Easter and food Issues from Holland

It is Easter time and there are these damn Dutch Chocolate eggs everywhere. EVERYWHERE! Calling me. They are so pretty and they come in bags of 50 or 100. They are wrapped in pretty foil, with bright pastel colors, glimmering and inviting. They call to me I tell you. I want them. I need them. They are near the entrance of every store now. I keep tell myself that I will buy them and put them out for decoration, in the spirit of spring, in a pretty bowl and only allow myself one a day...... I cannot express to you my shame the other day when I woke up at 3 in the morning on the couch covered in little pastel foil wrappers and an empty bowl on the floor. What happened? I am not even sure.....I am in denial of the whole "incident"

On a good note....which could (or should you would think) (but hasn't yet) help me lose weight is that I think I am kind of over mayonnaise and french fries... the Dutch LOVE their fries with Mayo. Sometimes it is my only option but recently I have found two pimples and my face which has not happened since high school and I am certain it is because of this Dutch Mayo-Fry combo thing. My poor skin is freaking out. So this week I have been cutting back on the mayo and fries. I will let you know if this helps.

Now as Easter approaches my Amercianess is kicking in. I seem to be developing a desperate need for Reese’s Peanut Butter eggs. Real bad. I got it real bad ya'll. And Mounds eggs and Cadbury eggs (which are English right?) Maybe a ROADTRIP to England! NO! I can't do that. Jur might divorce me if I explained that I needed to go to England to get Cadbury chocolate eggs. He is still a bit "disturbed" about the 3 am couch, chocolate, covered in foils "incident". I guess I forgot to tell ya'll that he was the one that found me and apparently it may not have occurred only on the couch because we are finding foils in weird places. It may be possible that I have been eating them and unconsciously discarding the evidence. I blame the cats who like to play with them when they are on the floor but that does not explain how some of the foils ended up in a pile behind the books on the bookshelf.

I wonder if chocolate causes acne. Maybe it is not the mayo and fries.

To make matters worse I am still doing the cupcakes! 4 dozen going out this week. And I feel it is my obligation to taste them. Right? RIGHT?!?

Okay so I am going to take drastic measures......I guess I will be joining a gym. After all I might have to swim at some point this summer.

OH ....AND I am officially announcing that the "mediate myself into weight loss diet plan" does NOT work! The plan was I would lie down and visualize the calories burning away. I would visualize the svelte me. Lay and mediate the pounds away.......well all I would end up doing was falling asleep and then waking up groggy and needing a little wake me up nibble of something to perk me up. It was rather depressing and did more damage than good.

So I plan to join a gym. Eat less fries and mayo, cut back on chocolate (after Easter of course) and then I will be happy! Right? RIGHT?!?

I'll keep you posted. Happy Easter ya'll. Enjoy spring and life and Chocolate. Life is short!

P.S. You all know my grape jelly issues right?....Could someone back in the States please contact Welch’s and ask them why they would design a squeeze bottle that leaves a big blob of my cherished grape jelly at the bottom of the bottle that no matter how hard you bang it will not drop down and you cannot get a knife to reach down there to get it out and when you do try to get the damn blob out (because you are desperate for jelly) with the knife it falls in and when you try to get the knife out your fingers and the knife get covered in sticky grape jelly and you become very frustrated and end up looking like a pathetic junkie licking your fingers and the knife over the kitchen sink...... (This along with the 3 am chocolate foil couch incident were not my finest moments)....Ugghhhh Why is there no grape jelly in Holland?

I know and I am sorry

I have not written in a while, I apologize....

Reasons I have not written:

1) There was the whole overthrow of the Dutch government...which I thought for a moment was a revolution...but then it turned out to not even be either an overthrow or a revolution! I was kind of dissapointed. I was ready to write my Dutch version of Les Miserables and march and protest but NOTHING....The Dutch are so civilized.....I had also planned to use the revolution as a spring board to introduce my Revolutionary American Cupcake business but since there was no revolution I have to put it on hold and come up with a new name.

2) Waiting for spring....the sun has appeared a couple times. My tulip bulbs (which are my first and which I think I may have planted a bit to early because I was so anxious call myself a tulip farmer) have sprouted! I spend a great deal of time looking at them from the window. I worry about them. The stupid pigeons walk near them and it is still kind of cold. Jur came home from work and saw that I had turned our garden into a kind of (as he called it) a trash dump. This is because in my tulip anxiety and obsession, I panicked, and thought it was going to be too cold one night and decided to cover each sprout with cups, plastic and cardboard (anything I could find). Considering there are 45 + sprouts, all right, maybe it did not look so good BUT atleast I knew my sprouts were safe! Jur tried to explain to me that Tulips are durable but I was not risking my first harvest! Hell no! Besides I was becoming  attached to them. I found myself counting them several times a day and talking to them. I stopped doing that. The neighbors were staring.

3) Online weather reports....I NEED to know the temperature to protect the tulips. There are so many different weather sites and they all give different predictions and to convert them from Celsius to Fahrenheit. Aye! It is a never ending process. I also do this for the currency converter since I still have American money. I check to see the rates. They can change every 5 second (okay only about a 1/4 of a penny but I admit I am DETERMINED to get the best rate....and when I think it is up a 1/4 of cent I bolt out the door for the ATM. I think I save myself about .40 cents a month. But that 40 cents gives me a high. I know I should be writing.

4) I found a website that shows tons of American shows. This is both good and bad. Do I need to be watching the Bachelor? I have started to keep a calendar and journal of the shows I am watching and what episode I left off on. I miss TEVO. This site has led me to watch things I never watched before. For example I never used to watch Desperate Housewives but this site has every episode so I might as well. I am on season two of six so I guess I only have 50 something episodes to go....(I should be writing.)

5) Grape Jelly....I miss it. I only have about 1 and a 1/2 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches worth to go. THEY DO NOT HAVE IT HERE IN HOLLAND. I have spent a great deal of time going to stores looking for it. I have looked and researched obsessively on line on how to make Welch’s grape jelly (btw I do not think grape jelly is healthy and I don't think there are even any grapes in it) I also have tried to push my Mother's visit up a few months out of fear of my diminishing grape jelly. She is not willing to base her visit around grape jelly. (Update: I am thinking of adding a couple teaspoons of water to my jelly to thin it out and fool myself that there is more in there)

6) Hawaii Tsunami....wasted a day (or several hours) watching some live video of a beach in Hawaii.... only to see a "possible" murky color wave sort of trickle ashore. (If I hadn't spent all that time watching this I would have already been on season 3 of Desperate Housewives) (Or I could have written)

7) Making cupcakes and empanadas.....seems I have a small following of Dutch people that are ordering from me. This is a good thing but after baking and tasting and making icing and tasting and leftovers I am usually in such a sugar coma that I can't even think of writing. 


(and NOW beside still needing to write I really need to be going to the gym)

8) Daydreaming about the lottery... I admit it....I do.....leave me alone.

9) Oh and of course my job. Tomorrow is a big day. I am working an event which will involve me having to deal with a cash register.....Can you imagine? That should be fun....first off I do not speak Dutch and I only know numbers (kind of) up to 9 plus all the money here looks like Monopoly money so I do not take it seriously (they are very pretty to look at) AND there are 1 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent, 20 cent, 50 cent coins and 1 and 2 euro coins AND the bills come in different colors (pink, blue, orange) which I think that helps to tell the different values. They have pictues of Euorpean thingys all over them. I like to look at them. It is very possible that all hell could break loose at my register and I get fired. I am very excited about this adventure.


10) spent a chunk of time trying to persuade a few Americans back home to send me some Girl Scout cookies....I just felt left out.

I hope to get on track with my stories. I apologize again. In them meantime....How about you? How are you? What have you been doing?