The hummus mafia, as my friend Oona calls them, sells not only hummus but Turkish bread and olives, and so forth at many of the city's street markets. I usually catch up with them on Saturday at the Lindengracht or Wednesday at the Haarlemmerplein.
This past Wednesday a new guy, or at least one of the guys I had not talked to before, asked if I was American. I said yes.
“Do you know anything about eggnog?” He asked.
“Eggnog? Seriously?”
I explained people drink it with brandy or rum and that as a kid I liked the first cup (without alcohol) a lot but then it got steadily less appealing.
A Turkish guy from Leiden, he had somehow learned about eggnog from films or TV or something and it had been on his bucket list (he used the term, “bucket list”) to try for decades. And now he wanted to know if I knew of a place to get it in Amsterdam.
He wanted his without alcohol too.
As added context, and as the continuation of a recent post, I will add that I was purchasing snacks for a meeting I will soon be having with my landlord, a meeting that may well determine whether my Amsterdam adventure goes on indefinitely or ends forever. Admittedly, that decision will depend on other factors beyond his selling the space I rent from him, and whatever happens will happen, with life's beauty and adventure at the end of it either way. Nevertheless, I was shopping with thoughts of "stay or go?" and “is there enough community and work and so forth to hold me here or should and unplanned move lead to a major departure?"
I told my new friend that there are a few ex-pat food stores in town and that I would look into it, though I said I would be surprised if they carried eggnog. (Indeed later research showed that they do not.)
On the one hand, imagining a forgotten taste from decades past transported me thousands of miles away, back to where I may return.
On the other, just my willingness to check it out earned me free olives (best in the city by the way) and also means the least able cook I know--that's me--is bound to make eggnog for a guy in the hummus mob.
So just when I thought I was out . . .