Haring Met Uitjes, a Dutch tradition!

I’ve said it before, one of the great things about traveling is getting to sample all kinds of different foods. Every country I have visited has had an incredible culinary dish or two that I have really loved! I’m pretty easy to satisfy when it comes to feeding time, but that’s not to say that I don’t have good taste, or at least good taste according to my taste buds. But isn’t that why they say ‘there’s no accounting for taste.’ I mean, everyone has their favorite food, right? What is a delicacy to some, may not be fed to the dogs, by others. It’s really amazing what foods some cultures eat! When I come across, what for me, seems like a bizarre food, I always wonder, ‘who was the first person to try this?’ Like oysters for example! Who was the first human to let a raw oyster slide down their throat? Or who climbed the walls of a cave to rip a bird’s nest off the rock-wall and make soup? Were those foods eaten out of curiosity or necessity? I can assure you, most new, off the wall dishes I try are because I’m curious more than anything. I’ve eaten guinea pig in Peru, menudo in Mexico, all sorts of weird raw fish and other creatures in Japan, dishes in Africa that to this day, I’m not sure what I ate? Most of the time things turnout fine, but there have been a few occasions where I consumed something that made me sick for days. Like the time I ate a ‘Chinese beef and noodle’ dish in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and was sick for a few days, I mean bad-sick. Or the time I ate ‘rare grilled chicken’ in Thailand and it soon exited me simultaneous from both ends. And how could I forget the time I drank some ‘counterfeit Gatorade’ on the Inca Trail and was sick all night long! Great travel memories…..lol. Not! Even with a few bad experiences, I continue to try just about any food other humans eat!
It’s funny but my 2 brothers are kind-of the exact opposite when it comes to food. They think I am crazy to eat some of the things I eat! So where do I get it? From my Dad! My father had pretty much the same attitude when it came to eating! He loved weird stuff like I do! When I lived in the Netherlands in the early 1990s, my parents visited and of course we had to try some of the local dishes. My father and I ate ‘raw herring and onion sandwiches.’ They were, and still are, very delicious! My father passed away in the late 90s but I know if he was alive today, he would have joined me in eating a few ‘raw herring and onion sandwiches’ or as the Dutch call them, ‘haring met uitjes.’
In memory of my father, today I ate one raw herring sandwich for myself and one for Dad!


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