A weekend in Bruges

Sander and I took a mini holiday to Belgium this weekend.  I wrote a final on Friday, so this was one of my free weekends to enjoy and we decided to escape early on Friday and head to Bruges.

If I was forced to describe the city of Bruges in one word, it would be adorable.

The city is so quaint and it literally charmed the pants off of me.

See:

My catch phrase of the day was "it's so cute I'm going to die".  Honestly, every nook and cranny in that city just made me smile.  We had a wonderful day exploring and of course having Belgian beer and waffles!! 

We also watched a candy demonstration which blew both of our minds.  We initially started watching because the guy was stretching out the candy on this hook and it looked really neat.  They then started using different colors and assembling them into what we thought was the most pathetic stack of gooey messy candy.  It wasn't until I saw the little candies on the ledge that I realized what he was making! The end product was a delicious hard candy which we got to taste as he cut the strings into tiny pieces.

These are all handmade!! I had no idea the process was so intricate! 

It was a wonderful little trip and I cannot wait to return sometime.  One day in that gorgeous city just was not enough! 

Totally nuts!

Yesterday, Nienke and I cracked a kilo of these lovely nuts (that were collected throughout Utrecht) and made the most amazing hazelnut pie. Such a fun baking adventure!! Nut hunting is definitely on my agenda for next fall!

Pie Night and Fall Colours

Pumpkin Pie Night

Thanksgiving wasn't quite complete without a pumpkin pie.  I had full intentions of making a pie for our lovely dinner, however, I ran into the slight problem of not being able to find a pumpkin! Pro-tip: pumpkins over here look different! I believe I did see a few pumpkins here and there, but they weren't the type of pumpkin I was used to, so I walked right past them.  Linda was kind enough to bring one the day of our dinner, so we whipped up a quick no-bake pumpkin cheesecake dessert (which was delicious), but I still had the craving for a real pumpkin pie.

Then the following week, I found a real pumpkin (or rather, the type of pumpkin I'm used to seeing) and I was inspired to give this whole pie thing a go.  It was so good! There was some improvising (*ahem, using a spring form pan cause we had no pie plate), but in the end, it was pretty darn close to the real thing.  Of course, being that it was my first ever pie crust, there were some improvements to be made, however, I have to say, for my first go at pumpkin pie, I was pretty proud of us!

A Beautiful Fall Day

The trees around here have been absolutely amazing the last couple of weeks.  I've been dying to get out there and enjoy the colours  (including a beautiful blue sky), but I've been so incredibly busy with school (which is going well, by the way.  I officially passed my first course!).  Yesterday, I finally made it out to the forest area for an afternoon walk.  I really thought I had missed most of the leaves (all the trees by our place are bare by now), but I was pleasantly surprised to see some trees still full!