All Night Long with King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima

How Dutch can you get? At 4:30 a.m. today my hub came to bed with the following request: "wake me before 7:00 a.m. so I can watch the next stage of the coronation."

At around 6:20 a.m. Flip did the waking, so we were all up and in front of the television (connected to YouTube on the Internet) in time to see the new king and queen of The Netherlands complete their coronation in the Nieuwe Kerk (which isn't really a new church at all, since it is a 15th century church!) in Amsterdam.

Around 9:00 a.m. I left Hub in front of the TV, and heard that later around 11:00 a.m. the Internet connection was broken as Andre Rieu was leading his orchestra in audience swaying music on Rembrandtplein.

So then my Dutch hub went to bed. When I phoned him after 4:00 p.m. while buying flowering plants for our front veranda, he said he had just gotten out of bed.

So he spent the night and day (or day and night) with a king and queen.

Actually a coffee or tea date with them and their girls would be enough for me.

Aren't they a good looking family?

Small World

As I write this post the world outside is claustrophobic. We have dense fog!

The temps have soared to the 80's F, and airco has replaced heating. Guess it is time to put away the woolens. Even my Dutch hub is ready to put away the sweaters and jackets. But air conditioning can get a little chilly sometimes, so the sweaters will not be far away.

Last night at 10 pm when Flip and I went out to check for "spooks," the fragrance from the honeysuckle behind our red barn was intoxicating. I actually looked forward to the aroma this morning when letting Flip out, but the fog seemed to have smothered the smell as well as the sun.

This all reminds me of one of my favorite poems.

FOG (by Carl Sandburg)

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/carl-sandburg

Artichokes. Who has a good recipe?

Our artichoke plant just "keeps on giving." Last year I enjoyed the beautiful purple flowers when the fruit bloomed. This year I will promise to try to steam a few. Now to find out how to determine if they are ripe and then a recipe for steaming them.

Maybe I should try Pinterest ;)))

Check out my new pins on Pinterest.

Walmart--Shame On You! Rant!

Yes, we shop at Walmart. But after what I witnessed at our local Walmart yesterday, I am not so sure I want to go back.

Rumor has it that Walmart does not pay or treat their employees too well, but what I saw yesterday caused me to send a formal complaint to Walmart headquarters.

I should have taken a photo, since you had to see it to believe it. A very "fluffy" young girl was down on her hands and knees washing the baseboards of the meat cases with paper kitchen towels. My hub was concerned with the waste of the paper products, while I was infuriated at the sight of the young woman with her clothing in disarray crawling around on the grocery store floor at 2:00 pm on a Wednesday afternoon.

Torture! Disgrace!

No one should be expected to scrub down on the floor of a public place at any time! There are machines and mops and brushes for those kinds of cleaning jobs.

In fact, the only time anyone should get down on all fours to clean is in the privacy of their own home!

Shame on you, Walmart!

Sell By Date on Greek Yoghurt

How long can you keep homemade Greek yoghurt in your fridge?

Well, actually you can keep it forever. But after six weeks my own Greek yoghurt is still good. Really better than any Greek yoghurt I could find in the grocery stores in The Netherlands.

Before we left on our trip "over the puddle," I froze most of my leftover homemade yoghurt. (I will be interested in how that tastes after defrosting it in the fridge.) As I still had a bit left in a jar, I just left it there in the fridge and ate it yesterday and this morning. It did not look or taste any different than when we left.

So my conclusion is that you can keep homemade Greek yoghurt in your fridge for at least six weeks. But who besides me would be so frugal as to do that?

Packed and Ready to go Home

The Beltway apartment is still not home. Not yet anyway. And maybe it will never be our home.

When we left here back last November, it was still Oma and Opa's virtually empty apartment.

And now, it is still not our home. On paper, yes, it is our apartment.

But when we return in the fall, it will be virtually empty again.

And then we can make it a home.

Vans on the Rooftops

If my iPad camera had been good enough, you would be looking at a photo taken from the Beltway balcony of white vans driving backwards on the rooftops of apartments near the train station. Actually it would be a photo of white vans being transported by train through the city.

We had never realized that you can see the train transport from the Beltway balcony.

Without leaves on the trees, we can see lots of things we had not expected to see.

White vans on rooftops, for example. ;)