The shelves at VanderVeens are stocked with traditional Dutch foods for celebrating St. Nicholas Day with chocolate Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet.
Figures of St. Nicholas are also for sale.
The shelves hold lots of shoe stuffers and Christmas tree ornaments too.
This windmill done in traditional Delft Blue Pottery caught my eye. The Dutch have always been in the for front of engineering which is reflected in this new kind of windmill.
Any size wooden shoe is available at the Dutch Village in Holland, MI.
Many colorful designs on the wooden shoes can be found.
Sinterklaas comes on a white horse so it is tradition to put out carrots and hay for Sinterklaas' horse. We live on a sand dune and there is no hay anywhere so we put out carrots and apples.
American-Dutch ideas for Sinterklaas gifts.
Chocolate Letter traditions go back to when Bonket, the pastry almond paste filled log on the right, was formed into the letter of the person's first name.
Babbelaars--butter flavored hard candy in blue wraps packed in the cone-shape, Wilhelmina peppermunts, Mentos, Stroopwafels--waffer cookies sandwiched with caramel (recipe coming soon on this blog), Windmill cookies--Speculaas koekjes (recipe coming soon), and Nusco chocolate spread for toast or waffles.
Foil-covered chocolate "gold coins" are important as one of the most popular stories about St. Nicholas is when he heard that 3 young girls would be sold into slavery because they had no dowries, St. Nicholas tossed gold coins down their chimney to help them. The coins landed in the girls stockings which were hung by the chimney to dry.
There are links to the VandeVeens, The Dutch Store, and for the Dutch Village on the Page Titled Dutch Links and Food Links on the right-hand side of the opening page of the blog.
thank you :-)
ReplyDeleteMy please, Miss Wendy. Thank you so much for your comment!
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