Koninginnedag

As we drove home from our Bible Study session last night, we debated about stopping by the grocery store. Since the month was ending we needed a few more purchases to get to the next level for earning a 10 cent per gallon fuel discount. The weather has been so nice that I suggested that we just hop on our bikes after work and ride to the store.

The grocery store is only about a mile away so it sounded like a great plan, until we turned on The Weather Channel when we got home. There had been no winds of note in the forecast, but suddenly there is a ticker running across the bottom of the screen announcing a high wind warning for today with 30 mph winds and gusts up to 50 miles per hour. Not what we had in mind!

When I got home it certainly was windy, but after a winter of no bicycling we're pretty anxious to get out whenever we can. I've also been thinking a lot lately about the Netherlands and remembering out trip last April. I've often thought about how our Dutch friends bicycle in just about any weather, so it seemed fitting that since it was Koninginnedag today that we should give it a try.

The Weather Channel showed 21 mph winds and 36 mph gusts when we left the house. The Highway 89 corridor that we have to ride on is a real wind tunnel, and our informal wind indicator (the flag at the local McDonalds) was blowing so hard that it was absolutely straight.

Despite all this, the ride surprised us with how doable it turned out to be. Even in the face of a headwind it wasn't nearly as tough as we expected. Of course, on the way home it's uphill but we have the benefit of a tailwind.

So our celebration of  Koninginnedag consisted of bicycling in weather that we would have normally considered unbikeable. It felt pretty good, but it occurred to me later that I should have worn my orange souvenir t-shirt!

Bicycling for Raisins

The Dutch are bakers, and one of the delicacies of Dutch baking is "krentenbollen" aka "Raisin Buns". You can find them in bakeries in every town and at every market day in every town.

One of Linda's hobbies is to read blogs by Dutch bakers and she recently ran across a recipe for krentenbollen that promised to be like the ones you can get at bakeries in the Netherlands.

 I think Linda hit a home run with these. She never bakes anything that isn't wonderful, but these may the closest we've had to the real thing without traveling on a plane for hours to get to the Netherlands.

Spread these with real butter and they simply melt in your mouth. Of course the distribution of raisins in a particular bun is pretty random and this one looks like it's a bit lacking. The Dutch would say that "you need a bicycle to get between the raisins" because there are so few.

This one is much better! Well, the other one wasn't really bad - the raisins were just hiding right under where the cut was made.

Even though we didn't need a bicycle to find the raisins in our krentenbollen, we did actually go bicycling for raisins. It was a beautiful day of 65F and the wind wasn't at gale-force speeds so we rode our bikes to the grocery store to get raisins. The ride was fun, and the krentenbollen were well worth the trip.

Hard Workers

A few weeks ago I took my camera along on a Saturday morning at Feed My Starving Children with grandchildren Nate and Ellie. After I took the photo of Nate I noticed that the camera lens did not stow itself like it should. The camera had to go back to Canon for repairs (fortunately covered under warranty) and I forgot to look at the photos on the card.

Seeing the pictures after the camera came back, I was reminded of what a great morning we had. The group set a record for the number of boxes per person that we packed. Ellie & Nate were a big part of that.

Nate was a box runner. His job was to make sure that the packing tables never ran out of boxes. He was flying around the room to keep up with all the packers and we never had to wait for a new box.

Ellie was part of the box packing crew. At first she had no help with packing the box. Despite the fact that she isn't quite tall enough to reach over the lip of the box to reach the box bottom, it was tough to seal food bags fast enough to keep up with her.

I'm really proud of these two. They really put their heart and soul into their work and they understand that they are playing an important part in providing food for people who are in need.

I have great grand-kids (and no, I'm NOT prejudiced) :-)