Food - But Not As We Know It !

I was going to title this blog post "Food Glorious Food" but I think I used that for a previous post so never one to repeat myself, I say, never one to repeat myself, I've decided upon the above....and anyway it's a bit more appropriate.

Being the seasoned traveller that I am (cough), I'm used to strange and wonderful food combinations and in fact, I'm quite prone to dishing up a few myself in the comfort of my own kitchen. I mean if you like 2 foods and 'society' says they shouldn't appear together on a plate, well then stuff 'society' and then stuff your face. Just close the curtains first.

A word of warning though. In my experience, ice cream in a BLT just doesn't work. Messy.

Yesterday afternoon I was going to prepare the 2nd blog post about our trip to Belgium, The Netherlands and France but I made the mistake of wanting to look at a few bits of the excellent movie "In Bruges" with Colin Farrell (a wee bit of naughty swearing goes on in this movie just in case you decide to watch it !) and I ended up watching the whole thing again and going....oh we were there..and there...oh and there too. I was even so geeky as to pause the movie at various places and compare the still frames with photos I'd taken and smiling like an idiot cause they matched !

Yes somehow I found myself excited that 900 year old buildings that were in the movie (made in 2008) were in exactly the same place in my photos, taken a few weeks ago. Quelle surprise !

Of course now being almost intimate with the layout of the old town, I did find lots of clever geographical edits where the main characters would round a corner or exit a building and suddenly be in a totally different spot.

Anyway, I've gone off topic here but as I never did get to do that 2nd day blog post, I've decided to throw in a 'quickie' to keep the pot boiling, so to speak, and that means going back to FOOD.

Being a clever dick, I already knew that the main foods associated with Belgium were frites, chocolate, mussels and, if liquid can be a food....beer ! As I can never have enough of the first two and have lived this long without the later two, I felt I'd not starve in Bruges. Actually the Dutch spelling is frieten but as Belgium has a mix of French, German and Dutch, we normally saw signs for frites.

These fries/chips are much thicker than their US and UK counterparts and are proud to be still cooked in animal fat. Yum. US fries may come in a box, UK chips may come in paper but Belgian frites come in a large cardboard cone. That's when eating them on the move of course.

Early on the 2nd morning of our trip, we walked back to the main square in Bruges, the Markt, as we wanted to climb the bell tower for stunning views over the town. Just in front of the tower entrance and where one of the characters in the movie made a dramatic appearance, there was a frietkot, or stall, selling all sorts of goodies.


Notice how clean it is around the stall ? Notice the 2 bins at each side ? Leeds City Council and residents please take note.

As an aside, there is a name on the stall....Bicky Burger....and I put that into my phone's translation application thinking bicky might be a proper word in Dutch/Flemish. It came back with "Bicky Citizen." Hilarious.

Here is a close up of the menu............

It's not a great photo as I had to take it fast as I always think food stallholders will have someone round the back with a meat cleaver to fend off anyone trying to take photos of their stall.

If you enlarge it, you'll see some interesting offers and I'll leave you to look them up yourselves. I particularly liked the idea of a Hannibal sauce on my frites or braadworst. With some fava beans and a nice chianti maybe !

I'm adding another photo here, and I admit it was taken in Amsterdam, but this seems a good post for it too. Like the word disingenuous, it might be hard to place it in another relevant post. It also shows that the Dutch do score more than nil points when it comes to word play..........

Eh ? Eh ? See what they did there ? A full douze points I think and maybe an extra one as they've dipped into English to get get it to work.

I never did try moules frites (mussels and chips/fries) but I did have frites more times than I should....have....had. Nothing to write home about and I still prefer my paper wrapped UK chips.

I'll be back to showing the picturesque delights of Bruges another time - all this talk of food has made me hungry.

I fancy a nice omelette. Now where did I put that ice cream scoop ?