On Tue, 27 Sep 2005 15:14:12 -0400, ~patches~
> wrote:

>I'm watching a really neat show "Loving Spoonful" about Dutch cooking
>but the guest insists that Dutch cooking is very bland. Is that so?

Well, I lived in the Netherlands for 4 years in the early 90s, so have
some experience. Even the Dutch consider the phrase "Dutch cuisine" an
oxymoron.

I found many Dutch "eat to live" not "live to eat". In fact, one of my
cow-orkers chided me once for talking about food too much.

Typical Dutch dishes are things like boerenkool (potatoes mashed with
bacon (unsmoked), kale, onion, and sausage), stampot (various stews),
uitsmijter (fried eggs on toast with ham, cheese, butter), paling
(baby eels), haring (herring served various ways but mostly pickled),
and erwtensoep (pea soup with smoked sausage).

My koe-oerker's (Dutch spelling) typical lunch in the cafeteria was a
roll, butter, 1 slice of ham, 1 slice of cheese and fruit and coffee.
The Dutch sure don't eat much for such large folks.

Since Indonesia was a Dutch colony, the most common ethnic food is the
rijstafel. Although they use various sambals, even the Indonesian food
isn't vary hot to cater to Dutch tastes.

Not to paint with too wide a brush, I think younger Dutch are getting
more adventurous.

>A few things I liked/noticed - I was amazed at her kitchen! It was
>basically a walkthrough hall with cabinets on one side only. It is way
>smaller than my kitchen and she had almost no counter space but she did
>rely on her kitchen table that I think was outside of the actual
>kitchen.

Everything is small in the Netherlands and the Dutch are really,
really tired of hearing about it. ;->

They like it that way.