Fries, ice-cream and cheese

Dutch cuisine is not inspiring as far as I can see and the grocery stores, unlike in Sweden, Denmark and Germany do not really carry anything all that different from a Canadian store except a pretty awesome display of mayonaise varients.  But, in other ways, I am all about Dutch eating habits.  First, ice cream.  Everyone eats icecream all year round.  Adults, kids, men and women.  Even very small towns have one icecream store.  In fact I can't think of a place that only has one and we've been in some smaaaaalllllll towns.  They like soft cones too... So equal opportunity ice cream lovers.  I'm with you. Weirdly downtown Amsterdam has almost none.  Evidence that the rest of the world, and their citizens visiting the city, are not wise enough to keep a good icecrem place going.

Second, fries.  I love Catalunya and I love Catalans, but *man* they cannot make a decent french fry.  Limp, oily and luke warm.  The Dutch? They have stores that make nothing but fries.  That's it.  Fries.  You get a cone of them and eat them on your way.  You get topping too. Usually mayo (what a surprise!!!) Indeed, there is mayo style specifically for fries. One store had 30 different topping choices.  I LOVE this. They double cook them too so they're nice and fluffy inside and super crisp on the outside.  Mmmmmmmm. The only thing I'm not so keen on is the sometimes downright creepy gigantic french fry cone with eyes amd arms you sometimes see outside of stores.  No picture, I'll take one one day and post it.

Then there's cheese.  Now, this isn't France, which definitely raises the bar higher but we're in Gouda and we're going to do the tourist thing and go to the cheese market. Edam is around the corner too.  I love cheese. In our family there's a question that gets asked.  For the rest of your life, you can eat anything you want except you have to choose either meat or cheese. Cheese.  No hesitation.  Though I'd miss meat, cheese every time. Mmmmmmmm