Last Saturday, people all over town without a restaurant, took part in Restaurant Day. Sounds a little strange maybe, but the concept is actually pretty cool. It’s about people who love to cook playing restaurant for a day. It’s a great moment to put your chef ambitions to the test.

In the co-working space where Jesse and Tim have their coffee bar, some folks with a passion for slow, organic food had booked a space where guests could eat their lovely goods. They asked us to take care of the coffee and sweets, so we baked our butts off. We had a lemon pecan cake, a lemon poppyseed cake (we were out of pecans after the first cake ), white and dark chocolate chip cookies and the raw vegan brownies I posted about before. Those were the first to sell out, yay for spreading the healthy sweet gospel!

Restaurant Day is not very well known in Holland yet. Only 25 ‘restaurants’ participated this weekend. But the concept fits very well in the developments surrounding food in our city, so I predict that next time there will be a lot more participants! I might even take part myself…

Last weekend, I cried a little on the inside. But they were also tears of joy. Last weekend, on the night before Mother’s Day, Je Moeder celebrated her last Je Moedernacht ever. Je Moeder (translated freely as Yo Momma) was and still is a fabulous Dutch blog, party, and fun group of people. A few years back they asked me to photograph at the Je Moedernacht party and I gladly accepted. They asked me again for this last party and of course I was honoured to be there!

The parties that Je Moeder throws are like nothing you have ever seen. They have the most insane artists getting pumped up by the most cosy crowd. There are almost as many men as there are women and this somehow works great. You feel like you are surrounded by friends and fellow silly people. The best place in town to be a party photographer for sure.

Last time the best thing was watching The Scotty Pippens perform. Man, are they crazy. I couldn’t stop smiling and jumping up and down!
This time, the best thing was a little more personal: I GOT TO CROWDSURF! Well, ‘got to’ might not be entirely correctly phrased, as I found myself suddenly hoisted in the air by a big bearded dude and was carried around by lots of hands before I knew it!
I tried to take some pictures, which is pretty hard when you’re horizontal, not looking through the viewfinder but in the direction of where you’re going and thinking all the while: ‘My bag! My camera! My phone! My things! My… this is so COOL!’. So the only proof I have is this one of my shoe up above all of these party people. It was awesome, to say the least.

Some more party pics I took:
Buutvrij Oud & Opnieuw
Lentekabinet

A while back when I was shopping for records to play on our cute little record player, I also stumbled upon a market stand with a big crate of wooden stamps. I loved them all: there were little flowers, big flowers, all sorts of symbols, fishes, birds… They were €2 a piece so not too expensive, but still I wanted to get just one. I ended up going for this peacock. I use it to brighten up letters or to do lists (which can help loads!).

Because the stamp is made of wood, regular stamp ink will not always do the trick. Wood is quite porous so you’ll need a lot of ink. The woman selling these recommended using paint. For now, I’ll try to manage with just my inkpad. Still, I might get one or two more with flowers on them. Hopefully this lady is still around on the Waterlooplein market!

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Brittni has asked me to change my profile picture to my favourite animal. I’m a total dog person but I really like cats too. And basically any mammal or bird in baby form
So since I couldn’t choose, I decided to go for my pet cat who passed away about six years ago, Snuitje. I posted about her before. She was so awesome and totally weird.
She’d listen to her name but only came over if she wanted to. When someone petted her, she liked it so much that she forgot to swallow and drooled all over your hands or outfit. Or worse, she’d shake her head and there would be cat saliva everywhere. Nice.

When we moved to Scotland, we lost her somewhere in Rotterdam at a gas station. Eventually she was found again and she stayed in Holland with my dad. There she lived in a house with two older cats, whom she had fun with by dropping herself on top of them from a chair. For the older cats it was a little less fun, you can imagine. She’d never drink water from her bowl but always from the pond in our garden. She once stole the ham off my mum’s sandwich when she wasn’t looking. She was the only calico cat in her litter, with 3 red brothers. When she had a litter of her own, she also had 4 kittens: 3 red boys and a calico girl!

Well, that was a huge story about changing my profile picture I will consider this one ticked off the 50 things list now!

Buttermilk is an acquired taste if you ask me. When I was little, I really didn’t like the sour taste of it. But now that I’m older, I can appreciate it more as the refreshing drink it is.

There are lots of recipes with buttermilk too. They turn out less sweet than recipes with regular milk and more interesting!

The other day I made two things using buttermilk: a pound cake with cranberries and some muffins. I really wanted to make the muffins because I’d just got myself a new muffin tin

The buttermilk pound cake recipe was delicious! You can find it over here. This lady used raisins but all I had was cranberries, still it tasted pretty good. This recipe is great for trying out stuff, I think dates and nuts would also be awesome in this cake.

I also made buttermilk muffins that I found here. Though they tasted good, these are really plain muffins. They pretty much scream for lots of awesome additions! I’d like to try them with oats, dates, berries, cinnamon… maybe all of the above?

I also want to try baking with yoghurt. At Easter I made cupcake frosting with Greek yoghurt and it tasted really nice. Do you like to bake with yoghurt or buttermilk?

As I’ve said before, I really want to get into making a lot of home products myself. After making granola, I wanted to try making nut milk to add to it. Turns out making nut milk is easy as pie! One essential item you may not have laying around is a cheese cloth. But you can get these for a couple of euros at most cooking stores.

Besides the cheesecloth, you will need a blender, a cup of nuts of your choice
and some spices.
First, put the nuts in some water so they are submerged, and leave this on your counter for a night. Rinse the nuts and put them in your blender, together with 3 cups of water. Blend for a while until the nuts are diminished to small grains. Grab a pitcher or something else you want to keep the milk in and pour the mixture in through the cheesecloth. Squeeze every last drop out of the mixture and put your container in the fridge with some spices you like (vanilla, cardamom, cinnamon). After an hour it’s ready for consumption! You’ll end up with about 4 cups of milk and it keeps for about 3 days.

What’s so great about this milk is that it’s no waste: you can use the dried nut grain as flour when baking! Another perk of making things at home if you ask me
Also, though nuts may be expensive, this milk is cheaper than buying a liter of nut milk in the stores. Yay for homemade stuff!

Two days ago, we celebrated the last Queensday for the next couple of decades. On April 30th, Willem-Alexander was crowned king of the Netherlands. This also meant that we would be getting a new date to celebrate his birthday, which will be April 27th (his actual birth date).
I pretty much worked all day shaking cocktails at Wilhelmina and listening to some awesome jazz and big bands. On Dam Square thousands of people gathered to see the Royal family and witness the succession on big screens. I’m not a royalty fan or anything, but this event was pretty special to be a part of. Princess Amalia, the eldest daughter of Willem-Alexander and Máxima is the youngest heir to the throne in the world at the moment, she is 10 years old!

The thing I like most about Queensday is the flea markets. The Vondelpark is for kids only, which makes it a really friendly place to walk around. Shopping there is a little less exciting, because obviously it’s mostly kids’ stuff. I went to the Apollolaan and Beethovenstraat for the first time. Rumour has it that the stuff people sell there is pretty great, and I must say I agree. Looking at the items people usually sell on Queensday, this area has better quality things and also antiques and such. Jesse’s mum actually bought a painting by Jan Toorop there! I bought myself some neckties that I will be using for a project I’ll blog about soon

I think it will definitely take some adjusting to having a king instead of a queen. Her face is on all the coins and stamps, and on top of that she has been the queen my whole life. What is more, the last time we had a king in the Netherlands was in 1890! And after Willem-Alexander, we will have a queen again. It’s a very special time indeed.

How did you spend your Queensday?

It can be so rewarding to make your own everyday products at home! I feel like sometimes we are all consuming so much without even noticing what chemicals are stuffed in all those products. Reading labels can often make me pretty sad, whether it’s about food, drinks or home products.

So from now on, I’d like to start making the products I use the most at home, myself. Something I already make is granola, so tasty and healthy!

To make about 750 grams of granola, you will need the following:
2 cups of oats
2 cups of nuts. I usually go for cashew, pecan, walnuts or almonds. Or everything
1 handful of sunflower seeds
1 handful of pumpkin seeds
1 handful of flax seeds
a pinch of salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
a big pinch of nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup honey or syrup
1 cup of dried fruits of your choice. I use cranberries.
anything else you might like such as coconut flakes, raisins, banana chips…

Grab a big bowl and put in the oats. Roughly chop up the nuts or give them a whizz in the food processor and add them with the oats. Add all the seeds, stirring the mixture after each one. Add the spices one by one and stir. Add the vanilla, oil and syrup, again stirring in between.
Spread the mixture on a baking sheet evenly and bake it in the oven at 150 ˚C for 30 minutes. Keep an eye on it though! Add the dried fruits and other things you don’t want too roasted in the last 5 minutes of baking.

Let the granola cool for a bit before you break it into chunks. Or you can cut it into bars to take with you as a snack!

In the next couple of weeks, I want to try making some other things I found on the blogs I follow:

Nut Milk (saw this quite a long time ago on Green Kitchen Stories, a great way to complete my homemade breakfast!)

Shampoo (found on the Free People Blog, I also saw some nice variations on Green Veggie)

Sea Salt Spray (also from Free People, I really like beachy hair and my expensively bought hairdresser stuff is almost finished)

Lip Balm (Kinsey is doing a big homemade thing on her blog, found this there too)

Dryer Sheets (also from Kinsey, clothes coming out of the dryer can lose the smell they got in the washer, hope this will help!)

It’s no secret that I love me a big old cup of coffee. I prefer latte but a tasty black coffee is always a good idea as well. A couple of years back, Stumptown Coffee Roasters were visiting from the States and had a little shop on the Albert Cuyp where I used to live. I don’t think I have ever had such good coffee before.

Now, there is a new place in town that borders pretty closely on what I have been missing: Headfirst Coffee Roasters. Coincidentally, their place is on the Tweede Helmersstraat, the street I used to live in before I moved to the Albert Cuyp. This of course has absolutely nothing to do with the coffee they serve, which is just so great! Their bar is in a home furniture store called Harvest, where you can buy vintage lamps, army blankets, chairs, and home decoration.

The guys running the place have ample experience in coffee making and are planning to add a roastery to the location. At the moment, they roast the coffee themselves but they do it elsewhere. You can get homemade granola with your coffee, or carrot cake (also homemade). These are next on my to-try list. But for now, I’m happy enjoying their coffee. Cheers!

The other day, Jesse acquired this awesome record player at the place where he works. This weekend there is a pretty cool event called Record Store Day, organized by the same girl that provided the player. Record Store Day is a worldwide event, where various artists and bands play in record stores in the States, Europe and Japan.

This player has a beautiful vintage dark blue colour, but in fact it’s a totally new machine. It has the pretty vintage look, but all the awesome add-ons to make it a modern device. You can hook up your iPod or earplugs and it has integrated speakers as well as the ability to hook up separate speakers. And the fact that it folds into a little suitcase is just adorable!

As soon as the player arrived, we went straight to the Waterlooplein market to buy some records. Amsterdam has quite a lot of record stores where you can buy vinyl, but the markets never disappoint either. At €2,- per album and €0,50 for a single, you can basically go nuts without hurting your wallet too much. We now have some beautiful and silly records by Louis Armstrong, Buddy Holly, The Andrews Sisters, Solomon Burke and Vader Abraham (Dutch readers will know this man quite well ). It’s playing on my table as I am writing this post, I’d really like one for my home too.

Do you have a record player? Does it beat having an iPod or another more modern device?