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How to: leave comments on our blog.
Underneath each post you first see the labels, and than:
'posted by maudenbram at [time] [X] comments', followed by a small picture of an envelope.
If you click on 'comments', you get a new webpage where you can enter a comment. Just follow the instructions and your comment will be posted and publicly accessible.
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Labels

Our faithful readers (here's to you, Paul and Bavo) might wonder what this labels are we suddenly add to posts. It works like this: we can add labels, like 'food', 'family', 'Botswana', 'wildlife', to posts. If you click on a label, you'll get a webpage with all our posts that have the same label.
We just started this, so you don't get the older posts about the same subject. Yet - maybe one day when Maud gets bored (fat chance, sometimes I long for this feeling of boredom instead of the long list of things I feel I need to do), she'll label the older posts.

Harddravers

End of June Paul, Jacinta and Lilly hopped over from their Scottish house to the Netherlands because their daughter & sister Rachel graduated from the Eindhoven Design Academy. Actually we want to meet in their Maputo or our Morwa house, but somehow Rachel keeps luring all of us to Holland (pictures, check page 4 also). Maybe we'll make it to Maputo in December, or they'll manage to come to Botswana next February, when the third guy of the triplets (Peter, Paul, Bram) plans to visit us.



That same weekend Marjan commemorated her 60th Birthday, so all of us went to Rotterdam to party. It's a pity we hadn't started 'what we eat' yet. Everyone was asked to contribute a dish, and the variety of nationalities among the guests was reflected in the food. And in the languages; Paul was happy he bumped into some fellow Irishmen, and Maud could speak Afrikaans.



Another contribution asked for was a performance, so Kofi excelled once again on his djembé drums. His red red (bean stew with fish and fried banana) by the way is excellent also. As is the superb Bengalese food Marjan's husband Rubel cooks. Maud will long for you when she's surrounded again by men who think cooking equals loitering around the barbie with a drink in your hand.

(Grand) Parents

In June Tineke & Ivan rented a big holiday-house in Assen to have their '(grand)pa and (grand)ma day'. Next to making the yearly family-portrait we adults tried to keep up with the kids. Soccer, biking, swimming - their energy is incredible. To keep our engines going grandma brought a truckload of great food.

No Knead Bread

Sunday suddenly Carel came. Having Mister C over is always fun, and not only because his belly is bigger than Bram's, which makes Mister B worry less about his good life.
This time he entered bubbling with joy, saying I've got something for you, we're going to do something, and I know you'll love it. Here's the result of our deeds:



Maud's first No Knead Bread (check youtube.com for baking instructions, I wrote down a recipe, so mail me if you need it). Incredibly easy to make, it only takes time but hardly any labour, and de taste is fabulous!
As one thing always leads to another this event led to Maud collecting everything you need to know for building a mud oven - a new Botswana-project... And than she found other interesting outside-kitchen stuff (youtube offers a fascinating collection of Indian and Pakistani village cooking video's), so she'll ask Bashi to collect cow dung, mud and straw for construction works.

WWE

Here's the official start of 'What We Eat', part one of many.
We're afraid there's little chance we'll show you a traditional Dutch meal (potatoes, meat, vegetables), because nobody we know cooks that way (anymore). Okay, we might bump into pancakes, snert (soup made from dried peas), or kapiteinsrijsttafel (big bowl of brownish beans accompanied by a lot of small bowls with goodies).
Here's what we ate at Charmian's last Saturday: an experiment for starters (eggplant sandwich) and a proven recipe as a main (spinach pie). Good food!!!

Clearing & Cleaning

The tornado came and went in a couple of minutes. Cleaning up the debris is a different story. The plot looks as if a migrating elephant herd decided to have a jolly great pick-nick party right there.



After the woodworkers came with their machines, it's more like the Chinese roadmen started their preparations, or, for the Dutchies, the hsl-people passed by.



There's still a lot of rubbish to clear, and while clearing we also try to start rebuilding. Maud's friend (since 1973!) Kristien came over with her two boys Koen & Pieter to join the forces.



What is it with men that they immediately fall in love with machines, the bigger & noisier, the better? Kristien's lastborn Pieter got Bram's brother Ivan junior to teach him how to be a chainsaw-guy.



Except for Junior all of us are not used to manual labour, so he's the one who is just hungry, while the rest of us also is exhausted. Luckily Maud's mom organizes mountains of food and drinks to keep us going. Exhausted or not, nice food and actually attacking the ruins brings back happy faces. The wine Kristien brought might have something to do with that also...



This picture also introduces our new series 'What We Eat'. We're fed up with 'Where We Sleep', and everywhere people keep asking us 'what do you eat over there'.

Time flies

After weeks of only 'cooking' ice cause we're too busy with our zillion projects, Maud had a heavy attack of being a kitchen-princess this weekend. Using our Sunday-dinner-guests as an excuse she transformed the kitchen into a battlefield, matching the living room, where poor Bram feverishly worked on his part of 'Project Chair Redecoration'.



Redoing most of the furniture hampers dolling up Bram's study. His room was the first to be finished when we bought this house, so it's the first in need of repainting. Meanwhile there're some garden-projects to be finished, the stairs still are half-painted and so on.



But who has time for building when there's so much socializing to do? Sunday-loitering at our place, Monday we pack the leftovers and hop over to Bram's great-aunt Loes for dinner - and suddenly another week has gone by.



The most important happening of this week is of course meeting our newborn nephew Tui (although we have to give his big brother Jack the impression he's the main attraction).

Ketelmeer of minder

Mum (in law) Tineke & dad (in law) Ivan invited old friends Bavo & Dineke and us for a lunch. Cause Bavo & Dineke kind of live on their yacht all summer we met in one of Holland's zillion harbours. After a nice fishy lunch we tested the beautiful new boat - it sails like a dream!