Food

The week before I left the Netherlands a friend asked me if I knew about the food in New Zealand. If would miss anything. He told me that in his time in Sweden his missed good Dutch bread. I knew that Japan would be weird, but I had no idea about New Zealand. I made you a list of the food that stands out.

Cheese: we are hardcore Dutch about cheese. Here they have this untasty (even if it is called tasty) cheddar cheese. Only good for toasted sandwiches (tosti’s). Luckily we found a cheese man (kaasboer) on the Saturday market who sells all kinds of Dutch cheeses.

Bread: they have all varieties of bread all quite similar to Dutch bread. They call it European style bread, or Swiss bread. We met however two German girls who hated the bread. They missed their German sour bread.

Peanut butter: that is common here as well, but they are not as good as Calvé. They taste too much like butter instead of cheese. Maybe that is why the Dutch call it Peanut cheese?

Boemboe’s or any other Indonesian products: a few things are available in the Supermarket or Asian market, like Singapore sambal, Indonesian Sate from Thailand (?) and soy sauces.

Tui beer @ our spot

 

Beer: You can get Heineken and Grolsch! But they have mean prices. We buy the cheapest beer (Tui) that is already twice as expensive as Heineken in the Netherlands. Yesterday we were at this cute little café at Cable bay where we paid a gruesome $21 for two beers (that is 11,50 euro). If you pay attention to price deals in the supermarket you can get good wines though for reasonable prices.

Fruit & veggies: these are cheaper in the fruit & veggie store than in the supermarket. And better. This is a little bid odd for me. Then you have the “common” veggies like cucumbers and tomato’s  are twice or trice as expensive as in the Netherlands. Avocado’s can be really cheap. And courgettes are really tiny here!

Meat: so far I didn’t find a butcher. I asked around, but Nelsoners are satisfied with supermarket meat, which is of pretty crappy quality.

The green mussels that made me sick

Seafood: very delicious! Big scallops, prawns, oysters and green mussels. Although the latter one made me throw up really bad one night… I even discovered that fish and chips is similar to our “kibbeling”. You must however pay attention that you won’t get dogfish (shark) on your plate (or in your paper). It is a sign of unsustainable fishing (by-catch) and it doesn’t taste really good.

Dirks list:

- Dirk eats carrots like a bunny, but the season is over. They aren’t as tasty as they used to be, so he is sad about it.

- He misses Hamka’s, but he found a good alternative in nacho chips

- He eats every morning a bowl of Cocoa puffs. Something he never did in the Netherlands.

The funny thing is that if you pay attention you can find Dutch stuff everywhere. I found Dutch fruitloaf (krentebrood), Het gouden speculaasje, Edam and Dutch salami (which tasted awful btw). I buy Dutch food occasionally, but we are here for the kiwi stuff off course. And they have a lot of kiwi fruit available.

Dutch salami