Tastes of Home

After reading Guardian's article 'Tastes of home: what food do you miss the most' I started daydreaming about all the foods I would indulge in once I would be back in my home-country this Thursday.

It is basically everything you can buy at my all-time favorite supermarket Albert Heijn and retail shop Hema (gosh, how I miss those shops in the UK) - but I will elaborate a bit more with some mouth-watering photo's of the Dutch delicacies that make me dribble when thinking of.

Boterham met Hagelslag

The bread back at home is just the best, as are the toppings! Take a fresh slice of bread, smother it with a generous unhealthy amount of unsalted butter and then sprinkle a copious amount (ideally a pile) of the sprinkles on your bread. Ahhhh heaven. We have dozens of different types of sprinkles, such as chocolate flavored, fruit-flavored, licorice-flavored. You name it and we have it! Cannot wait to have hagelslag for breakfast. 

Frikandel! 

I am pretty certain that all Dutch people are obsessed with this fried snack. And the obsession is very contagious too. All foreigners I have introduced to this sausage are over the moon and are desperate to have another one. Please note that the ingredients of this delicious sausage is something we do not really like to discuss (think horse flesh, pork and chicken offal... brains..?)

Patatje Oorlog 

Fries, with satay sauce and mayonnaise! I can't even comment on this at the moment as I WANT TO EAT IT NOW! Apparently we love our chips so much that we eat over 41 million kilo per year. However, it isn't really the chips that I miss so much and desperately crave, but the satay sauce. It is delicious on fries!

Tompouce

An equivalent to the English Mille-Feuille/Napoleon, but so so so much better. The tompouce is truly iconic in the Netherlands. I love it so much that my stephmum even gave me a blow-up bed in the shape of a tompouce. see photo here

However, what I probably miss the utmost is the delicious food created by my incredibly talented brother, and served in Restaurant/Brasserie De Vierbannen. His scrumptious creations are a sight for sore eyes! I feel a separate post about this beautiful restaurant and excellent food is due soon....

Secretly I am also hoping that my dad reads this, and that it reminds him of my post in March 2013: Continental Food for a Homesick Dutchy - my dad's infamous paella on the menu on Thursday night? YES PLEASE!

Liefs,

Dutchy xx

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Lets stampede the Dutch stamp

This post is very much related to my Postman Dutchy post from June '13, but after having sent and received a couple of letters I feel yet again a bit disappointed with the ever-so-trendy Dutch.

Whether you like it or not, we will all have to fully adapt to the communication changes of the 21st Century. Letters are a thing of the past as we continuously use other methods such as email and social media to communicate with one another. And even if we do send an 'old-fashioned' postcard, we increasingly use websites such as Greetz and Moonpig to write it and send it for us! It has never been so easy, quick and cheap to be pen-pals than ever before. 

However, what really frustrates me is that the Dutch try to cope with this modernity. Why not just remember this nostalgic way of communicating by leaving the postbox as well as the stamp to its beautiful original format? Despite my often liberal or socialist political views, I am a staunch Royalist (eek, let's hope my granny doesn't get to read this post). I have absolutely no shame in admitting that I love the Dutch & British Royal Family and therefore I want to see pictures and images of them. All the time. Everywhere. On Everything! 

Yes, that includes stamps indeed.

It is a real rarity for the British to provide the public with stamps that do not have our beloved Queen Elizabeth's smiley face on it, but the Dutch on the other hand..... The Dutch are beyond excited to swap Queen B's/King WA's head for planes, animals, food, children's drawings.. you name it and the Dutch have it! 

Have a look at the extensive collection of the Dutch:

Stamps to encourage the Dutch to be more 'green'

A special valentines day stamp!

Christmas Stamps... 

Children's stamps!

Have you seen the shocking continuity yet in the above Dutch stamps? No? Ok. Let's see how differently the British treat this important little sticker:

Celebrating the great British Fashion on a stamp

A tribute to working dogs

Yay, the olympics/paralympics are on its way

A poppy for Remembrance Day..

Ok cleverpants, did you notice the difference? What appears on every British stamp despite its design, and is missing on the Dutch stamps? 

Our Majesty!!!

I know our new King WA's chubby face isn't a very pleasant sight, but how else are we going to get used to him instead of our ever-so wonderful Queen B? 

I must say, Alex looks significantly better
on a stamp than in real life!

Liefs,

Dutchy xx

A little geography test...

Following up on Buzzfeed's Thanksgiving post in where Brits are trying to label the United States, I thought I'd do something similar and see how good my friends' geographical skills are. 

I asked my Dutch friends to locate London, Bristol, Blackpool and Leeds on the English map (not all listened to the instructions as you can see - stubborn Dutchies!) and my English darlings had a go at positioning main Dutch cities on the map of The Netherlands.

I was fairly confident my British friends R, L, D & BF would be able to point out Amsterdam.. Until R. asked me how she could locate  one of the allocated cities on the Dutch map: "Isn't Amsterdam a country?" and L. said she had never heard of any of these cities. Oh dear!

I didn't doubt my boyfriend for a second, nor did he lack any confident himself: "Of course I know it, The Hague the lovely town beside the strand dunes bottom left, just in land is old Anna Frank and the prozzies! Up top is Groningen, last is German Limburger Maastricht". Not sure about his way of describing the cities, but well done for paying attention during geography lessons (or for being so interested in the Netherlands because of having a Dutch GF!)

R. thought Groningen was at the bottom, as it had the shape of a groin and the city sounds like it. Err..... interesting thought process babes! L. on the other hand was 100% certain that Amsterdam was all the way at the top, wrongo!

Have a look at their answers:

Overall not a great score, 9/16 were correct. 

Over to my friends back at home to see if they can do it better. Dutch gal, E. already honestly admitted she only knew London - and guessed the rest. D. clearly did not trust the list of cities I provided her with, and replaced Leeds with Sheffield. So did F. though, she decided to point Liverpool out instead of Blackpool. Sigh, they are so obstinate. Or has my preparation over time proven to be that questionable? My good friend S. knew them all of by heart, but has lived in the UK for a year so I would have been disappointed if she'd failed. 

The Dutchesses managed to get 10 out of 16 - hurraaay!! 

Can you do it better? I certainly can't......

Liefs,

Dutchy xx

England has some catching up to do!

Famous Countries

From emperor penquins to cocaine use... this new map from The Doghouse Diaries has revealed the surprising things that countries are best at.

The colourful map above shows what each country leads the world in... The Netherlands and United Kingdom are too small to see what is written across the country's geographical territory, but what do you reckon? What's our country famous for?

I pondered The Netherlands could potentially take the lead in marijuana consumption, tulips or clog wearers. And United Kingdom could claim its fame for gingerheads, football hooligans and teadrinkers (oh how stereotypical of me). 

But, based on statistics gathered from across the internet from sources such as the World Bank and Guiness World Records, my two favourite countries seem to take the lead in the following:

United Kingdom leads the world in Fascist Movements

&

The Dutch for being the tallest!

I am not a big fan of this form of radical authoritarian nationalism as existing in the UK, so the Dutch giants will take the lead this post!

Liefs,

Dutchy xx

You can take the girl out of the Netherlands.....

...BUT YOU CAN'T TAKE THE NETHERLANDS OUT OF THE GIRL!

I'm feeling a bit guilty since I have been giving GB so many points lately. Hence why I wanted to provide you with some of my Instagram snaps posted in the last couple of months or so. As you can see, you've got nothing to fret about. I am still very much patriotic...

Hayling Island Sailing Club welcomes the Dutchies

Proudly wearing the Dutch colours!

I passionately hate Mc Donalds,
but my heart does melt a little from the Dutch McKroket.
Famous in the Netherlands and sadly unknown to the rest of the world.

Dress code: Delfts Blue!

Many sleepover to come on my 'tompouce' luchtbed, thanks F!

You come across the Dutchies e v e r y w h e r e - yayy!

You can recognize me running in the park,
wearing my orange Rabobank hockey top!

A restaurant to tackle the homesickness - My Old Dutch

I always have a bunch of tulips in my house of course!

I think The Netherlands has earned some brownie points, don't you agree?

Liefs,

Dutchy xx

The Red, Blue and Whites are square again!