The end of summer is starting to near and I can feel everyone around get into their normal place for the rest of the year to do what they do. I'm not good at that knowing what will happen for the upcoming couple of months. Give me impulsive, give me random stuff, give me let's-see-what-will-happen and I thrive a lot better on that actually.
But you know, we have to do with what is given to us, but also what we make out of it here. Bring some excitement, see wherever you walk into, meet new people, do other things. Learn some stuff from other cultures that you were not aware of at all. There are so many different objects that people had never seen from other countries, and this would be a perfect example for me for that.
So I am here today to learn you all about this typical Dutch object which can be the solver of every of your issues, or it can be a pain in the but which makes you end up with a bloodbath over and over again.
I present you: The Dutch cheese slicer
As most of you are aware, the Netherlands is a cheese country. We just eat a lot of it and also tend to use it in a lot of things. Ever heard of the 'Gouda' cheese? Well, that comes from here. And also, have you ever heard about the 'Edam' cheese? You have guessed it, that also comes from here.
So cheeses here come in big rounds and traditionally you buy a wedge from one of those cheeses. Now I know in a lot of countries you can buy these brick sized types of cheeses or you buy pre-sliced pieces, but we buy a big wedge. From that wedge what we do is slices up smaller slices to put onto our breads.
For exactly that, you need a cheese slicer. We call it a 'kaas-schaaf' and that one makes you perfect cheese slices every time.
Or.....it can be you worst nightmare
Because we are Dutch and that means that we are cheap. That means we want to get out every little bit of cheese from the bottom which is still useable. (Or it means that the store was closed already and there wasn't time to get new cheese and we have to do it with the old part which is more than almost done)
Now those cheese bottoms are tougher that the centre part of a cheese. And I mean a lot tougher.
That has resulted now again that the cheese slicer ended up being my thumb slicer and working more like a meat cutter even though this is a vegetarian instrument ;)
Instead of heading over to a cheese sandwich, I was heading over (again) to scram for some band-aids while everything was turning into a great red mess.
It isn't exactly what I meant about expecting the unexpected in life and seeing what will happen every day. Nehhh..thumb bloodbaths were not a part of that at all. ...Sigh.....
