Lidl goes USA!

That is the headline on this week's advertisement booklet from the supermarket Lidl. Lidl is one of the two German discount grocery stores with locations in the Netherlands, Aldi is the other. At Lidl you find brands you can't find at other stores, most I'm not familiar with. There is also a good aisle or two of non-food featured items. Every week has "highlight"s around a theme or two or more. This week you can find various cleaning supplies--up to a steam cleaner; hardware supplies including work clothing--a super mini Home Depot with marks including Stanley and Black & Decker; and women's clothing including under garments and shoes. To look at this and watch the store's weekly ad, you could plan it so you only had to shop at Lidl for most all your needs.

Then there's the food. There's a good fruit and vegetable section, with sale prices on a couple items, changing the items every Monday and Thursday, so you can often find cheaper fruits and vegetables there. In addition there's a frozen food section, a meat section--and they were rated as having the best and leanest ground meat/hamburg in the Netherlands but it's usually more expensive, cleaning products, dairy and cold cuts, wine, drinks, pet food, spices, and canned goods. Those items are always available. Then they focus on someplace or thing special and bring in products specifically to sell that week and they cycle through them about once a year. There has been China week, Greek week, Italian week and a British week--sure enjoyed some of those products as well.

But now, with summer and the 4th of July coming, this week's focus is on the USA. It is even being celebrated by saving stamps, or some such thing, to get a Grill Meister BBQ apron. There's even a cowboy on a horse with a lasso in that ad. You can also win a trip to Texas. Their USA mark is McEnnedy. I'm sure you noticed how close to Kennedy that is. There are other marks with "American" food but none I've ever seen in the US.

Here's the available items in their USA week:

BBQ marinades-classic, honey, garlic

Hamburger Saus--that "gives hamburgers a typical American taste", looks like ketchup and mayo to me which I certainly didn't grow up having on my hamburgers and you don't find on a McDonald's or Burger King hamburger.

Cheese-Onion Baguettes--isn't that a French word?

T-Bone Steak for 1.99/100 grams, making it 10 Euros/pound--and I'm so tempted to buy one because you just can't get good steak here.

Chicken nuggets with saus

Onion Rings

Chicken Dippers with saus--chicken pieces rolled in corn flakes

Snackbox--??? where'd that come from? Packaged, complete in buns, mini hotdogs, mini hamburgers, American Rib burger, and I think it's like BBQed beef sandwich, shredded rib meat in saus on a bun. They go for 1.79 a piece. (I'll make my own, thank you, and wait for a trip to the US for a hot dog.)

Hot dogs in a jar--sounds so unappetizing to me.

Frozen rib burger that's "only" 1.69

American sauces--ketchup BBQ, ketchup hot dog--never heard of that in the US, and Sandwich sauce

Salad dressing--Ranch, Blue Cheese, Honey Mustard, American Caeser, and Thousand Island

American style mustard--I have come to prefer the French style popular here.

Ketchup flavored potato twists that appear to be curly potato sticks with a flavor added.

Easy cake mix for cranberry cake--that looks more like bread that you just add water to and bake in the pan, reminds me of Snack 'n Cake only a bread. (I'll wait for the fresh cranberries to appear in the regular grocery stores in the fall.)

Dried cranberries--which you can find here.

Cranberry Drink--The Aldi often has Trader's Joes cranberry drink, the only Trader Joe's product I've seen here.

American cookies--apple cookies with raisins or brownie cookies with chocolate--both the crispy/hard type. Where's the chocolate chip??????

Muffin mix--with chocolate pieces, chocolate with a chocolate glaze, or with a bluberry filling

Honey roasted almonds

Cashews and pecans

Microwave popcorn

BBQ marshmallows--Marshmallows have become more common to see in stores here but these are all white and only 1 Euro.

Ice cream sundaes--cups of soft ice cream with carmel, strawberry or chocolate sauce through it--I'll pay a little more for a McDonald's sundae when I want something like that, and better yet, wait till it's on McDonalds 1 Euro sale, think it's regularly 1.25. (Every few months McDonald's puts 6 products on sale for 1 or 2 Euros...from this time what I remember seeing advertised for 1 Euro was yogurt & fruit and 4 bitterballen--a Dutch food--I should pop in and get them to take a picture and tell you about them and a fish sandwich for 2 Euro.)

American peanut butter, crunchy or smooth--I'll keep buying the Skippy at Jumbo when I want American PB.

And these:



They're really Jelly Belly jelly beans. Ok, they don't say Jelly Belly so they must be a kick off, but they sure taste and look like Jelly Belly beans. What a treat and only one flavor I don't like--peach.

Hey Arjan He Likes It

For those of you who remember Life cereal's commercial about trying to get Mikey who doesn't like anything to try Life and he tried it and likes it, I had a similar experience with Arjan this weekend.

Arjan is a true Dutch man who loves his meat and potatoes. He grew up in a poor time here and didn't get a lot of meat and I say he has spent his entire life since then making up for it. His favorite foods involve pigs or cows. I, on the other hand, prefer chicken and fish followed by cow and pig. When I make chicken, Arjan will usually eat a little bit, even comment that it's good but the only chicken he'll really eat are the legs in a BBQ type sauce and a chicken on the spit from the oven. I'd guess he has it maybe 6x a year. To my surprise, Arjan spotted a recipe in the paper Friday he wanted to try Gevulde kipfilet met spinazie (Chicken breast fillet filled with spinach) and we did yesterday.

The recipe included oven roasted thyme & rosemary potatoes and called for ratatouille. Since Arjan doesn't like eggplant or zucchini, we made our own ratatouille and it turned out so tasty. It consisted of brown onions, red onions, shallots, garlic, tomato, green pepper, and mushrooms. Arjan cut up the vegetables and prepared the potatoes. He had never made potatoes in the oven before, it's not done here much with the electric oven costing more to run than the gas stove, and had a hard time understanding how they would cook with just a little olive oil on them.

I made everything else, presented Arjan with his warm plate of food and waited...yes, he liked it! I was so happy because it was so good and I get the left overs tonight as he only wanted to make 3 kipfilets, not being sure if he'd like it.

The picture doesn't do it justice but it's ok. Because we only made 3, there some extra egg and spinach so I cooked it up and added it, that's what is to the left. This was also before parsley was sprinkled on it.

I told Arjan the story of Hey Mikey He Likes It and he is laughing totally agreeing that's how he is about some foods.