Food Snobbery Revisited

I rest my case. Courtesy of Anna Denise. Check out her beautiful orginal here.

Holiday Season 2009

The holidays are over and 2010 is here. My two-week Christmas Break has flown by so quickly that I am reluctant to start work this Monday morning. What better way to procrastinate than to write another blog? This year the holidays seemed crazier than ever. It started with a nice and civilized dinner at the in-laws followed by a dinner party in Amsterdam. Once Jochem and I hit Almelo, though, it started to get a little bit out of hand. Imagine living in your parents' house for two weeks with your three Spanish relatives and your two cats. Imagine an oversized dinner table in what was once the living room housing sixteen Spanish or half Spanish people enjoying a seven-course meal. Imagine your sober aunt finishing all of the cava while your cousins empty every whiskey bottle in the house. Imagine opening your Christmas gift to the sound of hardcore music while your relatives holler "HEY HEY HEY" in unison. Imagine New Year's Eve as the night where you ate too much while your sober uncle is suddenly pouring down whiskey and your cousins decide to honor the ancient Twents tradition to blow up an old milk can. May 2010 bring more of such craziness to my organized life. Happy New Year!!!

Food Snobbery

I pride myself on being myself because it took a lot of time and effort to get there. As a teenager I used to be obsessed with the latest trends, until my best friend one day decided that I was not quite cool enough to remain her best friend. As so many other teenagers, I was bullied every single day at school. This lasted for about a year. When I regained my composure after that year, I had some new goals in life. One, to graduate high school ASAP so that I could flee Almelo. First to Utrecht, and eventually even farther away to Los Angeles. Second, to remain as invisible as possible during my time still left there. For several years, I was dressed in black.

I believe this is when my lack of interest in trends started, and it has really taken off during the last couple of years. What's left is me, a person who, I believe, is truly herself. This manifests itself in a number of ways. For example: I don't like fashion. I wear reasonable clothes that are comfortable and practical. I like to dress up in natural colors like black, white, brown and blue. I have never understood those women who like lacy underwear (it itches!) or stiletto heels - I mean, they're uncomfortable, excuciatingly painful, and cold because so much of your foot is exposed to the unmerciful Dutch weather. When will you EVER wear them?! At parties? When you have to spend hours standing on them? No, thank you. I wear flip flops in summer, sneakers in the spring and fall, and high boots with thick socks in winter. Ergo: I am never influenced by what some rich designers that I don't know have decided is 'in' this season.

Nor do I care about reviews about the latest things to watch, listen to or adore. I listen to John Mayer (why does everyone hate John Mayer?), I watch Bride Wars three times in one week and I still like to watch reruns of Dawson's Creek. Why, you may ask. Because they're comfortable. They literally comfort me because I know what I can expect, and that gives me solace in a cruel world. I used to watch, what I refer to as, politically correct movies, like Hotel Rwanda. It left me deeply depressed with the world. Even though I still think it's important to know what's going on in the world, I have stopped watching such movies because they make me feel terrible about things I cannot change. And who has the energy to keep up with the reviews? I have some really intelligent friends but I always wonder how they have the energy to watch this movie, download that CD, look up that website. They always seem to know everything about everyone and it makes me feel so not-up-to-date. Then again, I can barely muster the strength to update my Facebook account every week. Twitter is lost on me.

I also don't care about gossip. Why do other people care? So Britney Spears has a new boyfriend whom she takes to the park with her kids - SO WHAT?! Why is that necessary information, or even entertaining? I must say, though, that my dislike of the currect media circus sometimes goes too far. For years I have been telling myself to watch the news more often, and I just don't. I really think I should. But I don't. Sometimes I get into it and I watch the news for two days in a row, but then I stop again. It's not that I don't want to see the news (even though it's usually depressing) or that I don't find it interesting, but when it's 8 PM and my boyfriend and I finally finished making dinner and crash onto the couch with a beer and a glass of wine, I'd much rather watch a predicatable episode of Bones than the news. And God, what hassle are newspapers! They're too big and they leave smelly black stains on your fingers. I'll pass, thanks.

Anyway, so this is me. Someone who is herself despite what other people think: someone who wears, watches, listens to and reads whatever she wants without adhering to social standards. Or at least so I thought till now.

It turns out that I have one weakness in this protective harness. I think I am a food snob. I am one of those annoying, self-righteous, Jamie Oliver-reading snobs who now tells other people what good food really is. I never go to fast food restaurants anymore (late night drunken aftermaths not included), because, let's face it, that food is crap. Supermarkets are the enemy, with their over-priced, bad quality production food. Local, organic food is the only food worth eating, so I buy most of my supplies at local vegetable and fruit suppliers and organic butchers. Only free-range eggs come into my house. If this means charging my friends more money because I insist on cooking organic food only, I will just do it. I also preach to other people about the holiness of organic food (mostly to my family, since they can't really disown me in any way). Whenever I cook some of the recipes that I used to cook before, I feel like a cheater, because only the recipes from one of Jamie Oliver's books is really worth cooking. Also, diet products are the work of the devil. People are so obsessed with being thin these days that these Frankenstein producers remove everything that is to like about a product, replace it with chemicals, and call it diet. Seriously, what's the point in eating something like a low fat brownie?! It tastes like crap! If you're really worried about your health (health, not weight) you'd be much wiser to eat less brownies, but when you do eat a brownie, please get a decent one filled with real chocolate and real butter. It makes the sin that much more pleasurable. With the exception of diet Coke (which I like because it's watery) I only eat REAL food.

Plus, every celebration is immersed in food. Every major holiday is celebrated by cooking food for other people. Tomorrow I will cook a six-course meal for eleven (!) colleagues. At Jochem's family I will cook Italian crostini and a Jamie Oliver (of course) salad. At my family I will cook risotto. Is it my birthday? Let's cook Thai curry! Is it our anniversary? Let's go to Fifteen in Amsterdam! Do we have some money left to spare? Let's go to the Italian store and buy truffel at €10 per 10 grams.

Of course I love food. But I've also noticed that everybody loves the person doing the cooking. And... we've come full circle.

Sad Spinster by Night

Today I reread one of my previous entries titled "Teacher by Day." Everything positive that I described in that entry is still very much true. I still love my internship and probably more so every day. My studies can be quite overbearing, especially now that our practical research is coming up (eewl Statistics!), but manageable. Parttime jobs are not as easy to fit into my schedule as they once were, but I find some time here and there so that I can keep saving for all of our wild plans. Family and friends are also good. The only problem that I have right now is that my boyfriend is unbelievably busy! It's quite depressing - he gets up every day before I am awake and goes to bed each night hours after I've fallen asleep. I am lucky when I get to spend two minutes with him in between brushing my teeth and changing my clothes. When he isn't in the Hague doing his thing, he is always either working behind his computer or making calls on his cell phone. I feel for my best friend, whose boyfriend also has an iPhone and all sorts of other gadgets. Luckily Jochem doesn't have any of those, but his behavior still disturbs me. Once he asked me to edit two pages out of one of his many reports, and I almost fell asleep due to pure boredom. Of course I don't have to understand his academic ambitions all the time (which I don't). All I need to know is that he's happy doing what he's doing - I mean, he should be doing exactly what he loves to do right now. And, since I am kind of counting on him to support me and my big plans in the future so that I can continue making a pittance doing what it is I love to do, I can only complain so much. With which I'm done now. After all, after rain comes shine. Even when you live in the Netherlands.

Istanbul

On Thursday I casually said to Jochem that it might be nice to get away for a short weekend. On Friday we looked at some websites. Today we booked a plane ticket to Istanbul for the end of February. It's like I don't even recognize my responsible, unable-to-be-spontaneous, hoarder self!

A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success

Anna told me about this speech by Alain de Botton today, and I recommend anyone to watch it carefully. It is truly inspiring! Check it out here.

1 + 1 = 2

And then there were two: Bicho ('Bug' in Spanish; on the left) and Manchego (same old Spanish sheep cheese; on the right). Two cats for twice as much fun!

Halloween

On Saturday, October 31 Jochem and I celebrated Halloween. This American holiday is not yet widely celebrated in the Netherlands, but we decided to make something special out of it. First, we went downtown to do some shopping. Unfortunately, the Jamie Oliver book that we wanted to buy was sold out, but hopefully it will be back in storage in a week. After that we bought a lot of food. For starters, we had Spanish ham and Italian cheese. We decided to open one of our special Cinque Terre wines after more than a year of proudly having been presented in our kitchen. We made special Halloween pasta with black spagetti, fresh spinach, pumpkin and Ricotta cheese. Jochem carved a scary face in the pumpkin that we used for our pasta and we put a candle inside. We also lit all of our other candles in the living room and we gave the cats fresh salmon for dinner. We had brownies and our favorite green tea with ginger for dessert. Since I don't like to watch scary movies, we watched a bunch of House episodes. I wish that we had had a digital camera, but since ours are both broken you'll just have to believe me: it was perfect! :)

Perfection

- = traveling by plane
// = traveling over land

Netherlands - South Africa // Kenya - United Arab Emirates - India - Thailand - Indonesia - Australia - New Zealand - Tahiti - Easter Island - Chile // Ecuador - Spain - Netherlands

Courtesy of Derek's friend Kasper at JoHo.

Teacher by Day

Of course there are many disadvantages to being a teacher: the lousy pay, the heavy workload, the lack of social status ("Why do you have to study for 8 years just to become a teacher?"), the long work days, the teenagers who sometimes seem determined to bend you until you break, to name but a few. But, naturally, I would not be doing this program if there weren't also a lot of benefits to being a teacher. I get to spend all of my days thinking, talking, and breathing English language and literature. At the moment I do spend long days at school, but I hardly ever have any work to do at night or during the weekends. Gone are the days where you'd think: "I still have to write that paper on American lit. " or: "I still need to study for that Syntax final" - instead, I spent my free time watching House M.D. with Jochem. Preferably in bed, with our two cats, while eating something. Right now my life is pretty much stress-free. I don't make a lot of money with my internship, but at least I get something, which is more than most teachers in training who aren't working already can say. Some of my students can be pretty intimidating, but I find that they are slowly turning around - today, for example, a couple of students from my 'busy' class greeted me in the hallway. This may mean nothing to those not involved with spending 8 hours a day with a bunch of 16-year olds, but apparently I am just cool enough to be acknowledged, which is a big deal. I also can't get over how wonderful my colleagues are and I am very thankful for being able to work in such a pleasant, supportive, and well-knit group as ours. And the last addition that I would like to make to this list, is the fact that we have so many vacations. After only 8 weeks of work, I now have a complete week off to do as I please: watch romantic comedies, visit family and friends, and hang out in my pajamas all day while staying up all night. Life's not too shabby for me right now!!!