Just got done spending a week in the Netherlands visiting some friends. The 10 hour flights & security theater aside, it was a fun trip. Got to see Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Maastrict, and many parts in-between. Also hit quite a few museums, shops, & the red light district (just browsing!). Also smelled enough reefer to think I was 15 again & living with my parents!
I also discovered Olliebollen (deep fried dough balls sprinkled with powdered sugar; why these are not sold all over America, I will never understand).
Them dough balls sound like zeppolies, available at most real italian restaurants.
They sound exactly like the “German doughnut holes” my grandmother (emigrant from Mudersbach) used to make. About the size of a baseball and amazingly good.
Ok, lets try this without the link…
Or beignets from New Orleans….
“They sound exactly like the “German doughnut holes†my grandmother (emigrant from Mudersbach) used to make.”
Similar, often filled with raisins.
Had you visited the Netherlands a week later or a few weeks earlier you’d not have found them.
They’re consumed almost exclusively around new year’s eve, usually going on sale sometime in november with the last stalls closing shop for the year in january (or switching to other things).
Yep, a VERY good reason to visit the Old Country over the Christmas holidays.
You will also find, in Bavaria at least, Pfferneussen, a delightful roundish, nutty, SPICY cookie. It took years, but my mom finally learned how to make them, a very complex process involving “curing” the dough. I never learned it, alas.
The other good reason, of course, is that the big stores almost always have a quaint old-time Christmas diorama scene, complete with the famous German Marklin model trains of the period.
They had the raisin filled ones as well, although those had a different name.
I should also note that the Dutch know how to celebrate New Years. Seems NYE is the only day they are legally allowed to blow off fireworks, and they do not squander that opportunity. The show began about 2350 and carried on until about 0200 (with the best of it going until about 0015). I had to sleep with ear plugs that night.
We read that the Dutch spent, on average, about $260 per person on fireworks for that night. Even in Europe, that is a lot of bang!
yes, depending on where in the country you are the filled ones may have a different name or not.
NYE between 2200 and 0200 used to be the only time it’s legal to set off fireworks in the Netherlands.
A few years ago that was extended to 2200 to 0200 (wow!), and police generally don’t interfere for most of the entire day unless things get out of hand.
Any other day, fireworks are allowed only by special permit and need to be set off by certified experts.
I’m not sure about the average expense. $260 per person seems excessive, but it might be accurate for the part of the population actually buying the stuff (a good portion just watches and listens, or puts in earplugs and goes to bed early).
Given prices of up to $50 for a good piece of show fireworks, it’s not that much if you want a nice display (if all you buy it’s firecrackers, it buys you a big bag full).
Traditionally, every year police chiefs go on public television stating that NYE was quiet, there were only a few hundred cars torched, houses burned down, and people hospitalised with blown off fingers and serious burns 🙂
Only to then, 10 months or so later, traditionally call for a ban on fireworks to prevent the excessive violence that marks each NYE.