Christmas Time

There is no standing in line at 4am the day after Thanksgiving for the best bargain of the season. There is no jolly ole St. Nick to listen to your list of wishes. There is no frantic fury of gift buying on the eve of Christmas. There are no parking attendants in Santa suits directing scores of SUVs, driven by harried shoppers, into over crowded mall parking garages.

But it's Christmas time here just the same. The subtle hints of the season popping up everywhere from market squares to the grocery stores. My favorite signs of the season are:

• With the coming of holiday meals, the grocery store has an entire line of "Feest Dagen" foods. Extra dark chocolate spread for crepes and toast, special kaas stengels, rich soups, candied breads, flavored brie, and Christmas tree shaped chicken nuggets are just a few of the treasures that have shown up in the gorcery store over the past few weeks. The Christmas meal must be a fancy affair over here, because there are also wonderful prepared horderves, amuses, stuffed/spiced/marinated meats, and even fancy cauliflower! The best time to buy all this food is the morning of Christmas Eve, when almost all of it is going 35% off (because the grocery stores actually closes from Christmas Day 1 & 2).
• Almost every town square is transformed into an outdoor ice skating rink! Hopefully, weather permitting, this is where we will be on Christmas day - skating in the park with warm Christmas wine. Don't worry mom, the rink aren't schedule to close until after you visit!
  
• The streets of town are lit up with Christmas lights. In Delft there is a party in the town square called Lichtjesavond, where they light the Christmas tree for the first time. It was a lovely evening with music from the Delft symphony, dancers, torch bearers, and a small Christmas market.

I am sure next year I will be in line again at 4am the day after Thanksgiving, but it has been nice to have a low key holiday this year.

Special Cookies

Grocery shopping is truly a discovery experience every time I go to get milk and bread. On the first trip to the C1000, I picked-up a roll of cookies that looked like gingerbread dipped in chocolate. In a habit learned from my mother, who can eat an entire sleeve of thin mint cookies in one sitting, I rarely just eat one cookie. Most of the time I eat a dozen or two.

Now the cookies I bought last week had some Dutch writing on them, but hey they tasted good and I thought nothing of it. I finished the roll of cookies rather fast and looked for another roll at the grocery store this week. I was at the Albert Heijn store yesterday and bought their version of the cookies for this week's snacks.

After eating nearly the whole pack, I realized the writing on these cookies was in English....Apparently they are "old lady cookies"!

I think I bought raw bread...

Thursday is market day in Delft and vendors come to hawk everything from $5 shoes to expensive kaas to produce to fresh fried fish (my favorite) to cut that morning flowers. I tried my hand at grocery shopping there this afternoon and am pretty sure I brought home raw bread. The insides look like they need to be "toasted" for 10 minutes or so; maybe that is what he kept saying about 200 something or another...too bad I don't have oven. Perhaps I can saute it on my cooking rings :)