The Irish have St Patrick's Day, the Mexicans have Cinco de Mayo so we decided that this year we would bring a good old Dutch holiday to the United States and decided to celebrate some of our own family heritage with Koninginnedag.
You can follow the link and find out all you would ever want to know about Koninginnedag so I will spare you a lot of the details here but essentially it is "Queen's Day" but for us, it is a reason to get together and celebrate all things dutch.
Hopefully we will start making this an annual family tradition as we had a very good time. We all met at the Sirrine's house in Bonney Lake to celebrate. The tradition in the Netherlands would be to dress in Orange as this is the official royal color of the Netherlands dating back to William I , Prince of Orange in the 1500's.
Of course, the main feature of any family party is the good eats which we had in plenty. Every family was asked to bring a dutch specialty and there were many good things from which to choose. Of course the biggest hit were the dutch croquettes which are a very common treat in the Netherlands. For those who don't know, they are a bit difficult to describe. Just remember that the key ingredients are butter and beef and that they are breaded and deep-fried. They are delicious but each one probably takes about two years off of your life expectancy.
The deep fryer wasn't done there yet as we also of course had french fries which are very popular in the Netherlands served in a paper cone with mayonnaise instead of ketchup.
We of course did go ahead and pass up on some very authentic things that the dutch partake of en masse and that would be cigarettes, booze and coffee.
We also were able to play several great games, such as VanderHoeven family jeopardy full of family trivia questions and was displayed on a screen outside with an LCD projector. That was a blast as was the dutch history quiz and dutch language test.
We stayed until late into Saturday night enjoying the whole thing. We'll have to do this again next year.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Koninginnedag
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6 comments:
Very Cool! You guys have an awesome family!!
Your family sounds like so much fun! I sure wish I had some Dutch ancestry in me!
Why wasn't I invited? Looks like so much fun...I want an invite next year!
Yeah, I wish I was there. Sounded like a lot of fun!!!
Keri, no invite for you!!! We were just across the street and didn't get an invite!! Although, we didn't even know anything until Mike came up to us in church on Sunday and asked why weren't you there. I guess we don't have enough Dutch blood in us to really appreciate the festivity!!!;o)
Silly Mike - you need to remind Mike it was his family's party - I can't invite other people to something at his house - HE has to! :) :)
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