A Quickie in Amsterdam

Hallo!

It's morning in Amsterdam and we are getting ready for our last full day in the city. We have had great weather (hot and sunny). Crowds have been light and we have been making our rounds to the great museums and sights here. We've seen Rembrant's house, been to the Van Gogh Museum, and toured the fanastic Rijksmuseum. I have been awed by an artist I'd never heard of (Horst Janssen -- my heart skipped a beat staring at a wall of his work; one example below) and we shared more than we probably should have with a semi-celebrity (the director of the opera here) at a hole-in-the-wall Greek restaurant.

Today, we hope to make it to the Anne Frank House, the Oude Kerk and the World Press Photo exhibition, and take a ride down one of the canals. We've kept an easy pace and we are loving this city.

Cheers!

Amster, Amster, Dam, Dam, DAM

We used to sing this song about Amsterdam and the chorus was "Amster, Amster, dam, Dam, DAM!". We loved it because we got to swear real loud. This was in music class way back when I lived in Tustin, Michigan (population 500 or so). This was somewhere around 3rd grade, with Mrs. Klinger. I hated Mrs. Klinger. We only had her for about an hour a week, so unlike the other teachers, she wasn't aware of my squeaky clean persona. One day she scolded me for almost no reason (I picked a gum wrapper of the floor; I don't remember why). The entire class went silent; they were surprised as I was that this crazy woman with some sort of dental issue was addressing me like I was one of the 'bad kids.' The nerve... but anyway...

Right now I am travelling to meet my dear wife in Amsterdam for a long weekend. I just took a taxi to the Hereford station, then a train to Birmingham Airport. Just one stop and a quick tram ride into the airport. All smooth. The round-trip train ticket was about 15 pounds. Not bad.

I am hanging out in the airport drinking a cold Carlsberg (better than a hot Carlsberg, fersure.) I got my Boingo linked up and I am killing time since I am really early for my flight.

This trip is also serving as a test run and exploratory mission. Part of the hope of our English adventure is that I can work remotely in just about any city while doing just a bit of sightseeing. That way, when Rachel travels for work, I can occasionally join her. To do this, my office needs to be as mobile as me. I upgraded my backpack for something that could carry my digital camera and my laptop with no worries (Lowepro Fastpack 350). I loaded it up to test my limits with some extra lenses, an extra harddrive, the camera, 2 books on the Netherlands, random junk, and my giant laptop. It all fits nicely and I have room to spare. My back is holding up, too. I am hoping wireless via hotspots will be sufficient to do my work since mobile broadband (Internet access for a laptop from cellular networks) is really expensive across Europe (as much as $20 per MB, which for me could be hundreds of dollars in just an hour!)

That's all for now! Cheers!

If I Knew It Was Going to be That Kind of Party...

Royal Mailman dropped this off today with our mail. If you are interested, we need to reserve seats ASAP.

Mikey, is he cute? Is he brown? Would he like to join us for a cocktail?

I'm referring to the sauce, of course.

If you had to pick the top two American condiments, would it be ketchup and mustard? I think it would be. There might be the occasionally mayo or Tabasco tossed into the voting results, but I think the classic red and yellow would win out pretty readily.

But here, there is another sauce in the mix, known simply as 'brown sauce'. At the Grafton the other night, I ordered the 'mixed grill' -- a festival of meat that include lamb chops, lamb kidney, sausage, a chunk of rib eye, some gammon,
a grilled mushroom, and a grilled tomato. And a giant vat of chips (fries!) Not for the faint hearted.

The wench asked what sauces we wanted. Feeling brave and curious, I asked for HP (I had seen it in the store) and she quickly responded, "Oh, you mean brown sauce?" Yes I do!

Take Worcestershire Sauce (woo-stah!), dilute it, add a fruity tang, and cut it with some ketchup and you have a rough idea what it tastes like. With my mixed grill, it was an excellent dipping sauce and was used readily to choke down the lamb kidney (nasty). Apparently, in parts of Scotland, this is the preferred condiment on fish and chips (instead of malt vinegar).

They take their brown sauce and their patriotism seriously here. HP, the #1 brown saucer, moved their production facility out of Birmingham to the Netherlands in 2006. The backlash of the move was that loyal Brits switched from HP to brands made in the UK, including Branston -- a newcomer on the brown sauce market. There was even political moves to pull HP from the Palace.

Fast-forward about 2 weeks: I now have my own bottle of HP. I put it all over a nice BBQ chicken the other night. I felt right at home. They might be on to something. A word of warning: if you try to find brown sauce in the USA, you might find HP sauce but its a different mix than what we get here. Thanks to one of the most dedicated blogs I've run into for the brown sauce information.

More YouTube: Don't click play if your boss is looking over your shoulder... this might be hard to watch for the squeamish but it does a great job of expressing one man's love for his brown sauce. Ew.

Ungoliant: Creature Of Darkness

Ah, the country. Fresh air, green grass, and a hella lot of spiders. Most of them, I'm not to concerned about - to the point where my indifference irritates one of my other two housemates (and its not Boo.) That was until I found this guy hanging out by one of our motion lights. Each morning I half-expect there to be something like 'redrum' or 'go home yankee' scrawled in web-script as a friendly reminder that we're not welcome.

I did some reading and found that the UK doesn't have much to worry about in the way of poisonous things. There is only one poisonous snake and not much as far as "really" dangerous spiders go. There are spiders that can bite and cause some pain, maybe some localized irritation -- but not too much beyond that (this should be good news for the spider-phobes and snake-fearing parents that read this...)

Then I started following a chilling series of articles and postings about the recent spread of what is known as the 'False Widow' spider or Steatoda nobilis. It has been in the UK for about 100 years but until global warming came around, it was only warm enough in the south of the island. It probably won't kill you -- but 'probably' means maybe it could kill me, right? There are real stories of nasty bites from these guys. Could this be the beast that lives on our light?

Well, after further review, I have decided it is not the infamous black widow wannabee. Sorry for the let down folks. I think its just a Steatoda bipunctata, also known as the Rabbit Hutch Spider. It too is also sometimes called a false widow (due to idiots like me). I found a forum where someone is asking exactly the same questions but even when experts got involved, there was still some uncertainty.

Either way, I might play Mayor Daley and pretend the spider is right where my new runway is going to be built. Sorry, Mr. Spider, you need to find a new home. For those of you who also may have a widow to deal with, be sure to watch the extra footage to ID that rascal.

Tastes Like Aged Willie Nelson

I felt a little naw-ty posting such negative press about one of Dunkerton's other ciders that I had to give another one of their products a try. Again, these ciders are more to my liking than, say, Strongbow cider with far less sweetness and more complex flavor. One description called this one "bone dry."

Once again, though, Rachel tasted this, handed me back her glass, and said "You can drink mine. Tastes like aged band-aid this time." Here we go again.

Thankfully, this time I disagreed. It's similar in many ways to the other one, but that strong rubber overtone isn't really there -- if at all. I think I will get this one again. To me, these ciders are more like a wine where as the others are more like a fruity beer. I may even order the Dunkerton's Collection to keep on hand for guests so they can judge "Tastes like band-aid"or "Doesn't taste like band-aid" across the entire Dunkerton's range. It includes two bottles of the alleged band-aid flavored Black Fox, too.

By the way, to get an idea of just how expansive the cider industry is in Herefordshire, check out the points of origination at this online dealer.

Field Guide To Mushrooms

I once had a book that tried to explain to me which wild mushrooms were safe to eat. It involved doing stuff like picking unknown mushrooms and then letting them sit on white paper over night. During the night, the mushrooms would spew forth their spores onto the white paper. Then, in the morning, you could examine the spores. Trouble was, color was a key factor in determining whether not eating said mushroom would be just tasty or tasty and deadly, too. You may recall I am color-blind.... so I gave up on that hobby.

I've figured out which mushrooms are safe to eat in Hereford. Those would be the ones that we grow in our pantry. Awesome. We harvested our first crop of 'shrooms this week and we can barely keep up. The experience was so rewarding we then went on a hunt to farm and garden stores across all Herefordshire looking for more mushroom kits. We found one -- just one -- on closeout. My dream of having fresh homegrown mushrooms year round might be in jeapordy. Are you listening, Señor Unwin? Show ... me ... the ... mushrooms ...

Thanks to Rachel on this one: check out the Vanna White-style technique on the mushroom presentation. Nice!

Collect Call for Mrs. Floyd from Mr. Floyd

Sorry folks! We've missed a few Skype calls here and there. We are still working out the kinks of our hi-tech system at the Lilacs Command Center. If the Skype phone isn't answered in 7 (was 15) seconds, calls are now forwarding to our regular UK landline (the home phone) and to my UK cell phone (both at once).

I've Got Gas!

Last summer, we special ordered a patio set to fit the great outdoor space we had in Chicago. Undoubtedly, the center of attraction of it all was the fake gas firepit. Hide a propane tank underneath, press the insta-matic igniter, and fire lept from the well-made ceramic logs. We couldn't leave it all behind so we brought the whole thing with us to the UK.

Maybe its just because everything here is so new to us, but the it seems they suffer from a lack of standardization. Refrigerators, dishwashers, stoves, -- they have oodles of different sizes and kinds of these things. Same with their gas tanks. To complicate things, they have grills that use propane, grills that use butane, and grills that use both. Many grills don't even come with the gadget to attach to a tank. Add to that the fact that they have around a dozen or so different tank sizes that vary slightly from vendor to vendor -- all painted different primary colors -- and you can understand why getting our fire pit working over here wasn't easy as treacle pie. I think I like the USA one-size fits all system.

We were at Wye Valley Garden Center -- a large garden store chain -- and I found they had regulators there (one kind for propane and another for butane). I grabbed a propane one and we crossed our fingers and hoped it would work. We then went to the über-Shell station to get the gas. I had no idea what to look for. They had a huge cage full of gas: tall red ones, short blue ones, medium sized yellow ones. But nothing that looked liked it would fit my new regulator. Luckily, the friendliest guy in the world was working outside and I explained to him my ignorance and how it was all different back home. I showed him our regulator and he explained we needed a '13 kilogram patio gas' and showed us the correct tank: a medium sized one that was only inside the cage. The regulator doesn't thread on to the tank, it just snaps on. We bought a tank (20 pounds -- not too bad) and headed home.

A couple hours later, I replaced our regulator (suprisingly simple), and then had gutted the inside of our fire pit to make room for the much-larger-than-the-US-size tank. It was all worth it. By nightfall, we had a roaring fire to keep us warm on yet another cool English night.

Cheers!

Beauty and the Yeast

Something you have to get used to over here is the idea of the "real ale" that I've mentioned before. Of course you can get this stuff in the US, but here it is much more mainstream and it compromises about half of the beer section in any store. Non-filtered, living brew right to your lips. At the bottom of most bottles of this good stuff is a little, or maybe a lot, of yeast. I was drinking a fine glass of some ale I have now forgotten and noticed a rather chunky final sip waiting for me at the bottom. I think one of them yeasts was smiling at me.