March 19, 2018

Vote for the best ugly place in North Holland

Filed under: Architecture,General by Orangemaster @ 10:37 pm

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Until Friday 23 March at 4pm CET, people can vote for the best ugly place in the province of North Holland (see link below). Even if you don’t understand Dutch, the 25 videos with all the candidates speak for themselves.

Watch and see places ranging from Beverwijk to Den Helder, Zandvoort to IJmuiden, and many more. There’s ugly stuff from the 1970s, 1980s and other decades that probably should never have been built or were poorly built and badly updated or are just plain weird and stick out.

All these urban planning gaffes are super obvious in a country that’s as flat as the Netherlands. And this was only done in one province!

(Link: nhnieuws.nl, image from nhnieuws’ Facebook page)

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November 16, 2011

Goose meat croquettes made from airport geese

Filed under: Animals,Aviation,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 12:47 pm
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We’ve written a lot of croquette stories on this blog, made from meat leftovers, questionable vegetarian variants and about general croquette awareness.

A goose meat croquette sounds to me like a Dutch Christmas appetizer or even a fancy French one. However, the geese in question are some of 100.000 geese a year that are shot to stop planes at Schiphol getting geese in their engines.

Beach side cafĂ© Beach Inn in IJmuiden, North Holland is serving goose meat croquettes made from the geese shot down at Schiphol airport. As I also saw recently on telly, a goose hunter for the airport said catching and releasing would mean hiring an army (they fly back to the airport anyways, a waste of time) and poisoning their eggs is just not done anymore and doesn’t really help.

The geese are usually destroyed or sometimes end up in cat food. Rob Hagenouw, an artist from Amsterdam, contacted some hunters, score some goose and worked hard at creating his own recipe. He says that with his croquettes, the flavours really come out.

Eating goose, or turkey for that matter, is not really a Christmas thing in the Netherlands for many reasons. First, many people do not have ovens due to a lack of living space. They have combination microwave and and oven devices that barely fit a decent sized pizza. Second, even if you do have an oven like I do, a goose or turkey won’t fit. Guineafowl or chicken is the best you can hope for. Another reason is that it’s just not a Dutch tradition to shove a big bird in the oven.

(Link: www.telegraaf.nl)

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