Three Things Meme

I have surreptitiously (or not, since I'm confessing and all) stolen this meme from FlyAwayFamily.

Three…

… places I’ve visited: Texel, The Netherlands; Marshall, Minnesota; Newcastle, England.

… cars I’ve owned: '96 Ford Taurus, '90 Subaru Mini Jumbo, 2006 Chevrolet Kalos (technically the last two are Martijn's, but I am a passenger).

… foods I love: Jello, bananas, chickpeas

… jobs I’ve held: retail monkey at RadioShack, sales support for Qwest, sales consultant for hpshopping.com

… authors I love: Clive Cussler, C. S. Forrester (though I'm a bit put out that he died before he finished the Hornblower series!), Elizabeth Peters (the Ameila Peabody series is absolutely hysterical)

… places I’ve lived: Layton, Utah; Rifle, Colorado; Eindhoven, The Netherlands

… favorite hobbies: crochet (I am trying to practice with yarn again instead of wire, but it's so floppy!), blogging & taking pictures, cycling

… bones I’ve broken: Luckily I haven't broken three bones, just one- the outer bone on my left foot.

… TV shows I watch: NCIS, Bones, Ghost Whisperer

… songs that make me turn up the volume (and dance in my chair!): Canned Heat by Jamiroquai (yes, the Napoleon Dynamite song), This is How a Heart Breaks by Rob Thomas, Stayin Alive by the Bee Gees (DON'T JUDGE ME!)

… favorite drinks: Diet Coke, Diet Coke, Diet Coke (I should probably found a Diet Coke Addicts Anonymous group)

… fun board games: Scrabble, Quiddler, Scattergories

… stores I could spend a whole day in: IKEA (sometimes we go there for breakfast and are still there when it's lunchtime), the Smitje (an awesome haberdashery shop here), Hobby Lobby (how I miss you!)

… chores I put off as long as possible: Only three?! Laundry (mostly the putting away of, I don't know what my objection to that is... I've already done all the hard parts), scrubbing the stove top, cleaning the bathroom (I put this off so long that I never do it! I love my husband)

… chores I kind of like: cooking, watering the plants (when I remember, I'm so awful), changing the sheets

… things I would rather chew glass than do: talk on the telephone in Dutch (heel moelijk, though strangely, chewing and gargling the glass might help with certain pronunciations), ride in the elevator with a certain rude neighbor and his very stinky dogs, head to head confrontations

… reasons I hate attending parties: I have no answers for this one so I'm going to pretend I didn't see it!

… favorite dog breeds: I like the ones that are actually cats instead of dogs!

… things I just don’t get: nasty rude people who seem to have nothing better to do than to try to make others miserable too, Martijn's job (I think he's really a magician, things he does with computers can't happen naturally), how the wind manages to shift directions so that I'm always trying to go against it (I swear, there is some sort of conspiracy against me here)


If you decide to do this, let me know, I'd love to read your answers!

Hashbrown Crusted Quiche

I bought a bag of potatoes for Martijn to cook with last week and there was a bad one in the bag that was going to spread it's badness to the rest if they didn't get used up fast. So, I decided to make a breakfast casserole!

You will need:

2 cups cooked, shredded potatoes (you can use thawed frozen hashbrowns if you can get them)
2 TBSP melted butter
1/2 cup shredded cheese
1/4-1/2 lb ground beef, sausage, or bacon
1 small zuchinni, thinly sliced
1 onion, diced
1 bell pepper (any color), diced
1/2 cup peas
4 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt


Press the potatoes down into the bottom of your casserole dish. Pour the melted butter over the top and bake at 200 C (400-ish F) for 25 minutes. This will make your "crust."

You should probably not forget about it like I did because then the edges get a little browner than the middle.

While your crust is cooking, brown your meat of choice. Drain off any excess fat, and set aside. Saute the onions, bell pepper, and zuchini until they're just starting to soften. Mix in the peas and let them warm through. Beat together the eggs, milk, and salt.

By this time, your crust should be about finished cooking. Sprinkle half of the cheese over the potatoes. Then layer the meat, then the veggies, and then pour the milk and egg combo over the top. Finally, sprinkle the rest of the cheese over the top.

Bake at 175 C (350 F) for 30 minutes.

This would be pretty tasty without any meat if you're looking for a veggie meal too.

As always, be sure to check out Tasty Tuesday @ Balancing Beauty and Bedlam and Tempt my Tummy Tuesday @ Blessed with Grace for more yummy recipes.

Menu Plan Monday- June 8, 2009

The only new thing we tried last week was the Inside Out Burgers. They were good. Next time I'll use horseradish in the stuffing.

click the banner and "Menu Plan Monday" for more menu planning ideas

This week:

One of the supermarkets here has these "choose and cook" meals in which you can mix and match a starch, some sort of vegetable mix, a meat, and a sauce. They're usually something like €13.50, but they were on sale for €7.50 this week so I got one with red rice and chicken sate. It's a pretty substantial amount of food so it should cover two meals!

Fish and Chorizo Chili- We haven't had this for quite some time and it's quite good.

Stuffed Zucchini- I think instead of putting the filling in the zucchini boats I'm just going to chop them up and fry them up with everything else. That way I won't have to heat up the apartment with the oven.

Chicken Drumsticks and salad- Still deciding how I want to do the chicken. Maybe I'll do a "baked fried chicken" recipe.

Melt Sandwiches and Tomato Soup- I might do this on the night Martijn is out if he has a dinner meeting this week.

The Mystery of the Discombobulated* Taste

The other day I started noticing this awful bitter taste in the back of my mouth. At first I thought I'd somehow inhaled some of my sunscreen (yah, I know, not so smart) and a drink of water when I got home would take care of it. That didn't seem to work, so I figured brushing my teeth and giving my tongue a good scrub would make it go away. That didn't seem to work either.

So now I'm going through the list in my head-

Heavy metal poisoning?
Brain tumor?
Tongue leprosy?
Bubonic plague?

None of these sounded terribly plausible, but I am the girl who is allergic to the sun so I wouldn't have really put it past my body to pull some horrible trick like that. While I was contemplating my impending doom, Martijn says to me "Did you buy a different kind of coffee?" I told him I hadn't and he said "This tastes terrible. I'm having this horrible taste in the back of my mouth!"

Never being one to overreact, I think "OH NO, NEUROTOXINS ARE BEING RELEASED INTO THE AIR."

Martijn had a much less reasonable explanation- it was something we ate.

He did what any nerd would do. He googled it.

If you google "bittere smaak in mijn mond," (bitter taste in my mouth) the very first hit and the three following it are about pine nuts causing a nasty bitter and metallic taste at the back of the mouth! Apparently, this is not an uncommon occurance and it only happens with pine nuts that have come out of China. Since the about 99% of the pine nuts I've consumed came from local sources in Utah, it explained why I'd never heard of it. It lasts about 5 days in most people, but some of the lucky ones get to live with the nasty nasty taste for 3 weeks or more. We're on day 7 and it's just now subsiding!

As far as I can tell, there are no other ill effects from the Chinese pine nuts, but I can seriously recommend STAYING AWAY. Your tastebuds will thank you for it.

*Martijn thought I made up this word the first time I said it, but HE is the one that suggested I use it here.

Thrifty Finds!

From about March until the end of May, the Dutch have about seventy-three national holidays. I swear I'm not exaggerating. I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, but it really would be handy if they could SPREAD THEM OUT a little bit because from now until about Christmas there's nothing!

Since today was the last holiday for a long while, Martijn and I decided to go to a rommelmarkt (also vlooienmarkt- flea market in English). We managed to hit up a good one! I found a magnifying lamp to use when I sew for €4, a new (well, to us, it's actually quite old) double tosti-ijzer (sandwich grill) for €1, and some crummy old rusty chairs with potential for €7.50.

This picture doesn't really do justice to the flaky filthy ick of these chairs! BUT, aren't they cute? I have been looking for some sort of folding chair to put out on our balcony. We've got some plastic chairs out there right now, but they don't fold up so they take up a lot of space. We've already taken a wire brush and some sandpaper to these and purchased paint to pretty them up! Now we just need to wait for the weather to cooperate. It's been raining on and off all afternoon and we don't want to suffer from "paint that never dries" syndrome. Once we get them repainted we can grease up the joints so that you don't have to have muscles of steel to open and close them. I'm quite chuffed with the finds!

Potato, Green Bean, and Tuna Salad

I never in a million years thought that this recipe would be edible, but it was one of those things where I had all of the ingredients and I thought "why not?" I don't know why I was so weird about trying it, everything IN it is good... but I have heard a story about some sort of chocolate chicken so I'm wary of trusting things even when all of the ingredients are good!

500 grams (about 1 lb) new potatoes
500 grams (about 1 lb) green beans
1 small (about the size of a jumbo egg) red onion
1 can tunafish, drained
1/4 cup mayonnaise or salad dressing
1/3 cup sliced olives (or one small can)
75 grams (about 3 oz) arugola

Scrub your potatoes up and cook them until just soft. Trim up your beans and snap them in half. Cook your beans for about 5 minutes, just until they're softening but still have a bit of a crunch to them.

While you're waiting for your beans and potatoes to cook, dice a small red onion. Combine the onion, tuna, mayo, and olives and mix well. When your other goodies are done cooking, let them cool for a little while and then add them to the tuna mix.

You can serve this warm or let it cool completely for a couple of hours in the fridge.

Serve on top of a bed of the arugola. If you can't get ahold of arugola, just substitute with whatever greens you can find!

**Quick Tip- I am hooked on using the Ziploc Steam Bags. I usually just toss the potatoes and green beans into a steam bag and steam them. It's fast and easy, and let's face it- I'm lazy! I think I like the potatoes cooked better this way really, they don't get all squishy.

What do you do to save prep time in the kitchen?


As always, be sure to check out Tasty Tuesday @ Balancing Beauty and Bedlam and Tempt my Tummy Tuesday @ Blessed with Grace for more yummy recipes.

Menu Plan Monday- June 1, 2009

I'm pretty impressed with myself. I goofed up a little (I really need to use a Sharpie to mark stuff in the freezer), but was able to improvise and it wasn't a big deal. Martijn's dinner got cancelled so we ate a weird mash of leftovers one night and I think we ought to do that more often. It's like random buffet night! Anyhow, here's the week in review-

The Tortilla Pie, as always, was a hit. Martijn batted his eyelashes at me and asked me to make it for his birthday, so how could I refuse that?!

These Tuna Balls are VERY good. I'm going to make them again for sure. I am trying to decide if they'd freeze okay or if they'd fall apart. I did use seasoned breadcrumbs in them rather than plain. I think they'd have been kinda boring without.

I'd planned on making that Chicken with Cornflakes, but I actually thawed out pork instead. Oops, so I improvised. It's not something I'd make again so I won't share it with you, but it wasn't deadly either!

My intention with the corndogs was to figure out how to bake them. I just ended up frying them and they were delicious. This is one of those "Once every 5 year" recipes, otherwise you'll die of hardened arteries.

click the banner and "Menu Plan Monday" for more menu planning ideas

This week is going to be pretty easy-

Pancakes

Taco Salad

Paprika Pork Chops

Inside Out Burgers

My father in laws birthday is this week, so we're going over there for Chinese one night and hopefully Martijn will be having his dinner so he'll be cooking one night.

What's everyone else eating this week? I need more ideas for future menus!