by Ellen Bannink -

Pepernoten – tiny Dutch spiced cookies

Pepernoten-1-inmyredkitchen

Yummy, pepernoten!
While we in the US are busy preparing for Thanksgiving my fellow Dutchies in the Netherlands are also preparing for a national holiday: Sinterklaas’ Birthday. Sinterklaas is a very old man, a very very old man. I mean like, hundreds of years old! Sinterklaas has a long white beard, wears a red robe and has a large golden walking stick. He also rides a white horse called ‘Amerigo’ and Amerigo likes to eat carrots. Every year at the end of November Sinterklaas arrives by boat in the Netherlands from Spain, where he lives. On board are also his hundreds of helpers, they are called Piet. Each Piet has his own task, like navigation, baking pepernoten, carrying around the Big Book of Sinterklaas or wrapping the gifts for all the children in the Netherlands.

Yay! Gifts and presents for all children in the Netherlands!

by Ellen Bannink -

Dutch egg cakes

– Click here for this recipe in Dutch -> Heerlijke luchtiger eierkoeken –

Those egg cakes (“eierkoeken“) are very popular in the Netherlands. Especially since a famous weight loss guru prescribed them in her menu’s. This woman is also known as Sonja Bakker, she is blond and always smiling (of course, she has to sell her diet!) and she is from West-Friesland, an area North of Amsterdam known for its huge greenhouses. So she also has an accent which I find very annoying.

Egg cakes p2

I’ve never followed her diet, I mean… it is a crash diet! I don’t believe in that! Sonja wrote books with weekly menus and she sold a lot of those books. For some reason these Dutch egg cakes where part of the diet.

by Ellen Bannink -

Dutch Potato Salad – Huzarensalade

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting on the balcony, with my laptop working on a blogpost. Suddenly I heard somebody calling:
“Hello!”

“Hello!”

“Heeelllooooohooo!”

I sat still and looked around. There was nobody I could see from where I sat. So it sure wasn’t for me. I wasn’t expecting visitors and nobody could see me from down the street because we have an enclosed balcony.
So I ignored it.

But then, a week later it was the same voice:

“Hello!”

“Helloooohooo!”

“You, on the balcony!”

From where I sat I couldn’t see any other neighbors on their balconies, so maybe this person wás calling me after all? But how could he see me? Strange!

Huzarensalade P

 

So I got up and looked down.