Number of days in Amsterdam – 250-251
Number of days without a bike theft – 247
Days since it last rained – 80
In our new routines, weekends have attained a new importance. With Nicole back at the office, weekends are the days when we truly gather as a family.
What’s that mean? We’re still sorting that all out.
You see, we’re new at all this. In a relatively short time, we’ve been handed so many life-altering changes – the international move, the arrival of the Kitten, and now the assumption of new roles as parents, one of us as the stay-at-home variety, the other as the worker, with a flipped perspective on the norm.
So Saturday was the sort of day we just wanted it to be, spending time indoors, hibernating a bit from the last vestiges of the furious cold snap, venturing out briefly for provisions that were sorely lacking from my inability to really get out with the baby in the subzero weather.
We got a ton of groceries to make two large home-cooked meals. We wandered through the frozen park near our house, watching ice skaters and remarking that just a few short months ago we were grilling here – and would be again soon. Then we spoiled ourselves a bit with a stove top espresso pot – one of those little luxuries we enjoyed in our old life that, now in the new life, is a minimal expense that brings us lots of caffeinated happiness.
It’s all about the little things.
Like watching the little one grow.
She’s becoming a bit of a mimic. She loves to watch her parents dancing to music, and then joins in. Granted, her dance is not much more than excitedly spastic flailing motions, but she’s very happy as she goes about, so we’re very encouraging of her explorations into interpretive dance.
Weekends are for cooking big meals. We love to cook, as I’ve said before, and our old life found us in a tightly confined galley kitchen where we managed to work very well.
Our new kitchen features more production room, but the added obstacle that requires one of us to often hold a baby. It’s like a challenge on Top Chef or something:
For today’s elimination challenge, you’ll be working in pairs, creating a meal for two, which will include leftovers for lunch tomorrow, plus something to go in the freezer for next week. As an added challenge, one of you will always be holding a baby. There is no time limit, as you’ll probably eat quite late.
The winning team gets to eat a home-cooked meal plus leftovers. The losing team must order pizza.
Your time starts now!
See, when you make a game of it, it’s fun!
Foodiness is something we do take great pride in. Granted, our busy week nights are when we often get curry, pizza, roti or burritos delivered, but given the time and opportunity to go shopping, our gourmet natures reveal themselves.
Saturday was all about spaghetti sauce.
Nicole’s red sauce is actually a legendary creation, a labor of love that takes techniques handed down by her mother, adapted to our tastes and further warped now by the different accessibility to ingredients than we had in the States.
It’s a labor of love, and an art, taking hours of tinkering with spices and two full bottles of wine (one for the sauce, one for the cooks), and resulting in a meal that’s rich in flavor, memories and love.
Sunday, saw the cold finally break just enough for the sky to unfreeze, resulting in snow. It was welcome, watching the flurries bring with them warmer, damp winds to push out the frigid barren wasteland that the ‘Dam has been as of late, but it marked the end of the city’s added surface area, as rising temperatures began to make the canals a much less safe place to congregate.
Another thing I do miss from the old life were the impromptu gatherings, where we could call up friends and say “come over for dinner, we’re cooking,” or even just swinging by a friend’s house, unannounced, for a beer, but we’re slowly regaining that, and were able to have friends over for dinner and board games on Sunday. Even if the friends were Canadian, it was still nice.
We made slow-cooked pork burritos, and got wrapped up in games and talking and appetizers and let the pork cook for an hour longer than it should have – at least.
The result was dry, but flavorful. It wasn’t the intended dish, but it was more than edible. One just had to pretend it was grilled and not stewed, and it was great. We ate it all.
This city is amazing and historic, full of history and mystery and works of art – is it odd that many of my fondest, most magic memories here so far consist of hanging out at the flat, playing with the baby, cooking for friends or barbecues in the park? Because that’s where our new life has been most magic so far.
