Out and about

Today my friend Sophie and I went hiking and once again I took a lot of photos. It was pretty cold outside, but the light was so pretty!

 

 

Trip to Delft & The Hague

Last weekend I visited my brother in Delft and together we went to The Hague.

First we visited a permanent exhibition of M.C. Escher's work in the former palace of Queen Emma in The Hague. Escher was a Dutch artist who made woodcuts, lithographs and mezzotints and used a lot of mathematical pricipals in his work. He is best known for his impossible constructions and tessellations.

We wandered around in The Hague for the rest of the day and in the evening we ate at an Indonesian restaurant.

 The next day we went to the city centre of Delft and I also took a couple of pictures there. 

We also visited the Johannes Vermeer centre and in the afternoon we went to a concert of Eefje de Visser. Johannes Vermeer was a painter from the 17th century who lived in Delft.

Discovering my own city

Suzan and I are working on a webseries about Zutphen, the city I live in. On monday we already filmed quite a lot and I also took some pictures. It's funny how working on this project I see my city in a different light. To me it always seemed like a pretty boring place, but I found out that it does have a rich history and there are lots of stories to tell about the place. It will probably take a little while before our first episode will be posted on youtube, but for now you can check out some photos I made.

How to make pepernoten

Pepernoten (spice nuts) are a special dutch Sinterklaas treat. They are very small round cookies. They are not really difficult to make, but I still managed to burn my first batch today. The recipe is enough for 3 baking sheets full of these, so I still had two batches that turned out nicely.The recipe uses speculaas spices, which you can buy in dutch supermarkets but probably not anywhere else. Click here to see how you can make it yourself.



Ingrediënts
250 g self raising flour
125 g brown sugar
6 tsp speculaas spices
150 g butter
2 tbsp milk

How to make it
Preheat the oven at 160 degrees C. Put the flour, sugar, speculaas spices and the butter in a bowl and mix it until a dough starts to form. Then slowly add the milk and knead it through the dough. Put a sheet of baking paper on the baking sheet. Make small rolls of the dough, put them on the baking paper and flatten them a little. Bake them for about 10-15 minutes. Check from time to time to see if they already have a nice golden brown color.

Enjoy!

Sinterklaas

Today it's 5 december and in the Netherlands it's St. Nichola's eve. It's the evening where Sinterklaas brings everyone presents. It's a bit like Santa Claus. There are special songs and treats for Sinterklaas.
Sinterklaas usually arrives midway november on his steamship from Spain along with his helpers, the Zwarte Pieten (Black Petes). From the day Sinterklaas arrives up until 4 december children can in the evenings put hay or a carrot in their shoe for Sinterklaas's horse and during the night the Zwarte Pieten will replace it with candy or a small present. They also sing songs when they have put something in their shoe. Pepernoten (spice nuts) are very small round treats that are handed out by Zwarte Pieten. I will post a recipe of how to make them. Furthermore lots of people receive a chocolate letter, which is usually the first letter of their name.

As a kid Sinterklaas was my favorite holiday and it was always an exciting time.

Here are some Sinterklaas songs to get in the right mood!

St. Martin's Day

Yesterday (11 november) it was St. Martin's Day (Sint-Maarten in the Netherlands). On that day children in my country go out as soon as it is dark with their paper lanterns and go door to door. They sings songs and get candy or fruit. When I was a kid we always used to carve pumpkins with the children in my street. My mum made pumpkin soup and after dinner we would go out with our carved or paper lanterns. It was always one of my favorite days of the year. I carved the pumpkin above two years ago. This year we were a little busy so we didn't really do anything related to Sint Maarten, except for buying candy for the kids, but most years I still carve a pumpkin and my mother still makes pumpkin soup (I don't go door to door anymore though, haha!).

Yesterday my mother had put all sorts of candy in a bowl along with some mandarins. I remembered how I as a kid always prefered candy over fruit, so I said to my mother 'Which child is going to pick a mandarin over candy?' But already with the second group of children that came to our house, my mother said: 'The miracle has happened, one of them took a mandarin'. I was sitting in the living room when the third group rang the doorbell. They sang their song and when my mom presented them the candy and the fruit, I could hear a couple of kids yell 'Mandarins!!' enthusiastically. That already surprised me, but then the children's mother said 'Ugh, we already have two weeks of mandarins'.
I don't know what it is with children and their parents these days, haha. Maybe it some sort of reverse psychology were the parents say they hate fruit and love candy so their kid wants fruit rather than candy.

Music Monday #11

Last saturday was the finale of the European song contest Eurovision Songfestival. The past few years the Dutch send singers who I didn't really like, but this year I did. Anouk was the Dutch contestant. I thought she sang beautifully and I loved how simple her performance was. A lot of other participants were wearing prominent outfits or their performances involved a lot of theatre. Anouk just stood on the stage and sang, which is what it's all about. She ended up at the ninth place. I think her song was a little to deep and distinctive to be apreciated by everyone.

Here is her performance of last saturday:
Anouk - Birds


The official videoclip can be watched here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPDYbuaXlA8

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Music Monday #10

The next days will be extremely bussy, because my final exams are starting today. Just 2,5 weeks and it's over! Hopefully I'll be done with highshool then. I'll try to post some things coming weeks, but don't expect to much! After my final exams are over, me and my friend Suzan are going on a holiday which I'm super excited about. I will tell more about it later.

Well, back to music! Today I wanted to promote some songs from Dutch ground. Both are a little bit older, but I still like them.

Racoon - My town
This is probably one of my favorite songs of Racoon.



Kane - No Surrender
This song makes me feel nostalgic... I used to listen to this so often.

Queensday 2013 - The coronation of a new king

Yesterday it was Queensday in the Netherlands and it was the day Queen Beatrix abdicated in favour of her son Willem-Alexander. Now he is our king.

This video is ofcourse in Dutch, but it will give a little impression.

I spend the day selling a lot of stuff at the freemarket with my friend Sophie. We had a blast. Later I saw the ceremony on tv at home and we ate tompoezen (maybe tompouce is a known English word, but I couldn't find a translation). The little princesses looked so cute in their blue dresses and Máxima (Willem-Alexander's wife) also looked stunning.

Amazing cover of Keep Your Head Up

Every week I watch The voice of Holland. I've gotten a little tired with al the singing contests on tv nowadays, but I like how this contest is slightly different. The jury had to sit with their back towards the person who is singing, so the voice is only of importance. My favorite contestant so far is Sandra van Nieuwland. Last friday she sang an amazing arrangement of Keep Your Head Up by Ben Howard.