~FOOD!~

It is so neat to go grocery shopping here- you never know what you will find!

Journey has decided that he prefers the European trend of eating mayonaisse on his fries instead of ketchup. So when we were grocery shopping the other day, Jeff took him up to the produce section to get a bag of aardapples (pre-peeled potatoes cut into neat little shapes) while I headed for the condiment section. I was surprised when I found these tubes of mayo that looked exactly like tubes of toothpaste! (no, I'm NOT crazy, they were right next to the jars of mayo and bottles of ketchup - I'm not gonna make my kid eat mint toothpaste on his aardapples!) The best part was that each tube of mayo was only E.29 - yep - TWENTY-NINE CENTS! Journey thought it was so cool....

They make these awesome little fruit crackers here - cracker layers filled with dried fruits. Our favorite was the berry flavor - chunks of dried strawberries, blueberries and raspberries - YUMMY! Well, now they have teamed up with the YOGO people and put a layer of sweet yogurt on top of each craker to create a granola-bar-like snack. We have gone through waaaayyyy too many boxes!

Jagger absoloutely loves the drinkable yogurts here - not the sugar-filled Danimal/Dannon ones back home, but the real yogurt fruit-sweetened ones. They make one kind that comes in a foil-like pouch (similar to the Capri Sun foil pouches, except this has a drink spout at the top) called Breaker. They come in different flavors like cherry, raspberry, strawberry, peach,etc. And all of them contain sunflower seeds! Seriously, as you are drinking the yogurt you get these pieces of soft sunflower seeds in your mouth and have to chew them up (sunflower seeds are normally pretty crunchy, but they lose some of the crunch after soaking in the yogurt for awhile).

Jeff loves the liverwurst/braunschweiger here. It is soft and spreads onto the bread. I can't get past the nasty smell of the stuff, let alone taste it. He pairs it with rye bread and this thin goat cheese with rye seeds in it. YUCK! But it satisfies his late-night munchies!

I guess the Dutch think that hot dogs don't have enough additives - throw some aluminum in there! They have all varieties of canned hot dogs! Yes, I bought a can the other night. Jagger loves hot dogs and these were only E.59 so I thought we'd give them a try. He and Journey seemed to really like them, but I don't think I'll buy them too often!

I'm still amazed at the number of products on the store shelves that contain Saccharin - gums, mints, candies - even the toothpaste!