December 30, 2016

Branko’s favourite postings of 2016

Filed under: Bicycles,Food & Drink,General,History by Orangemaster @ 1:30 pm

It’s that time of year again where we look back and tell you about some of the things we wrote about, and this year we had one clear theme that stood out and that, sadly, was ‘tastelessness’.

First the weird junk food combos:

Spring: the discodel

Summer: frikandel ice cream

Winter: smoked sausage and kroket

Dear Dutch snack bars, please follow our neighbouring countries and sell halloumi, and stop mixing crap already.

Next up, we have a tasteless escape room with Anne Frank as a theme.

The entire year saw some tasteless bashing of Ukraine. What did Ukraine ever do to us? Oh yeah, they gave back stolen Dutch paintings to a museum to show how classy they are.

As well, we found out in 2016 that supermarkets sell fertilised eggs, chicks prove it, we saw a food bank snub the poor over a Facebook like and had a good laugh at this organic fries truck stuck at a junk food chain drive.

And then to move towards some more classy bits, here’s the bicycle tunnel built in a single weekend in Utrecht, police training eagles to attack drones and a woman as the world’s first ever Professor of Fatherhood.

To finish off, here’s a story that went from classy to tasteless, an elderly woman sews bags from abandoned umbrellas, but then a few months later is pushed off her mobility scooter and robbed of her gold chain.

We’ll leave it at that, thanks for all your comments, and a reminder that next year is our 10th year anniversary in February, so I guess we should think about doing something special.

Happy New Year!

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October 25, 2016

Dutchman wants to sell fries in Antarctica

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 4:36 pm

fries1In 2018 Arjen Boerstra from Den Horn, Groningen is planning to open a mobile fries shop in Antarctica, AD reports.

The artist started his first fries stand in 2004 as part of an art project sponsored by a local starch manufacturer. He took his stand to the potato fields of the north-east where he sold french fries to the only people there: potato farmers.

In 2007 he moved his wooden shack to the tip of the island of Terschelling where he entertained seals and seagulls and irritated hikers who felt he was disrupting the experience. One day a freight ship stopped 100 metres off the coast and sent a dinghy ashore to fetch fries for the crew of eight.

The next stop, Antarctica, started as a joke, but plans are now beginning to take shape. His stand will have to be outfitted with skis, the fries need to be pre-cut and he needs to think about how to heat the frying pan, “because butane gas freezes at 30 below zero. I think I will have to use a diesel jet burner.”

Boerstra does not yet know how long he will be running his stand there.

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August 12, 2016

Junk food combos keep on coming

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 10:36 am
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The year of weird junk food combos is not over yet! Move over pancakes with fries, the discodel and the frikandellen vlaai for ‘Patatje 2.0’ (‘Fries 2.0’) named after cafetaria ‘t Huus 2.0 in Veenendal, Gelderland.

What it is? Straight up fries with a side of vanilla soft ice cream instead of mayonnaise, an idea one of the employees got from Sweden. The first thing that came to mind for me is Americans dipping fries in their milk shake, which my brain says I’ve seen somewhere before.

The picture above comes from Brussels: it’s fries with andalouse sauce, a mild spicy mayonnaise sauce.

(Link: www.gelderlander.nl)

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July 17, 2016

Organic fries truck stuck at junk food chain drive

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 10:20 am
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Employees working for a company that sells organic fries from bikes drove the company truck to a McDonald’s in Utrecht and got the truck at the McDrive. They eventually managed to back up the truck and all was good. Funny enough, this was their first day on the job.

Someone did the world a favour and posted a photo on Facebook, and in true Dutch style, the company owner casually said his employees are free to eat wherever they want.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl)

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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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April 11, 2013

Cooking with weed becomes fashionable and mainstream

Filed under: Fashion,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 3:16 pm

Well-known snack bar Manneken Pis on the Damrak, the first main street any tourist sees when they exit Amsterdam Central Station to walk towards the Palace, has started offering fries with a marijuana sauce as of today. Weed is usually quite pungent in food, which is why people put it in creamy or buttery substances, as it is not the easiest thing to cook with or digest for that matter. Yes, it can provide a very decent, slow buzz, thanks for asking.

Also in weed-related cooking, Dutch clothing company FreshCotton got the Arnold Amsterdam agency to produce a drug-based cookbook to promote the new range of Stüssy Amsterdam tees. “The cookbook, which references Amsterdam’s tolerance towards narcotics, demonstrates how to create dishes (very short video) using high-end ingredients and drugs – like marijuana and magic mushrooms – that can be legally obtained in the Netherlands.” It also contains some men’s fashion.

(Link: www.amsterdamfm.nl, www.campaignlive.co.uk)

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July 24, 2012

War on Fun to choke Amsterdam’s famous fry stand

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 11:31 am
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Another blow to downtown Amsterdam, part of the War on Fun or ‘cleaning up the city because we want to do that Unesco thing like Bruges in Belgium did’, the city is pressuring a famous local fry stand to close down for reasons unknown.

Homemade fries Vleminckx anno 1887 on the Voetboogstraat will no longer be given its permit to sell on the street because Amsterdam wants to get rid of places that sell to people queueing on the street. To be able to get another type of permit, the counter would have to be moved 80 cm indoors in a space that is a tight 10,5 m to start off with, install a door and other things that make little sense.

Yes, it closes at 6 pm on weekdays and 5:30 pm on weekends, yes you often have to queue, but shutting this place down in such a manner is a total shame. This place is tasty and famous. I say go and get yourself some fries at least one more time while you still can.

(Link: www.parool.nl, The fries depicted here are from Brussels with andalouse sauce)

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December 29, 2009

Grenades found with potatoes

Filed under: Food & Drink,General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:47 am
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Yesterday at the Farm Frites fries factory in Oudenhoorn, South Holland, three WWII grenades were harvested along with the potatoes. The cops were called in and the grenades were taken away. Oh no, wait. In Dutch fashion, they had a discussion about whether the grenades were dangerous or not.

One of the comments to this discovery is ‘patatje oorlog’, which literally means ‘war fries’ and is a junkfood dish of fries with all kinds of sauces that looks like war took place. Notice I don’t use the word ‘French’ with my fries simply because fries were never French, they were Flemish (Belgian) back in the day. And using ‘freedom’ to describe fries is for losers.

(Link: waarmaarraar, Photo of grenade by macspite, some rights reserved)

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November 29, 2008

Ceramic version of disposable French fries container

Filed under: Art,Design,Food & Drink,Gadgets,Weird by Branko Collin @ 3:18 pm

These ceramic containers for French fries are apparently on sale for 1 euro each at Bas / Dirk van den Broek in Rotterdam.

As the whole world has known since the movie Pulp Fiction, the Dutch eat their fries with mayonnaise. Hey, don’t knock what you haven’t tried! The only acceptable way to eat fries is from a cone-shaped paper bag, with the mayo on top. Since a long while many snack bars have switched however to serving their fries in plastic boxes with two compartments, a big one for the fries and a small one for the mayo. What kind of statement the Dirk van den Broek supermarket chain would be trying to make by having a sale of ceramic versions of these disposable containers Trendbeheer doesn’t tell.

Photo: Niels Post / Trendbeheer, some rights reserved.

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