March 25, 2015

Are women afraid to use the self-scanner?

Filed under: Food & Drink,General,Technology by Orangemaster @ 1:26 pm

Rosie

It is a tendentious question, but what on earth is Rosie the Riveter being used to encourage women folk, who are the main food shoppers, that they too have enough brains to use the relatively new self-scanners at the supermarket? It says ‘We scan ourselves!’. If they had a picture of a tough guy saying ‘I can use a scanner, too!’ it would be condescending. The scanners also work in other languages, so the insult isn’t lost on the non-Dutch crowd.

Hang on: the message with a woman is condescending towards women! Retro is cute, but not like this. Rosie deserves a hell of a lot better.

This lame message is quite typical of corporate Dutch passive-agressiveness: use the fokkin scanners ladies, as we’d rather have our cheap students (mostly female by the way) lose their jobs to a self-scanner over time. Yes, it’s mainly boys that stock shelves because, well, boys. I bet Rosie could kick all of their asses.

As a representative of women folk, I don’t always use the scanner because when I buy alcohol, an employee needs to come over, verify my age and swipe their magic card through the scanner so I can get on with it.

If you don’t agree that the poster is insulting to women, fine. But you should agree that it’s fokkin unoriginal.

(Photo: Mariƫlle Verbeek)

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March 11, 2015

Unwanted animals turned into fancy snack food

Filed under: Animals,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 10:20 am

parakeets-amsterdam-branko-collin

In 2011 Amsterdam artist Rob Hagenouw contacted some hunters and scored geese to create his own croquette recipe. It was a big deal because by law geese cannot be killed unless they are deemed a nuisance, like the geese at Schiphol airport.

Hagenouw’s project The Kitchen of the Unwanted Animal (‘Keuken van het ongewest dier’) is a food truck in Amsterdam that sells snack food made from unwanted animals like muskrat, horse, pigeon, crawfish and parakeet. Unwanted means that these animals are not indigenous to the Netherlands (crawfish), are no longer being cared for as pets (horse) or are a nuisance (geese). Instead of killing these animals and throwing them out, Hagenouw and his partner Nicolle Schatborn decided to build a whole cuisine around them that’s getting international attention.

Although rabbit was not on the list yet, they are considered a plague, although a hugely cute one.

(Link: www.npr.org, Tip: Fred, thanks!)

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March 9, 2015

Weed-flavoured ice cream sold in Wageningen

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 12:38 pm

Besides pistachio, Antonio ice cream parlours in Ede and Wageningen are also selling ‘perfectly legal’ cannabis-flavoured ice cream imported from Italy. Owner Antonio Mulder says that it tastes like caramel and is made with cannabis seeds.

Like many other weed-flavoured Dutch products such as weed sauce for fries, it’s more about the idea of flirting with an illegal substance than hoping it could get you high.

Mulder adds that it’s probably not a good idea to suggest this flavour of ice cream to children, as it is more of a gimmick than anything else.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl,
Photo by Eric Caballero, some rights reserved)

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March 5, 2015

American Heineken film loaded with mistakes

Filed under: Film,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 1:36 pm

Colbert-report

‘Kidnapping Mr. Heineken’, a 2015 American film about the kidnapping of Dutch beer tycoon Freddy Heineken, is not only getting bad reviews from the international and Dutch press, but is also has enough mistakes to keep everybody busy.

Maarten Treurniet directed the 2011 Dutch film ‘De Heineken ontvoering’ (‘The Heineken Kidnapping’), staring a cast of actual Dutch people including Rutger Hauer, while Kidnapping Mr. Heineken apparently couldn’t be bothered with authenticity and casted mostly British and other non-Dutch actors. While the Dutch film set in 1983 Amsterdam has many anachronistic items from the 1990s and a few references to 1984, the American film messed up big time by showing the wrong coloured beer bottles, which should be brown instead of green.

NU.nl says that, “it is a weird mistake because the makers were attentive to very small details, even the police cars are from 1983.” The mistake was easy to make because Heineken has always exported its beer in green bottles, but in the Netherlands domestic bottles were brown, a ‘stupid mistake’. Even Dutch crime journalist and author Peter R. de Vries whose book was used to script the film was so displeased with the final product he couldn’t be arsed to go to the film’s premiere in the US.

If you like your Heineken humour on the absurd side, find out why a Dutch beer brand was a good choice for celebrating February’s Black History Month in the US a few years back.

(Link: www.nu.nl, Screenshot of The Colbert Report)

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March 3, 2015

World’s most expensive cheese slicer stolen

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 9:29 pm

kaasschaaf

Last weekend thieves made off with what is being called the most expensive cheese slicer in the world worth 25,000 euro, made by Boska Holland. It was stolen out of the Amsterdam Cheese Museum and is studded with 220 diamonds, designed in 2007 by Argentine bling designer Rodrigo Otazu.

The cheese slicer was being showcased in a basement window that wasn’t much of a match for the thieves. CCTV may provide a clue as to the persons that looted the shop.

However, it anyone helps catch the thieves, the generous Boska have a big cheese fondue set and some cheese for you. Yup, that’s it.

Even though many people think the cheese slicer is Dutch (like the potato, tulips and Delft blue – none of which is Dutch), the cheese slicer is a Norwegian invention.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl, Photo of Cheese slicer by The Akermarks, some rights reserved)

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February 13, 2015

Design popcorn machine is fun to watch

Filed under: Design,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 9:43 am

Popcorn-machine

The Popcorn Monsoon by Dutch designer Jolene Carlier consists of a pair of small yellow bowls placed on a wooden base: one heats to pop the corn while the other collects it, a design inspired by the 1971 film ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’. A curving glass tube fixed to the larger of the two receptacles delivers the popped corn into the small serving bowl.

Popcorn is a blast to listen to when it’s being made, or maybe that’s just because I still make it on the oven and the sound is the only thing to guide you. I had a twentysomething person over once who had never seen popcorn made on the oven before, as he thought it could only be made in a microwave.

I like this design a lot, with the exception of the popcorn flying out of the bowl.

(Link: www.dezeen.com)

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February 11, 2015

Dutch professor invents robot that collect eggs

Filed under: Food & Drink,Technology by Orangemaster @ 10:35 am

eggs1

Dutch robotics expert Professor Edvert van Henten from Wageningen University is developing a robot that will help egg producers help put a stop to wasted eggs. “The hens have to lay their eggs in nests, but 30% are laid on the floor. They cannot be sold as quality eggs and encourage other chickens to lay there as well so the farmers have to collect them by walking through twice a day, which is challenging.”

The technology is not yet available, and much like milking machines in the dairy industry, much needs to be done to make them commercially available,” says Van Henten.

Why is there a feather on the eggs in this picture some North Americans readers may wonder. Because the rest of the world believes in the natural protective coating placed on eggs by hens and that washing them straight out the chicken forces North Americans to wash and then refrigerate their eggs, which has been proven to be more susceptible to bacteria.

(Link: www.abc.net.au)

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January 31, 2015

Haarlem bans freezer bags used by thieves

Filed under: Food & Drink,Weird by Orangemaster @ 1:10 pm

Facepalm

The city of Haarlem has changed its local city ordinance to include a ban on reusable supermarket freezer bags, used to carry home frozen food. The bags have an inner layer of aluminium that foils supermarket alarm systems, making them popular with thieves. What if a thief put the freezer bag in a regular bag?

The ordinance was modified to be easier and less odd for the police to stop and question people carrying freezer bags, a bit like monitoring people buying screwdrivers and crowbars at the DIY store. Or else it looks like the cops are trying to score pizza and ice cream.

Municipal council justified their decision by saying that now the police “will be less racist and won’t just stop people based on their appearance”.

The Mayor of Haarlem, Bernt Schneiders, who came up with this brilliant idea is the same man who got his silver livery collar stolen from his office in 2011 (maybe a freezer bag was involved) and who in 2008 ‘corrected’ the Mayor of Beijing Wang Qisham telling him the Dutch had invented the printing press even though he was dead wrong.

(Link: www.haarlemsdagblad.nl, Photo of Paris Louvre facepalm by Phelan Riessen, some rights reserved)

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January 27, 2015

Jamballa, a new Dutch culinary sauce

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 10:08 am
fries1

After going national and beyond with Joppiesaus (‘Joppie sauce’), a sauce containing onion and curry powder named after Joppie, a snack bar owner in Glanerbrug near Enschede, food company Elite of Neede, Gelderland is introducing ‘Jamballa sauce’, although few people seem to know what it. Yes, it sounds like ‘Jambalaya’ to me too. The container features garlic and peppers on it, if that helps.

“Sweet and spicy” is the only available description, and it’s something Elite says the Dutch have never had before, but that’s very vague. The recipe comes from the South (Limburg?) and was introduced yesterday at food fair Horecava in Amsterdam. If we try some, we’ll tell you about it, and if you do, we want to know.

(Links: www.gelderlander.nl, sportclubneede.nl, Photo of fries in Brussels with Andalouse sauce)

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January 23, 2015

Rotterdam firm to make twisted building in Vienna

Filed under: Architecture,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 10:06 am

Turm-mit-taille_MVRDV_Vienna_tower_dezeen_468_5

Rotterdam architectural firm MVRDV has won a contest to design a new skyscraper in Vienna by proposing a 110-metre tower with an “elegant, hourglass figure” that will reduce the impact of its shadow. The contorted form is said to prevent any of the surrounding blocks being in shadow for longer than two hours a day.

The initial comments on this building is ‘maybe it is possible to use too much glass’. The heat that will generate in summer would required specially treated glass, and ‘the bit about being concerned about shadow is creating a problem where there isn’t one’, although in some Asian countries like Japan it’s a huge deal.

MVRDV are well-known for other much talked about projects, including Rotterdam’s horseshoe-shaped market hall that will be getting a Jamie Olivier Italian restaurant soon, even though there are already two pasta places.

(Link and image: www.dezeen.com)

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