Hahahaha! I just read this and I think it’s hilarious.
Apparently, Australian soldiers have complained about the bad Dutch food being served in Kamp Holland, Afghanistan!
Of course, it’s perfectly understandable. While the food on Kamp Holland was… plentiful… and, well… food, it’s not exactly going to satisfy the gourmet palate (and apparently not even the palate of a hungry soldier!).
Which, if you ask me, is pretty representative of Dutch cuisine in general - if you’re in the mood for some deep-fried, ball-shaped, mushy meat-like stuff, you’re in for a treat. But if, say, you want a nice light meal, you’re pretty much out of luck (even asparagus is served with potatoes and butter and eggs - it’s good, but it’s not what I’d call “heart-healthy”!).
What’s especially funny to me about this article is that, when we were in Afghanistan, I spoke to a couple Aussies about the food. They wouldn’t go on the record, but they were, well, NOT complimentary when it came to the kitchen. And when I asked them about the food at home (thinking that it couldn’t be THAT much better, after all, anything that comes out of a canteen cooking for hundreds of hungry soldiers can’t be THAT good, can it?), they waxed poetic about bacon and eggs for breakfast and barbecues for dinner… I was drooling all over my over-cooked frozen vegetables and rubbery pork chop.
Luckily for the Aussies, it seems like they’re going to get their wish (at a cost of $2m per year!)… but, from the sounds of things, they’ll have their own canteen, so I’m not sure whether the Dutch soldiers will be able to sneak in occasionally or not.
Then again, maybe they wouldn’t want to - the Dutch seem to be relatively content with their own simple fare. And why develope a taste for the good stuff when what they ARE eating is working just fine - the Dutch, after all, ARE the tallest people in the world… so maybe eating mashed vegetables, pancakes, various deep-fried snacks, loads of cheese, and chocolate has a secret health benefit? Or maybe they’re just lucky that bicycles are the most efficient means of transportation to pretty much anywhere in Holland… otherwise they’d all be massively overweight!
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