I spent two hours shopping this afternoon for ingredients for an Italian dish I had planned, but at 8.00 pm I still hadn't started cooking.

Since the recipe involves making dough and baking it and it is at least two hours of work I decided to leave it for tomorrow and made something else. Inspired by a very enjoyable dinner yesterday night I grilled steaks and served them with baked potatoes and broccoli.

It was the first time that I've made baked potatoes and I must say that they came out really nice. I didn't take a picture of them, but they were smooth and delicious on the inside and with a crispy crust. They were in the oven for about an hour (350 degrees) and I had rolled them in kosher salt so they had nice salt flakes on the crust. I steamed the broccoli and coated it with sauteed garlic and a little bit of grated Parmesan cheese.

While cooking I watched Wednesday's Republican debate. It wasn't very spectacular but I enjoyed it. McCain didn't have a great night; he came across as arrogant and smug. Sasha also recorded the Democratic debate for me (I was flying when it was on), I'll watch it tomorrow.

Tonight we had boerenkoolstamppot for dinner. Don't you love those long Dutch words? I received the excellent advice to cook it with some bacon which worked out really well.

While traditionally paired with rookworst in Holland or kielbasa in countries where real rookworst is not available, tonight I served it bone-in pork chops with fresh mushrooms and thin slices of onion.

For the bacon I used North Country Smokehouse's cottage bacon that was cooked in a skillet for about 20 minutes. For the stamppot I used a recipe from a Dutch book and it called for onions. I found that a bit strange, since I don't remember that boerenkoolstamppot typically has onions in it. It worked well though: the onions made the dish more juicy and the result was delicious, especially combined with the crispy bacon.

For the Dutch readers: do you use onions in boerenkoolstamppot?

Boerenkoolstamppot.

Tonight's Democratic candidates debate was very heated. Possibly too heated for Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama's good, but I thought it was very enjoyable and a good exchange of ideas. I don't think the debate changed the minds of a lot of voters, but Mr. Obama did take his chance to address some of the attacks by the Clinton campaign from last week.

It was interesting that the candidates thought that Mr. McCain is likely to be the Republican nominee. I still believe Mr. Romney will be their choice.

Today is Martin Luther King Day and I watched 15 minutes of his famous speech. As a blog put it: "it never gets old".

The program for this week: Thursday the Republican Debate on MSNBC, Saturday the Democratic primaries in South Carolina, and Sunday again a Democratic Debate, this time in Florida.

This afternoon I saw Cloverfield, a monster movie for which we saw previews this summer before Transformers.

The movie was entertaining and pretty convincing, as far as monster movies go. Cloverfield leaves you guessing about the background of the story and this is refreshing. At least the makers didn't try to squeeze lots of explanations in 90 minutes. I found the movie quite enjoyable with nice special effects.

A day of decisions... With his convincing win in Nevada, my prediction of Mr. Romney becoming the nominee for the Republicans is increasingly likely. It's time for Mr. Thompson to give up. He's always looked like he didn't really want to be President and today's results reflect that again. Mr. Giuliani didn't even try to participate in Nevada and stayed focussed in Florida. As a reporter on CNN put it: "he's going to Disneyland every day".

We got a little bit of snow today but we're warm inside. We've been watching TV all afternoon, the first results started coming in at 2.00 pm EST.

Ms. Clinton did quite well today, if not as well as predicted a month ago. The fight between Clinton and Obama will continue. There's another Democratic debate on Monday and next week's elections in South Carolina will be very interesting.

While he may have a relative good performance in South Carolina, today's result are again bad for Mr. Edwards. He probably won't give up until next Super Tuesday, but I don't believe he has a real chance for the nomination anymore.

Road salt in front of our office yesterday to prevent icing.

Like I said earlier, watching the primaries unfold is great. Tonight from 8.00 pm we were at the TV and watching the first results coming in from 8.30 pm. Too bad CNN had Lou "War on the Middle Class" Dobbs presenting the first part; I was glad that Larry King took over at 9.00 pm.

Let me try a little predicting for the Republican race: I think Huckabee will win in South Carolina. His organization is strong there, the polls look good and coming from Arkansas he should do well in the South. For Florida, the next primary after South Carolina on Saturday, I find it hard to make a reasonable guess. Guilliani keeps saying that Florida is 'his state' because of the people who moved there from New York but that seems to me a weak idea for an election strategy. Guilliani has done embarrassingly bad in the first few primaries even in states where he could have been expected to do well. Mitt Romney is somewhat stiff in his manners, and his opponents call him a 'flip flopper' but of all the candidates he has the best chance of winning, if not in Florida then at least on February 5th, Super Tuesday.

Over-all, of all the candidates, I think Romney is probably best placed to win the nomination. I like McCain myself, but I don't think he has a serious chance of winning: the Republican base just doesn't care for him, and his campaign has hardly any money left. The same goes for Thompson, he is doing pretty bad, has never had any real momentum expect for when he wasn't running yet and his funds are running low. I'd say Huckabee makes a small chance, but I believe Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominate for 2008.

Saturday afternoon we saw The Bucket List in a movie theater in Wilson, NC. It's a story about two men who meet in the hospital and are told by their doctors that they only have 6 more months to live.

The main actors, Freeman and Nicholson were very well cast for these roles, and their performances made this a great movie. It was a touching, heartwarming story and reminded me a lot of that other great performance by Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt that we once saw in Haarlem.

Yesterday afternoon we made road trip to Wilson, a little town west of Raleigh and about 1,5 hours from Durham.

We wanted to see a historic downtown, and Wilson showed up high in the list with Google results. It was indeed a pretty town with lots of old wooden houses in Southern style with porches and chairs outside.

We saw large and beautiful suburbs when driving into the city, but the downtown area is not doing very well. A lot of houses and businesses are abandoned, and over-all downtown looks to be in bad shape. At other hand we did see some nicely painted stores and public places: the town is making an effort to look better and especially the little square behind the hardware store in the main street is a pleasant surprise.

Later in the afternoon we went to see a nice movie and after dinner we drove back to Durham.

The train station, with maybe 6 passenger trains a day.

A bed and breakfast.

Clock.

A whirligig.

The back side of a hardware store. Look closely!

The primaries have started and the campaigns for the presidential nominations are in full swing.

Over the last couple of days we've been watching quite a lot of television: campaign speeches, debates and news shows. C-SPAN, cable's political channel, provides 24/7 coverage of all things political which is great.

Yesterday we saw the results of the New Hampshire primary coming in. The CNN reporting was a lot more interesting than the coverage of the New Hampshire local channel, at least as long as Lou Dobbs wasn't talking.

I'm looking forward to a year of many election events and it's fascinating to follow all this... only 6 more days until Michigan.

One of the many highlights of our vacation in the Dominican Republic was a snorkeling trip to a reef in the ocean.

Some pictures of a wonderful adventure. The waterproof case of the camera was great.

Early in the morning a bus picked us up from the hotel and we went to beach about 30 minutes away. There we got in our swimsuits and got ready for the snorkeling...

...and for the speedboat!

It was a great experience to go with a speedboat on the open sea. There was pretty big waves so the boat was jumping on the ocean, and a view of the island was stunning.

We were with one other couple and a guide, who stopped after some 15 minutes at a buoy in the ocean. I don't have a picture of where we stopped, but above are some other boats in the area so you get an idea. It was cool to jump out of the boat in the middle of the sea.

A guide took a picture of us just before we jumped in.

We had a waterproof case for the camera so we were able to take pictures under water. Not many -- I choose to enjoy the view rather than spend a lot of time taking pictures.

Under water.

Fish.

A great trip... and great to be 'back home' in the hotel afterwards.