Travelsmartplanet

Quality Nacka Vaermdovaegen 84 , (Tel: 46 8506 16000)  Stockholm SE- 1200, was the hotel for the last night of the tour. It was not near downtown but was slick and modern (double rain shower) and most importantly had great electronic amenities.

We usually spend the first few minutes in our hotel room scoping out the outlets to plug in phones, laptops, back up drives, USB battery back up, audio pod caster,etc. This hotel had the best power station including: USB input and charger,  HDMI input, VGA input, audio/PC/ video inputs as well as two power outlets.

Dinner was a buffet with some highlights:  fabulous mango & shrimp salad (Stan had as main course!),  tomato and cucumber salad, pork in a mushroom and pepper sauce, sauteed potatoes, rice, broccoli and cauliflower. Cherry cheesecake sweetly ended our meal and our trip.

Tags: audio, charger, HDMI, input, PC, Stockholm, Sweden, USB, VGA, video

Queen Christina of Sweden cared about the poor people in her kingdom. She decreed that they should be allowed to fish for supper right downtown in Stockholm. So between the Royal Palace and the Opera House, there is clean water, where, to this day, they can fish for salmon, pike, perch and herring.

Tags: clean water, fish, herring, kingdom, Opera house, perch, pike, Queen Christina, Royal Palace, salmon, Stockholm, Sweden

This year, the bay scallop recreational harvest season will begin a week early on June 25 and end on Sept. 25, two weeks later than normal. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is predicting large numbers of scallops in the Steinhatchee area and good numbers around Crystal River, based on their annual scallop survey. The most popular destinations for recreational scallopers are Steinhatchee, Crystal River and Homosassa. This is because the Florida bay scallop, a bivalve mollusk, grows and lives in the shallow (4 to 10 feet deep) sea grass beds that are common to these areas.

FWC regulates harvesting of scallops, like it does other fish, in order to maintain healthy populations. At one time scallops ranged abundantly across the state, from Palm Beach on the east coast to Pensacola on the west coast. Today, however, healthy populations can only be found in selected locations along the Gulf coast.

In Florida, commercial harvesting of bay scallops is banned. In general, recreational scallopers between the ages of 16 and 65 must have a current Florida saltwater fishing license to collect scallops. This  is available in bait shops, FWC offices, or at the FWC website (http://myfwc.com/). All non-residents over the age of 16 are required to buy a license, unless they are fishing (scalloping) from a for-hire vessel (guide, charter, party boat) that has a valid vessel license.

Equipment needed: A group of snorkelers with mesh bags and a divers-down flag (required by law)

In shallow water, it is possible to wade for scallops in the seagrass, or to collect them from a shallow-draft boat using a dip net or landing net, but these methods are not very productive. Scallops may be spotted on or near the bottom of sea grass beds, usually lying on their ventral shells. Often, they are easiest to find in borderline areas where the sand/mud bottom meets the edge of the grasses. Scallops have many neon-blue eyes and may try to swim away when they see you, but they do not swim fast or far. Keep collected scallops in a mesh bag, rather than in a pocket or in your swimsuit. They can pinch!

Most scallopers go by boat into water 4 to 10 feet deep where they anchor, put up their dive flag, and snorkel over the beds, collecting the scallops by hand. When brought to the boat, scallops should be immediately placed on ice in a cooler for the trip to shore, unless you decide to clean the scallops while on the water. Scallops are quite sensitive to temperature, and will quickly die if they are not kept cold. Even if kept cold, scallops will usually die shortly after being placed on ice, especially if fresh water gets into their shells. Placing them on ice, however, makes them easier to open, because the muscle holding the shells together relaxes. A scallop, clam or oyster knife, or even a teaspoon, can be used to open the shells and cut the white muscle free, discarding the shells and unwanted soft parts.  Although most Floridians only eat the scallop muscle, in many other parts of the world the entire animal is eaten, much like we eat clams and oysters.

For the first time, FWC is asking scallopers to help them with their ongoing research. You can help by recording the following details of your catch and report them at www.surveymonkey.com/s/bayscallops: date collected, County collected in, number of scallopers, total number of scallops collected, total volume of scallops collected and total time collecting.

The Cosmos dinner in Tallinn rates some stars as it was  scrumptious. It began with what we presumed was borscht (this being the Baltics after all) as it was red and seemed to have bits of cabbage floating, but it was more of a flavorful minestrone with a bit of a kick. There was a slab of crusty bread sitting in the middle with some soft cheese and olives on top.

The main course had slices of beef (with some beef gravy) and thinly sliced mixed vegetables sitting on a rich version of Lyonnaise potatoes.

Dessert was presented in a parfait glass which was filled with a good vanilla ice cream, raspberry sherbet, a dollop of caramel sauce and a tuile rising out of the top – simple, pretty and a perfect ending.

Brewing at  Saku Brewery was first documented in October 1820. It was owned by count Karl Friedrich Rehbinder who built a distillery and a brewery on his estate.  Saku still is among the  most popular beers  in Estonia. Beer was already known in present-day Estonia between 500 and 1000 A.D.

In Old Town of Riga, Latvia there are food market pavilions that have been open since the 1930’s. In Soviet times they were important because it was the only place a free economy existed. Farmers were allowed to come here and sell excess vegetables.

Nowadays it is full of butchers, groceries, cheeses, fish, pickled condiments, baked goods and some cooked food. We loved the meat dumplings in the tiny booth just to the left of the main door so much that we bought one and then turned around and came back for more. They were only about $.50 and I wish I could have one right now.

This Sunday, June 26th, you can join foragers and primitive technologists Steve and Debbie Adams for a walk along the trails of the Teaneck Creek Conservancy and  the Teaneck Greenway to identify and discuss wild plants common to the local historic Lenape people as well as to international colonists.  Plants used for food and technologies will be encountered, with finished crafts for examination as illustrations.

By studying foraging and nature, we enjoy our renewable resources learn to preserve their riches.

Date and time:  Sunday June 26th 1:00-3:00pm
Price: $10 per family. Free for Teaneck Creek Conservancy (TCC) members.
Reservations:  To make a reservation call 201-836-2403 or email devery@teaneckcreek.org.
Location: 20 Puffin Way, Teaneck, NJ 07666

Tags: colonists, forage, Lenape, plants, renewable resources, Steve and Debbie Adams, Teaneck Creek Conservancy, wild plant

Even though our guide said that Amsterdam is so multinational that “you can find any food except Dutch food”, we found some delicious traditional food at Restaurant Haesje Claes (www.haesjeclaes.nl). In the six Dutch-style buildings bedecked in wood – walls, ceilings, tables, we dined on crispy cheese croquettes and hearty pea soup heaped with carrots, sausage and potatoes. We licked our plate clean of a memorable “hotchpotch” with carrots and onions in mashed potatoes and meatballs, sausage and bacon. We could’ve had stamppotten, smoked eel or fish stockpot with cheese.

We tasted the old-fashioned dessert made with raisins, brandy, egg liqueur and cinnamon ice cream and Grandma’s semolina pudding with red berry sauce. The liqueur page brought smiles, for you can drink “my aunts water, tears of a bride, Hans in the cellar, parrot soup or mistress in the green”.

If you’re near the Central Station, you can eat at Restaurant De Kroonprins (located in www.hotel-prinshendrik.nl). It’s pub-like, with beer on tap and simple dishes like Indonesian sate with peanut sauce or the popular Dutch steak with yummy fried mushrooms, salad and fries, wiener schnitzel or sea perch, and even a Dutch shrimp cocktail. For dessert, we tried the traditional Dame Blanche, a cousin to the hot fudge sundae.

Indonesian food is ubiquitous in Amsterdam but you can expect a warm family welcome if you dine at Puri Mas (www.purimas.nl), popular for the past 22 years. Ordering is easy because their speciality is rijsttafel; It’s a set meal of many small tastes – about 17 plates – served by friendly waitresses in traditional dress. The dishes in their distinctive sauces are carefully explained to you and placed in order of cool to hot.

Starters would be a crispy egg roll and fried prawns while mains are chicken brochette in peanut sauce, pork brochette in a spicy sauce, lamb in curry,  chicken in a Balinese sauce, spiced cucumber salad, veggies in peanut butter sauce, fried potato sticks, coconut powder to dust about, and you finish with tropical fruit and ice cream or fried banana.

When you want that perfect vacation that combines calm rejuvenation with the rev of action, then head for Holland. Make Hotel Okura (www.okura.nl) in Amsterdam your home base oasis. Its modernity and cool decor belies the fact that it has been here for forty years and brought high end five-star luxury along with Japanese cuisine to Amsterdam. You can start off  by taking advantage of their jet lag program and then wind down in the pool, Japanese sauna, Turkish bath and health club.

Reaching for the stars, the family grabbed a few Michelin ones – half the ones in the whole city. The two-star Ciel Bleu perches appropriately on the 23rd floor, up in the blue sky with walls of glass, so every seat and every bite is a delightful wonder. Winding down is easy to achieve at the one-star serene Yamazato, set in 15th and 16th-century Sukiya style decor and with views of the Japanese garden to complement the Japanese culinary arts.

We dined at the new canal-facing Serre where some of those Michelin-trained cooks drifted. So for only 34 Euros you can taste the same heavenly cooking with simpler versions of last year’s Ciel Bleu’s signature dishes and more. Our bento box lunch was an artist’s palate of tastes and textures filled with 9 tiny delights (guinea hen in garlic sauce, crispy crab, steak tartare, bulghur, smoked salmon, roasted artichoke, all in sauces, foams and powders. Yum!

Every other shop in Bruges, it seems, is a chocolate shop – 50 or so but who’s counting?  Bruges, known for its medievalness, has a playful side when it comes to tourist museums, with one for chocolate and another for fries. The chocolate museum started out as a private collection of everything to do with the history and making of chocolate.

You will learn that milk chocolate is 45% sugar, and that when chocolate made its way to Europe by the Spanish explorers, it was a drink with a secret recipe for making it – til the 1800’s. The process of conching was invented around then, which made it possible to create hardened chocolate for eating. You can see the cups they drank it in, and they sure were super-sized. Fries with that?

www.choco-story.be

Chips (fries) were  created in the US in 1852 in Saratoga, NY all because of a dissatisfied customer. When he complained to George Crum about his potato, Mr Crum sliced it into little pieces to annoy him. Instead he loved it! French fries were possibly misnamed during WWII when American soldiers, hearing Belgians eating fries and talking French, thought they were French food.

Potatoes around the world are covered too – see if you can find the pink and purple ones. If all this fry talk has gotten you a bit hungry, don’t worry, there’s a fries shop in the basement where you can have them with the traditional mayonnaise or pickle sauce, mustard or curry ketchup.

www.frietmuseum.be

Tags: Chocolate, conching, customer, french fries, George Crum, mayonnaise, medieval, Museum, potato, Saratoga, soldier, WWII