Guus Bosman

Tonight I attended the rijsttafel dinner organized by the Dutch club in the Triangle, De Wieken.

There were at least 40 people and a large variety of food. I especially liked an Indonesian 'salad' consisting of mixed rice, shrimp, currants and chopped vegetables. There was a huge bag with krupuk. True to Dutch habit, the evening started at 5.00 pm and dinner was served pretty much right away. Quite a difference with yesterday's dinner. The party was in a club house of a community in North Raleigh, about 30 minutes away from us.

I brought some of the serundeng I made earlier this week and beets pickled based on a recipe my parents gave me, atjar beet. The latter worked out really well; with a subtle delicious flavor.

Someone I spoke with, of Indonesian descent, recommended a new store in Raleigh that carries a lot of real Indonesian ingredients, including dried shrimp paste (trassi), something I've been looking for for a while. I'll check it out next week.

It was a nice, relaxed evening and I enjoyed the company a lot.

Tonight I attended a presentation by Adam Parrish on the use of Maven in building Adobe Flex & Java projects.

Maven is routinely used to build Java-only project, but this presentation talked about using the Flex Mojos plug-ins to build projects that combine Flex front-ends with a Java back-end.

It was an interesting presentation/demo for a small but knowledgeable crowd. There was a a lot of opportunity to ask questions, and I learned more about large scale Flex projects. A well spent evening.

The evening was hosted by One Cow Standing in Durham. They have a foosbal table and a real beer tap with Yuengling in the conference room.

I made seroendeng tonight, an Indonesian mix of peanuts, coconut and spices.

It came out nicely; it has the mouth feel of the coconut that I like about seroendeng and was tasty. A next time I'll put a little more spices with the coconut so it has a stronger flavor. I added a tiny bit of sambal to the spices and that worked out great.

I found real gula jawa at the Asian store. I've never used it before, it's palm sugar (see picture, the dark brown stuff).

Saturday morning we did some last minute shopping in Wieringerwerf and Middenmeer, and during the day I packed my luggage. Ettie and Gerben came over and we had a nice dinner together (with kroket).

This morning we woke up around 4.30 am and were at the airport well on time, around 6.30 am. I brought a lot of luggage. My parents and I had a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Still sleepy on the plane, I read a little and soon I arrived in Heathrow. What a difference with the terminal in Munich last week, so alive and crowded with people! The flight from Heathrow to Raleigh/Durham took 9 hours. Longer than usual because we took a route more south to escape tropical storm Bill.

At the airport Belen and Esteban were waiting for me; a very nice welcome. They drove me home, lots to talk about, and at home I started unpacking.