FOOD FROM MY TRAVELS: Pumpkin Cream Cheese or Nutella Muffins

There is no better season than Autumn, in my opinion, and I have always been in love with the golden leaves, the cosier clothing, and, above all - the food.

I think back fondly on my 31 years of Autumnal celebrations. My younger brother, whose birthday is October 28th, has always had it best in my family - encircled by hyper and excited costumed friends on his party (and having an immediate theme upon which to throw said soiree), ushering in his new life year with pumpkin beer and hard cider, or - when he was little - creepy cupcakes covered with black icing and liquorice legs or candy corn. Now that I am far away from all the American Halloween hoopla (although the Netherlands absolutely has its own Halloween celebrations here), I feel desperate to bring the festivities here with me. Allergies and colds be damned!!

The Netherlands are a relatively mild part of the world, sitting below sea level, therefore having the temps lean into the 50s (F) as early as August is pretty normal. Having them spike to above 90 in September, however, is not normal (or bearable). That, sadly, is what we experienced here. It was so hot I couldn't focus on a single thing, every building felt like an oven (Air Conditioning and fans are not much of a thing here), and I was sweating bullets just walking a few steps to the Tram in front of my house. So, when it finally started to get chilly, I felt like bursting out of the apartment wearing my sweaters, corduroy and scarves and frolicking down the street. The leaves have been turning for weeks already, and when I got a brand new road bike I happily traveled around on it (described in my post about the Netherlands). 

This brought Bruno and me to a farm in Baarn, where I discovered one can walk around enjoying the handmade crafts, baked goods and straight-off-the-farm produce, and even walk through the crops to pick whatever I chose and bring it home with me. This is the kind of thing I adore most about Holland, and, even though I know it exists all over the world, it has never felt quite this accessible. We walked through row upon row of hearty, ripe vegetables and greens, and eventually came to an area of enormous, Cinderella-sized pumpkins and squash. 

Hoeve Ravenstein in Baarn lets you enjoy local produce, handcrafts, farm fun and picking your own crops to take home with you. 

We picked a smaller pumpkin (I believe these are called sugar pumpkins), bought some local honey and off we went on our bikes, eager to see what we could make. My immediate thought was pumpkin bread, but once I navigated Bruno's kitchen, I felt inspired to go a little bit further: I saw cream cheese, nutella, lots of spices and seasonings. I was ready.

Expat challenge: PUMPKIN PUREE

In America, we have lovely canned versions of just about anything you could ever ask for. That means a recipe involving Pumpkin can be cut down in prep time by about 20 minutes simply because one can dump a can of unseasoned/unsweetened pumpkin puree into the bowl and mix away. Mmm.

Here, it's a bit more complicated. I've yet to find a single can of pumpkin, but that's alright - we make do. In order to get the puree I wanted, I skinned the pumpkin, halved and gutted it (save the seeds if you like to roast them), and then cut up chunks of the pumpkin. I threw those in a sauce pan with a tiny bit of sunflower seed oil (coconut, vegetable or olive oil would also work fine), and cooked them, stirring them regularly so they wouldn't stick and burn, until they were soft enough to poke dents in using the spatula. Then, we blended them until it was completely smooth and lump free. 

A note that this does make the puree a little bit watery, therefore causing the batter to be cakey, but I didn't mind this.

Mmm Fall.

Recipe: Dutch Pumpkin Cheesecake/Nutella Swirl Muffins

• 1 cup, or 1 can Pumpkin Puree
• 1 3/4 cup Flour
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar 
• 1 Teaspoon salt (I used pink Himalayan Salt)
• 1 Tablespoon Speculoos Cookie powder
• 1 Tablespoon Cinnamon 
• 1 Teaspoon Nutmeg
• 2 Eggs
• 1 Tablespoon Speculoos Syrup OR Vanilla Extract 
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1 Tablespoon Oil (Coconut, Vegetable or Sunflower)

CHEESE CAKE MIXTURE

• 1 Container (8oz) of Cream Cheese (I used light Philadelphia)
• 1 Egg Yolk
• 1/4 Cup Granulated Sugar
• 1/2 Teaspoon Speculoos Syrup or Vanilla Extract

NUTELLA MIXTURE

• 1/2 Cup Nutella
• 1 Egg Yolk
• Pinch of Salt

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 375 Fahrenheit. 
2. In a medium bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, salt and spices.
3. In a bigger bowl, whisk/ beat together pumpkin, sugar, and brown sugar. Add in the speculoos/extract and two eggs. Mix until smooth (but don't over mix). Slowly add in dry mixture until completely incorporated. 
4. Cheesecake mixture: Place all of the cream cheese in a bowl and beat until completely smooth and soft. Add in the sugar, egg yolk and extract (or syrup) and mix until smooth.
5. Nutella mixture: In another separate bowl, beat the nutella until smooth and soft. Add in egg yolk and extract (or syrup), and salt until smooth.
6. In muffin tins, place paper baking cups and fill about halfway with the main pumpkin mixture. Top with either the cheesecake mixture or the nutella (or both if you are feeling crazy). Take a toothpick or knife and swirl into the mix just enough for the cheesecake and/or nutella to make a swirl pattern into the cupcake (but not so much that it's entirely mixed into the batter. It should look like a distinct swirl).
7. Bake muffins 18-20 minutes (we baked these longer to get more of a crunchy top). 
8. The Cream Cheese muffins came out soft and chewy and the nutella ones came out a little crunchier on top and melty in the middle. Keep in an airtight container and enjoy!

Smakelijk!

ROME

IN JUNE, Bruno and I took a long weekend to Rome, Italy, where my heart exploded about thirty times a day. How can I even... describe..???

But I will try.

Rome, in the opinion of a small-town New York-native girl like me, is just below walking on the moon in terms of head-blown-ness (that's a thing, I swear). I have said this every time I've described it to people (so apologies to all of my friends and family): If a dinosaur had walked by while Bruno and I were standing in the middle of the street looking at the Colosseum, I would not have been any more in awe than I already was.

I spent the 2 hour flight from Amsterdam to Fiumicino Airport reading the Lonely Planet guide for Rome and preparing my mind for the craziness. Bruno had visited before because he's fancy. I had never been to Italy in my life, and after years of learning Italian for all my classical music needs, and attempting to convince an audience that I was Italian in 4-hour long renditions of Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, I felt like it was about damn time.

When we started our descent, Bruno whispered to me "Ready to spend three days walking around in one big museum?" and I absolutely was.

I cannot think of a single group of humans who would not find something to enjoy in Rome. You have the night life in Trastevere, the shopping - just about everywhere, sights so famous that even if you've never cracked open a History text you would recognize them (the aforementioned Colosseum. The Pantheon. The Vatican. Spanish Steps. Trevi Fountain. Sistine Chapel. The Roman Forum. Pretty much all of Rome.) Then there is the food. The language. You get to go way back in time and walk around the Roman Forum, where Julius Caesar once walked with his own two sandals. Look around everywhere at the ruins sticking up beside you, even if you are sitting on a bench next to a store - it's trippy, and amazing. 

For some help breaking down what you should see (if you decide you'd like to visit this holy land):

FOR THE HISTORY NERDS:

The Colosseum

There is not a single thing you'd see in Rome that wouldn't tickle some part of your history-loving noggin.

My sneaky shot of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, because... history.

But, here is what I recommend: Spend a full day at and around Vatican City. See the Basilica, gawk at Michelangelo's ridiculousness with Pieta and the Sistine Chapel, wander around and take hundreds of pictures and bask in the 'DaVinci Code' of it all. But, if you are a female, do not forget to cover your shoulders and your legs or they will not let you in. Rules are rules! (I was no exception on a 90 degree day, after trekking about 4 miles to get there.) From there, it is not a long walk to Trevi Fountain, where there are many legends about coin-tossing that you need to abide by (if you can even get close enough, and we had to pretty much elbow our way to the fountain. It was crowded.)

You can also walk to the Spanish Steps nearby, which were sadly closed when we were visiting.

Trevi Fountain - as close as I could get.

The Pantheon is also not a far walk (let me clarify: "not a far walk" meant, at some points, at least 10 km a day, but you can also use a metro and tour buses), and this was one of my favorite places to see in terms of general ease. There was no entrance fee, and lines moved quickly, which was not the case for any of the other attractions. As with most of the historical buildings mentioned so far, the Pantheon is still in use and considered a place of worship, so we were "shushed" and expected to respect the reverence of the building just like the Sistine Chapel. This is something I adored about Rome in general - nothing felt like a tourist trap; it all was a huge part of the culture and moved me nearly to  tears to see with my own eyes. The authenticity of the city was everywhere, from the groups  of nuns walking nearby, to the sounds of church choirs singing in the distance. 

Bruno, wishing for a plaque to tell us what we were seeing...

We spent a separate day exploring the Colosseum and Roman Forum. Our B&B owner, who was Dutch and also spoke English and Italian, was kind enough to give us some helpful tips before we struck out to conquer the city, and instructed us to walk to the side entrance to the Roman Forum, get tickets there to see both the Forum and the Colosseum, and start there (the Forum). So, we did that. Or, we tried to, missed the entrance, and wound up wandering another three miles until we looped back to the Colosseum and started over again, crying over our blistered feet.

When we found the entrance, we  purchased our tickets, were instructed that we could see both the Forum and the Colosseum in one day, or see the Forum and then come back the next day to see the Colosseum, and we decided to be extra ambitious and do both that day. 
...Then, we plopped down on a bench and panted for about 30 minutes.

I will advise that if you decide to see all of the Forum and ruins, you should find a map of what you are seeing ahead of time. Although Rome IS very much like walking around in a museum, there are, sadly, zero plaques explaining what the staircase leading to nowhere is. I frequently wished for more of a description of what I was seeing, and when Bruno and I eventually made it to the Colosseum that day, I was glad we decided to get the audio guide.

And, by the way, there is nothing that makes you feel more teeny and ant-like than hearing what the "games" were like in the Colosseum, and seeing the arena with your own two eyes. I am very glad I was never a gladiator. More on that another day.

FOR THE ROMANTICS:

You already know that Rome is for you - or, I suppose, all of Italy is for you. So enjoy it!

The city streets are lined with flowers, the buildings, even if modernized on the inside, all look like they date back to any era you can think of, and wherever you go there is music playing and (less-romantic) street peddlers trying to sell your boyfriend roses to give you. If you find a secluded corner near Trastevere, you can dance to the nearby guitar playing, and people will leave you in peace rather than glaring at your PDA. The restaurants have outdoor seating (I'm assuming this changes in the colder months), and the wine is flowing, laughter ringing out all around you, and plenty of pasta to carry out your 'Lady and the Tramp' kissing scene.

I have heard many romantic legends about the Trevi Fountain, and the bridges overlooking the night life make for some of the most beautiful moments you can think of - coupled up or on your own. Happy as I was to dance with Bruno in the cobbled streets, I could easily have imagined taking that journey on my own, and I highly recommend you do it no matter what your relationship status.

Trevi Fountain Legends: As I heard them, you must throw one coin into the fountain if you want to return to Rome, two coins in if you want a romance, and three if you want a marriage. I have heard of many people therefore getting engaged at the fountain after tossing three coins in.


FOR THE FOOD LOVERS:

Helloo, my people. You too will adore Rome. Unless you don't like Italian food, in which case... why are you traveling to Italy? 

Weeks before we even started thinking about packing for our trip, Bruno talked about the food. "I can't wait to show you Trastevere. You will love the pizza in Rome; you're going to be so happy." He didn't have to do a lot of convincing. I DO love pizza - It's my favorite food on the planet.

Fooooooooooood.

So here we were in Rome, and while I knew I should tackle the history laid out in this city like the travel nerd I am, really... all I wanted to do was find the food and wine. Luckily, this was something you could find very easily. On day 1, after walking everywhere, we went straight for the gelato next to the epic line into the Vatican Museums, and then promptly stumbled onto the nearest lunch spot - a pizzeria where we were able to get a whole pizza and two drinks for 5 euros. Mmmm. It's hard to mess up pizza, but this was goooooooooood.

We made sure to plan out an evening (or every evening, whatever) in Trastevere, a neighborhood well known for being a foodie centre in Rome, and we had a blast sitting outside in the summery breeze and drinking wine while we ate our perfect pasta.

My favorite night, however, was when we went out looking for one restaurant, and wound up wooed into a totally different one because we heard the singing and laughter floating towards us from within its patio area. We wandered in, were seated family-style at a long wooden table surrounded by candles and flowers, and sung to, by a small group of musicians standing nearby. We drank prosecco, ate more pasta, danced together and floated home on a romantic high wishing every night could be like that one.

On our last day, we visited the market - rows and rows of produce and cheeses and meats - were rained on in torrential downpours and found shelter at a cafe nearby that offered a mozzarella tasting platter. I got this, devoured the different styles of mozzarella, the pesto, the tomatoes, the bread and the ham, and let the rain pour down around me without a care in the world.

Be prepared to fall in love with Rome with every meal. That's what happened to me, and if everything else had been a bust, I would still return in a heartbeat just for that.

In all, I learned a lot from this city: I learned that you can get lost wandering around with one mission, and wind up having a better night than you planned. I learned to embrace the fact that, as far as the history of man is concerned, I am quite literally a speck - a blink of time - on the whole scale. And I realized that something as simple as walking down the street in a place this amazing, can be enough to change your life.

Go to Rome. You won't regret it!

That's Amore. 

NETHERLANDS

Well, this seems like an appropriate place to begin with the first post of a travel blog I've been meaning to launch for a really long time.

So, here we go with... The Netherlands. 
This beautiful, lush, fortuitous, bountiful, glorious land is becoming increasingly mesmerising to me by the week, and I have been here for over a year now.

It's probably safe to say that if you have chosen to be an expat somewhere, it is because you fell in love with that place, and - like a romantic love affair - decided after spending a little time with it that you would rather stay than fly back to your native home. This is how I, too, found myself living as a resident in Holland, and how I have discovered myself setting up shop here, starting a new indefinite chapter of life and... being really freaking happy, actually. 

There is no way for me to choose just one area of this thriving, vast, Dutch country to blog about, so I'll just talk about this weekend. (A note that I will attempt to tackle Amsterdam another day, when I have twice as much caffeine running through my veins and the energy to spell check the crap out of this blog).

Destinations: Hilversum - > Muiderberg -> Loosdrecht.

Travel Tools: Two Road Bikes, one cell phone with a map on it, two helmets, and a Canon.

Companion: A very tall Belgian man named Bruno. My inner soundtrack repeating Dutch music lessons intended for five-year-olds on a loop. I killed that one somewhere in Naarden...

This was one of my favorite weekends since moving here last June, because it was filled with sight seeing we did by accident, on the way to seeing the sights we planned to on purpose. That, my friends, is the best way I've found to experience the world: Setting out to see some of it intentionally, taking in the obvious sights, but being moved by the surprising ones no one necessarily brags about along the way. 

On Saturday, Bruno and I set out with our water bottles filled and our hearts excited on our bikes around noon from Hilversum, Netherlands, where he lives. Hilversum is a little village town neighbored by Hilversum Media Park, and Hilversum Sport Park - where the Nike European Headquarters are (and where, coincidently, many of my friends work). A lot of young people and families work and play in Hilversum, there are plenty of shops along the lines of H&M and Douglas (a store similar to Sephora), many great restaurants, a night scene, and a nice movie theatre. It is a magical town surrounded by deep woods to run and bike through (or just take a stroll), farmland you can really investigate and get to know like it's your own back yard, and lines of the prettiest homes I've ever seen, along picturesque canals. If you like the calm and quiet of the countryside, with an easy walk to markets and great faster-paced living, this is a total gem.

Those summer vibes in Hilversum, Netherlands.

Okay, so we got on our bikes and pedaled about 15 kilometers towards Muiderberg (pronounced MOW der Beh-rg), stopping along the way when we came across an empty arsenal fortress overlooking the water in Naarden-Vesting (Het Arsenal)...

Feeling on top of the world.

A number of times on the route, I felt like we were in a mirror image of our vacation with my parents to Camden, Maine, last month. Naarden, especially, made me think of that with its thousands of ships parked next to the harbor. Bruno and I continued on to Muiderberg and had lunch at a place called the Zeemeeuw (the Sea Bird/ Sea Gull), where we had iced tea and sandwiches (pulled pork for him, grilled veggies and humus for me), and I mused for the 50th time about what it might be like to live there. This is becoming a constant thought process for me: "Maybe I could live HERE... what would that be like?"

De Zeemeeuw. Not a sea meow, like I thought at first glance. 

The big surprise for me was as we biked along the farmland after lunch, and Bruno yelled up "Look to your right, it's a castle!" He said it so calmly that I thought I'd look up to see a small castle-type structure or fort, but instead I was greeted by rows of cows with a backdrop of THIS magnificent thing: 

The best view I was able to get with my phone. I highly recommend you check this out for yourselves if you can.

This was the Muiderslot Castle, set in Muiden, which is one of the better-known castles in the Netherlands and has been shown in TV shows depicting the Middle Ages. So, no wonder it took my breath away! 

For me, this was a big amazing shock. The only downside (if you can call it that) of dating someone who is a native European, and used to seeing massive, ancient castles sitting casually in the middle of town, is that they don't necessarily grasp the shock you feel and babble about for the rest of the day when you catch that same view. I kept making "Princess Bride" references, or quoting Narnia, and he kind of chuckled and glanced at me with a look on his face that said, "You're cute."It's got to be fun for him, though, getting these responses from me. 

With my insistence, we biked all the way to the ... castle... I gawked more at its massiveness, and then once we realized there was an entrance fee we decided just to bike around it and watched from nearby.

The town itself around the castle was stunningly pretty, and the first time this year that I really felt like it is now Autumn. The trees were shedding little golden leaves onto the cobblestone roadways below, and the small ancient houses, perfectly renovated yet showing their age and dating back to 1600s, 1800s, and anywhere before or after, were bustling with locals and with visitors from outside. We biked alongside them on yet another canal, crossing bridges to get a better view of the huge historic structure, and joking about what it must be like to live there along the way.

Then we looped home and spent the evening cooking mussels (by chef Bruno, who always amazes me), chocolate cake with plums sautéed in Goldschlager (don't judge me. It turned out to be amazing), and cooking granola while we watched "The Big Bang Theory" and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." Then we passed out because, biking.

Yesterday, it was another day of biking and Bruno had planned a specific loop for the day. We set out on the new course, this time heading for the Lake. I am a sucker for any view including bodies of water (or castles), and this route was absolutely perfect. We passed several towns shouting "Tot Ziens!" over our shoulders every ten minutes as each sign indicated we were leaving another one, and finally there it was: the lake - a beautiful water-side town called Loosdrecht. (Lows Drekht).

We started biking past water on all sides. The sun was shining down on us like it was the middle of summer but the air was crisp, a perfect September day, and we stopped at the beach to take it all in. Here, I decided to take my first ever pic on a "real camera",  (I am obsessed with logging my travels on Instagram and I think a simple iPhone camera does fine, but I had some fun playing with the clarity and definition that came from our Canon lens), and started aiming around me to snap pictures. Since Bruno had only packed the long lens, it was a bit tricky, but I managed to get one or two shots as we snacked on leftover Chocolate cake and grapes.

Taking in the view. Bruno gets credit for this one, along with his long lens. 

As I sat there, watching little kids practice football (soccer) on the beach and listening to the birds and the wind around us, I felt a moment of grounded calm. I am an active person, and sitting still has never been my strong suit. But here, it was possible to do so with joy. We gathered our stuff up and biked further into Breukelen - the fanciest town I've ever seen with houses that looked like universities they were so huge. We biked and biked, seemingly into a whole other country, yet the farmlands and pathways held a sense of familiarity somehow.

Taking a picture of this windmill with a long lens was slightly difficult...

Somewhere along the road, Bruno suggested we stop at a tiny old pub on a little street near the farmland, for a drink and some snacks. We wound up sitting outdoors, drinking fruity beers and eating croquette snacks (a very common Dutch appetizer), and I felt the kind of dusty, worn out happiness I have always loved from days of long biking or walks in the woods.

The beers made racing each other home to Hilversum a whole different level of difficulty, but we ended the day sore, tired, and grateful for the bikeways of the Netherlands.

There are many ways to sightsee in Holland. You can get a car (or rent one), hop on a tram or bus or train. But if you want to really see the land - the hidden narrow pathways that lead to countryside dating back to the 1200s - the way to do this is without a doubt by bike. You can sweep by these areas without ever feeling like you are intruding. You're invited into those different lifestyles, welcomed by the trees and tall grass and cows. You get to feel really Dutch for a day, even if - like me - you only know the language in 5 year-old song form at first. But best of all, you get to feel like you are seeing your potential future: living in an old home on a canal near a castle. Or on farmland raising your own crops. Or, if it's your thing, owning a coffee shop or small pub in the quieter side of the country. You can pick your adventure, just like we did, and that, to me, is the best kind of traveling.