Christmasy

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go . . ."

Rotterdam has its 'verlichting' up, and since it tends to get dark here at about 4:30 pm, we get to enjoy the winter lights for more hours than most people. 

We also have enjoyed the line of special Christmas gourmet 'ready to bake' dinner options. Our grocery store pulled out all the stops so for dinner all we had to do was pull open the oven. 

Pre- oven:

Post - oven: 

My pride would like me to point out that under normal circumstances I would never even consider    pre-prepared dishes a viable dinner option, and I tend to think them the opposite of gourmet. Especially in the U.S. of A. where the meat is over-processed and the bread has the shelf life of peanut butter. (As my wise Grandpa De Boer once said, "Makes you wonder what they put in that stuff.")

But over here things are different. For example, the egg shells are thick and usually brown, and they say no to GMO's. Not that everything is wholesome here but, we thought we would see if their packaged dinners tasted less like packaging and more like dinner. 

Plus we were pretty exhausted from our weeks of teaching and we didn't feel like cooking. 

And if your grocery store put out a whole new line of products just for the Christmas season along with  decorations including this poster . . .

Wouldn't you want to see what all the fuss was about and try some things for yourself as well?

(The man on the left is the gourmet chef/cook book writer Jamie Oliver and he has become quite a sensation in The Netherlands.)

The dish we tried was a turkey fillet with truffle sauce and sliced almonds on top. 

We also topped it with some cranberry compote (another word for preserved fruit) and baked a side of sweet potatoes and carrots to round out the meal. 

So what's our conclusion on Jamie Oliver pre-made meals? 

Pretty good! 

The spices were well balanced, it was not all salt, and the truffle sauce was great.

But the texture of the turkey was completely foreign to us.

We're still debating whether the unfamiliarity of the meat texture was due to the fact that we had never actually had a turkey fillet before and therefore it was a strange cut of meat for us, or if they really did do something to preserve it, but since it is such real meat, it changed up the texture a bit.

We'll probably never know, but it doesn't much matter because we enjoyed it, and now Jamie Oliver's gourmet dishes have left the shelves. 

More importantly, the dessert was unquestionable. 

We had never had creme brulee before, so we had no expectations and there was nothing disappointing about this pre-made gourmet dessert. Sure a real chef would probably cry to hear me say it, but my first creme brulee experience came from the refrigerator section of the grocery store and I'm not sad about it. 

We opened up the package, sprinkled some sugar on top, put it in the oven for a literal 3 minutes, pulled it out to cool, and then ate some warm, silky smooth creme brulee. 

I now just have to figure out something creative to do with the wonderful little glass bowls. 

Not all of the goodies we enjoyed in the Christmas season came from our grocery store . . . 

a package from Iowa came our way and gave us some wonderful bits of home for our holidays. 

I never thought there would come a day when I was actually excited to see cheddar cheese. Strange the things you take for granted. 

We had some good old - fashioned American snacks to accompany our present opening on Christmas Eve. 

And finally, here is the first dangerous and illegal item (in the U.S.) that the liberal Netherlands allows that I went crazy and took advantage of:  I ate my first Christmas Kinder egg. 

(Only my parents could say whether or not it was my first Kinder egg ever . . . it is certainly the first one in my memory.)

(The tiny stockings were a gift for our last Christmas and traveled with us here and now they look great on our wall.)