On JUMBO, Apple Pie and Plaice

The surprise apple pie from JUMBO.

Up close and personal. I wonder about the batter they used The pastry is what I like to eat the most in the pie actually.

Hubby indulged with whipped cream on a slice of the pie while I took not one, not two, but three bites from it...instead of the one bite which I had intended!

Vegetarian red curry for dinner. I love its creaminess! Made with love.

Back from Almere on a Thursday night, we had a simple oven food with salad. Three popiahs, three chicken nuggets, two chicken balls, one sausage, two IKEA hash browns with lots of salad shared between the both of us.

The plaice fish with remoulade sauce. I shall never forget the "high" I got from this fish. I just found from Wikipedia.org out this afternoon that the plaice is actually a flat fish with red spots on its body which I often see in zoo aquariums. I have touched this fish in the touch display aquariums before and its skin is quite wobbly. Hard to imagine that this is the fish I like so much!

Square shaped pasta in tomato sauce from JUMBO cooked for dinner on Wednesday night.

The good old Super de Boer grocery store was closed for one month beginning mid-February and it was reopened as JUMBO on Wednesday, March 7^th, 2012. Due to positive feedback, I had waited with trepidation for the reopening. JUMBO, according to my friends, is the most inexpensive Dutch grocery store. The management had made a pledge that if one were to find any product at another grocery store more expensive than products sold at JUMBO, the customer is entitled to receive the product for free. Not only that, the price will be immediately lowered; far lower than the product in the other grocery store which sold the product cheaper in the first place. The catch is that the price has to be the regular price as opposed to the seasonal on and off discount.  

On Saturday afternoon, hubby and I had gone for a stroll to the fish shop. After our stroll, we went to the morning market which now stretches into the Paardenmaarkt (Horse Market) Square. There used to be construction work ongoing in this very square for the past year. Now the square has been flattened out and it is used for exhibition purposes; the first one after its construction work was the Down Syndrome exhibition entitled “The Upside of Down”. Cleverly said. The photographs of the children featured were so cute and they had their own unique personality and quirks.

Today, the square was bustling with the ­­­market. I preferred that part of the market was in the square because everything looks orderly; being in one place. I did enjoy walking down the narrow streets for the market but it was not convenient to tussle with the crowd there. Too close for my comfort space.

Hubby and I bought some groceries. We came in intending to buy only tomatoes and mushrooms. Yet we walked out buying drinks and dessert too. Hubby said it was about time we indulged. The stars must have been in our favour. We received a round apple pie from JUMBO. Our receipt was more than 25 Euros, so we got the apple pie for free. We were not intending to make use of the offer so all the more it was a pleasant surprise.

Little notes here and there – JUMBO was crowded with people. Newly revamped, yellow was their company colour from the aisles to the cashier’s uniforms. The dairy section was brought forward near the cashier; a far opposite from Super de Boer.

Most Dutch grocery stores charge 25 cents for a plastic bag. JUMBO gave out their yellow plastic bags for free and had packing staff who put the groceries into your plastic bag for you. This is not a surprise in Malaysia as staff generally do that, but in Holland, this is unheard of.

The cashier is king while the customer is the serviceman. The cashier just scans your product and lets it slide down the conveyer belt whereupon you have to scramble to put your stuff in your own plastic bag or backpack or whatever it is you brought along to carry your own groceries.  

So while we can, we will definitely enjoy this service. Brings me back to the heyday of shopping with my parents who buy groceries by the ton!

On the way back home, we past part of the market whereupon we chose to have a Vietnamese loempia (popiah/spring roll). I stress on the word “chose” as we did want to eat without the pang of guilt. I realise that beating yourself silly after eating is not going to make you lose weight, no matter how bad you feel. Why suffer the self-punishment and make excuses for indulging when all you really want honestly is to eat? We enjoyed the loempia to the max!

Back at our penthouse, hubby immediately had a piece of the apple pie topped with whipped cream. He could not resist. We both drank strawberry fruit milk. It was creamy and milky.

Earlier in the day, I had missed my bus by just one minute. Dutch punctuality speaks for itself. The bus was due to come at 9.37 am. I huffed and puffed all my way through the streets and at 9.37 am, I was at the white ridge bridge just 200 meters away from the bus stop. I saw the two buses which I think I could take. I knew I could not run in time because I was going quite my maximum speed for running. Then I walked.

I hoped that some other bus might also take me to the gym. It took me one full minute later to arrive at the bus stop. It was 9.38 am. Just one minute late. Anyhow, still on Malaysian mode, I thought one minute does not count. I sat on the unoccupied seats there. It was good that hubby had packed a cereal bar for me. I had not had my breakfast because I rushed out of the house. I had the cereal bar for breakfast and spent five minutes at the bus stop before realising that the bus is not going to come.

So I walked home very slowly this time. At home I did my DVD Aerobics exercise for an hour. So you could say it was the same thing as going to the gym.

Perhaps you could say that my main motivation for going to the gym yesterday was to eat fish! How could that be? This is because on Wednesday, when I was caught in the rain on the way back from the gym, I sought shelter at a fish shop. While waiting for the rain to stop, I ordered (schol filet) plaice fillet.

The plaice was God sent! It was so delicious! They made it fresh for me. They deep fried the plaice there and then. The fish shop in Alkmaar does not do that. They merely microwave the already cooked fish for you.

The taste of fresh fish was so good that I was licking up the remoulade sauce as well. I was on a fish high. It was just like a caffeine high. I did not mind the rain after that. I walked home in the rain, happy and energetic. (Although that same afternoon, I caught a cold. My mother in law was quite concerned when my nose was dripping like a runaway train!) It was the start of my on and off fever till today. Already five days having a slight fever.

Since having that fish on Wednesday, its taste lingered still in my head subconsciously. So yesterday, my main motivation was fish after gym. I was disappointed missing the bus not for the gym but for the fish after the gym!

Man-luck was on my side. My hubby wanted to go for a walk anyway and said we could walk until the fish shop which was thirty minutes away so that I could have my fish there and he would get his more than thirty minutes walk (one hour walk in fact). So we were there and hubby saw me relishing every bite of the plaice that he wanted to take a bite from it. And he did.

It was to my amazement that hubby enjoyed the plaice as much as I did. He liked it a lot. Hubby has never eaten real fish before. The closest he got is oven-baked fish filet and vegetarian fish. Now he enjoyed this particular fish – plaice a lot. He took almost half my serving. He said it tasted good and does not have a fishy smell. I was glad because we could eat together.

For dinner, hubby cooked vegetarian red curry. Initially he thought of red curry with chicken. However I suggested a wholly vegetarian meal because we were still on a loose diet if not a strict diet. He added tomatoes, mushrooms, corn, kidney beans, paprika and salad mix into the curry. It was creamy and mouth-watering. I felt that it was more like a vegetable soup because the curry was not spicy at all.

2133,

March 11^th, 2012