you gotta eat, right?!
so better make it interesting every once in a while. and as friends know you well, mine spoiled me with a dinner at Smaak! where else?
and as you know your friends well, you take them with you. simple.
so we were at Smaak yet once again and you’d almost say we’d get a little tired of it. i think we would.
if Ronald wasn’t such an amazing cook, who loves what he does and if Debbie wasn’t such an amazing host, who loves to make her guests have an amazing time, we would. but now, we can’t get tired of it, even if we’d try… which we don’t. try, i mean… 
so we were with 9 ‘nj0ying people and we had a blast. as they have a grand tastery of appetizers and a grand tastery of desserts and as we saw the most amazing main courses, we asked for a tastery of those as well. and again, it doesn’t matter how, but they go crazy in the kitchen and prepare a fantastic combination of courses!
now, i like wines, but my friend Marco is crazy about them and picked a fantastic Pasaje de Barrancas from Argentina, a deep, firm wine amazing with the various pieces of great meat we ‘njoyed… last time i was there, Debbie surprised me with a lovely dessert wine and she served this one on the house, just for us! u gotta love her…
and look at this: what better way to re-celebrate your birthday?!
Share on Facebook
Posted 6 months, 1 week ago at 6:40 pm. Add a comment
I know it’s a little late. And no, it is not because it took me a while to recover…
although it was a beautiful week of friendship, family, expectations and a lot… a lot of food and drink (actually, it did take me a while to recover)…
I worked until the afternoon of 24th and started preparing for an undoubtedly amazing friends-xmas that we try to maintain a tradition. As always, everyone prepares and brigns a little something, that surprisingly creates an abundance of food… (how can that happen?!)
The kidz almost immediately started having fun and we gathered around the cooking island Sylvia and Paul have in their kitchen. With their characteristic clairvoyance, Sylvia and Paul had gathered an immense quantity of Prosecco, which all of us courageously challenged and overcame. All of those cute little blue bottles bit the dust eventually…
And we ate! Oh, how we ate, we had salmon wraps with cream cheese, crostinis with chicken curry, a salmon terrine with goat cheese and avocado, a spoom of champagne-jelly and ice-cream, lamb-racks with sesame seeds, small bowls with beef stew, scallopina filled with gorgonzola and sundriedtomato/pesto paste rolled in prosciutto crudo and as a dessert we had oven-baked pear with honey and oatmeal and ice-cream… and the point is, obviously everyone tries to make sure they make enough for all, so there is enough for all… more than enough.
Finally, even though my idea of a white christmas still is 100 cm of snow outside, because of which you have no choice but to stay inside and drink gluhwein, we came pretty damn close… Leaving in the middle of the night, walking home through the snow, throwing a couple of snowballs and totally missing christmas morning …
Share on Facebook
Posted 7 months, 4 weeks ago at 10:25 pm. Add a comment
I never understood it.
why, when people turn a certain age get crazy all of a sudden, change their lives radically, just because of that number.
that number… 40.
Now, I still wouldn’t do it, don’t be mistaken, but I do understand it a little better. Forced by, oh I don’t know, your environment? society? whatever, you do reach a point to think about stuff. I don’t think it necessarily has to do anything with that exact point in time, but with a phase. Triggered by whatever occurence or event. So I guess this event or process is the trigger to reevaluate your basis, who you are, what you do, where you’ll be… And I always thought (but it got reconfirmed), who you are is for a great part represented by your friends and who they are…
So when I did reach that point last week, I had just planned to take my grlz out to dinner (pizza? no, we wanna go for greek! ok, unexpected…). And as I have been very busy these last couple of months, @ night I am usually up, up and away! So when there was a big noise on thursday, I first dreamt it was the construction opposite of our house. But when I heard the distinct banging at our windows, I realised it was something else, when Daya came running up the stairs screaming: “they are all downstairs and they brought breakfast!!!”…
And indeed, as I slipped into something quick and comfortable and went down, I saw my friends and part of my family with about 12 of their children ‘in da house!’ setting the table for breakfast… I don’t know why and I still persist this point doesn’t get hold of me, but I became a little emotional. Your friends represent who you are, now it all is clear… That’s it.
So, as some of them left for work, the rest of us brought the children to school and we had some more coffee after… I am still feeling special…
Saturday, most of my friends came over and we had a blast. I made sushi for a small orphanage, everyone was amazingly surprised about it and we went crazy, we drank, we ate, we danced…
And in the dead of night our ways parted, seeing we are all represented.
Grlz, do try this at home! (maybe just when you’re a little older…)
Share on Facebook
Posted 9 months ago at 8:40 pm. Add a comment
another one bites the dust. and again it is in alphen aan den rijn. of all places.
now, i grew up here and remember the time, when it still was a small village. it still is actually. mentally. but physically it has grown and houses some pretty darn surprising places, food-wise that is… i already wrote about Alfred’s Diner, about Buuren, about El Caballo…
i have this beautiful group of friends, who all like to cook and eat and we do so as regularly as possible. so every year, when all of our kids have the fairy-light parade to finish the week-long holiday game just before they go back to school, we go and have a nice bite in the meantime… next year, we planned to have the kids do a quest for us after the parade (so we won’t have to leave the restaurant in a hurry )!
so, we try to find something new nearby, as we have to watch the kids at the end of the parade, of course… this year we barely made it! because we went to Smaak (taste and boy, do they have a lot of that!) and had been dining for almost 4 hours, before realising we really had to leave and watch the kids go by… of course, it was amazingly ‘gezellig’, but that is our own accomplishment and perfectly logical, by the way… but the atmosphere in the restaurant, the waitresses and especially the cook Ronald, who just shows he loves what he does, do the trick! we had the most amazing dinner…
they combined well-known dishes with more daring ones, making it a feast for both the tastebuds as well as for our eyes… and they made some amazing choices in wines as well: a (to me) unknown italian winehouse Astoria, located just south of the Dolomites… we had some beautiful spumante with the dessert… anyway, restaurant-wise, fortunately this small town starts to act more and more like a city (now hope the mentality follows suit ) !
Share on Facebook
Posted 1 year ago at 12:34 pm. 1 comment
