March 12, 2016

Snack food goes disco in Nijmegen

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 9:14 pm
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The latest junk food hit in the Netherlands comes from Nijmegen, Gelderland and it’s called a ‘discodel’ (photo), a wrinkled hotdog called ‘frikandel’ with mayonnaise on top of it and topped off with small multi-coloured sugary balls that you would normally find on ice cream or cupcakes.

Three Dutch students came up with this one after a night of drinking – what a surprise. They’ve always mixed things up at the snack bar, and one day they went for the frikandel with mayonnaise and coloured balls and the ‘discodel’ was born.

(Link: www.ad.nl)

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March 1, 2016

Dutch Twitter row over chocolate Easter eggs

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 9:58 am
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It’s time for another holiday controversy, one that revolves around chocolate Easter eggs sold at Dutch chain store HEMA. The store calls one type of its milk chocolate Easter eggs ‘eggs for hiding’ for the purpose of an egg hunt, but omitting the word ‘Easter’ has led to hate-filled comments from Dutch Twitter conspiracy theorists living in their own echo chamber. ‘The H in HEMA stands for Halal instead of Holland’ and other hateful nonsense is doing the rounds, effectively helping the rest of us weed out the nutters just in time for some online spring cleaning.

Part of Dutch Twitter went down the rabbit hole claiming, with no proof whatsoever, that HEMA was pandering to Muslims by removing the word ‘Easter’ in their ‘eggs for hiding’. HEMA claims it has been calling one type of its milk chocolate eggs ‘eggs for hiding’ for 10 years now because there’s a gold one and that makes them great for Easter egg hunts. After one ‘offending’ picture on Twitter, people jumped on the bandwagon because it sounded plausible if you ignore the pesky facts that get in the way of blind hate.

HEMA sells pork products, Christmas stuff, Easter stuff, Sinterklaas stuff, even head scarves that offends absolutely nobody.

(Links: nieuws.nl, www.volkskrant.nl)

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February 24, 2016

Gourmet popcorn shop hits Amsterdam high street

Filed under: Dutch first,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 7:48 pm

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I’ve recently noticed an increase in popcorn flavours besides salty and sweet at my local supermarket, such as fancy popcorn with cheese and chives and what not from the UK as well as Dutch attempts at making popcorn that reminds me of American Cracker Jack.

This time Italians are bringing the popcorn to downtown Amsterdam, with the opening of FOL Gourmet Popcorn, the first ever popcorn shop of the country. Flavours will include bacon, chili pepper and white chocolate with pretzel. You can also sit down and have a beverage with your popcorn.

I love popcorn and every time I reach for some I say ‘popcorn!’ and picture of James Brown getting down.

(Links: nieuws.nl, www.vastgoedmarkt.nl, Photo: Popcorn Monsoon by Dutch designer Jolene Carlier)

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February 22, 2016

Dutch supermarket hires cook to counter food waste

Filed under: Food & Drink,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 2:44 pm

The Plus supermarket in Winterswijk, Gelderland has a cook on staff that makes meals from the food close to its best-before date and sells it to customers, a Dutch first according to the supermarket.

While France has been making headlines with its legislation banning supermarkets from throwing away food (a great idea that doesn’t quite work yet), the Dutch have been giving away their expired food to food banks for a long time, not feeling the need to legislate what seems like doing the right thing. French supermarkets can also get rid of their food in a way that it becomes animal feed and compost rather than feed people.

In the Netherlands, even if food is expired and OK to eat, it has to be thrown out by law, and that didn’t sit well with supermarket owner Jeroen Bruggers. He got creative and hired a cook last autumn, Sander-Jan Bats, who makes meals with food that is about to expire. Bats, 32, who has been cooking food since he was 15, cooks in an open kitchen with his colleagues and says he enjoys the challenge. The meals cost no more than 4 euro and are freshly made, a big hit with customers. Bruggers hopes other supermarkets pick up the idea.

(Link: www.achterhoeknieuwswinterswijk.nl, Photo of an endive potato mash with meatless sausage by Jasja Dekker, some rights reserved)

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February 16, 2016

Dutchman fined with car full of meat in Switzerland

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 12:40 pm

To save some money while on vacation, a twentysomething Dutch guy decided to bring 160 kilos of meat into Switzerland, a country that only allows you to bring a kilo with you. He could have looked it up before trying to play bluff poker with Swiss border guards.

Customs found a veritable butcher’s shop in the boot of the car: spareribs, roasted pig, steaks and cold cuts. After claiming to have nothing to declare, the guy was fined a few thousand Swiss francs. Since we like price tags, 2,000 CHF is about 1,814 euro, 3,000 CHF is 2,721 euro), which means he probably ate dry bread for the rest of his vacation.

There’s nothing wrong with the Dutch bringing cheese, drop (Dutch liquorice sweets) and coffee on vacation as comfort food, but don’t pull stunts with the Swiss – they’ve seen it all. They’re not part of the EU or the European Economic Area like Iceland or Norway, and they don’t do Schengen. They will search the shit out of your car and fine you quicker than James Bond skiing away from the baddies down the piste at Gstaad for speeding.

(Link: nos.nl)

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January 27, 2016

‘Lab grown meat to hit shops in five years’

Filed under: Food & Drink,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 9:03 am

Newly founded Dutch company Mosa Meat wants to see lab grown meat in supermarkets in five years’ time. One of the owners of the company, Dutch researcher Mark Post of Maastricht University, was behind the growing of pieces of muscle in a lab, claiming that synthetic meat could reduce the environmental footprint of meat by up to 60%. The original lab meat cost 290,000 euro to produce.

Together with Dutch food expert Peter Verstraate Mosa Meat plans to sell lab meat for 10 to 20 euro a kilo, a price that would go down if this ever become a reality and a consumer habit. A select group of people tasted the lab meat in London in 2013 and you can watch a short video on how that went. English chef Richard McGowan prepared burgers, and not Heston Blumenthal as initially suggested. The critics were positive about the taste of lab meat.

“I think most people just don’t realise that the current meat production is at its maximum and is not going to supply sufficient meat for the growing demand in the next 40 years, so we need to come up with an alternative,” Post explains.

There’s already a cookbook for lab meat on standby.

(Link: www.bright.nl)

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January 25, 2016

Fishing for a Dutch Captain Iglo

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 1:24 pm

Volendam

Headquartered in Utrecht, Dutch frozen fish company Iglo is looking for a new Kapitein Iglo (Captain Iglo). It’s a real job with requirements and everything. From 1967 to 1998 well-known British actor John Hewer was the face of Captain Birdseye, as it’s either Birdseye or Iglo depending on where you buy the products in Europe. German taxi driver Gerd Deutschmann played the captain from 2008 until his death in 2012.

There’s never been a Dutch captain and since there’s no time like the present, Iglo wants someone to hand out fish sticks, sail around a bit and show up at sea-related festivals. However, it doesn’t say they want a man because that would be illlegal as women are technically allowed to apply as well, if they feel like wasting their time that is.

The job vacancy cleverly uses the Dutch word ‘gastheer’ (‘male host’), which automatically excludes women the same way ‘gastvrouw’ (hostess) always excludes men. On a darker note, wouldn’t a Dutch captain be expected to be Caucasian? One could argue that the captain should look the same as he (not she) always has, so then you’d get an older white man with a full white beard. The vacancy says “candidates of all ages may apply”, which is odd because technically you can’t exclude anyone based on age unless the salary is such that it fits the complicated ageist EU rules of paying younger people less and older people more in certain roles. In other words, they’ve overtly omitted specifying a man or a skin colour, which means women and non-Caucasian can apply and waste their time, but they have no problem telling us they’d be willing to pick a younger man by highlighting something that’s already a legal given. It smells a bit fishy.

If you’re casting a Dutch film and you need a Russian gangster type, you can then specify you want a man who looks Russian, is bad ass and 30 without any bad feelings. In this case, why don’t they just come out and say that Caucasian and male would be preferable? My money says the winner is going to be a man as white as the inside of a fish stick.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl, Photo of Volendam by quantz, some rights reserved)

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January 18, 2016

Carnival song says refugees came for the beer

Filed under: Food & Drink,Music by Orangemaster @ 12:45 pm

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Noord-Brabant student singers Grenzeloos Gek have made the news with their carnival song ‘Vluchtelingen uit Aleppo’ (‘Refugees from Aleppo’). They can’t sing on key and dance around a touchy subject, but so far they’ve not caused any actual controversy except for fueling the annual carnival lovers vs. carnival haters ping pong online.

Here’s a rough translation of the chorus:

“Refugees from Aleppo, over the mountains so high
Refugees from Aleppo, farmers, bakers and biologists
They’re coming here for four days of beer.”

It’s about a bunch of white male Dutch students drawing attention to themselves with a sub-par song using a ripped off melody and a hot topic. It’s about drinking beer and having fun and singing as flat as a carnival beer. The song amusingly implies that refugees drink beer when in fact a lot of them probably don’t and didn’t flee for their lives for a few watered down carnival beers with frat boys. I’m still wondering if this would have worked with a bunch of white Dutch girls: depending on their looks, they’d been written off or tolerated because of them.

Last year we had a few zingers. We’ll keep you posted this year.

Refugees from Aleppo is sung to the tune of the famous Dutch song ‘Una Paloma Blanca’ by George Baker Selection, better known by the younger generations for ‘Little Green Bag’.

Listen to ‘Refugees from Aleppo’ at your own risk, I couldn’t get through the video.

(Link: www.omroepbrabant.nl, Photo of Maastricht carnival 2008)

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December 25, 2015

24oranges HQ closes shop for a day

Filed under: Food & Drink,General by Orangemaster @ 1:23 pm

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The 24oranges tree is the same every year, but decorated slightly differently. I found it years ago abandoned on Queen’s Day (now King’s Day) in a big blue IKEA tote bag and it does the job just fine. This year it has candy canes I bought in the UK (not a Dutch thing) and some baubles made by friends.

Today’s menu is wild mushroom stew Bourgignon, which means red wine is involved, and home made almond shortbread cookies. Oh, and the fantastic French cheese that someone brought from France and left me to eat upon returning to France for the holidays, you know who you are.

Branko will again have a Top 10 list of this year’s favourite stories before the end of the year. Thanks for the comments, the likes and following us on Twitter. We’ll try and be more present on instagram (if only we could toggle between accounts!) in 2016 and we’ll keep uploading great Dutch pics on Flickr.

Happy Holidays, and for anyone who is working, have a good day and take care!

UPDATE: we took a few days.

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December 24, 2015

Food label lies put to the vote and publicly shamed

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 3:25 pm
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After voting for the cheesiest business slogan of the year (my horses won, placed and showed!), now it’s time to vote for Foodwatch’s Most Misleading Food Product of 2015, aka De Gouden Windei or ‘Golden Windegg’.

This year’s contestants are:

– Light peanut butter with a whopping 451% (!) more sugar than normal peanut butter.
– A small dessert of which half of it is air.
– Apple juice diluted with water and passed off as half as sweet.
– Cranberries that have a layer of syrup on them, sold as superfood.
– Children’s cookies “full of nutrients”, but with tons of sugar in them.

And two others with misleading labels that finally have less to do with hidden sugars and more to do with not enough proper product. I voted for the cranberries, which seems like the biggest con, but the cookies and peanut butter are right up there.

UPDATE: The cranberries won (in Dutch).

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl)

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