The only fail in an Amsterdam weekend in my humble opinion is Brunch.

You wake up on Sunday head bit woolly and all you want is saturated fat, carbs, and caffeine… and perhaps an OJ.

Uitsmijter

Brunch in these parts is also Lunch, as in there is no distinction … same menu, every day of the week. And that menu is mostly Tosti’s (the basic small toasted sandwich, cheese, ham, tomato sometimes with spicy sambal, served cut in half with a splodge of Ketchup for dipping) or Uitsmijter** - pronounced Outs-my-ter with some h’s thrown in to achieve the mandatory guttural sound. (this is 1 or 2 slices of bread, topped with 2 slices of ham, melted cheese and 2 fried eggs). If you are very lucky you might get Pannenkoeken, pancakes, that look like crepes but are thicker and greasier, with a variety of toppings, my favourite is apple and bacon – don’t ask just eat, its good I promise.
Anyhow, there are times that this just does not cut it, and what you want, nay what you *need*, is a really good fry up or fluffy pancakes and bacon, or eggs benedict. That was hard to source, until Englishman Jason came along, and began his project of love….

Love Food

One Sunday a month in Cafe Finch on Nordmarkt, Jason crafted his Seasonal Brunch menu… and then his Dinner menu… then his Take Away menu

On the last Love Food Sunday, 29th March, I arranged to meet with two of my friends Marie & Franklin for brunch. Maries Brother and his Girlfriend were in town for the weekend so they came along too. I had been to a Drag Party the night before, and was in real need of this life saving saturated goodness!

We were not disappointed, Fresh OJ and coffees were served post haste, (prompt service with charm is a rarity here) and we looked at the menu. In unison we all plumped for the Full Monty

The Full Monty…
The breakfast that made English men and women the fine people they are today!  2 rashers of thick cut English bacon, 1 of our own home made English pork sausages, a poached egg, fried mushrooms, a grilled tomato, a slice of Yorkshire black pudding and baked beans from a tin. Served with a round of toast & butter and a choice of ketchup or HP Sauce.

The sausages were instantly recognisable as home made, and boy were they meaty perfection. Thick bacon and runny egg, toast… I was in heaven, as were Marie and Franklin, the two tourists were looking at us a bit strange, “yeah its a fry, its good, but its just a fry”  – Just a Fry!! Never! You know when you get exactly what you’ve been searching for, this was it, now I knew my weekends (at least once a month) were complete!

So, imagine my happiness when this appeared in my DM window the other day.

Love food for the Win!! Now I can have my favourites every Sunday. And with it being a regular fixture I can explore the menu and try other things, not in fear that I will be missing out on my Full Monty for another month.

Think I’ll have to have the Full Mikey next time….

The Full Mikey…
The American classic breakfast. Choice of bacon or homemade sausage, hash browns, scrambled eggs, 2 American Pancakes with butter and maple syrup and a side order of toast

Oh and to complete the Win, Finch is in a lovely location, with a great terasse and cool staff. Free Wifi and a full bar (if its hair of the dog, or an early start you are after). Its perfectly placed for a cycle around Westerpark after, and perhaps a fresh mint tea in Het Ketelhuis cinema…. but that’s for another post

Anyhow, I heartily recommend you hit Cafe Finch if you are here on a Sunday and want to try Amsterdam’s best Sunday Brunch at Love Food!

See you there ….

**Ps potted history of Uitsmijter – it means Bouncer, as in big burly lad standing outside a nightclub. And is reputed to be “invented” by students, as the thing you served your mates after a night out and before you kicked them out… bit of soakage… and that it is… but its no fryup!

The Apprentice is a hot topic, even Batt O’Keeffe is talking about them…. no, really he is….

Continuing with the Live Blogging in tandem with Culch.ie, tonight you can join in the commentary.

Debra Barr

Lets face it, car crash tv is pointless without others to rubberneck with you!

So lets recap,
Culch.ie Darren summarized Ep 3 nicely here
We were in almost universal hatred of James, but for what its worth I dislike Debra more!

If you want to vote on who you think should go.. try here

LoLo Ball

Last week we lost Majid Nagra, you can read his interview here on the Telegraph Apprentice Blog.

The task being  to develop a new home fitness product. The rules were simply that it had to be portable, retail at £30 and be designed, built and marketed in just two days. The winning design was the Body Rocker (working title “bum ball”), which provides a new way to work the abs, and trim stomach fat.

While I agree the product created by Team Empire, was utterly rubbish, I thought the Body Rocker by Team Ignite looked like a cross between a potty and the 80′s toy Lolo Ball

There was a showdown in the boardroom between Jabbering James and Bighead Ben… but poor Mousy Majid got it in the neck and Sir Allen pronounced him Fired!

This week is one of Margret’s favorite tasks, (you don’t believe me? read it here) The Beauty Product Launch.

the candidates have to come up with ideas for two different body care products, make them in a specialist laboratory on the south coast and sell them to consumers in London the following day. They’re also responsible for designing the packaging. So they’re under extreme time pressure, and they need to use a variety of skills. And, as always, they need to remember the lessons of the previous weeks..

James & Debra in a boat, who walks the plank?

Sir Allen picks the leaders!
There’s more dressing up – remember the Togas!,
Whats on the shopping list?
Honey Soap and Seaweed Bathfoam!

So tune in and blog with us, to get all the gossip on who we’ll be stuck with and who we’ll wave goodbye to.

To join, come back here before 9pm GMT and click into the box below.

If you are really eager, and we all love the eager folk email me (elf(@)elfinamsterdam(.)com – remove brackets) or DM me and I’ll add you to the panelists!

My street approaching dawn

I’ve been meaning for a while to do a proper, “now I’m here a year post” but I’ve been putting it off for many reasons.

Some are obvious, busy, traveling, work… all that jazz, and some are less obvious, or maybe just harder to face and put in writing.

I moved here in a bit of a whirlwind to be honest,  I am a bit of a procrastinator, I like my rut, and am happy with the known. I’m certainly not a risk-taker. So when the job was offered, I said yes mostly as I had this “now or never” feeling, either I got off my ass and tried living, and earning my living (not just staying with family or studying) in another country, or I just shut up about it, stayed put and struck it off the list without trying.

I knew in my heart that if I was to sit and think to deeply about moving or its implications that I would find a million reasons not to do it, some real and some exaggerated. But they would build a wall in my head I wouldn’t be inclined to cross, so in all honesty, apart from consulting  the main players in my life and doing a few quick financial calculations, I really didn’t put a lot of thought into it.

Signs were, to be honest, when I think back on the first few weeks here I hardly remember them at all. I managed to source my lovely apartment on the internet before moving over, and a great friend of Catriona’s went to have a look at it for me, as she worked at the end of the street, and declared it reasonably sound. Like many of my decisions around this move it was snap and based mostly on whimsy. I loved the lamp in the sitting room and the colour of the wall in the kitchen. Having no photos of the bedroom or bathroom I was glad to be reassured by Prina that both did indeed exist.

I arrived on Easter Saturday morning in snow, as you do, to begin work on the Tuesday after Easter, with @fontfiddler leaving on the Thursday. Having never even come to Amsterdam on so much as a weekend break before, this was uncharted territory, but it was Europe not Outer Mongolia so I reassured myself with that and moved along.

Canalside Terasse of my fave Cafe & Eethuis

More internetting found various meetup and expat groups. With the summer starting to appear people were eager to shake off the winter indoors, and meet on terasses for beers and laughs. By May I had made a pretty neat core group of friends, most of whom I still count as good friends.

Mates from home and family came to stay, we had Queens Day and Canal Pride, and I was enjoying the freedom of beginning again, and the random beauty of the city.

Weekly trips to Nordmarket and my local bar(s) Cafe Chris, In de Wildeman and Cafe de Nieuwe Lelie. Along with meals in low maintenance eetcafe’s were fun and often wound well into the night. My core group of friends cemented and some new ones came along, it was getting to the stage where we all knew what the others were about and it was comfortable and fun. Not like at the beginning where it seemed like an interminable series of “first dates”, with the same questions, How long are you here?, What do you do?, Where do you work?. By July we all knew each other and it seemed as if I had always lived here in a funny way.

Work was ok, I knew taking on the job the projects would be varied, large and a bit tedious. Also that I would for the most part be working totally alone. I was finding that hard, having come from a close knit group in my last company with a real sense of family more than team. Early on I declared myself far more “work-sick” than “home-sick”, I think that is something that will remain with me, and some days it gets me down.

Being away from my family and friends, and especially @fontfiddler was the bit that I tried very hard not to think about. I called everyday and went home pretty much every 4/5 weeks. But I was missing seeing my nephew and having @fontfiddler there in the evening when I came home.

Our Hotel from Central Park

On the whole I find living here to be not much different to living in Dublin.  Amsterdam is small and easily navigated. The people are friendly, they all, much to my dismay speak brilliant English, so its easy to chat to people, if you are happy not to practice your Dutch  Service is woeful in most places, they are a bit blunt and pretty much all think they are right all the time.  I know these are generalizations, but they are the same generalizations many of my expat mates have come to, so I can be shot with the majority.

Throughout the Autumn, I was mostly looking forward to going to NYC with @fontfiddler in October, which was amazing and one of the real highlights of not just this year but many a year.

I had heard the Winter in Amsterdam was depressing, but mostly from Americans, so I thought, well perhaps they are just not used to it. I’ll be fine, after an Irish winter, after many winters as as student in Limerick, how hard can a winter here be?

Yeah it was pretty miserable.

Cycling was out for me as being honest, street lighting isn’t great here, especially along the canals, and fog is all prevailing. There is a constant dampness, that despite being Irish, was really tough, and when it rained …. yeah… lots. This winter was (as for everyone in Europe) a tough one. The nights seemed never ending, and no one wanted to meet up during the week, so it was Monday to Friday bed-work-home and repeat…

With the talk of recession and lack of prospects at home, and the never ending winter, I really found that isolation was creeping up. I’m glad to say that the spring has finally sprung, and things are on the move. While I may be here for another 12-18 months things will change over the next few and I hope that next winter will be easier.

All this said, I do like it here. I think winter ’08 took a lot out of me and it was hard for a while to see the wood for the trees.  The truths being, that I miss having my family nearby, I miss having  lots going on around me at work,  I miss my old work friends a lot, have not changed. I think this experiment has proven that I can live away and be relatively successful with it, but that there is no shame in saying that I like living in Ireland. For all its flaws.

Amsterdam is a great city to be in right now, and with open arms I welcome any bloggers or blog readers to come visit.

I am very proud of my foster city, and currently loving my return to biking after the winter. So don your cycling legs and put your beer drinking head on and come visit!

Beertje en Bitterballen!

Hello and welcome to the Easter Drinky Link.

At present I am at home in my mom’s and this is brought to you on macbook (@fontfiddler’s macbook) so we’ll see if bloging is better by mac certainly there are enough mac bloggers so it cant be that hard! lol

Ok on with the Drinky, it being Easter, there is really only one way to go!

Easter Bunny

• 1 1/2 oz Creme De Cacao
• 1/2 oz Vodka
• 1 teaspoon Chocolate Syrup
• 1 teaspoon Cherry Brandy

Directions:
1. Shake creme de cacao and vodka with ice.
2. Strain over ice in an old-fashioned glass.
3. Float chocolate syrup and cherry brandy.

So here I am watching *roll eyes* Britain’s got talent with my Mum and @fontfiddler so if this seems off kilter but its a bit hard to concentrate, as Britain’s answer to the Kelly Family sing their hearts out, if for some reason you are interested, check this piece out or this piece, burlesque wardrobe malfunction.

Anyway, that cocktail is YUM and you should try it.

So furthermore with the links!!

This week was Ireland’s April 09 Bludget, avidly commentated on around the web’s and heavily Liveblogged. With over 150 livebloggers well done to Lexia and Suzie for moderating and leading the informative and smartass amongst us.

Even the Flatmates got in on the action, but it seems they weren’t to keen on listening to the reactions.

Anyone that follows me on twitter, will know that Im thinking about buying a new laptop, the one i have now is nealry 3yrs old and is really only good for blogging and surfing, but not the daily encoding and transcoding that i have call for. I’m somewhere between a MacBook 2.4ghz and a Sony Vaio with equal spec but with the dreaded Vista. At least until Windows 7 is released.

Any suggestions please please let me know!

If all else fails and I can’t decide, I may end up getting this….

Laptop that rolls up

Yes? No?

Another piece of tech I think is interesting is the Pogoplug, a plug type device that turns and USB storage into a networked drive, but better yet, an internet accessible plug and play drive Handy for travelers and accessing documents on the move.

I usually find something bike related of interest, and I have to say, I’m not the most knowledgeable cyclist. But I’ve always wondered why some sport saddles have a split in the middle

I don’t know about you, and with the focus in Irish media being about Bludget 09 and the Italian Earthquake this may have slipped under the radar, but the story of the young Uncle and Nephew in Doncaster, UK that were attacked by two brothers near an unused quarry. Disturbing enough if both the victims and accused were older than 12. But at 11, 10 & 9 this story is a chilling repeat of the Jamie Bulger murder.

I’m home for a few days over the Easter with my family. I love spending time with my young nephew, and sharing our mutual nerdy passions for Lego and Star Wars, which as John Keyes discovered, is even better when watched with the fresh eyes of younger family members!

The Lovely Lottie came to a decision about happiness, have to say I love the sentiment of this post,

“When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life.

When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I wrote down “happy.”

They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

the Sensational Sweary got annoyed about how some can judge the nature of friendships began on the internet,

And this has brought me to the point where I might have to stop myself piercing with an acid-tipped spear the fuckwits who claim that the Information Age, or the rise of Social Networking sites, or the evils of texting instead of popping by for tea, or whatever new-fangled gimmick is eroding the morality of our children, has lead to our being completely dissociated from society and from human contact. If it hadn’t been for this great evil internet behemoth not only would we not have been able to keep up with Best Man’s latest haircuts (Skype video calls feed the curtain-twitcher in all of us), but when he was injured we would have had no way of knowing about it. We wouldn’t have forged a tie between him lying in a hospital and all those strangers on Twitter who paused for the sake of empathy. His dad wouldn’t have been able to keep Best Man’s friends informed of how he was doing. We’d have been cut off from a friend we love, blind to everything but that which happens right in front of us. And if the Old Testament is right, and information was that which got Eve fecked out on her arse, well then I’m fucking happy to join her. I am human, after all.

and the Amazing Ann gave us some tips on SEO Optimization

In your goal to improve your search engine rankings, it’s very easy to overly focus on all these words and numbers — and lose sight that this is a good way to guide you to the information that your target market is looking for. So be organised in your research, use your site map, prioritise and don’t lose sight of the fact that these searches are being made by individuals that are interested in what you have to offer, so talk to them in their own terms

Being a bit of a closet Ad nut, a campaign that caught my attention was MTV.org’s Our Planet’s Losing Patience

And finally I leave you with this ….

Preeeeeetttttyyyy LED’s:)

For what its worth, blogging on the Mac was a bit slow and frustrating, but once i got used to the comands and keystrokes, it was ok and worked well. Only minus point was the inability to open more than 15 tabs in the one Firefox window, but maybe I ask too much of my computing systems.