When you thought you ate healthily but then get a shock...

I am 31 weeks pregnant.

There is a fairly hands-off approach to pregnancy here in the Netherlands and that has at times worried me: only seeing the midwife once a month and then no urine checks and only two blood tests.

Anyway, that is how it is and I just go along with the flow; I am almost too busy with the other three to even notice that I am pregnant: although you can't fail to see that I am pregnant, as most people ask if I am due very soon and are shocked to hear I still have 9 weeks to go: and that's only if this one comes on time.

I had a routine check before Christmas and was told that as I was rhesus negative that I need to be checked for anti-bodies in my blood that would show up if baby was not rhesus negative: if baby is not negative then I need a shot of Anti-D to prevent any further complications with baby.

I rang the midwife to let them know that I had gone for the blood test just after Christmas as they had sent me another form to go and get my blood tested. That is when they told me that by 'blood sugar was on the high side' - I wasn't sure what this meant and she gave no further explanation. So I went and had the extra blood test the following morning at the hospital. After 2 hours my blood glucose was 8.0. That is on the high side. I went to the midwife to tell them the result: it needed to be under 7.8 and now I will be referred to a gynaecologist. 

I was rung today after spending hours on the internet in the absence of any advice. Some say eat carbs, some say don't. There is sugar in everything! But the trouble is I am a vegetarian and already restrict my diet. I don't overeat, I don't like biscuits or chocolate. I do not eat much in the day but I always have a big dinner with plenty of carbohydrate in the evening. We eat a lot of dark green vegetables already and lentils and beans.

I immediately bought wholegrain products and took all the sugar out of my diet that I can. No more warm milk and cornflakes...

I had wholegrain bread and peanut butter for breakfast, a slice of sardines on toast for a snack and a bowl of home-made lentil and spinach soup - all low in carbs but I am now feeling knocked out, which rather unhelpfully is a sign of low or high blood sugar!

What I haven't had today is my hour walk. I had a 60 minute walk on Saturday and Sunday and I miss it today. My daughters came with me yesterday, but they were not keen again this morning..!

I looked back on my diet: although I have out on weight whilst pregnant I never really fluctuate and tend to eat sensibly -or so I thought. I eat plenty of veg, only brown bread - don't overdo it with sweet things.

Yet I am now diabetic whilst pregnant. I am seeing the specialist next week and having another echo to check the size of baby - babies with diabetic/gestational diabetic mothers can get too big for their gestation and this leads to the need to induce labour before 40 weeks or have a c-section.

Neither appeal to me so I am taking the diet seriously in the hope that my new mostly brown diet can keep my blood sugars low and I can keep intervention to a minimum...

Vork en Mes - low food miles restaurant in Hoofdorp, mostly veggie food and not expensive.

Vork en Mes

Paviljoenlaan 1
Hoofddorp
Tel 023 5572963

 http://www.vorkenmes.nl/

My husband had his birthday yesterday and I wanted to surprise him with a slightly different lunch. We have three small children and don't get out that often!  I am vegetarian and he isn't, but he likes vegetaraian food. Where we are in Breda there is no veggie restaurant unfortunately, so when i heard the follwing chef on the radio, my ears pricked up.

I few weeks ago I was listening to Radio 1 in the car and heard a really interesting interview with Jon Karpathios, the owner of a restaurant in Hoofdorp.

Now,  that isn't that spectacular in itself but I was heartened and interested in his thoughts regarding locally grown food and knowing where your meat is coming from - and being in touch with nature by eating only what is in season. 

We are all so used to seeing strawberries all year round, seeing our demand for all year veggies fulfilled by faraway places such as Peru or Kenya. I am never too sure whether that is good or not but what I do know is flying all those veggies around the world creates a large contribution surely to the increase in CO2.

It has to be better to eat locally, thinking of our food miles and keeping in touch with the seasons. 

The menu is dictated by what is available in their gardens at the time. And they also work with local farms to provide their meat. 

The drive to the restaurant in straightforward - not far from Haarlem and not far at all from the motorway. The drive down a what looks like derelict plot only adds to the surpise as you appear in a carpark next to a lake and a park. The restaurant building is on the river and it has a wrap-around terrave where children and even your dog will be happy in the drier days. 

We were welcomed, they were expecting us and we were given the menu. What an exciting list of winter vegetables! Joeri and I chose a few smaller dishes to share. We only had the vegetable dishes and there were actually only a few meat dishes. Also some pasta dishes but I was interested in what they were going to do with the veggies. 

WOW! How can anyone make just vegetables taste so good? We were not disappointed at all, one dish was a beautiful mixture of winter veggies: beatroot, parsnips, carrots - just delicious! 

 We had:

Seizoensgroenten op verschillende manieren bereid, hangop met olijven en walnoten poeder

Tarte Tatin van ui met groene kool en komijnekaas

Brioche crouton met paddestoelen, uienjam en noten 

The three dishes were enough for a lunch, but we of course followed the meal off with a desert: Joeri had awhite chocolate pannacotta, grapesoup and chocolate mousse and I had carrot cake with walnuts, yoghurt icecream and caramel sauce.

We finished off with a coffee and left very happy. I even received an email the day after asking if I had enjoyed my visit and if I had any further ideas to improve. How many restaurants do that?

We had a lovely lunch, and I can imagine it is also a great place for dinner. Well done to Jon Karpathios whose concept is badly needed - we do need to think about where I food is coming from, we do need to be closer to nature and eat in season and there is no need that any of this needs to be expensive. 

I also have the cookbook now, so we can practice at home. Although I doubt that we will get anywhere close to the fabulous tastes we had yesterday.

You can tell a lot about people by the sort of rubbish they throw away...

I have just dropped my youngest one off at peuterspeelzaal (playschool). Over the last few days more and more boxes have been accumulating around certain houses. 

Sofie and I walk past them today - today must be pick up day because there are mountains of boxes and other stuff outside of some people's houses.

I am not uber green: I wish I could do more: I want to insulate our house because that is the first thing you should do - don't waste energy in the first place. We recycle, we re-use, we repair. 

I stupidly thought after hearing for years within Nottingham City Council about how fantastic the Dutch are at biking everywhere that they are too environmentally minded. But I am slowly seeing that Dutch society is not that green.

One indication: I am walking past houses and looking enviously at their rubbish. Almost all of it could be used again by someone with a screwdriver or someone that has little money or doesn't mind re-using. 

I see a pink balance bike; I see the biggest box of coloured wooden bricks that I have ever seen; I see 6 black plastic garden chairs (OK, not that fashionable but if you have no garden chairs at all, they are better than nothing!), two lovely tapestry cushions, boxes of shoes, chest of drawers, boxes of books!! All scattered around different houses: so it wasn;t just one thoughtless family: it was all of them. 

There were obviously items waiting to be collected that couldn't be repaired so I have less problem seeing them go to our district heating, removing what metal that can be recycled and then burning the rest to provide heat for a good part of Breda. 

I moaned about it to the husband when I got back. He was unusually still home at 9am. He stated that don't be silly, they come round with a wagon and take what can be recycled or re-used first. No, they do not. I have seen this massacre happening before.

The same bin lorry that takes our weekly recycling and household rubbish away comes down the street ( or one very similar) and takes the 'rubbish'away. The staff will pick up each of those items -re-usable, repairable or not - and will throw each one of them into the crusher where they will be crushed. 

This is not only a waste of money but also adding to the unneccessary pile of rubbish and creaping carbon footprint of all of us.Each thing that could be re-used or recycled that is thrown away, means that those are then not available for someone else or to be made into something else - which inevitably leads to more resource use. 

So along with not doing enough to reduce energy waste/use here in our area (it may be the same elsewhere in the Netherlands), the local council seems not to be doing anything about encouraging re-use or discouraging throwing away reusable goods. The service to pick up items from your house is free, regardless of what you are throwing away.

Happily at least I walked past some of those houses to pick my daughter up; the balance bike was gone, as were the tapestry cushions: someone was doing a little bit of re-using of their own it seems, well done!

Veggie Alternatives Review

I thought a review of the meat alternatives would be useful. This is the review of just sausage type foods from Albert Hein and Jumbo.

Albert Hein:

Vege hotdog type sausages:

Positive:  states to boil but I find they become huge, to I prefer to fry them for a few minutes. They are versatile. They can be eaten just as a sausage, or put in a tomato pasta sauce or in a bun. They are quite tasty and not spicy so can easily be eaten by my kids. 

Negative: there is a taste but they are not that tasty - but again, hotdogs aren't that flavoursome anyway, are they? If they become a staple in your weekly shopping, they can become boring after a while!


Albert Hein Bradworst: I also fry these sausages. 

Positive:They are thicker than the hotdog. I find that they have much more flavour than the hotdog, so better for me than for the kids. They are versatile but can more easily be eaten as just a sausage with potatoes or in your weekend morning fry-up! 

Negative: Their texture is a little strange, bit airy but the tatste is good. 

Jumbo - knakworst

Type of hotdog, they look like a hotdog and have a good texture. But they have a strong flavour and because of that, my children do not like them. i don't mind them but because of their strong flavour they are better eaten alone and not in a sauce as they can't accompany a sauce as well as the plain veggie hotdogs. 

Jumbo - frikandel: looks like a rough sausage! It isn't technically a sausage but sort of looks like one. The texture is more crumbly and it has a nice flavour, this is best eaten as its meat equivalent with chips! My kids don't like the texture but I do! Nice for occassionallly making frites-night more interesting. 


 

Sinterklaas and Black Piet

Give me my soap-box.

The pre Christmas tradtion here of "Sinterklaas en Zwarte Piet" is causing at long last a bit of a storm.

Sinterklaas himself is a lovely story and I enjoy my children having a part and believing it. However it is his Black 'helpers' that make me unformfortable. Many Dutch people take no offence (especially if they themselves are white) in a tradition of allowing a white Bishop (Saint Nicholas) to be served/followed by a large group of Black Piets. Many here see no irony (this land is supposed to be fair, equal and tolerant..) of ONLY white people being 'blacked up', wearing Black afros, bright red lipstick, gold earrings and white gloves. They follow and help Sint Niklaas prepare for his present giving evening on 5th Deceember. the helpers are called Black Piets - they say because they are going down the chimney. They look like the black and white minstrels. They are walking gollywogs. They are mimicing a slave figure from a bygone era.

These terms and traditions were unacceptable to any race knowing anything about civil rights and the movement in the 50s, 60 and 70s that made us move forward. Still not far enough in lots of cases.

If Black Piet here really has just gone down the chimney and is not a depiction of a slave - then take the afro wig off, wipe the black make up off and put a bit of soot on the face of any race that calls the Netherlands their home. Roll on seeing Piets with heritage from all over the world running around helping Sinterklaas with his very important duties on the evening of the 5th December. 

http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/10/28/anouk-is-voor-het-aanpakken-van-de-zwarte-piet-traditie-zo-reageerden-facebookers-daarop/

herfstvakantie

Before children I used to wonder around not knowing or understanding what school holidays were, or when they were.

Now we have school aged children I have the knowledge. 

I have my own internet based company so luckily I do not have to worry about leaving the house each morning to go to the office - the kitchen table is my office. This brings downsides of course as someone who rings my home phone wanting to speak to the Locker Winkel, may even hear a scream as I am in the middle to explaining that our 3 year old cannot have chocolate before lunch time, she disagrees loudly. 

So,  don't need to leave for the office so when the holidays come around I can mostly work around the kids for a few hours each day. They are at the age when they can play by themselves or with each other quite happily - or put a film on. 

The school day is much more complicated here. There is a lunch break, sometimes the kids are home for lunch in the week. Although it seems like a nice thing to do, it is often stressful: having to get back home, make lunch (we like to have something warm most days not sandwiches if I can help it) then eating lunch within the hour and then getting the kids all revved up again for a return to school. I don't think this break can help them concentrate at school. The plus side is that i know they have eaten well.

Before kids I didn't realise how stressful a school day here can be. Too-ing an fro-ing from school, then getting them to swiming lessons or guitar lessons or dance lessons. Plus then the negotiating over where they kids are playing straight after school, so warning - sometimes I might have an additional 3 boys at home with us. I already have 3 kids of my own! And then there are the days on a wednesday when the kids only half a day of school. I make pancakes on wednesdays. I have tried to make them in advance - only then to be surprised my having only the little one at home because the older two have gone somewhere else to play and eat!

This is rare: it normally feels like I am the one having the children to play...

So actually, even though i have three young children, parents or non parents may think that I dread the school holidays. I don't. I look forward to them. No running back and forth to school (we do literally run as we live in the same street as school and we are always late..), no swimming lessons (only swimming fun), no arguments over guitar lessons or guitar homework. No afspreken (play dates) - just enjoying my own children, who can stay in their pyjamas ALL day if we have no plans, come to think of it - so can I - or at least I can stay in my joggers and wooly socks all day. This is when i relax, and the children also do what they want. If they want to watch 3 films back to back, they can. I don't mind. Not every day, we do try and leave the house occassionally..

But life for them is so busy during the school week, and life for mummy is too. So we all have to completely switch off, especially if it is only one week holiday.

So we are on our final day of holiday - an it was an extra day too. The go back to school tomorrow - a Tuesday. I am completely realxed despite having all the kids at home at times. I will reluctantly start the rushing around again tomorrow..making fruit boxes, packed lunches for some days and the rushing back and forth to school and the unexpected play dates....roll on Christmas holidays..!

Maisdoorhof and pumpkin carving - Dongen

‘t fazantje Dongen, Brabant

http://www.fazantje-dongen.nl/

We raced from school to Dongen, around 25 minutes away on the motorway. 

We had an invite to come with some friends to find our way through a corn maze and to also carve some pumkins. Nor I or the children had ever gone through a real maze nor had we ever carved pumkins. I thought I would never do this on my own, so I jumped at the chance to go. It sounded like a perfect Autumn afternoon out.

The owners do not speak very good Dutch so you will have to rely on your Dutch. They were however friendly and welcoming. There aren't any snacks or drinks on site so bring some nibbles with you.

 The kids were given a list of letters that they had to find which made up a sentance in Dutch. They also had to look out for TV characters along the way. My kids are aged nearly 8, 6 and 3.5. They had a fantastic time racing around the maze and really tried to get as many letters as possible. Once they had found almost all the letters and could find no more, we found our way out of the maze. There are no markers to help you make your way out but the kids seemed to know exactly where they were going! 

After that we were able to pick 3 small pumkins and the lady told us how to get started. Getting the top of is tricky as the knives we were given had no grooves in them. However I did it for the kids and they then scooped out in the inside with a large spoon. Even the 3 year old managed quite a bit. We were then showed some ideas for carving - two of my kids wanted scary faces and the little one wanted windows and a door. To my amazement, since I had never done it before - the faces and windows looked good. I couldn't wait to get them on!

We paid 2 euros per child for the maze and 5 euros for the pumpkin. They also had a huge selection of 'display'pumkins - those that you can put with the scary ones to make a nice display for the Autumn. 

After bath and just before bedtime we let the kids light their pumkin candles and they were amazed at how different they looked shining in the darkness. Well worth the drive and well worth the effort. I now feel that I could do this myself at home!