The Twin Cities...

Many weekends ago, we took a few days to visit Budapest... two beautiful cities, each with its own character.

Baths at Szechenyi

Braving the winds by the fisherman's bastion 

By the Danube

Soaking in the sun near Gellert Hill

Amazing night lights

Chef in residence: #2 Spicy Pork Cutlet Donburi

#2 Spicy Pork Cutlet Donburi (Out of 5)

Category: Quick meal
Preparation (simplicity): 3.8
Ingredients (ease of obtaining): 4.5
Taste: 4.4

Also a very comforting meal, the eggy sauce from this dish binds the rice together with a bite of fried pork cutlet. Spicy, savory and best of all it leaves you craving for more!

Chef in residence: #1 Meaty Miso Noodles

I (Howie) love to eat, and so one of my passions is cooking! Being in the Netherlands (expensive to eat out!) and having a nice gas stove, allows me to explore my hobby and to start seeking out recipes to try and tweak to make them my own. One of the cook books that I will start with is Chen Kenichi's "Knockout Chinese" book of mouth watering wonders. Iron chef Chen's recipes seem to be reasonable and from a first glance looks fantastic.

#1 Meaty Miso Noodles (Out of 5)

Category: Quick meal
Preparation (simplicity): 4
Ingredients (ease of obtaining): 4.5
Taste: 4.6

Imagine the warm savory taste of spicy shiitake and browned ground pork, tossed in with noodles that have the perfect degree of firmness. This mouth watering combination is further enhanced by the cool crispy cucumber strips that are light and refreshing...

Simple and fabulous!

home - part 1

when we first moved in, our apartment looked like this:

then, for about two weeks it looked like this:

and now finally the boxes have [mostly] been put away and we have a home! its not all in order yet, but i thought i'd show you a sneak peak of the kitchen. it was very important for us to get the kitchen in order quickly- eating out here is rough on the budget. and let's be honest, not the best food! we were so excited to start cooking again and to use all of our nice kitchen things that we haven't seen for a year and a half. 

welcome to our new kitchen! don't you love how we expanded into the dining area to get more space for storage and our big work table? typically the dutch do not have big kitchens and this one has lots of amenities but almost no counter space. so we found this lovely work table which also stores a lot of our big appliances, pots and pans, knives, etc. one of the best things we did was to buy several transformers so that we could use our US appliances. 

now we just need some wine...

the mixer is "on display" because its too heavy!

one of my favorite spots- lovebirds from grandma millie
(the teapot is from her house as well!)

a visit to Antwerp

When I found out we were moving to Eindhoven I wrote a buddy from architecture school who is from and currently living in Antwerp. We took the train on Saturday morning for a day in the city with HC. It was great to see a familiar face and to get such a personal tour of the city! We are just a 2 hour train ride away so there will definitely be more visits in the future. Such a lovely historic city with modern additions and insertions into the city fabric. On our way to the new MAS we found a hidden gem which displayed a satellite view of the Antwerp port which you can walk on. We didn't realize that it's the 4th biggest port in the world, and this display shows this monster port as it dwarfs the city.

arriving at the amazing Antwerpen train station

at the market

iphone camera does not compare...

with my beloved canon s90!

the cathedral, HC's favorite building in Antwerp,
rises out of the old city

truly unique side aisles

old city of Antwerp in the foreground,
port of antwerp extending to the feet up there!

loving the satellite view

some great beer to finish our day

Thanks again, HC, for your hospitality and a great time! 

the healthcare game

this post was inspired by this new yorker story by David Sedaris:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/02/120402fa_fact_sedaris

there haven't been many blog posts since we moved in because we haven't been doing anything too exciting! we've been very busy taking care of all of the paperwork that it takes to move to another country, which is all required to receive our container of stuff sent from the US. luckily we had help from our relocation agency and everything went quite smoothly, it just took a while to go through all the steps of going to city hall, submitting paperwork, picking up ID cards, etc. our container did finally show, so we've been buried in boxes for the last week.

and health insurance! we can't forget about that. i feel like howie and i often learn by mistake, like after we got married and i went on his health insurance but we failed to change the plan and ended up paying much more in cash. last year we paid big bucks for great health insurance that howie didn't use once because he was too busy going to class.

so this year we were hoping to get it right. and in the end we don't have much choice, because in the Netherlands everyone is required to have a certain level of health insurance coverage. it is not cheap- we do get a small discount from Howie's employer- but from what I understand the insurance companies are not allowed to give huge discounts to corporations which keeps the prices reasonable for everyone.

now that we're properly covered its time to figure out how to go to the doctor!

overheard near this herring stand in Amsterdam:  "a herring a day keeps the doctor away!"

 

...we will not be testing the theory, couldn't stand the taste!

hhi: chanowitz edition

for all of the house hunters [international] fans, here is our super dorky spoof with footage from our actual house hunting- not professionally filmed!



House Hunters International Chanowitz Style from Howie Chan on Vimeo.