Chronicles Continued

 Start with milk, full, half full, skim, then add, chocolate in all three degrees.   Follow this with Organic milk in three types as well.  Don’t forget Butter milk.  Oh yes, goat’s milk, that too. But that’s not all.  There is Jersey Cow Milk.  This milk is only in full and is prized for it’s smooth foaming for cappuccino. One must include Meadow Milk. This milk is guaranteed that the cow lived for not less than 120 days, six hours a day in the meadow. The latest I’ve tried is MijnMelk. It means ‘my milk’ but the story is more involved. On each bottle is the name of the cow that was milked. Today I had Cootje, maybe later in the week, I’ll try Aukje.  This is not raw milk, it is pasteurized, but the farmer sees the animals as co-workers. therefore the cow determines when it is milked, and on the cap of the bottle  you see when it was milked, bottled, and how long you can keep it.  WELL who knew?

A name. Last week, an unknown-to-me-man said ‘Hoi’ and waved to me as I bicycled past him. I have had more experiences of people appearing to know me. Today, entering a small shop, the shopkeeper said, ‘Hoi Hannah”! All was fine until I spoke and then she said, ‘Oh, sorry, I thought you were Hannah’. Here we go again. In Eugene the rumor was that another person was always been asked if she was me. In NY more than once, someone who didn’t know me, asked me if I was Sue/Suzanne. Guess I have one of those familiar faces.

That was the word, not improving.
thought my ‘dutch editor’ would do better, but apparently NOT!

To figure out what curtain to hang in the front downstairs window and find the bread-taste I remember.
When I moved in, the house owner, on the fly, asked if I wanted the ‘sheers’ which were in her hand, hung at the front window. She had not used them, I was reeling from all the information and quickly decided, “No!” Within a few weeks I realized I did want them, but I could not find where she had stowed them. I spent the next few weeks improving until just today I found at my favorite ’emporium’ the perfect answer. The perfect answer is a curtain I can see out, but the foot/bike traffic can not easily peer in. The plants on the window sill are on ‘my’ side, so I can see them, not hidden so they can only be viewed from outside. Success.

The bread. I remember a taste. I have sampled a lot of variations on the theme, but none of them came close, until two days ago. For some unknown reason I bought a half-loaf of something labeled ‘bakkersulder mais’. That’s what it says on the sticker. I can’t even find the word online. The first part is baker, the last word is corn. The bread is yellow in color and has hard bits in it. It tastes like the bread I remember.

They could be worse.  They could those metal ones.  These are wood.  Dark of night is a challenge if you check out the bottom two – same darkness.  Never will be my favorite.

It all just tastes better.  Don’t know why, do believe it is better prepared and there are more restraints in place to keep the harmful additives out.  But the tomatoes taste like garden fresh, and the food spoils more quickly.  All the foods.

In all senses of the word:  there is nothing like it.  First it is wrapped up like a gift by the fish monger.  Then at home, you lay it out, cover it in finely chopped onions. which are inside the gift wrap.  Then you eat it.  Right up there with raw oysters.

My new-found friend, SMS’d -texted- to say her daughter was running a fever and we would have to reschedule our coffee date. The polite reply is to ‘say’ is ‘beterschap’ which means ‘get well’. But I wrote beterschaap which means ‘better sheep’. She thought it was funny. I knew I should have taken that extra moment and checked my spelling….

Some readers are concerned about my biking. If you know me personally you will remember I am a ‘competent’ car driver. It is 5 months since I wrote the last bike post and skills are up to speed. Remember I am not one to try and ‘win’ from something bigger than me and my two wheels.