Belgian Beer Collage Round Up

While in Belgium, one is obligated to drink beer. Prior to Belgium, I was really not a huge fan of beer. I could enjoy it in certain contexts, such as while out with my parents. But cheap college beer? Horrifying. While I still don't know what a trappist beer is exactly or the main difference between dark/amber/blond/pale or wheat or whatever (yea, so much for learning from those brewery tours), I do appreciate beer and enjoy it much more now. That being said, maybe I've become spoiled by Belgian beer and will hate any beer I try here.
Below is a sampling of the many beers I had over the course of my 9 weeks in Belgium.

This really makes me look like an alcoholic at first glance, but this was over the span of 9 weeks. There were a number of other beers that I had (probably another 5-10 kinds) that were not photographed since I was a bit haphazard about when I felt like being silly and taking my phone out to photograph at a bar. Also, Kilkenny is technically an irish beer, and Douglas is actually a cider, both of which I had at an irish pub while watching futbol in Belgium. There was some Swedish Cider I had while in London too, but I'm going for the just things I drank in Belgium theme here. Oh I'm going to miss the beer.

Goodbyes and Speculoos Rice Krispy Treats

Last Friday was my last day in Belgium. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how I enjoyed it. I certainly don't think it was a "life changing opportunity," but at the same time, I have zero regrets deciding to accept this internship. Sure, there were certainly facets that were not as great (paying for bathrooms, work being a little slow), but there were also lots of good things (biking, awesome PI, waffles). So, I guess my issue with being asked how I enjoyed Belgium and if I would go back is that I don't like thinking of good/bad as being summed together to net an over all +/-/0 experience, but rather as separate groups that cannot be combined. Perhaps this is simply the glamour of traveling abroad being wiped away. Because for all the cultural differences, on a day to day basis, life really isn't that different where you are. Maybe if I were older, with more responsibilities, staying for a longer period of time, I would have noticed myself adjusting more. However, I feel that I probably played the role of observer more during my time than actual lets pretend I'm Belgian.

As I mentioned previously before deviating into culture and my uncertainty about everything, my last day of work was last Friday. So to say goodbye, I decided to bring some present to my lab/office. Some interns who had previously worked there who left a few weeks earlier than me brought in pastries from a bakery. However, biking to work with a box of pastries sounds like quite a recipe for heart broken croissants and rock studded muffins.
So I had to think of something else that fit my critera:

• Something that wasn't quite so stereotypically "Belgian" (aka chocolate). 
• Something that had a slight American connotation.
• Something that was easily transportable via a backpack.
• If homemade, something that wouldn't require lots of ingredients.

For a while, I resigned myself to just buying chocolate since all I could think was "AGH, if only you could bake cupcakes or cookies! That would be so American!" Luckily while taking a break at work to peruse the internet, I was inspired to make rice-krispy treats. And then, since only in Belgium, I decided to make them speculoos flavored.

Not having tupperware, I had to wrap them in saran wrap. It felt very much soccer-mom (futbol-mom) esque to be giving people individually wrap krispies. They were a surprising hit among people, although many of my co-workers were very very confused what they were initially. I guess snap, crackle, pop aren't so big in Europe as they are in the US.
"Protocol" (as a post-doc in my lab calls it) from Rice Krispies website here. Just replace peanut butter with speculoos.

Belgian Yogurt + Oats: Mason Jar Style

This is awkward. I started this blog post about a week ago when I was actually in Belgium. But now have been back for officially 15 hours, so this is all a bit outdated. However, since I am very very lazy, and have quite a number of food related things to blog about from Belgium and in the future (baking!), we will just have to play a little bit of lets-time-travel-as-we-read-this. But, oh wait, isn't that what reading kinda does all the time? Takes you to new times and places?

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My lack of postings about all the wonderful foods of Belgium clearly mean that I am starving. Actually not. But its a little boring and not particularly aesthetically pleasing to post picture of my dinner everyday of a fried egg with sauteed vegetables. Just envision something foodgawker worthy.

One thing that I was initially very aversive about in Belgium was milk and yogurt. I can say I have never had milk while in Belgium. The predominant form of milk that they drink there is whole milk. Like, hard core full-fat milk. And, worst of all maybe, buttermilk. 2 of the 3 other people living in the same building as me that I know from school had unpleasant experiences involving accidentally buying buttermilk. And not for baking. For drinking. Straight.

However, that aside, I'm glad I decided to try belgium/european/whatever it is...?-style yogurt before I left. The yogurt is sold in milk cartons essentially and is way way way more liquidy than any yogurt I've seen in america. You can essentially eat it with cereal as milk. Which I did. Except by cereal I mean quick cooking oats. Its actually tastes pretty good to eat uncooked oats. Particularly the quick cooking ones tend to absorb liquids pretty fast anyways, so you get some fun textures while eating.

Furthermore, Belgium likes to sell everything in glass jars (yet fails to give you recycling bags for glass when they have ones for 1-trash 2-plastic bottles and 3-compost), so check out me being hipster with my mason jar!

Patriotism Abroad: No Blueberries Required

I celebrated 4th of July on the 3rd of July. Some of the interns working with a racecar team here had to  leave for a competition today, so we celebrated yesterday instead. Being kinda faux-martha stewart-esque, I felt it necessary that I bring something, and something patriotic. However some issues:

• Had to be portable in a bag because you just can't bike while balancing a tray of red, white, and blue fruit tarts.
• Had to not involve fruit. Because I'm a poor student intern in Belgium, and I have yet to see blueberries here.
• Couldn't be baked. Because I have no baking equipment here.

Fortuitously, I had popcorn. And lots of chocolate. And, as you may be able to deduce, popcorn is something that is definitely bike friendly for transportation.

White chocolate, mm popcorn for America's birthday. One of the awesome things Belgium has are crispy mm's. While they are no longer sold in the US, chocolate with crispies is generally pretty popular here I think, so this is probably why they still sell these mms here. (Sadly, they don't sell my all time favorite pretzel mm's though).

What was mildly annoying was the scant ratio of blue and red mms vs. other colors, as well as the unequal ratio of blue mms vs. red mms. Notice how there are at least 1/3 more blue than reds here?

Popcorn recipe adapted from Kleinworthco. Popcorn doesn't really need a recipe persay, but I still like to have one to reference so I don't accidentally use like, a cup of oil to pop a half cup of popcorn.

Brewery Tours

Like a good Belgium tourist, I did brewery tours last weekend.
Saturday we went to Cantillon Brewery in Brussels. Its one of the last traditional breweries left in the world. They're very proud of their natural fermentation cycle and how they must respect nature and deal with natural fluctuations in yeast/fermentation. As a result, no two batches of beer they brew taste completely the same. Since they also don't use industrial fermenters to speed up the process, it takes at least 18 months, and usually 36 months for the whole fermentation process to happen. The most interesting thing about their brewing process I found was the fact that they ferment their beers in wooden casks, recycled from wineries. Obviously the gas from the fermentation can escape, so this fermentation is only the first stage. They then ferment the beer again in glass bottles to get those bubblies we're all so used to in beers.

Anyways, they're famous for their lambic beer which I'm not sure how it differs from other beers wrt to its brewing (clearly I paid attention to my handout), but its a very sour beer, almost wine-like, and like nothing in the US. The 3 beers I tried there were Lambic, Geuze, and Frambois. The Lambic is, as mentioned, what they're known for, and is a flat beer. Basically, what comes out of the wooden casks I think. Afterwards, the Geuze and Frambois are made with some additional steps. Geuze is a mix of three different beers and is considered the "campagne of beers" or something. And Frambois, is basically the raspberry version of Kriek beers aka cherry beer aka fruit beers. The fruit beer here was SO much better than stuff I've had at bars. The way they make their fruit beers is by literally putting fruit into the beer and by the end of the fermentation process the flavors been imbibed into the beer and the fruit dissolved. Its very clear that its not just some terrible fruit flavoring.

Sunday, we went to basically the polar opposite of Cantillon and went to the Stella Artois brewery in Leuven for a big tour. Minus getting mildly lost on the way there and biking in a flat, the trip was fun, and definitely worth the 8 euros in just free beer alone. Unlike the self-guided Cantillon brewery, the Stella one was led by a tour guide, and we were made to wear bright yellow vests, and told to not walk outside the white lines. We weren't even allowed to take pictures of the control room, where men who have received Master's in brewing worked to oversee the brewing process. Quite different from the traditional brewery where if you screwed up your beer, you wouldn't know till after fermentation.

the crushing of the grains into sugar water 

the industrial fermentation process 

THE BOTTLING LINES 

The best part of the industrial tour was seeing the bottling assembly lines. They package beer in cans, bottles, and kegs, but only the can line was fully visible and in operation. AND IT WAS FASCINATING. It was great fun watching the lines speed up, slow down, look for the cans that had tipped over, or were screwed up and spilled beer all over the place when the machine tried to flip them ect. I wish the other packaging lines were open, but alas.

The tour ended with a tasting of course. We were all served Stella Artois first (the Stella part of their name came in the early 1900s after a Christmas beer they brewed became so wildly popular they decided to brew more). Stella is really not that great compared to the other Belgium beers I've had here, such as Leffe. Leffe is I guess another similarly pils beer (whatever that means....), but tastes better in my opinion. At the end we were also given gift bags with more Stella and Leffe. All in all, definitely worth the 8 euros, and maybeeee worth the pain of biking on a flat.