You Know You're Dutch When..
- The temperature is so low in your house that 2 sweaters is a bare minimum if you want to be remotely warm.
- During the winter it's warmer outside than it is inside.
- You open the freezer and are excited to find a container of ice- cream, only to open it and discover it's full of homemade soup or stamppot.
- When looking in the fridge, you never trust that the yogurt or margarine containers contain what the label says.
- You were green before it was popular. Why recycle when you can just reuse!
- You have a pair a wooden shoes in your house.
- Your china cabinet is filled with Delft.
- You like pickled herring.
- You've eaten oliebollen at New Years.
- You enjoy chocolate sprinkle (hagelslag) sandwiches.
- You have cousins who wear size 14 shoes and are over 6'4"
- You wash and reuse plastic cups and plastic cutlery.
- You have soup and open-faced sandwiches for Sunday lunch.
- The most frequent phrase uttered growing up was "Turn off the lights!"
- You get a chocolate letter every year for Christmas.
- All the tables in your house are covered in tablecloths.
- You like croquettes.
- You know that Vla is better than regular old pudding.
- You drink tea with breakfast, coffee at 10 am, tea at 3 pm, and coffee again at 8 pm (with cookies or biscuits of course!)
- You have an afghan knitted by your Oma.
- You collect coupons like they're going out of style.
- Your Oma had a calendar with everyone's birthdays & anniversaries spelled out in capital letters (bonus points if it hung in the bathroom!)
- You've been known to recycle aluminum foil. And ziploc bags.
- You own a special utensil that is only used for cutting cheese.
- You know that Gouda is the best cheese ever.
- You have at least 5 relatives with the same name (and somehow you always know which one is being talked about).
- You reuse teabags
- When you hear all the "new ways to save energy" you yawn and say "I've been doing that all my life!"
- You eat your sandwiches open-faced. "What? You want another slice of bread? I'll make you another sandwich."
- You rarely have both meat and cheese on the same sandwich.
- You have never met half the relatives at your family reunion
- You have 100 roles of toilet paper in your house because they were on sale.
- You put a little water into the jar of tomato sauce and shake it to make sure you got it all out.
- You have trouble shopping for hats. There should be at least two sizes: 'one size fits all' and 'dutch'.
- You wipe the last of the butter out of the container with your bun.
- All your cookies taste like almonds.
- You make the bed in your hotel room.
- You have lace on your windows but not on your underwear.
- You like dubbel zout drops, and have occasionally tricked a friend into trying one.
- You've put mayonnaise on your french fries.
- Your kitchen is filled with milk bags drying, waiting to be reused in the freezer.
- You drink Heineken out of pride.
- You have a front room but nobody sits in it (or it's only used for special occasions).
- You have a spoon collection.
- Your favourite mustard comes in jars that can be reused as drinking glasses.
- You leave a window open year round to get fresh air.
- You eat stroop waffles.
- You love the colour orange.
- You have a vegetable garden because there's no way you're paying that much for veggies at the grocery store.
- Your fridge is always stocked with leftovers. Throw out food? Never!
- You go to the "Dutch Store" because the smell brings back so many childhood memories.
- You have pictures of windmills around your house.
- Everything is Do-It-Yourself - it's cheaper than hiring someone.
- You use "washandjes" (facecloths that you can put your hand into).
- You have to explain what 'om' and 'tante' means when you're discussing your relatives with non-Dutch people.
- You own tea towels and oven mitts patterned with windmills and dancing women in clogs.
- You call it "MELK" not "milk".
- All your cousins have the same names as your brothers and sisters, because everyone is named after Oma and Opa.
- And finally, you know you're Dutch when..
- You're laughing along with this list because you can relate to most of it!
