In June, I took a two-week trip to Spain to visit some dear friends/colleagues who were staying there for a month or so. It was one of the best (even if solitary) vacations I've ever had in my life. It's been four years since I got back from my semester abroad in Pamplona, and during all that time I dreamed of going back there, of seeing the people I had become close to and of course, of eating the food I grew to love so very much. While I will have some authentically Spanish food posts coming, this one is not quite so for two reasons. The apple pie featured in this post is from Holland, and it's from a Starbucks. In the airport! Not exactly the Dutch apple pie I was longing for, but after 8 hours on a plane with little sleep, I was ready for anything.
While in Spain in 2007, I had the opportunity to visit some friends of my family (TX family) who live in Holland. It was an amazing trip, and it was really something to reunite with a woman who had lived with my family as an exchange student... when I was three years old. While in Amsterdam and Kampen, I tried all sorts of delicious Dutch food. In fact, on a somewhat unrelated note, I think I can say I sampled the best whiskey sour I've ever had there in Kampen. Back to the pie. Somewhere in that weekend (it's all a blur to me now) full of Rembrandt's house, the Rijks and other tourist sites, I tried an apple pie that blew my mind. Served cold, it came with nuts and fruit on top. Not to mention that it was about the size of my face. I don't mean to put down hot apple pie, but having it cold has turned me forever. And I've been craving it, waiting for the chance to have it again.
Although my layover was something like four hours, I didn't want to go outside and adventure around Amsterdam because I was extremely tired and didn't want to mess around with security (the customs officers sure weren't friendly). So I settled for walking all over the airport in search of a worthy slice of apple pie. After a long while, I gave up and resigned to Starbucks for some drinks and food I knew would get me by, being all too familiar with its products. And while I was waiting in line watching people and listening to them speak in their respective languages, I saw it. The HUGE, cold apple pie. With an iced soy latte on the side, it made for a nice layover on my way to Madrid (I would eventually end up squished between gigantic Dutch rugby players on the plane).
From there, my food adventures were only about to get tastier.
This will be a short post because I'm beat. Part of the reason that I'm so tired is that work today was full of action-packed fun, by which I mean we had a 55-minute party which offered more sweets than you can even imagine. Ice cream sandwiches, patriotic cupcakes, sherbet, sorbet, watermelon, grapes, snap peas?, yogurt covered raisins and sugar cookies. It seemed like a combination goodbye party for one of the staff in the library and the 4th of July. It was a really nice break from the tedious work that is the nature of graduate research assistant jobs, and I think the staff member who will be leaving us had a nice time, which is the most important part. When someone brought this cake out, I really regretted the little plate I had already prepared with a cupcake (frosting scraped off in the most socially awkward way possible, as you do). So I had a slice of this, which was pretty killer. I saved my cupcake for later. It's currently in my fridge, waiting to become the food adventure of tomorrow. 
