OH Oma

I called my Oma today (my mom's mom). What a hoot. She is such a funny lady. I LOVE her. Well, in our conversation she mentioned she got a fwd. from someone about "you know you're dutch when..." I could name a bunch of them before she even told me about it. So here's the list:
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 krokets.
• You know that Vla is better than regular old pudding.(Vla is a runny custard 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 rolls 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!

I know it's a long list. I laughed at most of it.... the others I didn't understand. Maybe I'm getting a little weak in my dutch genes.