DutchGirl's journal

[singvestor]

I can recommend Gennaro Contaldo's recipes - lot of them are on YouTube. Very simple and an easy way to increase the cooking reportoire. If you can eat spicy food, I can recommend the Thai curry pastes from the Asian supermarket, like this one: https://www.tjinstoko.eu/en/cock-brand- ... -400g.html - so easy to make many different curry dishes

[DutchGirl]

Thanks! So far for this month I have tried one new recipe. In the supermarket one can buy boxes that contain all the ingredients for one specific meal. So I bought a "traybake" veggie meal and made it, and it was surprisingly good. Yeah! Now I want to try to replicate that by myself. Buy the veggies and the potatoes separately, come up with a mix of herbs to add, and try to create a healthy(ish), nourishing traybake.

A few days ago I had dinner with my ex-colleagues from my previous job. It was nice to see them again. One of them is an excellent cook, and I got some more advice from her (for example to make some selfmade pasta sauce for multiple meals and freeze some portions).

What I do like about some meals is that you can do the most work early in the day. (Or even on a separate day). Because I often don't feel like cooking, and don't have a lot of energy, when it's almost time for dinner. So maybe I should focus on learning some recipes where indeed you can do a lot of the work beforehand.

The dinner with my ex-colleagues also showed me that it was a really really really good step to move away from that job. I heard a few things that made me roll my eyes now, but I can't imagine how it would have felt if I still was a part of that organisation. So I was thankful, again, that I made the switch when I did. (Yes, even with the new manager being slightly unfair about having to do my work at the office where I can just as well WFH).

Now, Monday and Wednesday are workdays for me. Thursday has now become my "volunteer work" day, with in the afternoon volunteering at the food bank, and in the evening volunteering as a language buddy. Tuesday and Friday (and the weekend) have no obligations.
I go to the gym two to three times per week, on days when I'm not working. I am slowly increasing the weights for the exercises, progress is nice. On Tuesday I have my choir practice.

It looks ideal when I write this down. It hasn't felt like this over the last couple of weeks, but I had a lot of extra obligations during these weeks that don't happen all the time (the dentist, tax paperwork preparation, a meeting, coffee meetings with friends), and I have also been slightly under the weather for a week which led to just being able to do the bear minimum. Things are looking up.

Financially, the stock market has been doing nicely this year so far, so my investments have grown by 3% already, which is nice to see. My income has been significantly lower so far than my expenses, but this should improve with holiday money in May and a big tax refund by June (NB for practical reasons we always have a big refund, there's little that can be done about this in the Dutch tax system). As said before, I should more or less be able to cover my ongoing expenses from my income (paychecks + tax refund from last year (which represents what this year's paychecks would actually be like if the withholding was correct)), and then my investments should be able to grow unperturbed.

Things are humming along nicely. Over the next few months I want to lose some weight, clean up our house somewhat, and grow into my volunteer role at the food bank. There are two annual singing events coming up that I'm looking forward to. And finally, I want to have some more fun - which needs to be planned sometimes in my life, or else it's not happening (rolling my eyes at myself).

[frugaldoc]

Sounds like a pleasant, relatively low-stress schedule you have each week. What sort of choir do you sing in? I had thought of joining a choir a few years ago but am deathly afraid of singing solo in front of someone (even for an audition). I had considered vocal lessons to get over that fear but it seemed like a superfluous expense at the time and now I am not in the position to do such a thing.

[DutchGirl]

Maybe you can start a choir or singing group at the ship, frugaldoc? Maybe there's even someone around who has some official training in music to guide the group?

We're a local women's choir (because too few men would join) that sings "easy" pop songs from say the 1970s onward. We generally have three to four voice types for the songs. We have been practicing "Dreamer" by Supertramp (it's a new song to us) for weeks now, but the latter part still trips us up. We're pretty amazing at singing Adele's "Easy on me" and I also love how we do "Sway" (apparently quite an old song, see here).
It's just fun, we're not extremely good. Sometimes we go off the rails when rehearsing, but (luckily) my boyfriend was pleasantly surprised when he came to a performance.

Here in the Netherlands there are also one-day events where you sign up to sing for one day: arrive in the morning, rehearse all the songs (that you've also already practiced at home, hopefully) and perform in the evening. It could be called a "scratch" - as in: starting from scratch. I'm going to do one of those this Saturday in Leiden, and it's a massive event with hundreds of singers from all over the Netherlands (and beyond perhaps). So you can't even hear yourself sing if you tried, ha. But it's fun.
Maybe that's something that you could do, if one happens to happen when you're on leave.

[DutchGirl]

So, tonight I finished collecting the paperwork/evidence for our income taxes; now the accountant will create a concept of how he wants to file for us and then we can approve that concept (or have it changed). One can file the tax "paper"work on March 1st here, but it took me a few more weeks to collect everything. We should get a nice refund, which will go straight to tax-friendly retirement accounts and investments.

I made a new meal with cauliflower from the oven; it's relatively easy to make and it sits in the oven for 25 minutes while I can focus my attention to other parts of the meal, so I'm happy to have learned this new recipe. Now onwards to learn a new meal with... broccoli. Ha. I might also try a Brussels' sprouts recipe soon - they are best in winter so if I don't try it soon I will have to wait until November or so.

A few weeks ago my new colleague announced that she found a new job and will leave by the end of April. That's unfortunate, but it was to be expected for someone so young to move on to a better paying job with better career prospects. My old colleague (the one who got injured) is slowly starting to return to work over the next couple of months, so this might be good timing anyway. It does mean that I will probably work more hours over the next couple of months, and I've already got some extra hours in my contract (should be reflected in my paycheck this Friday). So: no lack of income. And if I really intend to not pay any income tax this year (by having enough deductions), by October or so I should start to think about extra charitable donations and/or extra pension contributions to make sure my income taxes are roughly 0.
Here in the Netherlands we're now headed towards a government with racist and dumb people in it, and I do not wish to support that in any possible way. So luckily (at least for now), donating to charities is tax-deductible, so I will use some of my income to donate to those charities and get the tax deduction. I think my "tax money" is used in a much better way, that way. (And yes, a tax deduction is not the same as a tax credit, but I will happily send some of my own euros to these charities too).

This weekend we had a choir performance for a quite large group of elderly people living in an elderly care facility. They enjoyed the songs we sang, and we enjoyed singing them (for example "Radio Gaga" from Queen and "Make you feel my love" from Adele). A few weeks ago with a friend of mine I joined a one-day sing-along event, with a very large choir (thank goodness!) we rehearsed and then performed the Johannes Passion from Bach - something COMPLETELY different of course from my usual light pop music, and quite hard to do, but at least now I've sat through one of Bach's Passions for once in my life. I think once is enough for me. I fondly thought of my late grandfather a couple of times, because he adored classical music and would have loved it. It was also nice to do this together with my friend. I've signed up for a Beatles Sing A Long in The Hague .... which will be in January 2025... So if anyone is a complete and total Beatles fan... maybe plan a trip to The Hague in January 2025 and join me?

Still exercising - slowly losing weight - some things going on in the family and in the in-laws family that we have to spend some time on now and then - but that's what I wanted to write about today. Looking forward to my paycheck on Friday, even though it shouldn't matter that much to me anymore. Old habits die hard, I guess.

[frugaldoc]

Nice update: nothing dramatic and steady progress toward goals. I am envious of you being able to perform Bach. When I was a young man I loved the St. John Passion (as we call in English). That would be the type of choral music I would like to be involved in if I had any singing talent.

[ertyu]

I'm liking the deliberate choice you're making to direct your income and taxes to the sort of causes you believe in. Admirable!

[7Wannabe5]

When I stopped for gas a couple days ago, in the midst of urban blight, somebody was blasting Gregorian chant over the parking lot loud speakers. I immediately thought, "The apocalypse has come."

[DutchGirl]

Ah yeah, I'm sure when the goddess descents from the heavens to end all of our misery, she will loudly blast either Gregorian chants or Reign in blood by Slayer. Or maybe she will just play the sound of our automatic coffee grinder, because that is also a rather chilling sound.

My grandfather, who will forever be dear in my heart, loved "heavy" classical music. (Not sure whether "heavy" is the right translation here, but in Dutch we use "heavy" for this type of music). Not the funny or sweet, catchy, classical songs and amusing short piano pieces, but the depressing Passions and hour-long wailing dying swan kind of classical music. I'm sure it takes a toll on your brain cells to deal with this kind of musical input, but there you are, the dear man loved it. And one of his sons (not my father) has become a professional classical singer (and music teacher).
But classical music hasn't really rubbed off on me, although as I grow older I have started to appreciate some pieces, and some classical singers with beautiful voices.

And @frugaldoc: so the Utrecht student choir invited everyone to come and sing the St. John's Passion this year on a specific date (for a fee). Maybe at some time in the future they will do it again or they will do the Matthaus Passion - that piece will be 300 years old in 2027, so by late 2026 I'd start looking for potential sing-along versions of it that you might be able to join?

[DutchGirl]

I made broccoli soup and I liked it! And pretty easy if you use a stock cube as I do. Cut up the broccoli in small pieces, boil it for 5-7 minutes in water with a stock cube (enough stock cube(s) for the amount of water), then blend in the blender.
What I've added so far is also half a bell pepper (it needed to be used shortly, I added it to the boiling broccoli after a few minutes) and some cooking cream after the blending process.
A colleague at work told me that next time I should add some onion, as follows: cut the onion in small pieces, put a little bit of olive oil in the pan that you plan to cook the soup in, fry the onion a bit. Then add water + broccoli + stock cube(s) and get it to boil. Next time.

Financially some ups and downs - down is definitely that I need another root canal - not completely surprisingly as this molar has been bothering me since March 2023, it was repaired then but soon enough it started to send new signals that things weren't fully okay. It will cost a pretty penny now to get the root canal and a new filling. I also got a bit "down" mentally because of it, as I pondered how all things age and decay. Well, I've tried to move beyond that mood now again. The treatment will be next week and then, hopefully, things will quiet down on the teeth front again for a long time.
Financially up is that I will get a nice tax refund again this year (will probably come in in May or so).
Otherwise, financially things are chugging along nicely. Investments up somewhat, pension investments made (will give tax refund next year), income higher because I work more hours.

At work my new colleague will be working her last week next week. She is very excited about her new job, which is nice to see. My old colleague (the one who got injured last year) is slowly coming back to work, which is really helpful. For now, I'll be working some hours every workday of the week, but if everything goes well, she will slowly return to her fulltime position and allow me to take back my free Thursdays, Tuesdays and Fridays (probably in that order). She has started working a few hours per week and that seems to be going okay (good output, and she told me it went okay for her, physically/mentally). Would be nice if she could return to her job! But we're not there yet, and also at my workplace again they're talking about the future of the whole organisation and so things are a bit uncertain there as well. If this job disappears because of that, I'm sure I'll find something new. But for my old colleague it's not fun to "fight" to get back to work and then to know that maybe that work will disappear soon, anyway. She might be able to find a similar job elsewhere, but of course it's nicer to just be able to return from a long medical absence to your own job.
We'll see, not much I can do about it except doing my job well.

Hmm, what else? Not much, I think. I'm trying to learn to cook better (and now cooking meals that don't need chewing, like that broccoli soup), I'm very slowly increasing weights at the gym, and we're slowly reducing the amount of boxes in our attic. I also sold two books on our version of craigslist, I've got six more on there but no interest so far; at some point I'll probably just drop them off at the secondhand store.

[guitarplayer]

Nice to read an update!

Hmm, what else? Not much, I think. I'm trying to learn to cook better (and now cooking meals that don't need chewing, like that broccoli soup)

Is this to do with the root treatment? I cannot recommend slow cooker enough for that sort of food.