Got the tip from my best friend Servaas at Web 2.0

This is bad news for all of us. The climate will be changed forever!

I was convinced that The Netherlands was doing a good job by different kind of measures concerning the environment. To be honest I always thought that we are a respectable country.
But just like many other countries we are dealing in the emission rights of developing countries to get to the levels that was agreed on.

I don’t like that!

This is because The Netherlands, like its translation Low Countries says, is below sealevel and therefore quite vulnerable for the flooding of parts of the country. Selected areas are needed to be used to act as a buffer. At least this is the idea.
Territories can serve as reservoirs for rainfall.

I am not sure…

Source: Taalpost – Dutch only

“The environment must come to the first place and platic bags are not only ugly, but for all damaging the environment on land and water”.

Tourism is the main source of income to the island and it is on one of the main apportionment routes of the East African mainland. About 200 (metric) ton of plastic bags is passing the port of Zanzibar every month.

In The Netherlands it is quite normal to take stronger bags to the supermarket that you can use several times. But when you go shopping in little immigrant supermarkets (that I like!!) you get about a bag per bought product, just like in big supermarkets in Belgium and France and many more countries.
For smaller purchases I don’t need plastic bags or just one for everything I buy, and I take a big shopping bag otherwise.

Source: 20 Minuten – German language / Swiss source

There are some drinks I like they don’t sell in bottles. But the others I could have bought in bottles, but then the bubbles are gone within a short period of time. I don’t drink it that much.

What should I do? Start to learn drinking drinks with less or no bubbles, or keep on drinking from cans, next to the juices and tea I already drink?!

But less…

Happy Birthday, Dear SIIIIM. Happy Birthday to You!!

Without You, my life would be quite, quite different!

Source: Cellular News

Braveheart star Mel Gibson is an incorrigible anti-Semite, we knew that.
Now we have the proof! It is on tape!

Source: dutchclick.com
Before at TheCrab

Last weekend I was discussing the forms of pasta with my buddy bacteria. Pasta is a great product to make great dishes with.

We were discussing my idea that a certain sauces are more suitable than others with the different kinds of pasta and indeed taste different. The exact question was whether this is Italian tradition or that pasta in other form really will really taste different while being made of exactly the same material (grano duro).

I prefer to eat my spicy arabiata sauce with (and is most of the time served with) penne, but it will okay with spagetti.
Eating it with tagliatelle is in fact not done and to my opinion not as good as with penne.
Tagliatelle you eat with a good creamy mushroom sauce.

So are we talking tradition or does the form of pasta really make that it tastes different with another (the wrong?) sauce?!

I love what I am doing now at a public library, but can’t stop waching every cooking program on television.
Chefs starting a new restaurant and searching for a chef, just plain vanilla cooking programs, chefs helping restaurants to survive and so on.

But my hero is still Jamie Oliver. He was and after seeing his Jamies School Diner Project he will be my hero forever.
Yes, I know we are talking a part marketing here, but his reaction on his repeated setbacks are so pure. I could feel his frustration and got emotional while seeing these kids eating real shit stuff and just not trying the great courses Jamie made for them.

They didn’t even know the difference between a onion, potato and a kiwi.
My goodness!!

And NO, I am not a girl!

LINK: Jamie Schooldiners

I thought about this before. We, ‘normal people’ are trying to get most out of our relationships, but in this program I heard about marriages of 1 1/2 month…

What is going wrong there, in this music/movies industry? Is there something I don’t understand?

[I could love you forever, Minnie! ;-) ]

A dutch/belgian journalist, Hans Knoop (dutch only), did find out (okay, repeated after some German journalists), that it’s founder, Otto Beisheim, started his company with SS-money. Money that was confiscated and stolen in WWII, mostly from Jews.

Question is whether my not buying at MediaMarkt contribute to stop this company? If I would succeed, together with others, to bring that company down, how many people will lose their jobs?
I am sure that about 99,99% of the personel didn’t know anything about it’s founders dark past.

And: IBM wasn’t very clean too. Maybe not that personally dirty as this Beisheim-guy, but still…

Am I judge, or will the Almighty be their judge?!

LINKs : Otto Beisheim Wikipedia EN / Wikipedia DE

LINKs [german] : MediaMarkt / Metro / Makro NL / Saturn / Hansa / Kaufhof

I would never, never have spend a € 53 to go there myself, but with my girlfriend and three young kids I had to go (= € 191,- for entrance, € 8,- parking).
Far from the longest day of my life, but not really my cup of tea to be honest. I did buy a great t-shirt over there: “I am a surviver of Disneyland Resort Paris.”

[okay...I am lying! They don't sell these overthere...]

Good news for the [German] greenies…

The coming World Cup Football will be the first that did take a great deal of environmental measures for the games.
Goal of this is to organise the first big “climate neutral” sports event. A great initiative to my opinion.

Targets are set for refuse, the use of transportation, energy and water.
The lights (floods?) that will light the games have new lamps that only use half of the energy of the older ones, the big signs with advertisements will be recyclable and the rain water will be collected for further use for instance.

I think the Germans are making a nice start with this, but shouldn’t win the games…[hey, I am still dutch... ;-) ] Next to all of that I am so glad that I don’t have too look at these games!!!

LINK : GreenGoal
LINK : UNEP

As I love different kids of food, and especially chocolate and dairy (yogurt!) products, france is a good place to be.

What I am very surprised about is the fact that products sold in france don’t have an ingredient declaration on the label. So you know nothing about its nutritional value. No way to know how much fat, sugar, carbohydrate, and so on are in the products.

I think that it is, in this time of increasing number of potbellies, important to know how much of what you are getting out of your food.

It is time to get the European laws on one line concerning this matter. The really stupid and patronizing laws they can keep!
[and yes, I know the french seem to be more slender in general ;-) ]

We’ve had the Jamie Oliver programs about non-cooks becoming cooks, programs about chefs who try to get restaurants out of their self caused misery.
Now people running restaurants and cooks who have been working in restaurants for ages are tested to become the chef in this new restaurant of Den Blijker.

Every episode I get shocked more and more. The hobby cooks (one woman!) who take part in the test lack basic knowledge and therefore have difficult times. That is something I understand. It is just a matter of education.
But the guys that are in professional kitchens for 10 to 20 years now aren’t doing much better or maybe even worse.
They don’t recognize the different sorts of meat, can’t make fresh mayonnaise or a choux pastry, can’t open an oister properly.
As a veggie it isn’t about the sort of food, but just the fact that these cooks and chefs don’t know enough of the food they are preparing. “Most of the time we get these things ready-to-use from the supplier” is their answer.
They just have basic knowledge about food, their main product!

I thought about sending them back to school, but that is not a good solution.

Get them out of the kitchen and let them become bus drivers!!!