We are coming to the end of our Dutch sojourn. Tonight we are back on the lake at Vinkeveen. At the other side of the lake is the marina where LeBoat, the rental company, is located. We plan to stay here tonite, very close to where we spent our first night out of Vinkeveen. And tomorrow night we will stay at the marina, pack up, and catch a taxi to the airport in the morning.
All in all it's been a great trip, despite the issues with the extreme heat that totally changed our plans. But before I catch up, a little about what we ate and what we've read. We've done a lot of both.
Whenever we travel we try to find literature that takes place in or reflects the places we are visiting. There's a lot of historic novels that take place in the Netherlands. We tried to pick a few. Most of them seem to take place in the 17th century, and most seem to feature a young woman and a painting or paintings. Maybe it's what I'll call the Pearl Earring Girl effect. You probably remember either the book or the movie or both. I loved the book, but it's also the only time I can think of that I found the movie even better. It was either Scarlett Johanssen's first film or at least the one that first made her famous. About the famous Vermeer painting, the Girl With the Pearl Earring. It's in the Riksmuseum in Amsterdam. We never made it into Amsterdam, and I didn't really intend to, although I would like to have spent at least part of a day there to see either the Rijks or the Van Gogh museum. But it sounds so crowded and overtouristed that it wasn't high on my list.
The books I read set here were A History of the Netherlands in Thirty Objects, a clever approach to the culture, Midnight Blue, about a young woman who becomes a painter of the famous blue pottery Delft and other places are famous for. Next, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, which takes places in modern times and the 17th century and involves the forgery of a painting. Loring is reading that now, as I write. I am currently reading a book about three teenage women who defied the Nazis called Three Ordinary Girls. I haven't read any Holocaust related books in a long time. So far this one is intriguing, because it depicts the country from the viewpoint of non Jewish citizens. And it is frighteningly similar to current events in our own country.
I had read the Miniaturist a few years ago and recommended it to Loring. And we saw an elaborate dollhouse at the Utrecht museum that may well have been its inspiration.
He started another 17th century romance that was so cringeworthy a romance that he soon gave it up, and I didn't even look at it. I think that one was The Colorist.
And we both read a book called The Dutch Waterways which was descriptive of exactly what it says.
I have probably left out one or two.
Now, on to food. We have largely eaten and cooked on the boat, which has been great fun. We've shopped at supermarkets at several places along the way. For the first three days we were in a hotel in den Bosch, so ate in restaurants. Breakfasts were in cafes, mostly pastries and cappuccinos for me, breakfasty sandwiches and coffee for Loring. On our boat journey, we didn't eat often in restaurants, just once in a while for lunch. Onboard, it was either granola with yogurt and bananas or bakery bread and eggs cooked on our stove. For lunches or dinners we often had bread or crackers with cheese, cucumbers and tomatoes, and either smoked salmon (more smoked than lox) and prosciutto or something similar. Our dinners onboard were most often pasta with spinach and cheese, which is what we will have tonite. This is like a dream come true for me. It is rare and startling for Loring to concede and even recommend pasta, whereas I can eat it endlessly. We've had both fresh and dried pasta, and found the dried in shapes we don't have at home. We've bought frozen spinach which here comes in adorable little cubes. And either packaged or fresh cheese or cheese sauce. I'm getting hungry as I write.
Many have their own specialty sweets. In den Bosch it is Boschbollen, which I've previously posted photos of and maybe described too. It's a ball of pastry filled with cream and covered in chocolate. Incredibly good. Yesterday in a different town I saw them in a bakery and ordered one. It was good but not nearly as good as the ones in den Bosch. Only the top was covered in chocolate and the pastry wasn't nearly as good as in the town they are named for. Aren't I erudite? Or is it snobbish?
OUr refrigerator is filled with the things I've mentioned. We have gouda cheese from Gouda, which I have to confess we don't like as much as the cheese we got in the supermarket. Then again there were at least a couple dozen varieties the the Gouda cheese store, so maybe we just didn't choose the right one. Even though we tried almost every one. In Gouda, in additon to cheese, they are famous for a pastry called sirupwafel, two waffle cookies with a caramel filling in between. I may have already written about them in a previous post. We have some of those, as well as delicious chocolate cookies that I am hoping to take some home of.
I previously mentioned bitterballen, which are a kind of bar food, and really good. Yesterday I ordered a lunch of croquettes which were basically bitterballen in a different elongated shape.
There are foods I remember from my visits here over fifty years ago, mostly for their names. There's the rijstaffel and nasi and bami goreng. They are all Indonesian-Dutch foods, from the time that the Netherlands colonized Indonesia. The rijstaffel is a spread of about 20 small dishes with rice. The nasi and bami are rice and noodle dishes, although I can't remember which is which. I would like to have tried them again on this trip, but Loring isn't as big on either noodles or rice( except for our onboard pasta/spinach/cheese concoctions.)
And then there's jenever, which is a gin-like alcohol that I am drinking right now as I write. I have been drinking it with club soda most every night. I think I remember it originally from Belgium rather than here, but am not sure.
Loring has tried to order his usual martini when wev'e been in restaurants, but they seem to only be familiar with it as a mixed drink it a can, and don't know how to makea it. Oh well. Beer and jenever will do.
I will stop now and cook our typical (to us) pasta dinner.
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