September 26, 2017

Alkmaar’s world premiere live streaming cheese shop

Filed under: Dutch first,Food & Drink,Online by Orangemaster @ 12:10 pm

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For five days starting today, Kaan’s Kaashandel in Alkmaar will be live streaming their cheese shop. As I write this I can hear the local church bells and fast speaking Dutchmen talking cheese.

You can also order cheese directly and even chat with the employees who I can imagine are on their best behaviour today. The shop says it’s offering “the expertise, authenticity and experience of a physical cheese shop, combined with the ease of use and speed of a webshop.” This was an attempt to get more online notoriety and I guess it’s working.

The stream was set up together with the ABN AMRO bank as an experiment to inspire other shop owners. And there’s cheese!

(Link: nhnieuws.nl, screenshot of Kaan’s Kaashandel in Alkmaar)

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September 1, 2017

Tilburg school imposes water, parents upset

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 2:58 pm
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A school in Tilburg, Noord-Brabant, together with the parent-teach association (PTA), voted and agreed on letting children drink only water at school, but are now complaining about it. No energy drinks, no lemonade, no fizzy drinks: water. And if school staff feel children are eating sugary foods, they’ll send them home with a note about it for the parents. One kid had brought apple juice and a piece of butter cake to school and got such a note.

Parents are upset for various reasons. They feel their kids eat well at home, one kid’s parents says their kid doesn’t like water and came home crying, and there’s the parent that said “water is for dogs”. I’d say the first two comments are socially acceptable, but the last one is silly and ignorant.

The picture I used for this story is one we used a previous story entitled ‘Badly chosen picture with health article’, showing a teenager eating ontbijtkoek (gingerbread full of sugar and fat) and a vending machine full of similar sugary granola bars. And the article quoted was about ‘healthy eating’.

Some of the parents feel the ‘ban’ on juice should apply to the fat kids, not theirs – ouch. In Amsterdam’s Nieuw-West district, which has a lot of obese children, there was even talk of banning fast food places close to schools a few years back. Instead, schools encourage and teach drinking water and eating proper food, and apparently that’s working. Surprise: encouraging works better than shaming.

I understand parents should decide what their kids eat, that’s their job. But when a parent says “water is for dogs”, then something’s wrong. I was brought up on juice because in 1970s we were told that was good for you, and I also hated water. Today I drink mostly water because we all know better now.

Water is not only for dogs, it’s for a healthy human existence.

(Link: ad.nl)

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August 30, 2017

Dutch world record holder goes for apples

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 10:56 pm

Oranges-Branko1

Luuk Broos, the Guinness World Record holder for biggest champagne glass pyramid (50,116 glasses, watch him pour the champage) since July 2017, is going for his next challenge: the world record for piling up apples.

Together with residents of Vinkel, Noord-Brabant, Broos is going to attempt to pile up some 6000 apples in order to break a world record. Besides champagne glasses, Broos also broke a world record a few years ago for piling up 5500 oranges, a feat he called “the biggest success of my career”.

(Link: omroepbrabant.nl)

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August 29, 2017

Bringing back a truckload of beer crates

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 10:43 pm

Truck of beer

Students from the local beer joint in Dalfsen, Overijssel drove an entire truck full of empty plastic beer crates to the Jumbo supermarket to cash them in, about 1,000 in total. Beer crates and any bottles in them are worth ‘packaging deposit money’ (‘statiegeld’ in Dutch).

For three years, the beer joint saved up the crates and after deciding it was time to cash them in, they had to find a supermarket that was willing to do so. Other supermarkets turned them down, even Heineken turned them down, but the manager of the local Jumbo was ready to take the job on. It took four men to unload 869 beer crates with empties and 115 without, which instead of putting into the small bottle return machine were placed directly into the containers to go back to the breweries. The whole thing took two hours.

And how much deposit money did the students get back? A cool 3.620.14 euro, which may pay for a Jacuzzi and more beer, of course.

(Link and photo: ed.nl)

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July 5, 2017

Making 3D dishes and food for the elderly

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 2:44 pm
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Chef Jan Smink of top Dutch restaurant De Librije in Zwolle, Overijssel talks about the possibilities of making 3D printed dishes in the video below, where he shows us a creation made from celeriac and hazelnut paste with mushrooms, fermented garlic and more celeriac.

Smink segues into explaining that in Dutch retirement homes where 8% of the elderly have problems swallowing food, 3D printing could be useful for making their lives easier. It means they wouldn’t have to have their food blended to be eaten through a straw, which takes away from the social aspect of eating. Imagine making things like white asparagus puree, printing it out and eating with everyone else. That can be done since a 3D printer can make one-off orders, something a factory cannot easily do.

Of course, with a restaurant like Michelin-starred De Librije, not everything should be printed out, but it’s nice to hear from a chef that even people who don’t frequent his establishment could benefit from 3D printing.

Last year we told you about a 3D printer for pancakes at a restaurant in Ruurlo, Gelderland.

(Link: bright.nl)

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June 25, 2017

Mexicans accuse Heineken of lying about tequila

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 4:01 pm

desperados-tequila

Originally created by a French brewery and now brewed in Croatia for Heineken, Desperados beer sells in 85 international markets, but no longer in the United States since about 2015.

Desperados, which has been on sale for two decades, is now a problem for the Mexican authorities who claim that Heineken is messing with the rules on designation of origin. To put it plainly, there is no tequila in this tequila-flavoured beer according to Ramón González, Director of the CRT (Tequila Regulatory Council).

“Either they take the word ‘tequila’ off it, or they put some tequila in.” If they refuse, “we’ll have no choice but to fight this [in court]”, says González. The CRT reigns supreme over the use of tequila much like the French authorities do with champagne. And it was the cost of suing Heineken apparently that had stop them from threatening them until now.

A Heineken spokesman claims that Desperados is a beer flavoured with tequila, meaning that there is tequila in the beer. However, the CRT had the beer tested in Madrid and was told that there’s no tequila at all in the beer, which would mean it’s false advertising. The product is said to have trace amounts of tequila and is technically classified as a malt beverage, which means it’s about the presence or absence of hops.

Mexico and the Netherlands have had a tumultuous relationship on this blog, including Dutch and Mexicans girls duelling in videos and King Willem-Alexander using rude words in a speech)

(Links: ft.com, adage.com, wikipedia, Photo of Desperados beer by DrinkUpEssex)

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June 14, 2017

All this fast food, but no Wendy’s

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 10:21 pm

The year 2017 is a record year for opening American fast food chains in the Netherlands, as they seem to be ‘flooding the Dutch market’. On the menu is Dunkin’ Donuts (relaunch after failing in 1997), TGI Friday’s (relaunch after failing in 1997), Five Guys, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut (relaunch after failing in 1973).

While McDonald’s and Burger King are well established fast food chains in the Netherlands, the third big name in burgers, Wendy’s, is nowhere to be found. Wendy’s opened a branch in Rotterdam in 1985 for 1.5 years, having already trademarked its name several times in the late 1970s, the late 1980s and on 1 and 7 December 1995. Wendy’s opened a few places in Belgium and Luxembourg, but eventually disappeared after 1986, although in 1987 they got a 10-year extension on the name, as trademarks are valid for 10 years and can be extended for 10 years at a time.

In 1988 Raymond Warrens bought out a snack bar and a croissant shop in Goes, Zeeland and named them after his daughter, Wendy, which is also what Wendy’s International founder Dave Thomas did. When Warrens registered the name of his businesses with the Chamber of Commerce, they said the name wasn’t a problem. Sometime later Warrens decided to trademark his company name on 16 February 1995.

Wendy’s International threatened Wendy’s from the Netherlands, and Wendy’s from the Netherlands fought back. Wendy’s International felt that they were a known brand and that Warrens trademarked his company name in bad faith, while Warrens says he had never heard of Wendy’s, that Wendy’s International was no longer registered with the Chamber of Commerce and that the trademark was no longer active in the Benelux.

Wendy’s International knew about Wendy’s from the Netherlands, otherwise they wouldn’t have sent threats. And much later in 1995 they reactivated their trademark, after Warrens had registered his. This meant that Wendy’s International was acting in bad faith, not Warrens. Warrens successfully had Wendy’s International’s trademark revoked and Wendy’s International was not happy.

Wendy’s International took their grievance to the European court and lost. To quote one of Warrens’ employees in the Volkskrant newspaper, “They [Wendy’s International] certainly didn’t expect that a hick from Zeeland would be a nuisance for 20 years”. And Wendy’s International is apparently going to fight some more, so we’ll update you some day.

(Links: hln.be, charlotteslaw.nl, Photo of burger by huppypie, some rights reserved)

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June 9, 2017

Dutchman pens book about Chinese Indonesian restaurants

Filed under: Dutch first,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 10:13 am

MarkVanWonderen

A friend of 24 oranges HQ, journalist and photographer Mark van Wonderen decided a while back to write a book about Chinese Indonesian restaurants in the Netherlands, and is currently busy visiting all 1097 of them. There used to be a whole lot more ‘Chin. Ind.’ restaurants, but they are slowly being turned into more modern types of restaurants, especially in the province of North Holland. The ethnic Chinese born in the Dutch East Indies eventually came to the Netherlands as of the 1960s, and as a result opened a ton of restaurants, which are different than the usual Hunan and Szechuan Chinese fare you’ll find in other Western countries.

Van Wonderen is motivated by the fading kitsch factor of these family restaurants where the Dutch would either have a sit down meal with the family on a Saturday night for some special occasion or swing by on a Sunday night where you would order at a counter walled off from the main restaurant with its own waiting area and in a matter of minutes someone would slide a bag full of warm plastic containers through a food hatch for you to take home.

While visiting a bunch of restaurants in the province of Drenthe, Van Wonderen spotted the sign of a restaurant being closed to make way for an Italian restaurant. He decided he wanted to have the sign and bring it home, and the new owner said ‘sure, but you have to take it down yourself’, a process that apparently took two days. And yes he’ll be putting the sign in his living room.

(Link and photo: rtvdrenthe.nl)

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May 22, 2017

The Netherlands wastes an enormous amount of food

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 11:03 pm

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A quick Google search with ‘Netherlands’ and ‘food waste’ (albeit in Dutch) produces all kinds of links from the past few years, summed up as ‘it’s terrible that we waste so much food, we’re going to do something about it’ when the reality today is that the Netherlands is still number one in Europe when it comes to wasting food.

Despite goals that were set between 2009 and 2015, one third of all food gets thrown out in the Netherlands, as no progress whatsoever has been made since then to curb this bad behaviour. Reasons include the government saying that the goals they set back in 2015 of 20 percent less waste was not realistic and that consumers buy too much, get rid of it on the expiration date unnecessarily and don’t keep food in the right place. As well, supermarkets are guilty of putting unnecessary expiration dates on fruits and vegetables, while growers throw out perfectly good produce instead of transforming it into other products.

(Links: lunchroom.nl, brusselstimes.com)

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May 5, 2017

Pizza delivery guy goes viral during commemoration

Filed under: Bicycles,Food & Drink,History by Orangemaster @ 3:54 pm
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Yesterday’s Remembrance of the Dead commemorated in the Netherlands on May 4 remembers all kinds of civilians and soldiers who died in WWII, Dutch or foreign, and nowadays also includes the fallen from other wars and major conflicts.

And then there’s this guy, a pizza delivery cyclist who stopped rushing around Groningen and joined in on the traditional, nation-wide two minutes of silence, taken at 20:00 on May 4.

After seeing the picture on Facebook, his boss said of his employee that ‘he did what he thought was normal’. The employer had told the staff of its 220 branches to honour the two minutes of silence, but didn’t expect someone to snap a picture of it.

(Link: www.pzc.nl, Photo of Pizza pie by Adam Kuban, some rights reserved)

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