Diwali Celebration 2011

Diwali Lamp @ my room

Going Dutch....the bike story n the joke of the week

I bought a bike (cycle) few weeks back, a good old pink bike from Ms. G, the Colombian lady from the senior batch, my fren CT wanted to buy it but it was high for her so I ended  up with the bike and she was sweet enough to give me an extra lock.....just so that my bike doesn't become a victim of the "Dutch National Pass time"...which unfortunately happens to be stealing bikes (recently one bike belonging to one of my batchmate from Philippines was the first victim of the "Dutch National Pass Time" in our batch). 

My frens CT and SS also bought bikes and both the bikes are really cute....we were just to lazy to ride the bikes since we bought it but  today we decided to ride  till Centrum & The Grote Market as we had some work, it was fun to ride bike after such a long time but we are still getting used to riding (walking) on the right...sometimes we tend to ride on the left...(yeah...yeah old habits die hard ) back home we walk n ride on the left lekin yahan toh opposite hai eekdam. The best thing abt Netherlands is, the whole country rides bike and has bike path all over....which I don't think any other country has....I've seen it in Paris but not too sure if whole of France has it. My fren CT and I've decided to enjoy the extended sunny weekends by riding our bikes n exploring the neighborhood....which will not be tiring but we will enjoy it, otherwise the amount of walking I've been doing since the time I came here is really not funny.

Oh I forgot the joke of the week :

Me: Yaar CT, yahan toh puri country bike chalati hai aur har jagah bike path hai.

CT: Yeah...lekin hamare wahan sirf countryside mei log bike chalate hai.....hahaha

We must have laughed for 10 mins after this :). 

Saturday brunch...Eggs with Mushroom

Scrambled Egg with Mushroom

I love eggs....boiled, fried, omelets,sunny side up, cheese omelets, half boiled, egg curry ....basically eggs cooked in all forms and one of my all time fav. dish with egg is with mushroom. This is one of those items I've been making it since I was in Delhi and have always loved it. The last time I made it one of my floor mate from Colombia liked it alot...this morning after reading few articles on Sociology n after tryin my best to understand Social Relations of production...I was hungry...really hungry so decided to make one of my fav. egg dish "Eggs with Mushroom" for brunch. The ingredients and recipe is below:

Ingredients:

• 3/4 Eggs.
• 1 Onion
• 100 gm Button Mushroom
• 4-5 Garlic clove.
• 4-5 Green Chilles.
• Salt to taste.
• Olive Oil

Method:

• Finely chop the onion, Green chilies and Garlic. 
• Thinly slice the Mushrooms.
• Heat a non stick fry pan and add 3 tbsp of olive oil, add the chopped garlic and saute for 2-3 mins.
• Add the chopped onion and green chilies fry for 5 mins in low flame, now add the mushroom and cook  for another 5 mins. Mix the ingredients well and add the eggs. 
• Stir it well so that it doesn't stick on the pan and add salt. 
• Garnish with chopped coriander leaves. (optional)
• Serve hot with Garlic Bread.

Cooking Time :15 mins

Serves: 2

Cooking revived :)

After more then a month of living in The Hague I am back to my cooking spree again, I've started to enjoy cooking as m finally settled and that for me means....finding the exact store/place to buy things I want to cook, having good pots & pans for cooking and a neat kitchen. The Albert Heijn XL at my neighborhood has almost everything I need and also the "Open Market"  @ Herman Costerstraat, sells things which even Albert Heijn doesn't sell........Hanggam, Green chillies, fresh fish & prawns, crabs to mentions few of the items from Open Market n also its almost half the price.. The Indian store "India Gate" near the Open market is where we get all the dal, masala's, sweets and roti's.

Coming back to cooking, the other day I decided to make Chole (Chickpea Curry) but ended up making something else....I was in no mood to make an elaborate dinner so made a quick and easy dish. I am still confused about what to call the dish but nonetheless it was yumm. The recipe is below:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup boiled chickpea.
• 1/2 cup boiled corn.
• 1 Onion.
• 4-5 Green Chilies
• 1 Tomato
• Olive Oil
• Salt to taste 
• Chile Powder (Optional)

Method:

• Chop the onion, green chillies and tomato.
• In a non stick frying pan, heat some olive oil and fry the chopped onion, green chilies and the tomato's.
• Add the boiled corn and Chickpea & fry for another 5 mins. Mix the ingredients together, add salt to taste. Add some chili powder on top. 
• Serve hot with garlic bread. 

Trip Madurodam

I had not heard about 'Madurodam' untill someone told us about it the last week, we were told that it's an  interesting place to be and we sure will enjoy the visit....as suggested we found the place quite amazing, the miniature version of famous monuments  and places in Netherlands were really cute, it was like seeing the whole of Netherlands in one area....only it were hundreds of times smaller. To reach there we took Tram no 9, from Holland Spoor Station, the stop is called 'Madurodam' . We really enjoyed our visit and also we happen to be there on the right day, as1st october was a bright, sunny n lovely day, infact it was the hottest 1st october ever recorded in many, many years.  I will recommend it to everybody visiting Den Haag to visit 'Maduradam' atleast once. 

Mini replicate of various places in Netherlands

St. John's Basilica

One of the cities in Netherlands

Leiden University

The Peace Palace- International Court of Justice

How can this post be complete without the famous windmills of Netherlands!!!!

Discovering Hague....

Before coming to Hague, I tried and read as much as possible about the city esp. about the supermarkets, restaurants, transport etc etc but after living here for almost a month I realize that read up about the city did help me to some extent, so all the wikitravel and google did help me to make this new city home till the time I am here. One of my most important agenda now is to travel around Netherlands and Europe....till now I've been to Delft (twice), Rotterdam, Kinderdijk, the beach at Scheveningen (10 mins by tram) and Haarlem. We are planning a trip to others cities and esp to Amsterdam but not before buying our Museum card, the card is really awesome for 45 Euro I can visit all the Museum anywhere in Netherlands for the whole year....I really think its an awesome deal, in Hague itself their are I don't know how many Museums....their is one right next to where I live and have seen couple of them on my way to the HS station. 

We discovered some really cool places here...like the "illys Cafe" at Oude Molstraat, they serve the best Cheese fingers in the city I think...at the Scheveningen Beach we had gone to one restaurant called "zinzabar" the food was very reasonably priced compared to few other restaurants we checked.  The open market is another place I really like...and I like it more because I get to my chillies from there I bought something which is similar to "O-morok" it tastes the same but a little less hot...the Open market is one huge market selling the freshest possible vegetables, meat and sea food and also their is one Indian Store there called "India Gate" which sells all the possible Indian food....dal, rice, masala, veggies etc etc

I will try and explore Hague as much as possible while I am here and I hope anybody wanting more info about the city will find it useful.