Let me tell you guys a short story. 🙂 While taking the train from Milan to Paris, it broke down in Torino, which is s city still north of Italy. This was already in the late afternoon!! No one told us anything in English. Everyone was speaking in French. What was going on?! After being confused for a while and asking random people in English, we finally stumbled upon some English-speaking folks. In fact, we made new friends!!! Some of the friends we made was this cute and funny Dutch couple who were also trying to get to Paris. They’re from the Netherlands and one of them live in a city called Almere just outside of Amsterdam. That’s great! We told them we would eventually visit Amsterdam as the last city stop in our Europe trip. And off to Almere from Amsterdam we go! It was pretty easy actually! People take the train as one of their main sources of transportation! We went to the train station, got tickets, and the train took about 20 minutes! So easy and fast! 

Rosi and Bart are their names. They’re the nicest and funniest people I’ve ever met!! And I mentioned that they’re Dutch too right?? Normally I’m a really talkative person, but in their presence, I just found myself quiet and listening to them talk. Hearing about their culture and way of living made me mentally compare theirs to ours. It was an eye opener! I feel like there is a lot to reflect about in terms of my naïveté about other cultures and religions and people. (The picture above is taken right outside his home! What a beautiful neighborhood!! Almere is a small, man-made city outside of Amsterdam and it was so beautiful). 

Now Bart is a good cook!! We came over to his place and he made us pancakes! And not just any pancakes.. DUTCH pancakes! How they eat it!!! 

This is a simple pancake made with rice milk to accommodate dietary restrictions.. You can already tell that their pancakes are way different from our pancakes right?! A lot thinner and bigger. 

What is that in the middle?! It’s Dutch bacon. We’re used to the long, thicker slices of bacon that generates so much fat and oil when cooking them. These are different! They’re super thin, round-ish slices of bacon (kind of like cured ham and you can eat these raw too)! The texture and flavor is almost like prosciutto if you try a piece raw. These cook super fast and have so much flavor! Not that fatty either. 

These are done! They also have cheese in it too! So hence, cheese and bacon pancakes! The cheese is mixed within the pancake batter so the cheesiness is in the pancake “dough” itself. Cool huh? The best part was still being able to taste the bacon flavor within the pancake when there was no bacon in those parts! What better way to eat pancakes in Amsterdam than to try a local Dutch’s cooking! 🙂 I am blessed <3 

I need to learn how to make these pancakes! I’m pretty sure replicating them shouldn’t be too hard. The only hard part would be obtaining the exact bacon that they use; probably be impossible actually. Until next time in Amsterdam. 

Bart, teach me please!! 🙂