"Hagel" means 'hail' in Dutch and is also their word for sprinkles. Now, I'm a big sprinkles person, as anyone that has ever seen me within 10 yards of a Mister Softee can vouch, but I was a little taken aback to discover that, here, they eat it for breakfast. It basically functions like sugary cereal in America.
We went into a supermarket to see just how many brands of hagel there were. Answer: a lot. Some had cartoon characters on the packaging and, I like to imagine, prizes in the box. Kiddie Hagel. Then, there were the classier looking boxes. Adult Hagel.
Of course, at the bottom of the shelves, there was hagel in a bag. Economy Hagel.
The next morning we decided to try some out at the hotel's breakfast buffet. Basically, you just pour it on toast. We played with the idea of using pindakaas (peanut butter, or as it literally translates, peanut cheese) as our binding agent, but opted instead for margarine. That way, we could be sure to taste the hagelslag.This was Merlin's. He chose to cover half his bread with the traditional cylindrical chocolate ones and the other half with the more daring pink and yellow spherical hagel. Both were really sweet.
This was mine. It came from a box with a dinosaur on it. I thought it would be mint and chocolate and for the first few bites, my eyes deceived my taste buds. Green=mint. Obviously. However, upon further inspection, picking fallen green hagel off my plate with the wetted tip of my finger, I discovered that it basically just tasted like sugar.
P.S. We wanted to find a hagelslag commercial on youtube to post for you all but all I kept getting were Sen. Chuck Hagel interviews.
