious: lots of garlic and a pow! of smoked paprika being the kickers.