Camp Food
As part of new student orientation for my program, the second year students put on a half-week camp. I learned that it's typical for Dutch schools to put on an intro week camp (and some have a reputation for being camps for sex and drinking), but ours was unique in that we stayed overnight at a camp site out of town, had sponsors from different shops in town, and had DJs every night. It was pretty elaborate, and well run.
Through my own experience eating at camp, as well as talking to my new classmates, I learned that a typical Dutch breakfast is quite simple - bread, cheese, cereal. And a typical Dutch lunch is quite similar to breakfast - bread, cheese, cold cuts. Not only that, people here don't seem to eat very much (at least young people). Whereas I would take around four slices of the Wonderbread-like bread which felt like air to me, the Dutch students would take one or two slices. And then point at me with my mound of bread.
Upon encouragement from another classmate who informed me that people here eat the chocolate sprinkles not just on buttered bread, but also on peanut butter and even cheese, I tried a peanut butter and chocolate sprinkle sandwich. Much more successful than my first attempt (which I wrote about here), both in terms of taste as well as sprinkle adhesion.
When it came to dinner, everyone pretty much told me how they ate "typical Dutch" food very infrequently, maybe once a month, much preferring cuisines of other cultures like Mexican, Greek, Italian. When I asked what is a typical Dutch dish, pretty much everyone would give "stomppot" as the prime example. Last year when I visited the Netherlands, I tried this dish at de Keuken van 1870 restaurant in Amsterdam. The two spheres on the left were potatoes mashed with endive, and the sphere on the right was a huge meatball. Everything was doused in a gravy with crunchy bacon cubes. I thought it was pretty good actually.
The dinners at our camp were quite the opposite of stamppot. First of all, it was all vegetarian, and it was all an interpretation of, yes, Mexican, Greek, Italian. There was a chef who cooked for us, and he always came up with awesome variety, e.g. in the dish below I had potato salad with olives, couscous, cucumber salad, hummus, a red pepper stew, and sprouts. What I loved the most about dinner service was that the second year students would line up and each would put something on our plates, and always it would be just one person's job to carefully place two sprigs of chives at a right angle on top, or one bibb lettuce leaf on the bottom of the plate. In this case, one person sprinkled the parsley and another put the two lime slices in opposing fashion. Very gourmet.
A bit too gourmet was our dessert on the final night. Hot chilies in the fruit. But it was quite the luxury that we didn't have to clean our plates from dinner for dessert as they provided disposable plates. This being the Netherlands, where everyone apparently loves camping and the outdoors, sleeping bags, air mattresses, and your own plate, utensils, and cups were things that we were expected to bring ourselves!
