Catchup blog

Today is my birthday. I turned two today and Mike got me a bully stick and Meredith gave me a bone in honor of my special day. But I'll tell you more about that later. First, I'd like to apologize for the long hiatus of not posting. Since I feel I should make it up to you I'm going to 'catch you up' on the goings on in my life for the past 6 months in the form of haiku.
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My backyard has grass
I like to run in circles
oops-- dug a hole

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I am a big dog
The neighbor is a small dog
Mike won't let us play.
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My hypothesis:
Meredith's belly is so big
Therefore..... puppies!
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Katie came to visit
We drove to get the new couch
In a refrigerated truck.

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Kathy cleaned the house
Chris cooked mouth watering meals
what the.... a baby!?!?

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Finding ingredients in the Netherlands

The Dutch like to bake from mixes. Not so much from scratch. Therefore, finding ingredients like good quality flour for cookies can be a bit of a challenge. Sugar isn't as much of a problem because the Dutch love any coffee accoutrement, so there are many kinds of sugar at our local AH grocery store. Powdered sugar, however, is another story entirely. And forget about finding chocolate chips here!

Meredith and I checked out Eindhoven's Genneper Parken watermolen (water mill) to see what they had for baking. They claim to have over 400 kinds of flour! Well... not exactly. They've got 2 kinds of plain white flour: cookie flour (zeeuwse bloem) and bread flour (wit brood bloem). Many other kinds of flour blends exist like donker volkoren (I think this is a whole wheat flour blend) and mais bloem (corn flour- NOT corn meal). Most of the 'flours' are for baking a certain thing like cherry bread or peach bread. Of course you have to add the cherries or peaches!

The bunch of stuff we came home with:

Well, not the bag of Hershey's chocolate chips of course- they are only there for comparison's sake- we did find chocolate chips but they are the mini kind- "Bakvaste Chocoladedrupples". The good news is they are made from Callebaut chocolate (the best chocolate- not that I've tried it- doodle dogs are not allowed) the bad news is that little bag was 4.95 euros (about $7.00!).

And we found "Poeder suiker" which is real powdered sugar- not the bizarre flaky stuff they sell at AH (the tube container in the upper right corner of the photo above) that blows away when you breathe on it. We also found real rolled oats! Havermout is the Dutch word for oats, but the AH version is more like the quaker quick oats you find in the states.

Dutch Cake Event

Over the weekend Meredith and Mike went to the Dutch Cake Event. It entertained Meredith to no end. The event had vendors and a contest and a cute cafe for snacking in between. Most interestingly, the contest was for the appearance of the cakes. Each cake entered in the contest was not really a cake. No- it was a bunch of cardboard or foam decorated with fondant or gum paste or frosting or whatever. The entrants had to also submit a tiny real cake for the judges to taste- just to make sure they actually know how to bake a cake, we presume. The theme for this year was "music" so all the cakes reflect that in some way, although they could be in one of three categories: formed cake, tiered cake, or flowers.

As I'm only a dog I really don't know if this is normal for these sorts of contests or not. Meredith loves to bake and was attending to scope out the contest for next year. I'm not sure if she'll enter a card-board cake or not- it might be against her moral values.

Here is the grand prize winner:

And the goodies they gave each person attending:

It was 10 euros to get in. I didn't get to go because dogs weren't allowed.

Ice Ice Baby

Mike took me over to the pond to see if the ice has completely melted yet. It hasn't. He made me walk on it. I probably look more nervous than I need to be as the depth of the water here was only about 2 inches.

My conclusion is that the solid form of water is better than the liquid form. But only marginally so.

Whenever you need a little break, rest your head on a chair.

Snow week!

We got snow again! All the Dutch people here are astounded. They are not used to snow at all; in fact Mike and Meredith's Dutch language class on Monday (the day the snow arrived) was canceled because the teacher could not drive out of her street! Plows are few and far between around here. Of course being from upstate NY, M&M didn't think much of driving in the snow but people here are petrified...

We had a ball in the field near our house. Snow is my favorite thing, ever, so I was in full doodle-looping mode. The horses on the other side of the river even thought it was fun to race me back and forth along the river!

Of course I had plenty of snow cookies on my feet when I was finished. It was tough to get them all off once we went inside. I spent a long time eating the bigger ones. Yum.

What was interesting is that this entire week the snow has stuck around. Normally it melts within a day or so. We are so lucky!

That war last night

New Years Eve in Holland = Firework Display Extravaganza

Last night was really interesting. We all went over to one of Mike's colleague's house for drinks and food (and a little bit of one-year-old baby licking by me!) and fun. While we were there, I heard and saw fireworks out the front window occasionally. We came home before midnight and around 11:50pm the craziness really began. Meredith and Mike decided that I could sleep upstairs in their room because of all the loud booming sounds coming from our neighbors. I really wasn't scared at all, but it sure was nice to be able to see the color changing sky out the window for about 30 minutes or so. Right at midnight I swear it was as if a war was going on out there! We all watched in amazement as the entire sky was pink, yellow, blue, orange in every direction! Impressive!
Today I've been investigating the remnants of last night.

Don't worry, these were already boomified.

Yep, this is the street right outside our house. Crazy, huh!

Who cleans up all this mess?