Saturday, April 10, 2010

Amsterdam - Organic Farmers' Market


I am in Holland for 1 week. There is a major holocaust memorial happening and the government has invited my Oma (my grandmother) to come. She is being acknowledged for the first time publically by the government as the only dutch survivor of Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in Poland. It has been a beautiful and intense 36 hours. Incredible to be sharing this event with my Oma and my sister. There is so much to tell, but that is all a long story for another time. I'm sort of delirious and foggy headed, but for the sake of a quick snippet of food life from today here we go:

 Kendra and Selma on the way to the plane. 

Arrived at 8am this morning. Spent a large chunk of time getting my Oma settled. I slept a few hours on the plane unlike my sister and grandmother, so while they were resting, I, (with my 11 pages of food notes I'd cut and pasted form various websites and blogs in-hand), headed off to my Saturday must see food destination: the organic farmers' market held, only on Saturday walking distance from our hotel.

The Noordermarkt 
Organic Farmers' Market
Amazing cheeses! 3 kinds of goat milk gouda, young, medium and aged. I got the aged, it was amazing, and also a raw milk cow gouda. so fresh and complex. there must have been 40 kinds of gouda there! Also see the tastings of various flavored fresh goat cheese. I can't get this text to move between each photo, so I'll quickly tell you about a few: the small dishes with spoons were tasting samples for various types of salt. A 10 foot table piled with so many kinds! I was blurry-eyed from no sleep so kind of stumbled by a table i otherwise would have lingered at. The messy fudge looking table was all raw super foods. It was beautiful to be in food life in another land. The European comfort with food is apparent in the way stands are set up, oysters to be shucked by passers by, salt to sample with slivers of cucumbers and so much more.
 
Please leave any comments below! Thanks!

3 comments:

  1. So beautiful! Amazing. Give Kendra a smooch from me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello Tagan,

    My name is Freerk Wiegman.
    I just saw the documentary on the internet (i´m dutch but i live in Spain thats why i didn´t see it on television) and apart from the horrible story about the camp, the escape and the hiding, I feel awful about the way youre opa and oma were treated and feel ashamed to be dutch. Sorry to post this in a foodblog.
    Good luck from Barcelona.
    P.s. the food here is amazing

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good for you and Kendra to take on this amazing trip to honor your grandmother.. You make all the Tanatas proud!!
    Bonnie Bayuk et al..

    ReplyDelete