We had a wonderful Thanksgiving here. Obviously it's not a holiday here, but Cameron's boss was nice enough to give him both thursday and friday off. We started the day off with a trip to the Rijks Museum. The line is super long on saturdays, so it was the perfect time for us to go. We loved it. They have a lot of Rembrandt, which we both loved.
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| I've always loved this Vermeer. |
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| This is Remrandt's "Nightwatch," his most famous and largest painting. |
The weather was beautiful (cold, but sunny), so we headed to the Vondelpark to walk around for a few minutes before Andy needed to nap. Andy's favorite thing these days is holding our hand and walking around. He always has this look on his face like, "Look at me! I'm walking around just like a big person! No stoller for me!"
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| Andy is super excited because he spotted the dog you can see on the bottom left corner |
We had two of the elders in the ward over for dinner as well as our friend Claire. It ended up being a really fun group. Making a big dinner like that here was stressful and really stretched me because our oven hasn't been working quite right, I had to improvise a bit in recipes, hunt for ingredients, etc. I had a few conversations with my mom to try to figure out how to do stuff here, and I think she said about ten times, "What?! They really don't have that there?" Anyway, I think I learned a lot about cooking here, and I found some ingredients I didn't know they had (cocoa powder, cornstarch). I ended up really enjoying the process. Cameron's an excellent cook and helped everything turn out great. We had chicken breasts (turkey is too hard here), mashed potatoes, gravy, crockpot stuffing, and homemade crescent rolls. For dessert we had a chocolate cream pie and an incredible pumpkin chocolate cheesecake Claire brought. I think it mostly turned out well. We loved the stuffing, especially. My rolls didn't rise as much as I would have liked, and the pie crust wasn't quite right. But, for the most part, it was a success! We have so much to be grateful for, and it was wonderful to spend a day thinking about our many blessings.
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| I couldn't find a normal pie pan here, so I had to use this springform pan. |
It's about being together...and it looks beautiful!!! Thanks for sharing your journey. When Matt & Kath were in the UK they discovered a LOT of things we take for granted are not available there & a lot of food tastes we just assume everyone loves...ie rootbeer; they pretty much hate it. LOL Their sugar is not nearly as sweet. Things do not have preservatives, etc. The "dill pickles" they finally found were awful. "Squash" was concentrated fruit drink (!)...quite a learning curve. I am still laughing. Have fun & enjoy!
ReplyDeleteI want you to share your stuffing recipe! We skipped it this year, I need a good, reliable recipe before I tackle stuffing. I'm glad you got a vacation with Cameron that wasn't the hustle and bustle of traveling and fitting a ton in. I bet it was nice for him to relax at home.
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