The Netherlands - Fig Activia Yogurt

I love Activia because it makes you deliver chocolate cake in the toilet smoothly. In particular, I love Activia yogurts with fruits inside because I like having an idea that eating it helps me increase fruit intake (which also means fiber intake - and perhaps some vitamins and other beneficial nutrients naturally present in fruits although some of them might have been destroyed during processing). Actually, all of them don't really matter unless...

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The Netherlands - Brain Tonic Mushroom Soup

I forgot to include this interesting story about finding a brain tonic herbal soup mix in Den Haag's China Town.  I can't read Chinese characters, especially when they are too fancy. I can only read a word that means "monkey head mushroom" and "brain". The rest looked like some encrypted ancient language to me. Lucky enough, I was there with a friend from China. She translated almost everything on the package, and it says that it can...

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The Netherlands - Interesting LIDL Goods

Groceries shops are my best friends. The Netherlands is the fourth country I've ever settled for at least 3 months, and based on my personal experience and interest, groceries shops are the core of a country's food culture. There are 5 supermarkets / groceries store chains that I know around Wageningen and Ede: Albert Heijn, C1000, LIDL, Aldi and Hoogvliet. Albert Heijn generally has more food varieties, and sometimes with a Bonuskaart (a card...

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Cooking Collections during Bachelor's Degree

If you study food science major in the United States, you'd most probably end up in a somehow rural settings where entertainment is somewhat limited. After I came to Wageningen, I feel that there were actually more entertainment in Urbana-Champaign. Basically, Walmart is my haven. I remember spending 2 hours in food section of Walmart with my foodie friends after having a large dinner together. Yep, this was how I spent my bachelor degree without...

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The Netherlands - Seal Rehabilitation and Research Centre Lenie 't Hart

To celebrate Nicolas Appert's 50th anniversary, our school/department decided to adopt a seal from Seal Rehabilitation and Research Center in Lenia 't Hart in Pieterburen. It's located at the very north of the Netherlands, and is also quite inaccessible by public transport.  I took 300 pictures of the trip but guess what? I ran out of space in Picasa! Which means I have to make collates to save some space. I have tons of cute seal...

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Instant Noodle around the World 13 - MAMA Kimchi

In Instant Noodle around the World part 7 I mentioned that I like MAMA Tom Yum Soup flavored instant noodles from Thailand. Just about a week ago I went to Den Haag again with my friend to pick up our passport from the Irish embassy and went to the same oriental groceries shop we visited before, and while my friend was busy getting pickled cabbage and fish sweet potato instant noodle, I was checking the entire instant noodle aisle for interesting...

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The Netherlands - Gezellig

My native language is Indonesian, I speak fluent English, and I speak rather fluent Japanese. Now that I'm in the Netherlands, I'm bound to learn some Dutch words or sentences just by interacting with friends, bus drivers, cash register lady and even random people asking for directions on the street.  One of the most beautiful Dutch word that has no direct translations to any of the language I know is gezellig. If you try typing it...

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The Netherlands - Shiitake Beer

Stir-fried mushrooms are my favorite. I was really excited to find a mushroom specialty shop at Wageningen's open market. They had a stall that specializes in mushrooms. They have almost all types of edible mushrooms I've encountered in my life. Before this, I enjoyed a large variety of mushrooms cooked in many different ways in a restaurant called Mushroom Pot in Singapore. This stall sells monkey head mushroom (because the texture...

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