2 Cinnamon toast At 2:30pm14:30 I sat at a picnic table near
the tent, with a blue sky and no clouds. First I spent some time to update my
notebook, a Dutch Heineken Beer made writing a little easier. I read for a
while and at the same time observed a squirrel and two girls. The squirrel was sitting
three meters from my picnic table. The girls were just putting their tent up near
mine. I took a picture of the squirrel and had some fantasies about the girls. I made a
tactical move and placed myself in an optimal position to have a face to face
with the sun. The contact was so intense that I closed my eyes to enjoy it. The
warmth of the sun brought me in a stage of daydreaming and just before I entered
the land of Nod I heard a sharp voice that called me back from dreamland into
reality. ‘Are you travelling
alone’ one of the fantasies from the tent next door asked me. Because she entered my daydream without knocking
I was a little ashamed and it brought a deep blush to my face which she probably did not notice because
the red colour was mixed with the result of the sun of the last days. The girl did
not fit into the stereotype of a beauty (queen), she had a pinched face and a skinny
body but her open friendly and jovial eyes made it pleasant to look at her. The
other girl, who was standing beside her, did not have any sharp parts; everything
was nice round even her voice and she had the same cheerfulness in her eyes. For them, this
campground was only a “one night stand” and their intensions were to go to
Key-West for a week’s holiday. After a pleasant chat with both girls I invited them
for dinner and promised them a typical Dutch meal. I only had one request; to prepare
this meal I needed their stove and some assistants. They liked
the idea and we agreed to start at 6:00pm18:00. To prepare this Dutch
meal I needed to buy some ingredients in a supermarket. Because they had to go
to Fort Pierce themselves they offered me a ride to town to find a supermarket. When they
saw my very short list of ingredients (a few eggs, sugar, cinnamon, milk,
butter and strawberries), I saw them thinking, ’Is that all there is’. I told them
to have faith in me but I suspect that they bought some food just in case. They
were two easy-going, giggling and jabbering girls with a positive view of life
which are the perfect ingredients for a pleasant evening. Back at
the camping we could start right away because it was already 6:15pm18:15.
The girls did not only visit the supermarket but all the clothes-, souvenir-,
shoe-, jewelry- and magazine- stores, with me as
their assistant and personal advisor behind them, carrying their bags. With both
stoves in front of me I was in charge again. We also bought some bottles of
wine so we started our culinary adventure with drinking a few glasses (plastic cups)
of wine. ‘Do not tease
us any longer and tell us what we are going to cook and eat.’, Nachelle (the skinny one) asked me. ‘OK Ladies, we
are going to make a centuries-old dish called wentelteefjes’, ‘Wentel...whaa?’, Wendi
giggled. ‘Yes, wentelteefjes’, I articulated. ’It is something like cinnamon
toast and is made from bread leftovers’. When you try
to translate Wentelteefjes in English you get something
like “turnover bitches”, due to the last part of the word: “teefjes”,
meaning female dog. While the front part of the word meaning revolving or wallowing.
In Germany however they have the same recipe with wine instead of milk and is therefore called Betrunkene Jungfrau, "drunken
virgin". ‘You are
making fun of us’ Nachelle said. To prove it I
showed them my notebook with the recipe. Before l left Holland I
wrote down some typical Dutch things in my notebook, about food, politics and
our way of living and I’d already translated the difficult words in English so I
was able to start telling a story and also finish it without missing some important
words. We started with cutting the crust off the bread leftovers. Wendi whisked the eggs in a deep plate and added the warm
milk, cinnamon and sugar, whisked it again until the sugar was dissolved. I
used a fork to hold onto the bread while I coated each side of the bread with
the egg mixture (counting to three for each side of bread). I stacked the
soaked bread onto a clean plate I’d set aside. Meanwhile Nachelle,
browned the butter in a pan over a medium heat. She carefully fried the slices
of bread until it was golden brown on the bottom. Then she flipped it and repeated
it on the other side. The first few
did not deserve the name wentelteefje so we gave those
to a squirrel who loved it so much that he invited his brother, sister, loved one
and children to the party. They did not leave us the whole evening and night. We switched
roles so each of us made a number of wentelteefjes.
We sliced the baked toasts into triangles and served them piled up on plates. For
the finishing touch we used a few slices of strawberries and sprinkled it with
a little powdered sugar. As a dessert, we added a scoop of vanilla ice-cream on
the side. During our cooking event we had a lot of fun and
we criticized each other’s results and the girls started a contest who was
pronouncing the word “wentelteefjes” the best. After
some whispering and giggling with her friend, Nachelle
told me that at the end of this “feast” I had to be the juror but also the price.
The
combination of wine, strawberries, ice-cream and wentelteefjes
made it a delicious dinner and looking at the amount they put away they had to like
it a lot. They wrote down the recipe in their notebook and made a picture of
the wentelteefjes. After dinner
we played some card games, threw some left-overs to the squirrels and finished the
last bottle of wine. The only unfinished thing was the contest between the two
girls. The amount of wine helped them to pronounce the word “wentelfeefjes” perfect. That night had only winners. At 4:00am4:00
we cleaned-up and went to the bathroom. Back in my tent I started were I exited
my daydream of that afternoon but this time it felt so damned real! |