Topic: Your Country

I live in the U.S.
We are better than our leader, trust me.

We do have some pretty crazy foods here in the US, though some vary by region. State fairs are especially interesting in the food department as well, particularly fried everything. (Some things, IMO, are better off not fried)

A favorite regional staple of mine where I live is the horseshoe:

The meat and amount of bread can vary, and a smaller portion is (unsurprisingly) called a ponyshoe.

@Tyranexx What is it?

I live in Belgium.

The northern half of the country is called Flanders and speaks Dutch, while the southern half is called Wallonia and speaks French. A small part in the far east of our country speaks German and our capital Brussels is officially bilingual in Dutch and French.

Because of these language borders we have a very complicated political system. After an election it usually takes months for the political parties to come to an agreement and create a government. After the election of 2010 it took no less than 541 days for the government to form, which is still the worldwide record for a developed country.

@Octane: It's basically a kind of open-faced sandwich. There's at least one layer of bread on the bottom which holds the meat; the meat can be anything and is commonly turkey, ham, or a hamburger/ground beef. On top of that is a layer of French fries, with melted cheese drizzled on top.

The concept is slightly reminiscent of Canada's poutine dish, though there are notable differences.

Roughly 60% of us.

Ow, muh 'Murica.

@Tyranexx I thought it was some kind of mayonnaise, hah. But it's cheese. It's exactly what I imagined a typical American dish to be, two kinds of carbohydrates, meat, cheese and no vegetables

@Octane
Don't chips count as vegetables?

@Octane: It really depends on the place serving it. XD I've seen them come with onions and (on one occasion) sauerkraut, but yeah, typically no veggies are involved. I didn't say they were healthy (I don't eat them very much as a result), but they do taste great going down.

TBH, a homemade 'shoe can be healthier than what most fast food/mom & pop joints offer, though in some cases the bar isn't set very high there.

Speaking about Foods, these are my Traditional dishes from my hometown, Surabaya.
1. Semanggi (Boiled Clover leaves dressed with Peanut sauce and Yellow cracker)

Semanggi is from Clover leaves.

2. Sate Ayam Ponorogo (Ponorogo style of Chicken BBQ with Peanut sauce)

3. Tahu Tek (Deep fried tofu, potato, with Rice cake dressed with Mixture of Peanut sauce and Shrimp paste called "Terasi", served with crackers)

Born in America but my family comes directly from Mexico, and I commonly go between the two. Although, I haven't gone to my family's hometown in a while because of how dangerous it's been lately, especially for outsiders.

Both homes are rural in nature but completely different in appearance. We use to eat a lot of traditional Mexican food, but over time my family, has sadly become too lazy for it. Instead just doing it for special days.

@Tyranexx Well, if you like that kind of dish, then you're simply gonna LOVE what the Dutch have come up with:
(although the veggies might turn you off, but the Dutch like their faux-healthy snacks)

The "kapsalon" aka the hairdressing salon:

It comes in two sizes, small (klein) and large (groot, pronounced "growt", nothing to do with that walking tree from Guardians of the Galaxy)

It has almost all the ingredients, except for the bread, but it replaces it with a couple more, so all in all, it's a richer dish.

Some more information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapsalon

To also stay on topic, I'll add my own whereabouts story:

Born in California, moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands when I was 9, and been here ever since, with a few short breaks and visits to other countries such as Germany and Denmark, because we have friends in Germany, and family in Denmark. My heritage is actually Dutch/German, but some of my ancestors were a part of the first colonists, hence my American background.

So, now I live in the Netherlands, for 38 years already. And imagine my surprise as a kid when almost none of my preconceptions of the country before I arrived here were true: a lot of Americans actually believe, or rather: believed back then (they're a bit more wise to the world nowadays), that the Dutch live in Windmills situated in between fields of tulips, where they stomp around on their wooden shoes, making cheese and Delft Blue...

Although some idiot reporters still believe that the Dutch ice skate to work on the canals every day in the winter:
http://deadline.com/2018/02/katie-couric-apologizes-netherlan...

The Dutch have a great sense of humor, which showed when they made a video using that mistake of Katie Couric as the main ingredient:
https://www.facebook.com/wefilm/videos/vb.193003827384282/206...
Twitter also ran with it:

Anyway, the Dutch are actually quite modern, for the most part. I'd even say they're quite Americanized, so I feel right at home here, especially in Amsterdam. And no, besides all the clogs, windmills, cheese and tulip myths, it is also not a country full of Red Light districts, legal coffee shops and diamond smugglers. That's only in Amsterdam...

And the Dutch have great beer, and great food. The beer is of course Heineken, but there's a lot of other great brands as well, but seeing as Amsterdam is such an international city, you'd easily be able to get your own favorite brand of beer here. There's even a nice little establishment in the city center which is called "The Beer King" and they claim to have 1001 kinds of beer. Don't know if that exact number is true, but they sure have a lot of flavors and brands.

And you can try each one of them, if you'd like to, for free. They use tiny shot glasses for that, which seems kind of weird and silly, but there's a method behind the madness: say you try out the stronger beers and you would drink them out of regular glasses, then you'd probably be considerably wasted before you've even tasted every last strong beer that they have, so being able to sip and truly taste them all is much better. And even with these small glasses, you could still get hammered before you step out the door again...

Well, that's enough debauchery and sinfulness for now, but if anybody wants to know more, I'll gladly add any information on your next holiday destination. It's a definite yes for anyone's to-do/to-go-to list...

@ThanosReXXX: I'd definitely try it! I personally have nothing against veggies.

I'm not really too picky about trying new things in general, though there are even some (thankfully rare) dishes around here that I won't touch. XD

Faux healthy stacks huh. Well if you want something like that in Mexico, you'd probably ask for an esquite.

Basically, it's steamed corn in a cup slathered in mayonnaise or sour cream (or both), lemon, cheese and chili powder/sauce.

You can also get the same thing still in the cob for a more traditional experience. Looks funner, it's messier.

@TheLZdragon

weve gone over this before...our excuse is were texans. anything goes.
_{texas chain saw massacre}

@ogo79 Indeed. We've gone over this before

@ThanosReXXX
Oh Amsterdam is beautiful. A city that really is outstanding to me.
I went there as a child a couple of times (since it is pretty close to Cologne), but could not quite remember or maybe did not find it that exceptional as a kid.
When I went there two years ago after a visit to Cologne during Carnival, I was pretty amazed how beautiful the city is. With all the canals and houseboats (we stayed on one <3) and it's brickstone-architecture it has a unique flair.

Talking about dishes, we have a pretty weird traditional dish in Cologne (or well, probably many more than one) that I would like to recommend:
It is called "Himmel un Äd" or "Heaven and Earth" in English.
The name comes from the fact that potatoes in some European languages are called "Earthapples". So the dish consists of mashed potatoes, fried apples with fried onions and blood sausage (cut into slices, dipped in flour and fried). I was always very sceptical as a kid, especially the blood sausage was suspicious to me. But it is pretty tasty that way. It crispy on the outside and tastes rather salty, which matches great with the sweet apple-onion-mixture.
The dish is unique to Cologne and surrounding areas, but there are other types of blood sausage in other German counties. In Saxony (where Dresden is situated) they have "Tote Oma" or "Dead grandma", which is a mixture of blood, bacon and grain. It is much more some sort of mash in the end and I have not tried it yet (did not dare to ). But my boyfriend likes it, so maybe one day I try.

MicheleBachmannEatingIowaCorndog.jpg

@Tiefseemiez Cologne is a beautiful city too. I visited there many times when I lived in Maastricht in the Netherlands. Including one memorable visit when England played Sweden there at the 2006 World Cup. Amazing day that was.

Here's some Finnish food.

Karjalan piirakka - Rye crust with rice. Often enjoyed with munavoi (egg butter) which is butter mixed with chopped-up boiled egg

Kalakukko - Prepared with rye flour, filled with fish. Roughly translates to "fish rooster".

Mämmi - Traditional Easter dessert. Usually made of water, rye flour, and powdered malted rye, seasoned salt, and dried powdered Seville orange zest. Tastes just as bad as it looks.

Salmiakki - Salty liquorice. Had to include some candy as well. It's certainly fun to see a foreigner try one.