Spices

When I first started collecting postcards, I concentrated on views of different countries. I had no idea at the time that so many other types might be available. I "discovered" spices very late in my collecting career, and I wish I had started much earlier..

I approached this spicy theme via food. It's often hard to separate one theme from another.

I was a bit short of ideas for the letter S, The seaside might have been nice, or ships, or snow.

Summer berries

Summer seems to have arrived here, more or less, and at the same time I received a mouth watering postcard from Belarus showing summer fruits.  It is a card issued by BelPost in 2013.

Breakfast, Singapore style

If you visit Singapore you will find this typical breakfast anywhere: local blend coffee with condensed milk, toasted bread with kaya (a sort of jam or spread made from coconut and sugar), lightly poached eggs with pepper and dark soy sauce.

Yum!

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday hosted on Beth Niquette's blog The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Cranberry juice

If I've thought about cranberries and where they come from at all, I would have thought they would grow on bushes like blackcurrants and blueberries and harvested in the same way.  Well, I was wrong.  They grow in wetlands - on bushes, it's true - but to harvest the berries, the fields are flooded, the vines are shaken to release the ripe berries which float and turn the area into a crimson lake.

This card was sent to me from Belarus from where we in the UK import a lot of our cranberries.  Since Delia Smith gave them the seal of approval, demand has soared.

A serious business

It's a serious business, having your cake and eating it, not to mention balancing your cup of tea on a saucer.

According to the person who sent me the card (from Russia), there is nothing Russians like better than to gather in the kitchen, drinking tea and discussing "life".

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday hosted on Beth Niquette's blog, The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Betuwe

Betuwe, an area in the east of the Netherlands, is known for agriculture and especially fruit production.  The main town is Tiel where there is a jam factory called  "De Betuwe".

An interesting piece of information: the name Beethoven is derived from Betuwe.

Fruits from Cambodia

A wonderful surprise arrived for me today, wonderful in a number of ways:

The card followed me here from Cambodia and then from France thanks to a kind neighbour who forwarded my mail.
It shows one of my favourite themes - a market stall with mouth watering fruits.
It comes from our good friend, Sreisaat, at Postcards Crossing.
AND it has the date stamp: 12-12-12!!!

It lifted my spirits. :)

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday hosted on Beth Niquette's blog, The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

A fruit market

Mouthwatering displays of fruits on a roadside in Uganda.  Although I think I can identify some of the fruit - magoes, watermelon - most are unfamiliar to me.

Food

To counteract all the fresh vegetables being sold at the market, the stamps I have found some cake and something I thought might be sausages but may be pancakes.  All are from Finland.

This is a post for Sunday Stamps, now hosted by Violet Sky at "See it on a Postcard!"

Ukraine

Every card that has arrived from Ukraine recently has mentioned EURO 2012.  As I am only marginally interested in football (soccer for those of you on the far side) EURO 2012 has largely passed me by.

What hasn't passed me by are the pictures on this card:
The borscht soup made from beetroot - yum
Guelder rose, the national symbol and the symbol of the beauty of Ukrainian girls
Traditional clothes which look as though they are decorated in cross-stitch
More food.  I think I can identify Kruchenyky, Syrniki, Varenyky.

Beemster cheese

Children dressed as cheese carriers at a market, outside a cheese museum.  The cheeses are Beemster cheese, some of which is aged for 26 months.

The name Beemster comes from the Beemster Polder, an area in North Holland.  It was the earliest of the reclaimed land in the Netherlands, first drained in 1609, and now lies over 3 metres below sea level.  It has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1999.

Goats' cheese

There are well over 300 different types of cheese in France but the area where I ma staying at the moment is best known for goats' cheese.  Until about 10 years ago I really didn't care for goats' cheese but I hadn't tasted the good stuff.  Now I'm only too happy to choose it.

The distinctive shape of the Valençay cheese is supposed to be thanks to Napoleon.  It used to be a pyramid shape but Napoleon saw it on his return from an unsuccessful campaign in Egypt.  It was a painful reminder so he took of the top with his sword.  I think that story could be taken with a pinch of salt.  As you can see, the Pouligny is a very similar shape but appears to have been only partially beheaded.

A subtle form of cruelty

Belgian chocolates from Belgium.  I can taste them now.  Sigh.

Blancmange

I received the beautiful card from Annecy, a place I'd love to see, last year through Postcrossing.  The stamp on it surprised me because although I knew the post office in France had published a series on regional foods, I didn't think blancmange would be a dish to celebrate and it's nothing to do with Annecy.  It was always something of a joke at school.  Clearly I haven't had the opportunity to eat the real thing.

There was a series of twelve in the booklet, these being the remaining eleven.  Even there, there were a few surprises.  French caviar?  I had no idea.

Quite mouth-watering on the whole and a little more expected than blancmange.  They are meant to be arranged as three menus of four courses: starter, main course, cheese and dessert.  I'm afraid I had them in alphabetical order before I realised.

This is a post for Sunday Stamps, now hosted by Violet Sky at "See it on a Postcard!"

Cheese market at Alkmaar

The cheese market at Alkmaar in the Netherlands is a tradition going back to the 16th century though there was a weighing house there as early 1365.  At one time, until World War I, about 300 tons of cheese was sold on market days.  The tradition is continued but now with less than 10% the quantity of cheese.

It looks a lovely spectacle and I know it's popular with tourists.  Apparently as many as 100,000 people arrive to see the market each year.  The cheese carriers wear traditional costumes as you can see on this postcard.  The colours on their hats denote the different groups (or vemen).

One other piece of odd information about Alkmaar - there is a museum dedicated to the Beatles because John Lennon's first guitar was made in the town.

This card was sent to me by Deirdre of Mail Corner.  Thank you Deirdre!

Being fruitful

A delicious selection of fruits and other produce at this Sri Lankan market.  Lemons and limes I recognise (I think) and of course the bananas, but as usual there are others that are a mystery to me.

Tomatoes

Fresh tomatoes from Italy, from Sicily to be exact.  Quite inexpensive, and they look lovely.  We very rarely see them like that in the UK.  Ours tend to be uniformly shaped and uniformly tasteless.  I think at least some of these may be a variety called Fiorentino.  The postcard was sent to me from the Netherlands.

Fish market, probably Senegal

I didn't think I'd be able to take part in Sepia Saturday today but then I found this postcard.  It was sent in the 1990s from Gambia, so not so very old and certainly not sepia, but I found it interesting enough to post all the same.

First I tried to identify the fish but that was a mission impossible.  I did come across a list of fish that could be found, but I'm none the wiser.  What I did find was an article written in 2007 lamenting the shortage of fish in Gambia "because of the absence of Senegalese fishermen".  In fact this postcard may well have been bought in Senegal, or possibly designed to be dual purpose, because the text on the back is in both French and English:
Le marché de poissons
Fish market

If you look at a map of Senegal I posted 18 months ago, you can seen that Gambia is almost completely surrounded by Senegal.  The trade rights for the Gambia river were sold by the Portuguese to English merchants in 1588 and that may account for its shape bordering the river, though according to its president, Gambia was one of the oldest and biggest countries in Africa but "was reduced to a small snake by the British government".

Europeans colonising Africa took little, if any, account of ethnic groups and traditional lands so the ancient Senegambian stone circles,  a UNESCO World heritage Site, lie in both Senegal and Gambia.  They are described as the largest concentration of stone circles anywhere in the world, spreading over 15,000 square miles (39,000 sq km), dating from approximately the 8th century.

Thanksgiving

...for a plentiful harvest.

Wishing my American friends a happy Thanksgiving.

A market in Provence

A traditional market in Provence in the south of France, with quite an emphasis on garlic by the look of it.  I like the message on the card:

There are more varieties of fruit and vegetables and fish than exist in other places.  Weather not up to the English summer at the moment.  It was lovely up to today, and according to two different forecasts tomorrow will be (1) better or (2) worse.

I know the feeling.  Summer here has ended and we're (probably) going to suffer a drastic drop in temperature and (probably) see some rain.  Well, I suppose it is October.