A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 5 January 2021 - T for liquorice, market and tea

 Hello lovely ladies,

Happy New Year! I'm a little late to send you my wishes for 2021, but I am not at home. I am in the Netherlands visiting my 96 year old mother (against all government guidelines). I just wanted to see her (although we ar not allowed to hug or kiss). That's hard, but I'm glad to be here. 

So today I have no postcard, but lots of photos from Rotterdam.

In Holland the traditional New Year's treat is 'oliebollen'. (The round ball on the plate). They are deep fried sweet dough balls often with raisins in them. The two other things are apple fritters. Apple deep fried in  batter (sweet of course). None of us really enjoy deep fried stuff but we bought some for tradition's sake.

I always make a potato salad (like my mother before me). It contains (apart from potatoes and mayonaise) pulled beef, ghurkins, tiny pickled onions, beetroot, boiled eggs and sometimes lettuce. We omitted the lettuce this time. The date is carved from sliced beetroot.

We were officially in quarantine but we had to go shopping of course, so we chose Tuesday as there is a market outside mum's building. During Covid only food stalls allowed. 

This is the nut stall:

And typically the cheese vendor:

And this is where they sell fish:

In Holland face masks are not compulsary outside, but thankfully many people do wear them. They are compulsary on public transport and in shops.

I did a lot of cooking and baking for mum. We cleaned the freezer on the first day and the rest of the time was spent filling it up again with lots of small portions of nice meals and cakes. Here is a typical Dutch apple pie I made called 'appeltaart'.

Apart from defrosting and cleaning the freezer, our other yearly job is to take down the net curtains and wash them. Mum has no washing machine of her own, but there is a laundry on the ground floor. It works on tokens, which we buy at reception.

The other day we heard music outside and when we looked out of the window we saw the street organ:

It was raining so it is covered with a sheet. People usually throw money down, but mum lives on the 5th floor and I didn't know quite how to go about it. By the time I had wrapped some money in some paper, they had gone..

This morning (Monday) we had to go into town to take a covid test. We have to have a negative result to be able to fly or to enter Spain. Here I am waiting for the Metro taking us into town:

The lab was ten minutes walk from the station along this canal. One of the statues in the water had ben dressed as a santa.

One of the front doors of the houses we walked past. Most of them were in this style:

This is the bicycle storage at the back of the station:

As today is T-Day, organized and hosted by Bleubeard and Elizabeth, I wanted to share another drink related subject. I wanted to buy some herbal tea as hubby is suffering from bowel cramps. This is what we found:

It was a joy to behold so many different teas! We bought a packet of fennel tea in the end.

One last photo. The Dutch do like their liquorice. (I do too). I particularly like salted liquorice. Here is a selection in our local supermarket:

That's it from me today. 

I wish you all a happy T-Day,

Stay safe,

Hugs,

Lisca