After some sadness and tears, joyfulness and fun, and a lot of family time, we are trying to get back to real life and finding our new “normal”.
We have been to Germany, Belgium, and France. We’ve seen lots of family and spent some time together bonding and have tried to enjoy some moments to ourselves.
Here are some photos to enjoy from these last three months.
Flowers in Leiden
I really really hate that my birthday is the day before Valentines Day. Like… HATE IT.
I’m sure this sounds really ridiculous and selfish, but first off I feel bad for Job because he gets really stressed about making every day magical and perfect, which is something he’s naturally talented at, and secondly because sometimes I feel gypped because in past relationships, we either celebrate my birthday or valentines day (okay, somewhat selfish, but hey, it’s how I feel).
In Job’s case, he is the exact opposite. He set up the lovely day for my birthday, and we had such a lovely and fun valentines day….and valentines day part two.
Since he had to work on valentines day, we didn’t have a whole lot to do during the day, but I made him a surprise breakfast while he was in the shower and gave him some gifts (a tamper for the espresso machine and some more Darkhan Nespresso cups), and he some lovely chocolates from Van Soest Choclatier for me.
He also pointed out something I had never thought about before, though, from experience I knew. People who don’t necessarily want to go out on valentines day do if they are in a relationship because, well, that’s what you’re supposed to do on this commercial holiday. So we did the exact opposite. We stayed in and had some awesome leftovers, and then we prepped for the next day, because Job had the whole day off and we decided we would go out to eat then instead. Job asked me if I would enjoy a chocolate soufflé… COME ON! WHO WOULDN’T (I know there are some people who don’t like sweets or chocolate, but we’re talking about me) ENJOY A CHOCOLATE SOUFFLÉ….ON VALENTINES DAY!
We had all of the ingredients for the chocolate soufflé as Job had stopped at Albert Heijn and Blokker on the way home. Clearly he had this all planned out 🙂
Since neither of us had made a soufflé before, we did a quick bit of research, watching Gordon Ramsay on his tips for making a perfect soufflé and then used the recipe from Chef Steps to start our creation and first attempt at a soufflé.
Watching both of the videos, we felt pretty confident in making these soufflés. Gordon made everything seem really easy, and there weren’t too many ingredients involved.
The next step was measuring everything. Lucky for us, everything was in grams…
Wait, did I say lucky for us…? I mean JUST KIDDING. We have a super retro kitchen scale that measures up to a kilo and counterbalancing weights so that the max weight can be 20 kg on the scale. Anyways, measuring was a bit complicated.
(I cheated here and made a screen shot of the ingredients from the ChefSteps website because I am lazy it looked nicer.)
First we buttered and sugared our ramekins and put them in the fridge to stay cool. 
Next we measured some salt and flour and butter into our lovely measuring cup on the scale to get the correct measurements. 
We put all of that into a bowl and kneaded it together into a doughy texture.
On the stove we mixed our milk and sugar and cooked on a medium heat until it was starting to boil. from there we added in the doughy mixture and stirred until it was a gummy texture. It looked like pudding.
We mixed in the chocolate next and then added egg yolks one at a time. (We removed the mixture from the heat before adding in the egg yolks)
While I was stirring in the egg yolks, Job was hand beating the egg whites (we don’t have an electric hand mixer or mixer in general, so everything is by hand!)
After all of the yolks had been added, we poured in about a third of the egg white mixture which was now forming stiff peaks.
We whisked that into the mixture until it was blended. From there, we added the other two thirds, gently folding in the egg whites so as not to lose the air bubbles we had just made. (That hand mixing is a lot of work you know…) (also just realized that we only used 3 egg’s worth of egg white. The recipe calls for 5)
Fold that meringue in until the mixture is fully brown again.
Now it was ramekin time!
We grabbed them from the fridge (let me first just say that these are not ideal ramekins for making soufflés because they have a handle on the side which makes it impossible to knife off the extra mixture and make them flat. Anyways, we used Gordon’s cleaning method of cleaning the rim of the cup and made a lip on the inside so the soufflés would rise straight up.
We placed our soufflés on a piece of tin foil in our oven because we don’t have a baking tray. We set the timer to 19 minutes and cleaned up the mess in the kitchen.
The timer rang and we opened the oven door and saw our beautiful soufflés!
We carefully moved them from the oven to the counter and dusted them with powdered sugar.
It was time to chow down. We cracked the surface and dipped our spoons in to find our soufflés were perfectly cooked through. It was like heaven in my mouth. Definitely one of the most delicious things I had ever eaten.
We did have a whole lot of extra batter so we made two more in mugs. 
Those probably could have cooked longer and the chocolate was so rich that we ended up with tummy aches as we watched the first episode of the second season of House of Cards on Netflix, but man, so worth the pain.
It was a perfect valentines day in my book.
We decided we would make a soufflé again the next day as well as go out for dinner and have a nice time enjoying each other on the 15th of February.
#hvd #happyvalentinesday #valentinesday #valentijnsdag #love #gifts #flowers #bloemen #roses #chocolates #vansoest #amsterdam #tamper #nespresso #coffee I also made @jobbeumer a surprise breakfast of scrambled eggs, kiwi, and bacon. #spreadthelove #thetravelingspoons @thetrvlngspoons
The distance sure isn’t easy, but it’s worth every moment.
Being in and having a long distance relationship is difficult, but if that person is worth it to you, it’s worth it. Set some ground rules and keep the surprises coming!
Job and I have definitely done number 4, although we usually just send each other links in iMessage while we are FaceTiming, but that’s a cool little program, and I’ve done slightly different versions of numbers 12 and 18.
20 Things That Will Help You Through Your Long Distance Relationship
What an intriguing and true fortune!
The amazing food I shared with Job in Amsterdam
Trying to stay sane at a Turkish wedding!
Love finds a way.
This is The Traveling Spoons, and we are Job and Hannah.
In October of 2012, the two of us were fortunate enough to have been selected from a pool of hundreds of applicants from our global company for a special project in California. I flew in to California from Rhode Island, the smallest state in the United States, and Job flew in a day earlier, from Amsterdam. The second we met, sparks started flying and before the day was out… well, we kind of started to fall in love. With the group of people we were working with, and a healthy per diem, we had great food, met cool people, and had an amazing time.
About a year before Job and I met, he was sent to London for our company and was put on a significant per diem for his food expenses. During this time, he sauntered around the city looking for posh hot spots with great food. It was all this amazing “free” food that inspired him to start…collecting, we’ll say, spoons from each restaurant he visited. He had this great idea to use the spoons as a sort of a rating tool for his food blog that he was excited to start… but it never really took off when he had the idea.
Fast forward to now… and about 150 spoons later (or something close to that), we are here to launch this amazing blog together. Here we are going to share the amazing food we find in experience together in our travels, from lil’ Rhody to Amsterdam and everywhere in between. We’ll share stories about our travels, recipes we love, recipes we find, recipes we try, and recipes we want to try. We’ll share more of our story together, and most of all, post pictures of all of this amazing food. We hope you enjoy all of this love… love of food, people, traveling, and each other, and maybe even try a recipe or two.
For now though, welcome to The Traveling Spoons! We’re really excited to have you!
Hannah & Job
The Traveling Spoons 