I had a healthy lunch today.

Tonight we went for our first sub-freezing run of this year. It was cold, but with long sleeves and a cap it wasn't too bad.

We had pizza tonight from the dough I prepared last Sunday. I placed the dough in the fridge and now, 4 days later, it still worked.

The pizza wasn't anything fancy: just olives with the left over Fontina cheese and a bit of mozzarella. It came out nicely -- I used fresh olives instead of canned ones and it makes a big difference. I underestimated the time it takes to make the pizza so we had dinner pretty late.

For the regular reader it no surprise if I say that I like cooking. Like father, like son: Jaap is experimenting with making camembert cheese. A very interesting experiment -- good luck!

Yesterday afternoon I cooked a recipe from La Bela Vita, a book with recipes from Tuscany, Italy. It has a beautiful picture of their four cheese calzones so that recipe was the first one I tried.

It took a lot of work to make the dough and the stuffing but there is something very satisfying about making dough and baking. The recipe called for chopped thyme in the dough, that was a nice touch.

The main part of the stuffing was a mixture of different cheeses. I used Bulgarian feta cheese, a little bit of Fontina and Parmigiano-Regiano and mozzarella. In addition, I put fresh oregan, parsley and basil, chopped roasted peppers and meat from an Italian sausage. Lots of chopping!

The end result was very delicious. I don't have a picture of the inside of the calzone but there is a nice empty space in them, with a layer of the stuffing which looks white from the cheeses, and green from the fresh herbs.

The recipe book and the result.

The inside of the calzones.

Tonight we had boerenkoolstamppot for dinner. Don't you love those long Dutch words? I received the excellent advice to cook it with some bacon which worked out really well.

While traditionally paired with rookworst in Holland or kielbasa in countries where real rookworst is not available, tonight I served it bone-in pork chops with fresh mushrooms and thin slices of onion.

For the bacon I used North Country Smokehouse's cottage bacon that was cooked in a skillet for about 20 minutes. For the stamppot I used a recipe from a Dutch book and it called for onions. I found that a bit strange, since I don't remember that boerenkoolstamppot typically has onions in it. It worked well though: the onions made the dish more juicy and the result was delicious, especially combined with the crispy bacon.

For the Dutch readers: do you use onions in boerenkoolstamppot?

Boerenkoolstamppot.

Dutch cheese is the best cheese in the world, and I brought about 6 pounds coming back from Holland this weekend.

I went to the market in Wieringerwerf, and took 3 chunks of different types of cheese, ranging from medium old to very old ('crumbling'). So delicious!

I felt like cooking something special tonight and I made a pizza.

I used a different recipe than usual: I used whole wheat flour for the pizza's dough. I could say that this is more healthy and that's why I choose it, but the reality is that the regular flour we had was expired.

Whole wheat flour is great for a pizza! It makes a delicious and strong crust. I baked the crust without topping for 5 minutes on 500 degrees before baking the whole pizza on 425 degrees, and it turned out to be crispy and just right.

A next time I should buy a different meat. I wasn't quite satisfied with the Genoa salami I used tonight: not enough spices and not tasty enough. The sauce worked out quite well, I made a light tomato sauce with a bit of garlic and fresh oregano.

Tonight I attended a Wine 101 class at A Southern Season in Chapel Hill. It was really enjoyable.

The wine buyer of A Southern Season, Jay Murrie, introduced the group of about 20 people to six different wines, three whites and three reds and explained some of the differences about the various grape types and wine regions. I don't know a great deal about wines and this was a very nice introduction.

Somewhat unusual post-Sideways, I don't really care for Pinot Noir too much (or perhaps I haven't found the right one yet). A very pleasant surprise was the 2006 Merkelbach Urziger Wurzgaten Riesling Spatlese, a German sweet wine. I didn't think I would like it at all: a sweet, white wine but it was quite good.

I took a cab to the store because I wasn't sure how much drinking would be involved. I'm happy I did -- those six glasses were well over my driving limit.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day, and this weekend is the start of the summer season. The weather is excellent; it's close to 90 degrees.

I made a summer lunch: baked caprese salad (slices of baguette with tomato, mozzarella and basil) with an insalata mista from radicchio, arugula and cumcumber.

We had a little bit of wine left from last night (Luigi Bosca, one of my favorites) and it was a delicious meal.

Are you Americanized if you have to look up how much 150 milliliter is in cups?

A while ago we bought an electric grill. I use it on the balcony and it's great as it gives a real grilling flavor, and it's much nicer to grill food outside.

Tonight we had kebabs from Whole Foods: chicken with bell peppers and onions. Delicious, but 1 kebab is too much for 1 person. I made some Indonesian peanut sauce on the side.

By the way, 150 milliliter is slightly over 0.6 cups.

When I worked in Rosslyn we often went for lunch in Pho, a Vietnamese restaurant.

They serve a number of delicious dishes, and I especially like the noodles soup with Vietnamese meatballs. There is always Sriracha sauce on the table, a hot chili sauce. I'd never tried the sauce before and I really like it. It has a natural deep red color, and it's very spicy and very tasty.

I found it in A Southern Season two weeks ago and bought a bottle. Tonight I had green beans and it worked great with this Sriracha sauce.