Random Things about Dutch Food

• Chicken Curry Cup-a-Soup is surprisingly delicious.  Asparagus Cup-a-Soup, not so much.  Though, to be fair, it does really, really smell very asparagussy.

• In the Netherlands, Ramen soup is really expensive.  It is about 85 (US) cents per package.  That just seems wrong in so many ways.

• You can get lots of things really cheaply at the market.  And, lots of times, when the farmers have an over-abundance of certain fruits, they will just stick them in grocery bags and sell them as-is, for a set price.  That is how I got about 8lbs of Granny Smith apples for 1 euro, about 10lbs of oranges for 1 euro, and then about 10 lbs of unidentified apples that kind of reminded me of a cross between a Gala and a Fuji, also for 1 euro (not all three at once of course).  They also had bags of 8 avocados for 1 euro.  They looked really good--I spent a little while trying to decide if I knew what to do with an avocado if I got it, but other than eating them raw, I couldn't think of anything and I didn't think that I would eat that many of them.  Another thing they have a lot is large bags of maybe 10-12 bell peppers.  They are all really pretty and they shade from green to red.  I keep trying to decide if I can eat that many peppers all by myself but so far I haven't worked myself up to buy a bag yet.  I will have to see if I can find good stove-top recipes for peppers, in case I start running out of time.

• For some reason, in the Netherlands, they sell eggs by the half-dozen or by the ten, not by the dozen.  Perhaps it is that terrible old metric, base-10 thing coming up, but it seems funny to buy eggs in boxes of 10.  These are brown "barn" chicken eggs that I got at the market.  All of the writing on the inside of the carton is a series of egg descriptors and what they indicate:  free-range, organic, barn, caged, etc.

• The Dutch make very good cheese--things like Edam and Gouda and stuff like that.  However, if you live in the Netherlands, you get decidedly boring cheese.  Apparently, this is because the Dutch export all of their good cheese and just keep the boring stuff for themselves, whatever nobody else will buy.  I was thinking about this compared to the French who apparently keep all of the good wine for themselves and ship only the stuff that they don't want to drink.  I think that this must say something about the Dutch and the French, generally.

• Dutch food seems to have way fewer preservatives than the food that you buy in the US.  And, while I am in favor of no preservatives, I guess, on the other hand, preservatives are kind of nice for, say, keeping a loaf of bread good for more than three days, especially since Dutch loaves of bread are gigantic and, no matter how many peanut butter sandwiches you eat, there is only so much one person can do.

• On the topic of peanut butter: perhaps I judged the Dutch too harshly (either that or I have just become inured to tasteless, weird, healthy peanut butter).  Whatever the cause, I got a different brand of peanut butter and it tastes way better than the first brand I got.  It does have a really weird texture though--it is "creamy" peanut butter but still has little bits of gritty pieces of peanut chunks throughout.  

• Dutch yogurt is really, really good.  Or at least I assume that it is so, generally.  I buy the cheapest brand and it is really, really good, at least.  I have gotten peach (my favorite) and peach-passion fruit.  It is way less sweet than what you get in the store in the U.S. and, in texture and taste, it is a lot closer to homemade yogurt--kind of runny and kind of tangy.  It is pretty tasty.

• My apartment building is on top of a restaurant.  The restaurant's dumpster is right beside the main entrance to the apartments upstairs and our entrance hall is right next to what I assume is the kitchen/washing-up area of the restaurant.  So a lot of the time, the whole downstairs smells like trash that has been out to long, old, moldy dish-water, and cooking cabbage.  Not the bests smells ever.  The other day, though, they must have gotten things cleaned up inside and were doing some kind of cooking when I went by because I turned the corner and it smelled just lovely.  It smelled just like Aunt Marlyss's baked chicken.  So then I was all home-sick and wanted some baked chicken but since I have neither an oven nor a slow-cooker I had to settle for a peanut butter sandwich.  For the record though, stopping by Milaca is on my "list of things to do" in ten or eleven months.  =-)