Day 6 and 7: Dutch Food

Since getting here, I have been asking what Dutch food I should try while visiting. Many people have told me that most traditional Dutch food is not very good. I don't know if I can completely believe them (after all, the pannekoeken were traditional Dutch food and delicious), but I can believe that some of the food is just a little odd. So in this post, I aim to document types of food I have been told to try (or not try) during my time here.

First, the kroket. Now, this is basically a fried thing with a strange mystery filling inside (really, no Dutch person knows what the meat-substance is). I think I tried one of these by accident at the New Year celebration during my first day of work. I thought I was eating a cheese stick, but was confused by the substance inside. Apparently this snack is so popular, McDonalds has their own "McKroket". I do not plan on trying that while I am here.

Next, there is the frikandell. From what I can tell, this is literally just a deep fried sausage. Not with breading or anything, just sausage in the deep frier. I also ate one of these at the New Year celebration (although I didn't know what it was at the time and just thought it was overcooked sausage). From what I can tell, and what I have heard, much of the traditional dutch food is fried (but a lot of non-fried things also exist).

Poffertjes are another type of Dutch pancake that I have yet to try. They are apparently made in a pan with indents for each pancake. I don't know why they are so delicious, but will hopefully find out soon.

Sandwiches. Now, I was a little confused when people told me this, but then I started looking around at lunch, and it is true, they all eat sandwiches! But not what I typically think of as a sandwich... rather than putting a ton of toppings between two pieces of bread with vegetables and meat and cheese, there seems to be one topping per sandwich. For instance, someone will eat lunch and have three sandwiches. One with a slice or two of salami, one with a slice of cheese, and one with just butter.  Or, they will put chocolate sprinkles on the sandwich with the butter.

Yes. I said chocolate sprinkles. I think this is possibly the weirdest Dutch food thing to me. I first saw this when looking for chocolate chips in the grocery store. I was directed to the chocolate sprinkles, because to my surprise, there were no chocolate chips. On all the boxes it pictured a piece of bread with a pile of chocolate sprinkles on top. I thought to myself "who would eat that?" until I saw this, and then saw people eating them during lunch. I have not tried this yet, but chocolate sprinkles really aren't that appealing to me on ice cream, let alone bread.

I headed to Cambridge, England the night of Day 7 (Thursday, January 12th), so tomorrow's post should be filled with pictures from exploration before the start of Mystery Hunt!