People that visit us have commented that a lot of our furniture is from IKEA.. well, I would say there is little that is not from IKEA ;)
But if you compare their prices to “professional” manufacturers of furniture you quickly revert back to the swedish brand that also sells this tasty chocolate ;)

After 5 years of living together we finally have a bed now. I mean, a bedframe. We used to sleep on the ground for such a long time (just the mattress on some wooden construction) that now after my first night in a “real” bed I feel like I am in a hotel room :P
I spent the bigger part of saturday assembling a bed and two commodes and curing my nasty hangover that resulted from friday night at the irish pub with my colleagues. (Note to self: don’t mix Guinness and Heineken.)

Later, when we lay in bed together, I saw the small one doing his exercises in her belly for the first time.. watching her belly bulge and shift as he moves along underneath. He seems to be a very active person :)
Anna is in sixth month now and you really see a big ball attached to her.. although my colleagues commented on it as being “quite small” – remembering other women that got incredibly … incredibly.. (what’s a good substitute for “huge” that doesn’t insult pregnant women?) ;)

Actually it was necessary to get a bedframe as Anna had problems standing up in the morning. She has to carry 7 kilos extra around (getting more every day) and is starting to be impacted by gravity a lot.

Slowly, I am getting used to the idea that 50% of my genes have been recombined with hers and are growing into a little human being inside her belly. Slowly but steady I am getting the grasp of it and prepare for what is going to happen in April.

Now it’s Sunday and I decided to make a bread (as Dutch bread still sucks and I don’t expect it to get any better soon) and wondered, why in Germany the bread is so much more tasty.
After long and exhaustive reading I found out that it can be condensed to these things:

1) German bakers use rye-wheat mixtures to get a bread that is both tasty and satisfying. (the wheat provides the “glue” and the rye gets it tasty). Cheap flour tastes cheap :P
2) The “sour” and “tasty” aspect comes from the “sour dough” that bakers use. I remember our baker in my village having a culture that was passed down from his grandfather, they still use it)
One can basically just breed a new culture or use a portion of someone else’s culture and “feed” it. Just like “hermann” in the eighties – remember him? ;)
OK, Hermann was a yeast and sour dough is made from bacteria but who cares.. I quit biotechnology for a reason! :D
3) when putting the bread in the oven, splash some boiling water on the bottom of the oven and do that every three minutes for the first 10 minutes. This will create an incredibly tasty crust. (I even brush the bread with salty water before putting it in. Makes the crust more tasty) :)

Now, after melting butter and honey on self-made bread I have ordered biological rye and wheat flour from a mill and I am thinking how to get myself a sour-dough culture.

First possibility would be to snatch some from our baker in my village. Stupid that he is ~900 km away.
Second, I could just start my own culture by putting rye and water on the heater and wait for it to grow.. but the idea that it will depend on the amount of spores in the air where I grow it is disgusting, especially if you think about the air pollution in Amsterdam North.
Third is to get dried cultures of an American sour-dough culture that is called “1847 Oregon Trail sourdough starter” and according to the website it has been passed down in original form since then.
Apparently, I just have to send an envelope to the address mentioned on www.carlsfriends.org and they will send me some dried cultures.

No more tasteless bread :P