Let's start cooking Erwtensoep/Peas soup!!

Hi there again!!

Before I thought about aiming the blog more at food and cooking as there has not been a lot of traveling going on lately, so here is the first post.....And what better way to start to adding cooking to the topics on my blog then with a truly Dutch dish!! The Dutch readers must have already recognized the picture and think 'aaaaaaaah Erwtensoep, lekker!!' ('aaaaaaah Peasoup, delicious!!). Indeed I made my first Erwtensoep, let me give you the recipe as I made it.

- Pig leg
- Pig ribs
- Celeriac
- Split green peas (dried, soaked in water overnight)
- Green peas (dried, soaked in water overnight)
- 1 Cube of vegetable broth, 1 cube of beef broth,
- the leaves of a bunch celery
- 1 big carrot
- 2 or 3 potatoes
- 1 big leek
- A couple of bay leave
- 2 smoked sausages

Side dish
- rye bread or black bread (roggebrood), with a type of bacon called Katenspek

So how do all these ingredients come together?? Well it is actually very simple, you just need to have time, as this kind of dish falls under the label sloooooooooooooooooow cooking.....

First one chops the leg of the pig in 2 (it is easiest of course to let the butcher do that), this way the bone really manages to release its flavour. Together with the ribs one puts this in a big pan and adds water so everything is covered and lets this boil/simmer for 2 hours. I then added the peas and the cubes of bouillion and left this to simmer for another hour. Already after leaving this simmer for about 30min with the occassional stir (it is recommendable to use a flame devider or a simmerplate to prevent the peas etc from burning and sticking to the bottom of the pan and to stir every 5min or so), you can see that the peas are really starting to fall apart and releasing the typical fragrance and giving the structure to the soup. Then I added the roughly chopped (cubes of 2 cm) Celariac, big cubes of carrot, bay leaves, chopped leek, and cubed potatoes. To help the soup a little bit in terms of structure I used the blender to wiz the soup up a bit, however I only used the blender on the bottom of the pan as I did not want the carrots and celeriac to be all mashed. The last things I added were the sausages (in slices) that I already heated for 20 minutes in water that was just under a boil (the water should not boil it will make the skin of the sausage crack, which is not what we want) and the celerary leaves roughly chopped. After leaving the soup simmer for a bit more and stirring it a lot the soup was ready to be served together with the bread and bacon on the side. Unfortunatly as we had guests I forgot to take pictures of the end result, but the taste was excellent and very authentic :D

So if you are ever in winterish conditions and want to make a trully rewarding filling soup, consider making Erwtensoup!! They also make this kind of soup in Germany and actually the name of the bacon, Katenspek, comes from German where the Kate part means 'keet' in Dutch, or lower social class simple small house where the bacon was kept to dry.

Erwtensoep together with hot chocolat milk (with rum) are the traditional food you can buy near or on an ice scating ring in Holland in a stand called Koek en Zopie. Koek is cake and zopie comes from 'soopje' signifying a shot of alcohol (in order to keep warm).

That was the end of Dutch culture cooking history class ;)

See you next time with some other dish, maybe asian?

Cheers
Jody

Winter Wonderland

He ho he ho.....

So the last post was already some time ago, but there has not been any traveling going on lately.....so I am thinking about moving the blog more in the direction of cooking....as I like to cook and do make some nice things frequently....So if you are into nice food and cooking, keep an eye on my blog....

But for now there is a different topic on the agenda....SNOW!! :D Finally after many months, which were too warm, winter seemed to have arrived......We had a few cold days which were crowned and also ended with a nice amount of snow!! I was so happy already when I heard the forecast (which I never trust that much....;)) but this time they were right!! As I had to be in town for an appointment I made use of the opportunity to spend my afternoon in the snow in the park that I used to cross daily on my way from home to university....I also have also seen a number of concert in there, Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Marilyn Manson, Metallica.....etc....Obviously it is one of my favourite parks in my old town and it is by far the biggest too. After missing out on snow last year due to me living in Valencia, I now finally saw snow again. In general in the last decade the days we had snow that actually stayed has been declining. Last year there was a lot of snow though, but of course I missed that one....But today was an excellent day, seeing the landscape all dressed in white, just too beautiful. I enjoyed the people walking in the park, walking their dogs, seeing school classes enjoy building snowmen, sliding off the hills, being re-connected to my old town etc...Always nice to see the influence weather has on people, a true winterday in Holland can have the effect of a perfect summer or spring day, everybody was happy.


After this nice time in the park it was time again to get back home......along the way I enjoyed sliding around with the car, playing a bit with the grip, or the lack of grip, superfun although of course also tricky. The next day there was nothing left anymore of the snow......only nice memories and cool pictures.

Untill next time, perhaps in the kitchen ;)

Jody

Madrid weekend

Back in Spain!!

At least for a long weekend. Nata wanted to visit some old highschool friends who lived in Madrid while I thought 'hey how nice', and 'hey I also have a good friend of me living there' a French ex-roommate from Valencia (the world is a village?). And there we went, off to Madrid. After an early flight we got picked up from the airport by car, how comfortable....The first day mainly consisted of the highschool friends getting updated, talking in rapid Chilean, with food, drinks and laughter involved :). The second day we had several missions, barber (Nata's hair got a bit out of hand ;)), pans & company (my favourite lunchplace from Valencia as I liked the food as well as the location close to university where I worked), see the KIO towers and buy xmas presents for home.


We succeeded in all missions throughout the weekend, but the barber and lunch mission already were accomplished on the second day where we also visited the Kio towers and had a pans y company lunch next to the towers, excellent!! We also found some presents in the xmas markets spread throughout the centre of Madrid, where the one at plz. Mayor was really the Major one, gigantic and superbusy!! All the xmas decoration lights in Madrid were also very nice. In the evening we had fingerfood and nice talks in which we also invited my French. It was great seeing her again having some great laughs a small break in English hehehe.





Day three was a day of going to the Rastro I believe it was called, a gigantic fleemarket somewhere in the centre of town. The market was spread over lots of nice small streets and squares, supernice, and superbusy. IFollowing that there was a Paella at the home of one friend and after returning 'home' we had one nice final walk in the neighbourhood and did some puzzling (bought at the fleemarket of a Dutch mill hehehe) before going to go to bed early and wake up at 3.40 in the morning!! in order to catch the early early early morning flight....

The End (of a nice weekend in Madrid)

See you next time in??

Jody

ESPON

© ESPON, 2006

After talking about ESPON but not really explaining what it is, it is now time to give you a better idea of what ESPON really is.

ESPON stands for European Spatial Observation Network. It was a EU programme consisting of 36 applied research projects covering a wide range of spatial issues all different in nature regarding their goals and methods employed. The projects were executed by Transnational Project Groups. The first ESPON programme ran from 2000 till 2006 while ESPON II will run from 2007 till 2013 and will have an increased budget. ESPON I had a budget of 12 million Euro while ESPON II will have an approx. 36 million Euro Budget. This is still peanuts compared to for instance INTERREG, another EU programme where they speak about billions of Euros. The network focusses on the observation and analysis of regional development trends in Europe.
© ESPON, 2006
Within ESPON they defined 5 fields of research:

• 'Thematic projects (projects under Priority 1) on the territorial effects of major spatial developments on the background of typologies of regions, and the situation of cities on the base of broad empirical data
• Policy impact projects (projects under Priority 2) on the spatial impact of Community sector policies, Member States’ spatial development policy on types of regions with a focus on the institutional inter-linkages between the governmental levels and instrumental dimension of policies on the base of broad empirical data
• Co-ordinating cross-thematic projects (projects under Priority 3) as a key component. Evaluation of the results of the other studies towards integrated results such as indicator systems and data, typologies of territories, spatial development scenarios and conclusions for the territorial development.
• Scientific briefing and networking (projects under Priority 4) in order to explore the synergies between the national and EU sources for research and research capacities.
• Studies and scientific support projects serve mainly the purpose of deepening results already achieved by current ESPON projects.
  More particularly, the ESPON Studies will further deepen and explore the results already achieved in a targeted way, in response to demands from the policy community. The ESPON Scientific Support Projects will address issues of a more technical and/or scientific nature, to be presented in a “state-of-the-art” documents. They will as well to some extent serve as a preparatory work for a possible continuation of ESPON activities after 2006'. (http://www.espon.eu, 2006)

I myself worked mainly on the 'ESPON project 2.3.2 Governance' where the relatively new terms Governance and Territorial Cohesion were better defined, related to each other and much more:

'Project 2.3.2 holds an important position in the definition and elaboration of a common ground for investigating the institutional and instrumental aspects of implementation of territorial and urban policies in Europe. The project focuses on the question how effective different systems are, e.g. considering a policy mix of spatial planning (in different forms implemented by Member States), local government powers and taxation policy in meeting common spatial development strategies and objectives such as a polycentric urban system, balancing urban-rural needs, reviving derelict urban areas, urban regeneration, sustainable management of the natural and cultural assets. In that perspective, an analysis based on a comparative review of the instruments used, and stakeholders involved in various policy areas, is being undertaken to draw some valuable conclusions of practical relevance on governance'. (http://www.espon.eu, 2006).

I also have been involved in 2.3.1 and other projects (Iberian) in which my Professor was involved, which made the diversity of the tasks at hand very wide.

So now you know what sort of vague thing I did back in Valencia.....I absolutly loved it!!


See you next time

Master J

(Please do not use any of the above texts without contacting either me or the ESPON coordination unit. All texts are subject to copyrights. All other queries on intellectual property rights, such as copyrights and sui generis rights should be addressed to info@espon.eu.)

Day 2 Helsinki

Day two in Helsinki was actuall half a day as I had to fly back home late in the afternoon. So after having had a nice breakfast, packing my back and checking out of the hostel (leaving my bags) I was ready for another looooong walk. Today I had less of a plan but wanted to see the Sibelius monument. I didn't really wanne go there because the monument was so special or anything or that I am such a huge fan of his music, but I thought the walk itself to get there would be nice. Indeed it was a very nice walk, and long as I of course took a wrong turn :D After crossing many resident areas and local shopping streets (btw who knows what those tubes from the ground are?? I see them everywhere but have no idea what purpose they have) I finally reached the coast, there I took a nice long walk along the water, a beach, park, etc before I got to the monument.


After having seen that I was doubting to continue walking to the open air museum as it was supposed to be authentic Finnish, just a small settlement on a small island that was frozen in time....however I also wanted to do some shopping for souvenirs so I choose for the second one.
I walked back all the way along the coastline, passing a HUGE cemetery. The cemetery was on a peninsula and cosisted an orthodox, muslim, christian, war etc. cemetery. You had great views over the cold windy sea, and the city on the other side. Although it was very cold and windy it was a beautiful walk. After a short stop in the library again to get heated again and use the internet it was time for a short stop at MacDonalds as I didn't want to loose more time. I crossed the centre in all directions again and then got back to my hostel. After a short tram and busride I was back again on the airport ready to fly back home. After spending 30min at home it was time for me to head to a graduation party of my ex-roommate with a nice Finnish design present for her freshly flewn in from Helsinki :D

So that was a perfect end to a great trip to Finland. Next time I will be sure to come back in summer to see it all green and more warm, as I believe that it must look extremely nice in summer with aaaaaaaaaaalll the parks they have overthere.

Jody

First day in Helsinki

The first night in the hostel was excellent, had a good night of sleep with a busy day ahead, but a very different busy than the days before. busy with myself, siteseeing. I had a small guidebook from Holland which gave 5 interesting walking routes, and I did 3 of them on my first day....well more or less as every once in a while I got a bit lost, but I crossed Helsinki from north to south and west to east :D I have started with walking to the olympic stadium of 1952, from there on I walked passed the lake (opera, theatre, parliament, etc) to the trainstation after which I crossed the centre of town (senate square (massive Lutheran church), market square, shopping streets, etc.) to the Russian neighbourhood with the biggest orthodox church of Europe. Crossing that area, staring at the big boats, old warehouses that were transferred into nice hip conference centres etc, was very nice.



I Then had an internet break in the extremely beautiful university library also to get warm again. I bought some nice vanilla bread on the market square to also get some fuel again to get me warm inside again. Then it was time to head to the southern point of the Helsinki centre Peninsula and the Eira jugenstill neighbourhood and a beautiful park from where you had a very nice view over all the islands and the coast. Walking back through the nice Eira neighbourhood it was time to meet up with 2 Chilean friends with which I had a nice evening making a great end to a fascinating day. Damn I love traveling!!





:D