The American edition of Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations, 1609-2009 will be officially launched in Washington, DC this Friday.

The book examines the ties between the Netherlands and the United States. That this is a long and extensive relationship is shown by the size of the book. It is written by nearly one hundred Dutch and American scholars and with almost 1,000 pages it weighs more than 5 pounds.

The Wilson Center, in in cooperation with the Netherland-America Foundation, Roosevelt Study Center, and the Embassy of the Netherlands, will host the official presentation and a discussion of U.S.-Dutch relations this Friday; over the next weeks there will be several other presentations of the book in the US and in the Netherlands.

In attendance in Washington DC will be Renée Jones-Bos, Ambassador of the Netherlands to the United States, L. Paul Bremer III, former U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands and Ernst H. van der Beugel, Professor of Diplomatic History of Atlantic Cooperation at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. The editors of the book will be in attendance also: Cornelis A. van Minnen, Director of the Roosevelt Study Center and Professor of American History at Ghent University, Belgium, Hans Krabbendam, Assistant Director of the Roosevelt Study Center and Giles Scott-Smith, Senior Researcher at the Roosevelt Study Center.

The book is now available on Amazon for $39.95 for a hardcover edition. It is published by Boom in Amsterdam (ISBN 9789085066538) and State University of New York Press in Albany, New York (ISBN13: 978-1-4384-3013-3).

With the NY400 week now officially over and Crown Prince Willem Alexander and Princess Maxima back in The Hague today to open the parliamentary year, there are still plenty of events in the New York area.

In addition to the art exhibitions we wrote about earlier there are a number of other museums that pay special attention to the celebration of Dutch American ties.

Here's a list with 10 museum exhibitions throughout the next few months:

• Through September 27: Mannahatta Manhattan: A Natural History of New York City (Museum of the City of New York)
• Through September 27: the Worlds of Henry Hudson (also in the Museum of the City of New York)
• Through September 27: Dutch Treats: Highlights from the collection of George Way (Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden)
• Through October 17: Actien Handel: Early Dutch Finance and the Founding of America (Museum of American Finance)
• Through November 10: The Half Moon (Halve Maen) replica will be available for tours. See the website for its schedule.
• Through December 31: When Brooklyn was Breukelen: A Celebration of the Schenck Houses (Brooklyn Museum)
• Through December 31: Dutch Culinary Traditions in America (Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden)
• Through January 10, 2010: Dutch New York: The Roots of Hudson Valley Culture (Hudson River Museum)
• Through March 7, 2010: 1609 (New York State Museum, Albany)
• Through July 26, 2010: Double Dutch – 400 years after Henry Hudson discovering new frontiers in contemporary Dutch art (The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art)

So, there is plenty to do this fall in the NY area for those interested in Dutch American history and culture.

We ate boerenkool for dinner. It was sunny today but it is getting dark earlier these days, so I figured it was okay to make a traditional winter dish. The boerenkool, as always, was delicious and we did our duty in researching a rookworst substitute -- more on that later. We even had my favorite Zaanse mustard. Now if only we had gele vla it would have been a fully Dutch dinner.

Yesterday over dinner we watched some Dutch TV online. That was fun as always, with Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Maxima on orange bikes in New York. We didn't get to see the weather report though.

Today Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Maxima watched a parade of boats in the New York harbor. In the afternoon they visited New Amsterdam Village, an imitation Dutch village that was temporarily set up at Bowling Green Park for a week.

The Dutch royal couple visited New York for NY 400 week, which commemorates the journey to what is now New York 400 years ago by Captain Henry Hudson. Earlier this week they opened a (permanent) Dutch pavilion in Manhattan and visited President Obama in the White House.

The New York website Gothamist has nice pictures of the Dutch pavilion, earlier this week.