Family Day

Every year, N's mother's family celebrates their family day. Each year, one of the families gets to organize an activity and everybody gathers at their city. Also, N's grandmother (her mother's mother) celebrates her birthday (her 91st this year -- and still going strong). This year both activities were combined.

This year's activity was organized by N's parents, and they organized a chocolate workshop: grouped by three, everyone had to make some type of chocolates. More on that in a later post, I'm supposed to get some pictures from that from C.

Grandmother's birthday traditionally takes place in the same conservatory of a typical country-restaurant, where we're traditionally served a nice buffet and we're traditionally served by the same waiter. There's a regular scheme there, that's repeated each and every year: First, two cups of coffee with some pastry (choux or those squared cake things pictured above), then either vegetable or tomato soup and then the buffet itself.

Since every year, it's (supposed to be) exactly the same, we make fun of meeting the same waiter again, being subjected to the same scheme again, introducing new family members to the scheme and making remarks about things that did change ('The waiter is not wearing his glasses anymore' or 'Last year, there was another table arrangement').

I won't bore you with other family peculiarities, but instead show you some pictures of the buffet instead.

A typical Dutch cold/hot buffet, served by a restaurant like this, consists of:
- cold meat/potato salad
- cold salmon/potato salad
- smoked salmon
- smoked eel
- Dutch shrimps (smaller than more familiar ones, but I like them better, they've got more flavour)
- cold cuts of meat
- melon with prosciutto
- brined raw herring (Dutch traditional), served with raw onion
- sliced baguette
- sauces (garlic, cocktail etc)
- satay
- beef
- ham with peppercorn sauce
- pork in champignon/cream sauce
- rice
- potato sides (potato croquettes, deep fried potato parts)

...and probably some other things which I have already forgotten.

You can go as many times as you like, and each time you go you can get a new plate.

That's basically it. Dessert is a buffet again: it includes several types of icecream, tiramisu, a chocolate fountain, puddings etc. but I'm not that much of a dessert type of person.

So, anyway, I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to next year's traditional visit again :)