The Ice-Cream World Tour: Leiden

This week we have a brand new discovery, but totally worth it. While we were walking in the old center of Leiden I could not help but noticing a small little shop in the corner of a street, in front of a bridge ,where through a window you could see an expert girl working with chocolate and making some kind of fancy pretty cake. As we walked closer, we saw there was a huge line coming out of the shop (good sign). And then we saw people were getting ice-cream. Needless to say we had to try it. And I am glad we did because we were not disappointed. The place we are talking about is called Soetenso. They have homemade ice-cream, but also chocolate, bonbons and some cakes that I definitely have to go back and try. (If you click on the macaron you will see what I am talking about). I tested the berries ice-cream and the boy tried rhum and raisins. Mine was perfect. You could actually see the pieces of fruit inside (which is a bit rare, very often in flavors with berries you can tell they use syrup and almost no real fruit) and the taste was creamy and subtle. I will definitely come back for more.

 The boy's ice-cream was also creamy and full of flavour though I have to say I am not a big fan of ice-cream with alcohol in it. I was even surprised he chose it since he does not drink alcohol at all. If you are in Leiden, this is definitely a spot you shouldn't miss. And hey, there is also chocolate if you don't feel like ice-cream. Though I can not imagine someone not wanting ice-cream, ever.

 

 Their address is:
Korg Galgewater 1
2312 BR Leiden.

It is fairly easy to get there from the train station Leiden centraal:

See in google maps here

*This posts are based on my own personal experience and love for ice-cream, no one is sponsoring for writing this .

Muffin testing.

For my last birthday, the boy gave me this book and some paper cupcake liners. Only after we had a whole discussion where I had to convince him (with an actual article) why it was better and easier if we got not 1 but 2 muffin baking sheets.

 Not least of all because most of the recipes make more than 12 muffins. So my first try was with this yoghurt -and -oil- butter -free -recipe. And lately I have been trying other recipes. I made this banana crumb muffins one of those days when you don't know what to do with over-ripe bananas. They were so good I did not even get the chance to take some pictures. Perfectly moist, and crunchy on top. Oh and the whole house smelled like heaven. You should have seen the boy's face when he opened the door and smelled them. Priceless. The last recipe I've tried is these lemon-raspberry muffins. They were truly delicious.

 I have to say that I used 2 eggs instead of 1 and I added cinammon because that's what I do to everything. I also added blueberries as well, but not to all of them. The only thing I don't understand is how Deb managed to defy gravity so that the raspberry stayed on top.(Look at the photos of her muffins to see what I mean).  On mine, the fruit slowly sank down to the bottom of the muffin as the batter grew in the oven. It was a nice surprise though, to find a fresh tangy raspberry inside the lemony cake.

 Oh and while I was at it, the boy had to make a silly joke pun,  intended: Why would we need a KitchenAid when we have a Kitchen maid? Haha not funny.

Kitchen maid in action

Of windows and cats.

The Dutch have this funny tradition of displaying all kinds of curious items in their windows for passerby's to see. You can find all kinds of things. From the obvious, like flowers, to fairies, elfs, garden dwarfs, dolls, to paintings, to elephant collections. You name it. It is funny to think that people arrange this things for strangers to see.  The houses here generally have big windows and there is some kind of voyeurism (hence the importance of curtains, talking of which, we still don't have). I have gotten in the game of looking inside houses, you know, for decoration tips, and to satisfy my endless curiosity. But the best window display ever was this one. So cute.

Aren't they the cutest? I couldn't help but remembering this:

And off to the science museum

we went. A few weeks ago, at the lab, a raffle was held for free tickets to a Circus and Science exposition at Boerhave Museum in Leiden. Of course I registered, and for once I got lucky and actually won. We had the tickets for a while now, and we noticed that the expiry date was September 4, this weekend.

 "Museum Boerhaave is the Dutch National Museum for the History of Science and Medicine. In 1931 it opened its doors. It is located in the former Caecilia Hospital, in the centre of Leiden. In terms of the history of science and medicine, the collections in Museum Boerhaave are among the most important in the world. This history begins in the middle of the 16th century, which is also the time of the earliest objects on display in the museum, including the not-to-be-missed world’s oldest herbarium. As well as some original drawings and books by Vesalius.  From the Dutch ‘golden age’ (17th century) come microscopes by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and pendulum clocks by Christiaan Huygens, his planetarium and telescope."

 There is a wooden amphiteater complete with  a dissection table in the middle and all kinds of curiosities, like a deformed piglet foetus that looks like a baby elephant. Or forceps from the seventeenth century. I was so happy that we went. Leeuwenhoek was some kind of teenage hero for me, ever since I read "Los cazadores de microbios" (Microbe hunters) by Paul de Kruif. 

 The place where the museum is located is a magic place in itself:

"The historic building in which Museum Boerhaave is located has had various functions over time. The original nunnery of St Caecilia dates from the early 15th century. Originally a nunnery, the building had become municipal property after the Reformation and shortly before 1600 was converted into a ‘plaque hospital and madhouse’. In 1635 it became an University hospital. It was here, around 1720, that Herman Boerhaave gave his famous sickbed lessons that drew medical students to Leiden from around the world. After extensive restoration, the building has been used as a museum."

 I think I must have been a crazy nun in another life. I always have this feeling in my gut when I am in cloysters and old hospitals. Talking of which, if you are in Barcelona, you shouldn't miss the Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya , another magic and beautiful building, with a patio full of orange blossoms, that used to be a convent, medical university and hospital. It is also the place where Santiago Ramon y Cajal discovered neuron cells. 

[Source]

And almost at the end of our visit, there was one last surprise, I felt like jumping up and down. (Maybe I did a bit). Because in the last room, dedicated to contributions from modern dutch scientists, there were the original sketches from Nikolaas Tinbergen, the ethologist who won the Nobel prize together with Kondrad Lorenz, for the famous seagull experiments*.  There is even an original photo of his (of a seagull chick) and the camera he used.

*Tinbergen N., and Perdeck, A.C. (1950). On the stimulus situation releasing the begging response in the newly hatched Herring Gull chick (Larus Argentatus argentalus Pont). Behavior 3:1-39

Breakfast

just might be my favorite food. And you don't necessarily have to eat it exclusively in the morning. I love jam, butter, bread, tea and milk. I love fruit, I love oatmeal. I wish we could survive on breakfast alone. Or on breakfast and ice-cream alone. I have had whole discussions argumenting that ice-cream is actually healthy breakfast. It is made of milk, eggs, fruit.  If you ever go to Amsterdam there is a little breakfast place that you shouldn't miss.

Kerkstraat 46-48, by the Leidsestraat

We went there way after breakfast time, and nobody thought it was weird. In fact everyone else was also eating omelettes or pancakes or something of the sort. Now that I think about it last Sunday we ate breakfast the whole day. We woke up, and had oatmeal with apple and tea. Then we went to the city and had said pancakes.They are supposed to be a Dutch specialty and we hadn't eaten them in a while.Later in the day we met friends for tea and I had to have eggs benedict.

 

It was quite a perfect day. With nice pleasant weather in between the rain. Yes. It is all about the moments. In this country you have to appreciate the moments when it is NOT raining. The moments in between.

Sparkles of color

are everywhere I look. Last week, the lovely Marcela from Diario de una Trotamundos*  posted this picture of an  ad for a button shop in Cyprus.

Photo by Marcela from here

As soon as I saw that button-covered-wall memories came back. I remembered that once upon a time,  sometime between 2002 and 2003, I had a black jumper-dress that was my own version of a little black dress. And I never really knew how to wear it. For a LBD it was a lot more cute than it was sexy, but that's how I am. I always thought black is for funerals. Sure, I have seen stylish people pull it off and even look happy while doing so. But it's not made for me. It always saddens me. Even the boy says it. I've tried the Audrey Hepburn-ish look, but no, no. It is just someone else. Well, back then I was visiting a friend in Grenoble who was doing an exchange program and somehow we came up with the best idea ever. We would make sad little black jumper happy with lots of colorful, mismatched buttons in all sizes. And this weekend I decided to take it out to see the world again. It had never been in Amsterdam.

 

Then, yesterday I was over at Mudfooted and I could not stop smiling. Dr. Babu,an indian scientist, and his wife observed  that ants are transparent and that their bellies turn the color of their food. Then he ran some more experiments and he discovered that they might be attracted to different colours or flavours and took this magic crazy pictures.  You can read the full story in the Daily Mail here. 

Both photos above via Mudfooted

Isn't it just magic? I want a rainbow belly too.
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*By the way if you are planning to travel anywhere you should go and read her. She is full of great travel advice.