Oliebollen
Has anyone else put on a bit of winter padding? It makes sense: eat as much as you can in the warmer months, so you get (a) a nice layer of insulation once it gets cold, and (b) food reserves to tide you over the lean times. Only these days, in winter we have oliebollen.
Oliebollen are deep-fried lumps of dough, like a doughnut with neither hole nor jam filling. You can get them with chunks of fruit inside too (apple, cherry, raisins), and they should be eaten lightly dusted with icing sugar.
There’s an oliebollen stall right next to the ferry that I take every morning to get to the city. The ferry that runs every six minutes, which is coincidentally roughly twice as long as is needed to order, receive, and pay for an oliebol.1
Not good for the waistline, but excellent for getting started in the mornings.
Due credit: it was Renske (friend of my to-be-flatmate Ella) who pointed out the conflict between our evolutionary heritage and the cultural institution of oliebollen; and it was Robert (thesis supervisor) who bought me an oliebol this morning on my way to work. I didn’t have much to do with it all, to be honest. Except the eating, that’s all my own work.Notes:
- Dutch folks: do you actually refer to oliebollen in the singular? Or will I have to start ordering two at a time?! [↪]
Comments
Oliebollen! No matter where I go, I cannot escape them (not that I have a particular desire to do so, I grudgingly eat all those offered to me). I've had people here feed them to me, people there feed them to me. I'm surprised that noone in Germany tried to feed them to me saying "These are traditional Dutch foods, you must have some!".
They're really quite good, but I think I still rate Belgian waffles higher.
@Tom: I think it's that I hear the plural much more often than the singular. So my statistical induction machinery starts ticking away, "Absence of evidence... evidence of absence!" Also, you are right to query "addition": quite clearly the doughnut holes have been removed, not added.
Also, Wikipedia has a category (not just a page) for Doughnuts. With 46 entries.
@Robin: "grudgingly". I bet.
Also, the Wikipedia category Waffles only has seven entries. That for your preferences.
I have winter padding, alas, unassisted by oliebollen singular or plural. It's 'cos I'm more likely to get sick in winter (lack of oliebollen, that'll be it).
Looking forward to being in NL around Xmas now...
Λουκουμάδες! I just now realized what "oliebollen" means. Guess what, you will not miss them in Greece. And Greeks of course eat them all year long. Who wants to wait until Christmas?
For instance in the summer, while sunbathing at the beach after having burned some fat swimming, and right when you have started feeling fitter and less guilty about all that fat that kept you warm all through the winter, you see a guy selling loukoumades. What do you do then? Of course you buy some (that poor guy is trying to sell them walking all day long under the sun in 45 degrees temperature) and gain back the lost fat...
Κατάλαβες λουκουμαδάκι μου;
(If you have problems interpreting that last one, the "Cultural references" section of the Wikipedia entry on Loukoumades will give you a hint. There are certain implicatures involved...)
On the beach?! Aargh...
We do indeed have a singular: one "oliebol", so it's quite regular. Is that what you mean? At least it's not like those odd circular loans like Delicatessen (German->French->English/Dutch ?) that have plural inflection that cannot be removed anymore. And just for the record: oliebollen are not "like doughnuts", because doughnuts are just American oliebollen with the addition (?) of the hole. You see, for issues of national pride "to be like" is not symmetric.