While walking through De Passage last week I noticed a colorful sight by restaurant De Luca:
It was early in the morning so it wasn’t quite open yet. Which just meant I had a great opportunity to take a few photos.
And here is a close up:
Check out those prizes! €2.50 for 1 macaron, €25 for a box of 12. These are definitely seen as a luxury treat. If you are less picky you can go to the local Albert Heijn and get a box of 12 macarons for €5. Hmm. I am sure that is heresy to some folks, though.
A few days ago I was at the local Hema and I spotted some classic Dutch candy (oud hollandse mix).
It reminded me of visiting my grandparents. I am pretty sure they had a candy dish full of sweets like that (who didn’t?). The hard candy that sticks together, somewhat annoying for a kid because you have first try to pull them apart before you can enjoy one, but nice because they take so long to eat. I don’t remember them having much taste, but I could be wrong on that point.
Candy, candy, candy everywhere. Sometimes I miss being a kid that could eat half a bag of candy or a handful of cookies without a second thought. I do still have a weakness for Haribo gummy bears, though. But only if you stick them in the freezer first… I’m weird, I know.
For Christmas I received a box of chocolate from Roger from an Amsterdam-based company I hadn’t heard of yet: Chocoladna. Normally they cater more to hotels and restaurants, but thanks to Corona and lockdowns the company has been forced to expand its horizons a bit.
Marco and I have been enjoying a piece each with coffee in the last week or so. Half the fun is trying to decide which one you want (the other half is misery for Marco because I take so long!). So far my favorites have been a hazelnut praline and a hazelnut crisp. Which is interesting because I don’t go out of my way to get hazelnut chocolate normally. So far everything we have tried has tasted great. Oh, and we like to joke that the larger red ball near the top is probably a sour ball and not chocolate at all, as a sort of prank.
Of course, you can also get the luxury option for € 449, which includes 50 chocolate truffles, 7 bottles of mini liquors and… a 7 inch LED tv screen!? See also the LXRY kist page. Admittedly it is mainly for use by companies, restaurants or hotels, and you can order chocolate truffel refills separately. The TV screen shows viewers how the chocolates are made and what ingredients are used.
For that price it is good to see that it is also personally delivered to you!
Back on the day that stores were allowed to reopen (January 15) I saw a curious find at Xenos. Xenos is a national chain here in The Netherlands. The Dutch Wikipedia page summarizes it well when they say Xenos specializes in selling “mass produced exotic goods”.
Well, apparently they also had a leftover stock of chocolate letters (English Wikipedia) from the Sinterklaas holiday, celebrated on 5 December. I know the stores had to close in mid-December due to the lockdown, but still! Albert Heijn and Hema always clear out their stock even before 5 December.
Of course, at this point they only had the most common letters (M) or some rarer ones (O, P). They still had all of the usual flavors, though. Milk chocolate, white chocolate, dark chocolate, hazelnut…
In other news, for the history buffs among us:
Digitalised Holland Amerika line passenger lists reveal famous names from dutchnews.nl. “The digital archive, which is kept at the Rotterdam city archive and accessible to the public, covers the period between 1900 and 1969 when millions of people made the journey [from Rotterdam to the United States] and took three years to complete.” Apparently Albert Einstein was also one of the regular passengers, as he frequently taught a course at nearby Leiden University. The direct link to the list is available here (stadsarchief.rotterdam.nl, in Dutch).
As noted, everything is closed at the moment due to the lockdown. With the exception of course of supermarkets, pharmacies and other essential stores. It doesn’t seem to help that much though, as the omicron wave has hit the Netherlands (nltimes.nl in English).
Here is a look at the Pathé movie theatre on the Spui:
In the background you can see the escalators leading up to the cashiers and theatres. As I blogged previously, at least we got to see Spiderman the day before lockdown started.
Of special note is the sign in the foreground: “We’ll be back… again and again”.
For New Year’s Eve, Marco and I spent the night at Roger’s as we always like to do. This time we had some guests over at the dinner table:
That’s right – a stuffed teddy bear and reindeer decided to pay us a visit in their Christmas best.
And not to be forgotten, the oliebollen-themed napkins that they were sharing. New Year’s Eve gourmetten (link to iamexpat.nl in English) does get a bit messy at times…
I did forget to post a picture of the oliebollen Marco and I made yesterday. Opps!
In the foreground is krentebollen (oliebollen with raisins) and in the background, just barely visible, is oliebollen (no raisins). I am a fan of the no-raisins variant, partially because raisins make everything sweeter. And I want to save my extra sweetness levels for a bit of powdered sugar. Although in the last few years or so I have realized that cinnamon sugar – just barely pictured in the background – is even better than powdered sugar. Although perhaps that opinion makes me a bit of a heretic…
Outside it is fairly quiet although I do hear the occasional boom from fireworks off in the distance. That is slightly surprising, since fireworks have been banned for the last two years thanks to corona. Even these fireworks have been illegally stored in people’s basements or they made the trip to Germany or Belgium to purchase fireworks. Hmmm.
Although who am I kidding. It is not surprising at all to hear fireworks today: Belgian border towns busy with firework-mad Dutch, despite the ban, from dutchnews.nl.
Marco and I made oliebollen tonight (Wikipedia). Or, more accurately, Marco made oliebollen and I helped/looked cute/cleaned things occasionally. Now that we have a bit of experience, we’re definitely getting better and faster at making them. The longest wait is letting the raisins soak for 15 minutes and then letting the oliebollen dough rise for 45 minutes. You then fry them at around 190C/375F for about 3-4 minutes each.
This batch of oliebollen is for tomorrow evening’s New Year’s Eve festivities. I will also stop by the Grote Markt oliebollen stand (official website) while I am in the city centre to pick up a few apple beignets.
Speaking of oliebollen… Koopmans (a major distributor of boxes of oliebollen mix) forgot to put yeast into a small percentage of their boxes. Opps?
It’s not harmful, but the mix won’t rise at all, meaning your oliebollen will be more like bricks then fluffy donuts. It’s a bit of bad timing on their part as everyone and their mother bakes oliebollen around New Year’s Eve.
The funniest part? The affected products have a production code of L212447 and a timestamp between 02:30 and 05:00. Yeah, I wouldn’t be awake at that time of the day either, so it makes sense that someone forgot to press the button to add the yeast in…
It has finally happened – jars of Goober have arrived in The Netherlands, spotted at the Albert Heijn grocery store. Goober is jelly and peanut butter in the same jar (!). I thought it was an invention from the 1990’s, but according to Wikipedia it has been around since the 1960’s. Who knew.
I am a bit particular about my jelly and peanut butter ratios (about 1x jelly to 3x peanut butter) so this arrangement doesn’t work for me. Also, I have realized the awesomeness of Dutch peanut butter (aka less sugar and a bit thicker) so going back to American peanut butter would be a bit difficult. The only time I have it these days is when I am at an American hotel and I get one of those individual peanut butter containers for my toast. I do miss American style breakfasts.
Of course, it is entirely possible that this product has been available in The Netherlands for a while and I just noticed (it was hiding up on the top shelf after all)…
Check out this Christmas tree made of bread rolls:
It is as tasty as it looks. It is actually bake-off bread – you buy it at Albert Heijn and finish baking it in the oven. Perfect toppings include butter, peanut butter, speculaas paste (Wikipedia), and/or hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles). If you’re Dutch you would add a layer of butter and then the hagelslag sprinkles, but luckily I am not Dutch so I am exempt.
We also split a mini kerststol (Wikipedia) between us, a sort of sugary Christmas bread with almond paste inside. And it was one of those rare mornings where I went and made a second cup of coffee… Good times!
Life in the Hague 