not just an abbreviation it is also an intergovernmental cooperation/union. it is used for cooperation between these three countries and was a start of a customs union
Benelux was founded before the EU and it was example of how an EU could work. It convinced others to start the EU. Incidentally, the Benelux was started (in part) because of wholesale butter smuggling on the Dutch-Belgian border, way back when. It was smuggled in wheel barrows, lol. 🧈 🚧
My understanding of the Finnish dish-drying cabinet is that you leave the dishes in it. You don't have to transfer them to another cabinet or shelf for storage. So it doesn't take up additional space and provides an additional function.
Doesn't it cause a mold problem? I live in the South of the US, where high humidity is just a thing, so maybe in other places, it is not a problem. It did look like a cool way to put away dishes for easy access and better organization though.
@@RiverWoods111 It's not meant for every climate or places with hard water (with lime/chalk scale). In places where this is not a problem, these are genius!
@@RiverWoods111 I know that mould would also be a problem in most large cities in Australia, being in a temperate or tropical climate and generally quite humid for at leat half the year, but perhaps with forced ventilation?
Deposits on bottles were very much a thing back in the 80s here in the UK. The ultimate recycling system were the dairies who'd deliver milk, along with eggs and other things, to your door and then take away the empties to be reused.
McQueens still do that. I imagine almost no-one does it though, not me anyway - as the glass bottles are pretty much 2x the price of plastic cartons. Go figure.
I don't know exactly how it was done in Germany back in the day. But I do remember seeing british black and white movies on TV( or the Tele, as you might say), were the Milk Man delivered said milk in glass bottles with Aluminium foil caps.
No money involved in returning milk bottles but I do remember stealing empty beer and cider bottles from the back of the pub to get the deposit back. A different kind of recycling
Yep, I remember Corona fizzy drinks got you 10p back when you returned the bottle to the shop...my parents would tend to collect them up until they had about ten of them and that'd get you a quid back..that's best part of a fiver now.
Hey Evan! I am 72 we used to have return for deposit bottles in United States for years. Back in the Sixties my brother and I collected soda bottles from the whole neighborhood to get enough money to go to movies and see first Beatle movie A Hard Day's Night. It was 25 cents for under 12 years old. In the Seventies in college I collected enough to buy cigarettes. Luckily, I quit smoking in the Eighties but I still love the Beatles. Carry on Dude!❤
The cheese slicer is very common, probably universal, in the Nordic countries. It was invented by a Norwegian carpenter in 1925. It's infinitely more practical and better than slicing cheese with a knife. It was in my 30s when I realized that this object wasn't used all over the world, where sliced, hard cheese is consumed.
I'm czech, and I always thought it was super common - until I started visiting other people's households and learnt that apparently my family is the outlier here xD
It's very common in the Nordics but that is to a significant part due to the types of cheese most commonly eaten in Nordic countries. Edam, Emmental, and similar slightly bouncy hard--ish cheeses fit it well, and this was the everyday cheese and often the only cheese known to most people until like the 90s in the Nordics. On the other hand, if the cheese is too hard (such as Cheddar) or too soft (Gouda I find is often too soft) the slicer does not work at all. Mind you, the fact that everyone has these and it's their go-to for slicing cheese and pre-sliced is not used basically at all, there are now varieties of both Cheddar and Gouda that have been basically modified to fit this kind of a slicer. Compare a proper British Cheddar to a Finnish Oltermanni Cheddar, for instance; the latter can be sliced with one, the former absolutely can not.
@@TheNugettinageI use my Finnish cheese slicer daily for cheddar in the UK, but it only works for mild cheddar (which I of course prefer since it's closer to Oltermanni and similar cheeses I'm used to). Mature cheddar may just about be sliced with one, but never the extra mature!
Swedish-Finnish here. I have yet to visit a household in these countries that doesn't have at least two cheese slicers, often more. I can't even imagine a household here without one, and it's not just "I can't understand how anyone can be different". It's genuinely up there together with spoons, forks and knives as how common they are in the kitchen. Also works for slicing cucumbers (slices are quite thin, but it's so easy just do triple the number of them), or potatoes (raw), or even cutting/slicing convenient pieces of hard butter for your pan. I've only ever bought sliced cheese when travelling to a place that pretty much doesn't have block cheese in every store, and we often bring our own slicer. For the dish drying cabinet, I just use it for storage for all the things that might be wet at some point. The space definitely doesn't go to waste.
Cheese slicer is also perfect for quickly making butter soft, just slice the butter and you don’t have to wait for it to soften very long. My slicer has traveled too! Also, kids seem to love long slices of carrot, cucumber, apple or any other suitable snack veg or fruit. All in the novelty of the shape, I guess :)
@ajpanton ooh, I never thought to use my Dutch cheese slicer for butter or cucumber. Definitely gonna be doing that in the future! But I do also use it as a mini spatula- great for lifting potato cakes, fish fingers etc
@@janemiettinen5176 in Germany we Call them Käsehobel, so cheese planers… I got mine from my grandma, born in 1918, so it really isn‘t a new thing. I have a plane one, and one with a wave pattern from a thrift store, which makes thicker, more decorative slices. For cucumber, carrots and other veggies I use a slicer with a fitted box, so the juices don‘t run down my arm 😉
I'm an American living in the Midwest region of the US, and I appreciate learning more about other countries and other parts of my own country from this channel and the second channel. Keep up the high-quality work, Evan!
Pfand (Germany) / pant (Norway) is not only for glass bottles, but also for plastic bottles and aluminium cans. In Norway, we also have something called "pant lottery" - if you write your name (or the name of an organisation you want to support) and phone number on a milk carton and throw it in the paper bin, you have a chance to win money.
Love the details, but wanna correct some a little; norways pant is not for glass, but plastic and aluminum is correct! We have "pante lotteriet", but that one is for pant where you can either win money, or the pant you gave (basically works as a ticket) is given to the red cross. The system of writing your name and phonenumber on a carton does exist tho, but its called "Kartonglotteriet"
In Finland pantti is for glass and plastic bottles and cans. Stupidly you get more money for the latter two and less for the glass bottles, which combined with glass bottles being heavier often leads to people not bothering to return them. That then means more glass bottles get left lying around and broken. If I had a say I'd make all the sums same and bigger than they currently are, since the return percentage isn't good enough yet. Sure, it would make the bottles and cans more expensive to purchase from a shop, but that shouldn't matter when you're getting more of it back too. You don't need to even bring them back into the same store or anything so it's not too difficult to do.
Denmark also have "pant" for most drinking containers (other than wine and strong alcohol bottles). There are three kinds of "pant" payouts: large soda bottles will be 3 dkk, 1liter bottles 1,5 dkk and soda cans will be 1 dkk
The Dutch call it "statiegeld" or poorly translate "...money" if I use google it simply translates to deposit but that is not accurate. Return money? loan money? temp money? IDK a good translation. But we have it on aluminium cans, beer bottles and PET bottels. And if you buy a crate of beer (containing 24 bottles) the crate itself has "statiegeld" on it as well.
I knew that. But why is this region lumped together, as a place name? In my youth I vaguely thought, it might have something to do with pre World War 2 Radio and Television treaties... Or something.
I'm German, my parents have a cheese slicer like this, but made out of metal. It helps you get clean and even slices off a piece of cheese. I prefer hand-cut slices.
@@ankavoskuilen1725 I’m in the UK I also have the metal cheese slice. Another ‘pen like’ with wires either side with different space ( one fat slice the other side much thinner )
I'm from the UK, I don't have one (I prefer handcut too) but it's a normal piece of kit here. My family home had it growing up, you wouldn't expect it in every kitchen but it's pretty common.
In the UK, some bottled beers sold in pubs, the brewery will take the bottles back for a rebate. The beers are delivered in plastic crates, and then you give the crates back with the empty bottles on your next delivery. This is particularly common with Grolsch that has the reusable stoppers.
The crates used to be wooden which you see in antique shops. Milk crates were metal but don't seem to hold their nostalgic value. Both were replaced by plastic... to sell oil?
It used to be the same for all the mixers (lemonade, coke, orange juice, etc, too), but probably isn’t any more. When I was a kid my parents ran a pub, I used to earn extra pocket money by sorting the empty bottles into their relevant crates so they could be collected.
As I understand it, a "mangle" is strictly speaking the term for a device used for smoothing fabrics between two rollers, while the similar device used for squeezing out excess water is correctly called a "wringer". That said, my mother always called her wringer a mangle (I'm British by the way).
Yes, very true. I believe the mangle also applies heat for smoothing. Oh, the good old days! I knew a lady who caught her hand in the wringer and it was sadly damaged for the rest of her life. Guess the wringer "mangled" her. Not meant to be a joke. That safety hazard led to why we now have "spin dry" in washers.
When I was little my mom had an electric mangle, it was basically roller irons that you could feed (folded) bedsheets through. And also, carefully, pants.
Yes! And often an electric mangle has a linen fabric that the clothes are run through, to absorb moisture from the clothes or bedsheets. I'm Swedish and most communal laundries have them :)
Washing machines originally just washed with no spin, then the clothes were fed through the mangle/wringer to wring them out before drying, on a clothesline.
As a Swede (Scanian/Skåning) the apartment complex basement clothes washing room still had a mangle/wringer in the early 1990s, IIRC. I was so sad to see it go.
I have not known cheese slicer for a long time (it is not very common in Czechia). We bought it at IKEA and soon found out that it is great for slicing butter from the fridge into thin slices. When you want to spread butter on bread, this is the best way because the slices heat up quickly and are easy to spread.
The bottle return policy used to be a thing in the UK. as a kid in Scotland, all fizzy drinks were all called Ginger. The returnable bottles were "Gingies" also known as "glass cheques". They tried to bring it back about 10-15 years ago, the damn Tories blocked it.
Lithuanian here, the Finnish dish drying cabinet is very wide soread here too, and so is the Swedish reusable cloch for cleaning. Also, people just tend to leave their dishes in the dish drying cabinet, especially plates and cups, so it does get used and isn’t just a waste of space
my mom and i saw the Finnish dish dying cabinet and put it in our kitchen (Latvia) when we were redoing it (without the hole on the bottom though), and it’s so nice, because it frees up the counter and the counter doesn’t look cluttered with drying dishes, i couldn’t recommend it enough for people who like a minimalistic look!!!
My extremely proudly Dutch-American parents have a bathroom birthday calendar and they're at least 3 generations removed from anyone who actually lived in the Netherlands. My grandparents (both sets) had one too, as do some of my aunts/uncles. Cultural traditions die hard, I guess.
Yeah that's one thing I always found so strange about the US. It's not like anyone actually speaks Italian/Dutch/... anymore, it's just an "exotic" sounding name, a bunch of flags and a few dishes but for some reason it's their whole entire identity. The O'Malley who couldn't fake an Irish accent to save his life but gets all teary eyed on St. Patrick's day etc. Weird. 🤷🏻♂️
I'm sure they kept the tradition purely for it's uniqueness, he'll I'm American and I'm actually totally gunna do this, I had a birthday calender at my last job, this time ima get them let me put it in the bathroom 😂
I think it’s really cool that your family keeps some cultural traditions! I’m Dutch myself and I’m curious, are there any other Dutch traditions your family still has?
13:25 the spurtle is designed to get into the “corner” or the pan when stirring your porridge. The idea being that the end of a spoon doesn’t fit to get into the corner. But it’s completely unnecessary because you can just… turn your spoon a little bit and use it sideways around the corner of the pan. Works fine. Doesn’t need a separate utensil.
My mom has a mangle, but a modern version. The rollers are heated, so it's an instant ironing. Works for shirts, dresses, pants, etc. Everything that doesn't have shaping bits like suits do, those would get destroyed by one. Takes 5 seconds or so per item.
@@HedgeWitch-st3yy You say that but I only had space for one or the other: a dishwasher or an automatic washing machine. I chose a dishwasher because you can still buy (little cute) twin tubs. They are so light and small they can be stored away in my built in wardrobe. 🥰🥰
Looks like the wringers on top of my mums old washer from the 60's., to wring the water out of the clothes. She never called it a mangle, but I can understand why that's it's name. She caught her hand in it more than once!
@@debthomas2078My mother had one as well in the sixties, on top of a washing machine, which was basically a metal box open on top, with vertical turning blades inside that you could see and touch, very dangerous! As kids we weren't allowed to touch it, because my mother didn't want accidents like your mom had. We didn't call the mangle a mangle but a wringer. This was in the Netherlands.
Mangle : my grandmother (in UK) had one -(in Birmingham as it happens). There were not washing machines or spin dryers in those days (1950s). Washing clothes was done in a tin tub using a “dolly”. Stains were removed with soap and a washboard (there was a popular song using a washboard, otherwise known as a skiffle board, Lonnie Donnegan had a pop group that used one in the music). After rinsing the washing it would be fed between the mangle rollers to squeeze the water out then hung on the washing line to dry - so a mangle was like a manusl spin dryer for the worst of the water.
Norwegian here. My grandma had a mangle located in the basement "washkitchen". I believe this was an item in most households before the advent of the modern washers and dryers.
we had washing machines in the UK in the 1950s. They were top loaders, with a mangle on top and another tub for rinsing. They were called twin tubs and were invented in the 1940s. My family had one and we were not a rich family, but we lived in a coal mining village where washing clothes thoroughly was a necessity.
Regarding "pant" - in Sweden (at the very least), it's not just glass bottles. It applies to plastic bottles and aluminium cans too. You essentially pay an extra 0,1€ per container when you buy it, and get that money back when you return it to a recycling station, which every grocery store is legally required to have.
We have a spurtle, and it's great for porridge. Also, I still have an electric spinner in the shed from 60 years ago. It still works. It's great for spinning stuff your washing machine can't handle. And a 60 year old hand mixer. The old designs work the best
I can second the affection for old (and typically cast/wrought iron) mechanisms. The only problem with them is that you usually need a garage to keep these marvels of technology in and occasionally a forklift to move the bigger ones around.
In Dutch we have the term Kaasschaafmethode, cheese slicer method. It a way of slicing expenditures in the government, or a company, in all departments a little bit. A kind of austerity policy.
The reason for the Finnish thing of drying dishes in the cupboard is that they don't take space on the counter and you don't need to see all the drying dishes around but they are neatly in the cupboard and you just take them from there when you need to use them again. Then you don't need to wait till they are dry on the counter and then put them in the cupboard anyway. Of course it's different if your kitchen is very small and you have very little cupboard space.
They're standard in Italy as well, even tho dishwashers are becoming more and more widespread. We are among the first pioneers of the train of thought "YOU GOT A DISHWASHER FOR CRYING OUT LOUD JUST LET THE THING DO ITS JOB!" and devote the cupboard space for everything else. We still get side eyes from our guests. (this is also why we do not entertain guests anymore. Stupid guests with their stupid side eyes)
Do you keep the cupboard doors open while the dishes are drying? Otherwise if it’s close won’t the dishes have a musty smell since there’s no ventilation
I keep forgetting the cheese slicer is quite the danish invention They are a basic Dutch household item as well. Seen them being sold in Germany quite often too. It's basically a handheld mandolin for cheese
The type of cheese slicer shown in the video is a Norwegian invention. There is a different type that uses a metal string, and I think that may be a Danish invention. My parents got theirs in Denmark, and I have seen them in Danish shops.
9:34 yeah we have these washing cloths here in Germany, too. They’re called *“Waschlappen”* - which can also be used as an insult as in “coward” or “weakling”.. granted it’s not the (pun intended) _dirtiest_ of terms
Considering the political developments recently, it's not looking too good for us either in that regard (at least in Germany, looking at the AFD poll numbers for the election we have soon) 🥲
whatever brain eating virus they got over there seems to have made its way across the pond, considering so much of western europe has seen a rise in the popularity of right wing parties. the u.s has the excuse that they went from monarchy to democracy and never suffered dictatorship, but in europe, there's still plenty of people who have relatives who were alive during our dictatorships and can easily tell you how shit went down back then
The cheese slicer you showed in the video is the Norwegian one. The more typical Danish one is a metal rod with cheese wire running parallel to it on both sides with a handle at the bottom. That way it basically works like a knife but without much resistance because the "blade" is so thin. Most Danish cheeses are relatively soft and a lot of them also very mature, so a regular knife can easily turn them into crumbs or cut too much off. With a Danish cheese slicer, the maximum thickness of the slice is limited by the distance from the central rod to the cheese wire, so you don't accidentally cut off too much. Maybe we are the only ones obsessed with having thin, uniform cheese slices on our open-faced sandwiches, idk.
Wire cheese slicers are common in the US, too. Even if not every household has one, they're common enough that people compare other things to them. For example, playing the thinner strings of a cheap, poorly set-up guitar is said to be like playing a cheese slicer.
I had one of those wire slicers in my childhood, but could never get it to work well. I guess it really does require soft cheese (and a good amount of tension in the wire, which mine seemed to have problems maintaining) to function well. And I enjoy a lot of hard(er) cheeses, which the plane-type slicers deal with so, so well
We've had a "pant"-system for glass bottles in Sweden since 1884 (yes 18, not 19) and added aluminium cans and PET bottles in the 1980's and 1990's. It's so weird to me that this is not a common thing everywhere. Also the Wettex can be machine washed when dirty and used until it disintegrates really.
The dish drying cabinet can double as storage for the things that you placed to dry there. No need to keep it empty once the plates etc. have dried. Mangle is relatively common in Finland. It's supposed to be used especially with bed sheets. It makes them really nice and crisp. Getting into a bed that has nice washed and mangled sheets is absolutely divine. Like someone places you into a cloud to sleep in...
I'm Dutch, and I have a birthday calendar on my bathroom door. I put it up about 8 months ago, but I still haven't written any names on it. And I've been living in my apartment for almost 4 years now. I feel a bit ashamed about it.😂
7:45 Pfand is not only reserved for glass bottles, but applies to (most) plastic bottles as well. For glass it’s usually 8 cents and for plastic even 25 cents. Additionally it’s not some money one gets back, but your own money, since it’s like a deposit that you pay at the register and receive back if you recycle the bottle.
there are variants where the cutting is done by tiny very sharp wires that works great for very soft cheeses. I also have one in metal but where the blade is cut very short and that one works also great on very soft cheeses.
@@Henrik_Holst Yes, I used to have one with a roller and a wire - very effective and you could vary the thickness by the angle. All the wires broke and couldn't find a replacement, so back to the knife.
FYI: A few US states including NY do have something like pfand. In MI, it is 10 cents. In NY state, it is 5 cents along with several other states like MA, ME, CA, HI, etc.
MI it is JUST beverage bottles. When it first went into law, there was a standard size of refillable beer bottle that was only 5 cents deposit. It took the legislature YEARS to change it, but a couple months after the law went into effect there was a article, that got reprinted everywhere, so everyone knew about it, and we all mailed them to our legislators. Turned out big hotels were unwilling to find space for bottles to be returned for deposit. So they switched every brand that came in a nickel bottle (which was almost everything back then) and threw that bottle in the trash after use. The bottle made to be reused ended up in landfills rather than recycling or reuse. Btw, if bottle deposits kept pace with inflation, they would be over 25 cents today -- unless you go back to the 2 cent, 3 cent, and nickel deposits from the 60s, those would be 50 cents or more. At those prices almost none of them would ever be thrown away. Last thing, big grocery stores, where they have machines to scan them and print out a receipt for your bottles, to be used to pay for groceries or just to get a refund, while the rule is that all returned are to be cleaned, with no person involved, they are dirty, and all that sugar in beverages ends up making that place smell like a sewer. What a great way to start the grocery shopping trip.
@@BEdwardStover It isn’t just bottles. In MI, the 10 cent deposit covered aluminum cans as well. See the MI 10 cent label alongside the 5 cent label stamped on the tops of redeemable aluminum cans or on redeemable plastic or glass bottles. In NY, the current 5 cent deposit state law originated in 1982. Had just started first grade back then. Yours truly and 2 other friends in my childhood NYC neighborhood collected and redeemed about $20 worth of cans and bottles before our families found out and forced us to stop due not only to concerns about us 6 year olds going through the trash, but also due to fears of us being mugging targets given the then skyrocketing violent crime wave prevalent back then.
When I was little the Corona pop man came round the houses. You gave him your used glass pop bottles and he gave us money. Recycling in the UK before Recycling was cool. My gran used to have a mangle.
My mum had a mangle when I was little but then my dad got a better job. Washer dryer arrived ! I remember the Corona pop van 2p per empty is stuck in my mind.
The name wettex stands for "wet textiles" and it's a mix of cotton fibre and regenerated cellulose! If you rinse them out thoroughly, after each use you don't have to wash ich boil them more then once a week. Plus, it's compostable!
Did you know: Knife crime is more common in the USA than the UK. The USA has more homocides including knives, and that's not even getting into gun homicides. The UK has some of the lowest knife crime rates, they just report on it more, giving the illusion that knife crime is bad in the UK. Thank the press/tabloids for that. If you compare London specifically to cities in the USA, it doesn't even make the top 10 for knife crime per capita.
thinking about it, that doesn't surprise me, as if you get into EDC or what in my bag, you will nearly always find a knife on the pockets or more then one but here I am the only one with a knife
this is not true and a complete misunderstanding of statistics. Knife crime, as reported by UK parliament for England and Wales, was 50,500 incidents in 2023 (newest data i could find quickly). In the US there were just under 120,000 incidents involving a "knife/cutting instrument" in the same year. The US has a population of well over 300 million people vs just 60 million for the England Wales area. Yes, the number is bigger but per capita this comes out to ~82 incidents per 100,000 people in the UK vs ~35 incidents per 100,000 people in the United States. Far lower than the UK. So no, knife crime is not "far more common". Just like we have a problem with gun violence, yall have a problem with knife violence. Trying to pretend its not happening or 'over exaggerated' doesn't help anyone. Its an issue your country needs to address just as we need to address ours.
@@NoHope_ Yep and just like every country the UK Politicians just stick a plaster/band aid over it and pat themselves on the back over how good a job they've done, while leaving the underlying courses still there and festering.
@@NoHope_ 'Knife crime' in the UK is defined as _carrying_ a blade of 3" or more. Knife _violence_ is a whole other matter - and that's where the USA still leads the UK. (The US definition of knife homicide is also 'using a knife or cutting instrument', while the British definition is wider, including things such as screwdrivers and broken bottles. Even so, it is still smaller, in the UK, per million of population.)
I'm an American who occasionally drinks tea, usually making a single cup with the microwave or using my stove top kettle. There's nothing like the sound of the whistle when the water is ready.
Once had an electric kettle similar to above; it lasted 22 years, made by GE Canada. Now I have glass electric kettles made in China. Each lasts about 11 to 15 months. Heating on a stove is inefficient, especially since the latest rate increase.
3:49 Bulgarian here, the pepper roaster is used around early autumn to roast a lot of peppers and then make spreads from them to store for winter. Also this shouldn’t be more expensive than €15, so whoever is selling it for €60 is seriously profiting from it.
Funnily enough I bought 24 Swedish dish towels/wettex from Costco in the USA yesterday! lol. I’m in love already they’re so nice. 😂 had never heard of them until I saw them in the store. The prints were cute and we always need dishcloths and for
My parents have a Verjaardags "Birthday" calander. It's outside of the Netherlands. My Dad is Dutch, my Mum is Irish. Mum refused to keep it in the bathroom, so now it is in the kitchen, so you look at it while you are cooking. Reasonable compromise I think.
The mangel you saw was an old style one that existed before electric was common place. They are much smaller and sleeker now. We have one and mangled sheets for your bed is so much better. That is what hotells use to get them so flat. They usually have bigger industrial version though.
The Dutch bottle scraper looks genius. I always struggle with my bottles of moisturising cream. They have a pump mechanism that never gets even close to finishing the bottle, but the cream is so thick most won’t come out without some vigorous shaking. It could use a little rubber disc that slides along the handle so you can leave it in the bottle and cover the opening.
Yeah, we tried to implement the bottle recycling scheme in Scotland, but the Secretary for State for Scotland (on behalf of the uk government) over-ruled our parliament… and the uk courts let him.
@@elaineb7065 I mean as an English person I think a general "curse Westminster" is appropriate for a ton of reasons. The government suuucks. At least you guys get a devolved government that cares about you and tries to do cool stuff for you. We're stuck with just..... Them. And they only care about London and the south.
@@Fred-gu6pkMy understanding that it was to be based on proven technology from Europe. They’d created a company and the big supermarkets and retailers were on board with the idea. I honestly feel that it could have worked enough that the idea could have been tweaked and refined enough to make it work properly over time. Even if it hadn’t worked initially, it was still worth trying- especially when you hear that Boris (allegedly, but hopefully untrue) wasted £100 million on a feasibility study for his ‘Garden bridge’.
9:15 "Benelux sounds like something that gives you diarrhea" As someone who's from a Benelux country and who's recovering from a stomach flu, I concede that you might be onto something.
In various states in the US, glass bottles do still have a deposit that you can get back if you return them. I know California does it, so does Michigan. It is far from universal however.
In California it is for aluminum cans, glass bottles, and several other container types. I don't recall how Michigan handled it off hand, but I believe it was similar.
Connecticut, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Oregon, California, etc. - lots of places have it! And most of those states it's for plastic bottles, glass bottles, and cans.
Grew up in S IL, and there was a glass bottle deposit when I was a kiddo. Assume it's still around? There was also a facility that would buy metal, I assume aluminum, cans.
There are modern mangles btw, we used to use them in the cleaning department of our uni. They´re great for ironing big pieces like bed linen - you just sit there and run the linen through big heated rolls that iron a whole double duvet cover in a few seconds.
@Electric999999 the cleaning department - meaning the cleaners. Each summer our uni hosted summer schools and the halls turned into de facto hotels. Cleaning department hired students like me for a few months to run that show.
You don‘t use the same towel for the sauna and drying up after swimming or whatever in a German sauna. You have different towels for different purposes. At least you have two of them. One for the sauna (where you’re literally supposed to sweat) and another one for drying and so on after you showered you’re self clean after the Sauna Gang or after swimming or whatever.
The UK does have ‘wettex’, they’re just not popular because Brits like to put things in dumps. We have ‘Spontex’ and remember even having them growing up in the 90’s. 100% they’re better than paper towels. We do also use the chunky cheese graters, although you can also get a pedicure item which is exactly the same thing, though slightly smaller (I’ll leave that one to your imagination). The spurtle reminded me of the little wooden thing we use for honey, though I have no idea what they’re called.
The dish drying cabinet is in every single house/apartment in Taiwan. It's actually used to store the dishes as well. You don't even have to worry about putting them away. Fixes your wasted space issue!
I'm Norwegian and live alone, so I don't need a dishwasher. I remember seeing a cabinet like that many, MANY years ago, and thinking - even as a kid - how smart that was. It isn't that uncommon in some European countries, but not in Norway anymore. I'm renovating my kitchen in a few months, and I'm definitely going to have one of those cabinets made! 👍
I'm in the US and have a cheese slicer like the one you showed. I actually grew up with one like that and then got one for my house too. I love it! Makes very thin slices.
Germany has had this "pant" (pfand) system for a relatively few yerars, but here in Norway we've had it "forever". I'm 65 now and cannot remember a time when it wasn't there. When I was a kid we used to collect beer bottles from the drunks on the pier in my home town Tromsø and buy single records (45's) and stuff. It could be quite a good hustle!
I live in Michigan and we recycle bottles and cans. We pay 10 cents per bottle and can when we purchase them filled, and then take them back to the store when they are empty and get the deposit amount back.
3:21 IKEA in the UK sold a cheese slicer like that. I have one because confession: I am concerned about using a grater and grating my fingers as I am a klutz. It's the HJÄLPREDA and I bought one 2 years ago for £2.
I have one of those apparently danish cheese slicers, but made of metal. I once slipped and cut my pinky open with it. Right to the bone. The tip of my pinkie still feels numb to this day. Been using a knife ever since. You just have more control, and the knife requires less force. 3/10 - Would not slice again.
@@NevelWong I too have maimed myself using the cheese slicer. And not just once. Us Swedes use those slicers every day but no one else hurts themselves like I've done. Maybe cheese tools aren't made for people like you and me 🤷♀️
Hint: use a wire cheese slicer. Not only you can control the thickness of the slice, but also it's a lot safer since it doesn't have a "slicer edge", you slice with the wire (it doesn't work so well on the *really* hard cheeses, becausethen you need a lot of strength, but it works fine in like 95% of all cheeses)
In Sweden we had Pant long before we started with recykling. We were first in the world and started with pant on glass bottles 1885. It was a way for the companies to get there bottles back and save money when they didn’t have to buy new bottles. Almost a hundrad years later, in 1984, we also put Pant on aluminium cans and 1994 on PET bottles.
Public bins in Copenhagen have sometimes a holder for your 'pant' makes it easy for people collecting them. There is 'pant' on softdrink bottles, cans, and glass bottles. 'pant' is about 1/15 of the bottle price
We have them here in the Netherlands too! Also in Freiburg, I noticed that people would just put the pfand bottles next to the bins when having a party in the park.
The Finnish dish drying cabinet goes above the bench on the wall. So it is both where you dry your dishes and store your most commonly used dishes and doesn't take up bench space. Well at least that is how my sister in law explained it when i was staying with her and my brother in Helsinki. Obviously will work best in dry countries rather than humid countries closer to the equator.
When I moved to Sweden I stayed in a temporary furnished apartment and it didn't come with a spatula but you bet there was one of those cheese slicers.
Cheese planers allow you to slice thinner, which for many cheeses is essential. Flavors can otherwise be overpowering and consumption happens quicker than enjoyment. Obviously not for all cheeses, but those of a medium hardness (what's known as "Halbhartkäse" here in Switzerland) would be very well-served with a planer. The experience is kind of the difference between taking a perfect bite of cake, savoring each individual flavor, vs. shoving the whole piece in your mouth - both can be fun in their own ways, but the fun lasts a lot longer with the first option.
Lots of cheese grating things! We (British family) definitely have a slicer like that, its great for certain types of cheese. Can't name any as they're the ones I don't like! My Dad uses it all the time! We have a cheese grater that looks like the electric one but is still manual, you spin a handle and push the lump into it. Useful for larger quantities when making pizza or something! I'd instantly recognise a mangle and know how to use it but my house is basically a museum, we have plenty of things that are Victorian including my great grandma's piano, a grandmother clock and a pedal sewing machine (which is just used as a table in the porch). I'm surprised they didn't recognise a mangle as they're still used in baking for pastry or pasta, although obviously those are smaller!
My mind got blown when I found out that not all countries celebrate birthdays with their countries flag. This is so common in Denmark, that our flag often is just referred to as the Birthday flag. I think more countries would get a better relationship with their flag if they started using it for birthdays like us :D
the dutch have a kaasschaaf. the cheeseplaner mentioned in the video. almost every household has it and a lot of dutch people are supprised to learn it`s a danish invention. and we have statiegeld (pant/panft) on bottles and cans now. 0.10 cent for small bottles/cans , 0.25 for big bottles. benelux is a area in Europe, existed of Belguim, Netherlands and luxemburg.
More importantly: we have different cheese slice maker thingy’s for old cheese than for young cheese! Because the young cheese is stickier and you’d want thicker slices since the taste is less strong ;-)
"a danish invention" - Norwegian, not Danish. But extremely popular in Denmark (and the rest of the Nordics). The same Norwegian inventor also invented a butter slicer but that one never went popular.
10:00 isnt that just a common absorvent kitchen cloth? I havent seen a home without it in Spain (and im gonna bet Portugal and France aswell). idk why it wouldnt be used everywhere. They can be used way more than 15 times and it is common to also clean bathrooms, glass or anything like that.
As a Swede I couldnt live without the cheese slicer, wettex dish cloth, shoe horn and the butter knife. I use them probably every single day. For food I have to give a shout out to Julmust (which outsells coca cola), lingonberry jam and Semla. But those I dont eat all the time ☺or do I? lol
I've always lived in the USA, and I've always had a cheese planar in my house; I assumed they were well known! And there are SEVERAL states you can turn in bottles/cans for cash (CT, ME, OR, WA, CA, etc) -- so you'll always find people going through bins in those states, too. Not just a Germany thing! edit to add: ps - an electric grater is just a food processor with the grater attachment 😅... every house in the US has one!
My mum had an electric mangle on top of her top loading washing machine in the 60's. No tumble dryer then so most things, especially large items like sheets, were passed through the mangle to squeeze out all the excess water before hanging out on the line. Loved wash day when the kitchen smelt of steamy washing detergent.
I feel like there's a difference between a mangle: cast iron frame, wooden rollers and hand-cranked like Evan's illustration, and a wringer: motor-driven with rubber rollers. My mum had one, too, attached to the washing machine like yours, and I think the brand was Acme. It was superseded later by a standalone spin-drier.
@@jonathanrichards593 My mum's had wooden rollers not rubber ones and it was made by Hoover (I'm in the UK)..you could swing it out to the side of the machine and it had a detachable handle to hand crank it separately from the machine, you could also alter the gaps between, a bit like a pasta machine, for different items and with sheets she would start with them a bit wider, gradually adjusting them until a sheet would be so well squeezed it didn't need ironing. My job would be to help hold it up from the back whilst mum fed it through...got shouted at if I let it touch the floor..l.ol We always called it a mangle.
In the US here and I'm loving the dish drying cabinet. Think about it. You gotta put em in the cabinet after they dry in the dish drainer anyway, right? so... Just put em up wet and you're done.
Oh I can already hear the Norwegians running to the comments saying that they invented the cheese slicer 😂 and yes it's definitely worth it if you have cheese on bread!
The dish drying cabinet is also a Baltic thing, it’s very common in Lithuania and I understand they have them in Estonia and Latvia. It’s all possible they have it further east too.
My grandmother's mangle didn't take up floor space, it was attached above the washing machine. It must have been a fantastic idea when it was introduced as it could remove so much water from the wet washing making it lighter to hang out and easier to dry in a humid city like Auckland where she lived. Many spinning machines I've used haven't left the washing as dry.
I am also German (now living in Norway), and we had birthday calendars, but never in the bathroom. I had my own one in my own room when I grew up, and my parents still have one in the living room.
I have one of those calendars. I married a man who was Dutch and learned all about them. I've had one ever since. I've always had one of those cheese slicers. Canadian here. They just slice cheese thinly. The recycling bin pickers happens in Canada too.
I think the Danish slicer is something else. it fixes a block of cheese and its a rotating slicer shaves off the top. you have to adjust it and move it down. Seen it at every hotel in Copenhagen.
Hmm... This sounds very much like a "Girolle" to me, which is a Swiss item for a specific cheese named "Tête de Moine". I wouldn't be surprised if this showed up in a hotel in Copenhagen.
As someone who married a Bulgarian, you have no idea just how important Tschushkopek is in Bulgarian culture. As a country with hot summers and freezing winters, canning and bottling is still important and Lutenitsa is one of the most important dishes for this process. It's like Bugaria's Kimchi season.
German here and I do have one of those cupboard drying racks in my minuscle kitchen. Love it, otherwise the space wouldbe cluttered constantly. The wettex we just call "Schwammtücher". Standard here, used to be plastic spongy, now there are cotton version that feel the same 👍🏻 Just to help your pronunciation of "Cacio e pepe"... the second "c" is a "tsch" sound... it's something else otherwise... Loved the cheese puns 😂 Huh. the spurtle looks like a nostepinne...
When i was a kid in Chicago in the 60s we had a mangle in our laundry room although i never saw it used. But it was a padded roller surface with just a press hinged above it that you could push down with a lever. It was electric so you'd get it hot, spread a garment across it, and press the lever down for a minute or so, and you'd have ironed an entire garment at once. Much easier than ironing. They're more common in commercial laundries. The thing you showed was more like a wringer from the 19th century before things were electrified. Our mangle was a table top appliance.
Mangle, otherwise called a wringer. They were not uncommon, attached over top loading washing machines, in the days before spin drying was perfected. We had one into early 1970s
They are still very common here in Sweden. Pretty much everyone who lives in an apartment would be familiar with them here. They are almost obligatory in these sort of 'neighborhood laundry centers' (you cannot really call them public, they are part of a neighborhood/building full of apartments so only available for those who lives there). I don't know of anyone that actually owns one of these for private use though.
I thought a mangle was a tool for flattening bedsheets after washing them. And it was also slightly warm, so the (sometimes) damp sheets got both super crispy flat as well as completely dry. My mother used one when I grew up, but somewhere along the line it disappeared and I can't recall ever seeing one for the past 20 years or so... Perhaps people stopped caring if their bedsheets were wrinkled as long as they were clean.
@@evawettergren7492 Traditionalloy they weren't heated. Their job was simply to squeeze as much water out of the laundry as possible in the days before spin drying cycles in washing machines. It seems you can get heated ones now though.
6:13 It's also called a flessenlikker, or bottle-licker, which I find more fitting. The Dutch have acquired a reputation for frugality over the years, so anything that allows them to extract that little bit more out of their containers seems so appropriate.
Here in Oregon we’ve had the Bottle rebate since….. the 80’s? 90’s? Either way, a long time. And we have, I believe one of the highest return rebates in the country with 10 cents per bottle.
I think most states have one now, but Oregon remains the highest deposit. Every year someone gets caught and prosecuted for smuggling in aluminum cans from AZ to California. Cali's deposit is higher than AZ's. And the same from Cali to Oregon.
We had the Wettex cloth here in Australia when I was a kid in the 1950s. I can even remember the radio jingle for it. Also, the 'pfant' or bottle deposit is big here and gets 10c for every bottle or can. Drink bottles, beer cans, anything with a bar code gets the refunded deposit. There are 'Return and Earn' stations all over my city where we throw the bottles into the opening and the machine counts the bar codes and prints out a shopping voucher for a supermarket or we can select a local charity.
In the UK in the '60s & '70s I remember "Corona" - a fizzy drink sold in glass bottles which you could return to get a deposit back on. I have no idea why we stopped doing it!!!
My Dad used to have to deal with fraud on returnable bottles, not just Corona, he worked at Schweppes, and had enough fun with people stealing full bottles, but there was also an illicit trade in empty bottles where they would end up paying for the returned bottles multiple times. I think it was casual drivers being bribed. I know at one point they were tracking to see if publicans were returning more than they ordered.
@@stevenwilliamson6236 Corona uses glass botles in NL and is the only InBev product that does NOT have a deposit on the bottle, unlike all their other bottled and canned beers.
The U.K. has been recycling for several decades. Glass was first (soft drink bottles in the 1950’s , 3d in the former currency for returning empty bottles), there is still a procedure for returning beer bottles this way to pubs. Glass is now routinely collected from British households in large bins monthly. Paper and cardboard are recycled in the same way. monthly. Most plastics (and all plastic bottles) are collected this way too, monthly. . Excess, we take to recycling centres, either outside supermarkets, or designated council centres. Batteries, old make up, broken toys, special plastics etc are recycled in store in supermarkets. Toughened plastics are recycled in certain pubs. Small electrical items (TVs, kettles, toasters, shavers, any items like that) go to the recycling centres. Same for garden waste, house renovation materials, though you can arrange with the council for these: to be picked up (sometimes this is at cost). Furniture, the council again. This all happens across the whole of the U.K.including remote areas I if the Scottish highlands. 🇬🇧😀
You can also take electrical items to shops that sell them, such as Curry’s, even large items such as televisions. You don’t need to have bought the item from them. It’s part of their obligation under recycling legislation.
I worked for a printer in the UK and we had regular orders from a client to print birthday calendars, although not sure if it was meant for the bathroom.
Wettex is the best! Many uses- one of favorites is for dusting. Wet the wettex and wring it out and dust away. When you collect to much dust just wash off and continue. Also good for mopping up spills. And cleaning glass because its doesnt leave streaks or fibres.
I never thought it wasn't a generally used item in other countries, we have them too in Portugal! Although they are commonly called "pano Vileda" (lit. Vileda cloth), because the Vileda brand (a german brand) is the the main seller.
7:50 There are about ten states that have bottle and can deposits. In Oregon, it's ten cents on beer, soda, tea, juice, still drinks, and water. (Wine, milk, and spirits excluded.) There is an cooperative of retailers that operates a bottle return service. If there isn't a Bottle Drop location within about a mile of a store, the store has to accept the returns itself.
When a german friend of mine visited me I heard him laughing his ass off in the bathroom because of the birthday- calender. Untill then I thought everybody did this, and not just us dutchies.
Oke, so I have the Verjaardagskalender, washandjes , multiple cheese slicers ( different ones for young soft cheese and aged cheese) , we also have Statiegeld (pfand) for plastic bottles, beer bottles and cans. I know the flessen-trekker ( we call it flessen-likker ) but don’t own one and the electric kettle is such a basic, how else do you quickly make pot-noodles or cup a soup 🤔🤣 guess i’m pretty Euro-standart
I am a Dutchman who has been living in France for more than 20 years. Here in France they do not know this 'tradition'. And yet that calendar hung on the wall here for a long time. But given my age (63 years) more and more crosses appeared on the calendar behind the names of family members, neighbors and friends who had since passed away. That I just removed the calendar. :((
You can get grating/slicing attachments for a kitchen mixer/machine instead of a separate device (and not hard to clean). The Danish cheese slicer - even this American has one but I don't know why.
9:15 benelux is just a abbreviation of Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg, just used to refer to that area
not just an abbreviation it is also an intergovernmental cooperation/union. it is used for cooperation between these three countries and was a start of a customs union
@tarickw oh really? Never knew about that, thanks!
Benelux was founded before the EU and it was example of how an EU could work. It convinced others to start the EU.
Incidentally, the Benelux was started (in part) because of wholesale butter smuggling on the Dutch-Belgian border, way back when. It was smuggled in wheel barrows, lol. 🧈 🚧
I now remember that I DID know that once-upon-a-time...😂😂
Ah yes the tristate area
My understanding of the Finnish dish-drying cabinet is that you leave the dishes in it. You don't have to transfer them to another cabinet or shelf for storage. So it doesn't take up additional space and provides an additional function.
Doesn't it cause a mold problem? I live in the South of the US, where high humidity is just a thing, so maybe in other places, it is not a problem. It did look like a cool way to put away dishes for easy access and better organization though.
O, that is cool!
@@RiverWoods111 It's not meant for every climate or places with hard water (with lime/chalk scale). In places where this is not a problem, these are genius!
@@RiverWoods111
I know that mould would also be a problem in most large cities in Australia, being in a temperate or tropical climate and generally quite humid for at leat half the year, but perhaps with forced ventilation?
These are quite standard in Spnish kitchens!
Deposits on bottles were very much a thing back in the 80s here in the UK. The ultimate recycling system were the dairies who'd deliver milk, along with eggs and other things, to your door and then take away the empties to be reused.
McQueens still do that. I imagine almost no-one does it though, not me anyway - as the glass bottles are pretty much 2x the price of plastic cartons. Go figure.
I don't know exactly how it was done in Germany back in the day. But I do remember seeing british black and white movies on TV( or the Tele, as you might say), were the Milk Man delivered said milk in glass bottles with Aluminium foil caps.
No money involved in returning milk bottles but I do remember stealing empty beer and cider bottles from the back of the pub to get the deposit back. A different kind of recycling
Yep, I remember Corona fizzy drinks got you 10p back when you returned the bottle to the shop...my parents would tend to collect them up until they had about ten of them and that'd get you a quid back..that's best part of a fiver now.
@@juliaw61 But when did the job of Milk Man cease to exist?
Hey Evan! I am 72 we used to have return for deposit bottles in United States for years. Back in the Sixties my brother and I collected soda bottles from the whole neighborhood to get enough money to go to movies and see first Beatle movie A Hard Day's Night. It was 25 cents for under 12 years old. In the Seventies in college I collected enough to buy cigarettes. Luckily, I quit smoking in the Eighties but I still love the Beatles. Carry on Dude!❤
They aren't supper common in most places tho, especially where I'm from in NC, I've only ever heard of them being more common up north
Yeah we get 10 cents here in Michigan
Bottle return/deposits are still a thing in the US in some states or if you buy milk from a smaller distributor and it comes in glass.
@wolfrhl5 I have seen that glass milk thing a couple times, but I think it was in Florida? I was an otr trucker, so I saw lots of fun stuff
Massachusetts still does it.
The cheese slicer is very common, probably universal, in the Nordic countries. It was invented by a Norwegian carpenter in 1925. It's infinitely more practical and better than slicing cheese with a knife. It was in my 30s when I realized that this object wasn't used all over the world, where sliced, hard cheese is consumed.
In the Netherlands too..kaasschaaf
I'm czech, and I always thought it was super common - until I started visiting other people's households and learnt that apparently my family is the outlier here xD
It's very common in the Nordics but that is to a significant part due to the types of cheese most commonly eaten in Nordic countries. Edam, Emmental, and similar slightly bouncy hard--ish cheeses fit it well, and this was the everyday cheese and often the only cheese known to most people until like the 90s in the Nordics. On the other hand, if the cheese is too hard (such as Cheddar) or too soft (Gouda I find is often too soft) the slicer does not work at all.
Mind you, the fact that everyone has these and it's their go-to for slicing cheese and pre-sliced is not used basically at all, there are now varieties of both Cheddar and Gouda that have been basically modified to fit this kind of a slicer. Compare a proper British Cheddar to a Finnish Oltermanni Cheddar, for instance; the latter can be sliced with one, the former absolutely can not.
@@TheNugettinageI use my Finnish cheese slicer daily for cheddar in the UK, but it only works for mild cheddar (which I of course prefer since it's closer to Oltermanni and similar cheeses I'm used to). Mature cheddar may just about be sliced with one, but never the extra mature!
Alright you sold me
Swedish-Finnish here. I have yet to visit a household in these countries that doesn't have at least two cheese slicers, often more. I can't even imagine a household here without one, and it's not just "I can't understand how anyone can be different". It's genuinely up there together with spoons, forks and knives as how common they are in the kitchen.
Also works for slicing cucumbers (slices are quite thin, but it's so easy just do triple the number of them), or potatoes (raw), or even cutting/slicing convenient pieces of hard butter for your pan.
I've only ever bought sliced cheese when travelling to a place that pretty much doesn't have block cheese in every store, and we often bring our own slicer.
For the dish drying cabinet, I just use it for storage for all the things that might be wet at some point. The space definitely doesn't go to waste.
Cheese slicer is also perfect for quickly making butter soft, just slice the butter and you don’t have to wait for it to soften very long. My slicer has traveled too! Also, kids seem to love long slices of carrot, cucumber, apple or any other suitable snack veg or fruit. All in the novelty of the shape, I guess :)
@ajpanton ooh, I never thought to use my Dutch cheese slicer for butter or cucumber. Definitely gonna be doing that in the future! But I do also use it as a mini spatula- great for lifting potato cakes, fish fingers etc
@@janemiettinen5176 in Germany we Call them Käsehobel, so cheese planers…
I got mine from my grandma, born in 1918, so it really isn‘t a new thing. I have a plane one, and one with a wave pattern from a thrift store, which makes thicker, more decorative slices.
For cucumber, carrots and other veggies I use a slicer with a fitted box, so the juices don‘t run down my arm 😉
*plain, sorry
I'm Dutch, I hate cheese, and I have two of these, lol
I'm an American living in the Midwest region of the US, and I appreciate learning more about other countries and other parts of my own country from this channel and the second channel. Keep up the high-quality work, Evan!
Thank you!! This was a last second video as my big London Berlin train video needed one more week 😇
Woah, an American who is aware there are other countries, neat 📸
There are modern electric mangels! 😂
@@evan You're welcome!
@@skylark.kraken We are too rare, unfortunately ☹️
Pfand (Germany) / pant (Norway) is not only for glass bottles, but also for plastic bottles and aluminium cans. In Norway, we also have something called "pant lottery" - if you write your name (or the name of an organisation you want to support) and phone number on a milk carton and throw it in the paper bin, you have a chance to win money.
Love the details, but wanna correct some a little; norways pant is not for glass, but plastic and aluminum is correct! We have "pante lotteriet", but that one is for pant where you can either win money, or the pant you gave (basically works as a ticket) is given to the red cross. The system of writing your name and phonenumber on a carton does exist tho, but its called "Kartonglotteriet"
In Finland pantti is for glass and plastic bottles and cans. Stupidly you get more money for the latter two and less for the glass bottles, which combined with glass bottles being heavier often leads to people not bothering to return them. That then means more glass bottles get left lying around and broken. If I had a say I'd make all the sums same and bigger than they currently are, since the return percentage isn't good enough yet. Sure, it would make the bottles and cans more expensive to purchase from a shop, but that shouldn't matter when you're getting more of it back too. You don't need to even bring them back into the same store or anything so it's not too difficult to do.
Denmark also have "pant" for most drinking containers (other than wine and strong alcohol bottles). There are three kinds of "pant" payouts: large soda bottles will be 3 dkk, 1liter bottles 1,5 dkk and soda cans will be 1 dkk
Pant sounds like such a good idea, they do stuff like this with cups at festivals so I don’t see why the UK can’t adopt it too.
The Dutch call it "statiegeld" or poorly translate "...money" if I use google it simply translates to deposit but that is not accurate. Return money? loan money? temp money? IDK a good translation.
But we have it on aluminium cans, beer bottles and PET bottels. And if you buy a crate of beer (containing 24 bottles) the crate itself has "statiegeld" on it as well.
Benelux is an abbreviation for Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg.
I knew that. But why is this region lumped together, as a place name?
In my youth I vaguely thought, it might have something to do with pre World War 2 Radio and Television treaties... Or something.
They are three relatively small counties who share a lot of cultural and historical connections.
@@_Matthias_0815 It was the very first customs union, established in 1948.
@@wessexdruid7598it was only the very first if you ignore all the unions that were formed before it...
I'm German, my parents have a cheese slicer like this, but made out of metal.
It helps you get clean and even slices off a piece of cheese.
I prefer hand-cut slices.
I don't think there's any Dutch home without at least one cheese slicers. Typically one for hard cheeses and one for soft ones.
Mine is also out of metal. And I have one with holes in it so I can make grated cheese.
This is in the Netherlands.
@@ankavoskuilen1725 I’m in the UK I also have the metal cheese slice. Another ‘pen like’ with wires either side with different space ( one fat slice the other side much thinner )
@@MartijnPennings I use it to cut slices from a cucumber too. I use my kaasschaaf every day!
I'm from the UK, I don't have one (I prefer handcut too) but it's a normal piece of kit here. My family home had it growing up, you wouldn't expect it in every kitchen but it's pretty common.
In the UK, some bottled beers sold in pubs, the brewery will take the bottles back for a rebate. The beers are delivered in plastic crates, and then you give the crates back with the empty bottles on your next delivery. This is particularly common with Grolsch that has the reusable stoppers.
Hell yeah!
The crates used to be wooden which you see in antique shops. Milk crates were metal but don't seem to hold their nostalgic value. Both were replaced by plastic... to sell oil?
It used to be the same for all the mixers (lemonade, coke, orange juice, etc, too), but probably isn’t any more.
When I was a kid my parents ran a pub, I used to earn extra pocket money by sorting the empty bottles into their relevant crates so they could be collected.
As I understand it, a "mangle" is strictly speaking the term for a device used for smoothing fabrics between two rollers, while the similar device used for squeezing out excess water is correctly called a "wringer". That said, my mother always called her wringer a mangle (I'm British by the way).
Yes, very true. I believe the mangle also applies heat for smoothing. Oh, the good old days! I knew a lady who caught her hand in the wringer and it was sadly damaged for the rest of her life. Guess the wringer "mangled" her. Not meant to be a joke. That safety hazard led to why we now have "spin dry" in washers.
When I was little my mom had an electric mangle, it was basically roller irons that you could feed (folded) bedsheets through. And also, carefully, pants.
Yes! And often an electric mangle has a linen fabric that the clothes are run through, to absorb moisture from the clothes or bedsheets. I'm Swedish and most communal laundries have them :)
Washing machines originally just washed with no spin, then the clothes were fed through the mangle/wringer to wring them out before drying, on a clothesline.
As a Swede (Scanian/Skåning) the apartment complex basement clothes washing room still had a mangle/wringer in the early 1990s, IIRC. I was so sad to see it go.
I have not known cheese slicer for a long time (it is not very common in Czechia). We bought it at IKEA and soon found out that it is great for slicing butter from the fridge into thin slices. When you want to spread butter on bread, this is the best way because the slices heat up quickly and are easy to spread.
Ah yes! It definitely doubles as a butter slicer! 😂
Oh, good idea!
The bottle return policy used to be a thing in the UK. as a kid in Scotland, all fizzy drinks were all called Ginger. The returnable bottles were "Gingies" also known as "glass cheques". They tried to bring it back about 10-15 years ago, the damn Tories blocked it.
Yes was 20p per bottle returned.. we used to hunt for them and trade them in at the shop for sweets 😁
I remember people slinging around beautiful phrases like 'Yer da chaps doors for gingie bottles' when I was younger.
Lithuanian here, the Finnish dish drying cabinet is very wide soread here too, and so is the Swedish reusable cloch for cleaning. Also, people just tend to leave their dishes in the dish drying cabinet, especially plates and cups, so it does get used and isn’t just a waste of space
my mom and i saw the Finnish dish dying cabinet and put it in our kitchen (Latvia) when we were redoing it (without the hole on the bottom though), and it’s so nice, because it frees up the counter and the counter doesn’t look cluttered with drying dishes, i couldn’t recommend it enough for people who like a minimalistic look!!!
My extremely proudly Dutch-American parents have a bathroom birthday calendar and they're at least 3 generations removed from anyone who actually lived in the Netherlands. My grandparents (both sets) had one too, as do some of my aunts/uncles. Cultural traditions die hard, I guess.
Yeah that's one thing I always found so strange about the US. It's not like anyone actually speaks Italian/Dutch/... anymore, it's just an "exotic" sounding name, a bunch of flags and a few dishes but for some reason it's their whole entire identity. The O'Malley who couldn't fake an Irish accent to save his life but gets all teary eyed on St. Patrick's day etc. Weird. 🤷🏻♂️
You’re not “Dutch-American”. You’re just American.
I'm sure they kept the tradition purely for it's uniqueness, he'll I'm American and I'm actually totally gunna do this, I had a birthday calender at my last job, this time ima get them let me put it in the bathroom 😂
WE WUZ DIETS EN TROEP
I think it’s really cool that your family keeps some cultural traditions! I’m Dutch myself and I’m curious, are there any other Dutch traditions your family still has?
13:25 the spurtle is designed to get into the “corner” or the pan when stirring your porridge. The idea being that the end of a spoon doesn’t fit to get into the corner. But it’s completely unnecessary because you can just… turn your spoon a little bit and use it sideways around the corner of the pan. Works fine. Doesn’t need a separate utensil.
My mom has a mangle, but a modern version. The rollers are heated, so it's an instant ironing. Works for shirts, dresses, pants, etc. Everything that doesn't have shaping bits like suits do, those would get destroyed by one. Takes 5 seconds or so per item.
Wow. Love the idea.
We had one of the old type when I was a kid, a long time ago before we graduated to a twin tub washing machine, which is also pretty old school...
@@HedgeWitch-st3yy You say that but I only had space for one or the other: a dishwasher or an automatic washing machine.
I chose a dishwasher because you can still buy (little cute) twin tubs. They are so light and small they can be stored away in my built in wardrobe. 🥰🥰
Looks like the wringers on top of my mums old washer from the 60's., to wring the water out of the clothes. She never called it a mangle, but I can understand why that's it's name. She caught her hand in it more than once!
@@debthomas2078My mother had one as well in the sixties, on top of a washing machine, which was basically a metal box open on top, with vertical turning blades inside that you could see and touch, very dangerous! As kids we weren't allowed to touch it, because my mother didn't want accidents like your mom had.
We didn't call the mangle a mangle but a wringer.
This was in the Netherlands.
Mangle : my grandmother (in UK) had one -(in Birmingham as it happens). There were not washing machines or spin dryers in those days (1950s). Washing clothes was done in a tin tub using a “dolly”. Stains were removed with soap and a washboard (there was a popular song using a washboard, otherwise known as a skiffle board, Lonnie Donnegan had a pop group that used one in the music). After rinsing the washing it would be fed between the mangle rollers to squeeze the water out then hung on the washing line to dry - so a mangle was like a manusl spin dryer for the worst of the water.
Norwegian here. My grandma had a mangle located in the basement "washkitchen". I believe this was an item in most households before the advent of the modern washers and dryers.
we had washing machines in the UK in the 1950s. They were top loaders, with a mangle on top and another tub for rinsing. They were called twin tubs and were invented in the 1940s. My family had one and we were not a rich family, but we lived in a coal mining village where washing clothes thoroughly was a necessity.
@ only if you were not old and not poor - my grandmother didnt. I dont remember whether we did but I doubt it.
Regarding "pant" - in Sweden (at the very least), it's not just glass bottles. It applies to plastic bottles and aluminium cans too. You essentially pay an extra 0,1€ per container when you buy it, and get that money back when you return it to a recycling station, which every grocery store is legally required to have.
We have a spurtle, and it's great for porridge. Also, I still have an electric spinner in the shed from 60 years ago. It still works. It's great for spinning stuff your washing machine can't handle. And a 60 year old hand mixer. The old designs work the best
I've just inherited my Grandma's spin dryer it's great. I think it's from the 70s and survived her house getting flooded twice.
I can second the affection for old (and typically cast/wrought iron) mechanisms. The only problem with them is that you usually need a garage to keep these marvels of technology in and occasionally a forklift to move the bigger ones around.
In Dutch we have the term Kaasschaafmethode, cheese slicer method. It a way of slicing expenditures in the government, or a company, in all departments a little bit. A kind of austerity policy.
In the UK, similarly, we have 'salami slicing'. It's happened to defence budgets for well over half a century.
The reason for the Finnish thing of drying dishes in the cupboard is that they don't take space on the counter and you don't need to see all the drying dishes around but they are neatly in the cupboard and you just take them from there when you need to use them again. Then you don't need to wait till they are dry on the counter and then put them in the cupboard anyway. Of course it's different if your kitchen is very small and you have very little cupboard space.
They're standard in Italy as well, even tho dishwashers are becoming more and more widespread. We are among the first pioneers of the train of thought "YOU GOT A DISHWASHER FOR CRYING OUT LOUD JUST LET THE THING DO ITS JOB!" and devote the cupboard space for everything else. We still get side eyes from our guests. (this is also why we do not entertain guests anymore. Stupid guests with their stupid side eyes)
Do you keep the cupboard doors open while the dishes are drying? Otherwise if it’s close won’t the dishes have a musty smell since there’s no ventilation
@@Maevalen my dishwasher does that for me *smugsmug*
@ Yes, dishwashers are in most kitchens these days but the drying cupboard is still handy when you don't have a lot of dishes to do.
@@Maevalen the bottom of the cabinet is usually open for ventilation
I keep forgetting the cheese slicer is quite the danish invention
They are a basic Dutch household item as well. Seen them being sold in Germany quite often too. It's basically a handheld mandolin for cheese
The are very common household items in Finland. I have three.
Yeah, I was introduced to this as a "Dutch cheese slicer"
Now, they exist everywhere, but the Danes started it.
Yeah using a knife just baffles me. The cheese slices will be too thick!
The type of cheese slicer shown in the video is a Norwegian invention. There is a different type that uses a metal string, and I think that may be a Danish invention. My parents got theirs in Denmark, and I have seen them in Danish shops.
9:34 yeah we have these washing cloths here in Germany, too. They’re called *“Waschlappen”* - which can also be used as an insult as in “coward” or “weakling”.. granted it’s not the (pun intended) _dirtiest_ of terms
"10 things Europeans use daily that Americans don’t even know about" oh please let it be brains !
LOL
Considering the political developments recently, it's not looking too good for us either in that regard (at least in Germany, looking at the AFD poll numbers for the election we have soon) 🥲
whatever brain eating virus they got over there seems to have made its way across the pond, considering so much of western europe has seen a rise in the popularity of right wing parties. the u.s has the excuse that they went from monarchy to democracy and never suffered dictatorship, but in europe, there's still plenty of people who have relatives who were alive during our dictatorships and can easily tell you how shit went down back then
Many of the things here are also not common in other European countries.
The cheese slicer you showed in the video is the Norwegian one. The more typical Danish one is a metal rod with cheese wire running parallel to it on both sides with a handle at the bottom. That way it basically works like a knife but without much resistance because the "blade" is so thin. Most Danish cheeses are relatively soft and a lot of them also very mature, so a regular knife can easily turn them into crumbs or cut too much off. With a Danish cheese slicer, the maximum thickness of the slice is limited by the distance from the central rod to the cheese wire, so you don't accidentally cut off too much. Maybe we are the only ones obsessed with having thin, uniform cheese slices on our open-faced sandwiches, idk.
We had those even when I was a kid here in Germany, I remember, because my parents still treated them like a knife, although they are mostly harmless
Wire cheese slicers are common in the US, too. Even if not every household has one, they're common enough that people compare other things to them. For example, playing the thinner strings of a cheap, poorly set-up guitar is said to be like playing a cheese slicer.
Whether it's the kind he showed or the kind you described, we have both styles in Canada.
I had one of those wire slicers in my childhood, but could never get it to work well. I guess it really does require soft cheese (and a good amount of tension in the wire, which mine seemed to have problems maintaining) to function well. And I enjoy a lot of hard(er) cheeses, which the plane-type slicers deal with so, so well
Thank you! It bothered me!
We've had a "pant"-system for glass bottles in Sweden since 1884 (yes 18, not 19) and added aluminium cans and PET bottles in the 1980's and 1990's. It's so weird to me that this is not a common thing everywhere.
Also the Wettex can be machine washed when dirty and used until it disintegrates really.
The dish drying cabinet can double as storage for the things that you placed to dry there. No need to keep it empty once the plates etc. have dried.
Mangle is relatively common in Finland. It's supposed to be used especially with bed sheets. It makes them really nice and crisp. Getting into a bed that has nice washed and mangled sheets is absolutely divine. Like someone places you into a cloud to sleep in...
I once came across it, and was very impressed. No need to dry dishes separately, it all lives in there. I wish I had one.
I'm Dutch, and I have a birthday calendar on my bathroom door. I put it up about 8 months ago, but I still haven't written any names on it. And I've been living in my apartment for almost 4 years now. I feel a bit ashamed about it.😂
July 29th xox
And no visitors have added their own?
@@evan Leo xD
Yeah, I can see how it would kind of say to visitors "I don't know anyone whose birthdays I care about".
Maybe you _should_ encourage your guests to write their birthdays on it? 😄
7:45 Pfand is not only reserved for glass bottles, but applies to (most) plastic bottles as well. For glass it’s usually 8 cents and for plastic even 25 cents.
Additionally it’s not some money one gets back, but your own money, since it’s like a deposit that you pay at the register and receive back if you recycle the bottle.
Cheese planers only really work with certain types of cheese such as gouda - they struggle with crumbly types.
It depends. Most people only have one planer, but there are different types for different types of cheese.
@@therealdutchidiot Maybe I'm using it wrongly, but all I seem to plane are my knuckles.
there are variants where the cutting is done by tiny very sharp wires that works great for very soft cheeses. I also have one in metal but where the blade is cut very short and that one works also great on very soft cheeses.
@@Henrik_Holst Yes, I used to have one with a roller and a wire - very effective and you could vary the thickness by the angle. All the wires broke and couldn't find a replacement, so back to the knife.
FYI: A few US states including NY do have something like pfand. In MI, it is 10 cents. In NY state, it is 5 cents along with several other states like MA, ME, CA, HI, etc.
MI it is JUST beverage bottles. When it first went into law, there was a standard size of refillable beer bottle that was only 5 cents deposit. It took the legislature YEARS to change it, but a couple months after the law went into effect there was a article, that got reprinted everywhere, so everyone knew about it, and we all mailed them to our legislators. Turned out big hotels were unwilling to find space for bottles to be returned for deposit. So they switched every brand that came in a nickel bottle (which was almost everything back then) and threw that bottle in the trash after use. The bottle made to be reused ended up in landfills rather than recycling or reuse.
Btw, if bottle deposits kept pace with inflation, they would be over 25 cents today -- unless you go back to the 2 cent, 3 cent, and nickel deposits from the 60s, those would be 50 cents or more. At those prices almost none of them would ever be thrown away.
Last thing, big grocery stores, where they have machines to scan them and print out a receipt for your bottles, to be used to pay for groceries or just to get a refund, while the rule is that all returned are to be cleaned, with no person involved, they are dirty, and all that sugar in beverages ends up making that place smell like a sewer. What a great way to start the grocery shopping trip.
@@BEdwardStover It isn’t just bottles. In MI, the 10 cent deposit covered aluminum cans as well. See the MI 10 cent label alongside the 5 cent label stamped on the tops of redeemable aluminum cans or on redeemable plastic or glass bottles.
In NY, the current 5 cent deposit state law originated in 1982. Had just started first grade back then. Yours truly and 2 other friends in my childhood NYC neighborhood collected and redeemed about $20 worth of cans and bottles before our families found out and forced us to stop due not only to concerns about us 6 year olds going through the trash, but also due to fears of us being mugging targets given the then skyrocketing violent crime wave prevalent back then.
When I was little the Corona pop man came round the houses. You gave him your used glass pop bottles and he gave us money. Recycling in the UK before Recycling was cool. My gran used to have a mangle.
My mum had a mangle when I was little but then my dad got a better job. Washer dryer arrived ! I remember the Corona pop van 2p per empty is stuck in my mind.
The name wettex stands for "wet textiles" and it's a mix of cotton fibre and regenerated cellulose!
If you rinse them out thoroughly, after each use you don't have to wash ich boil them more then once a week.
Plus, it's compostable!
Did you know: Knife crime is more common in the USA than the UK. The USA has more homocides including knives, and that's not even getting into gun homicides. The UK has some of the lowest knife crime rates, they just report on it more, giving the illusion that knife crime is bad in the UK. Thank the press/tabloids for that. If you compare London specifically to cities in the USA, it doesn't even make the top 10 for knife crime per capita.
thinking about it, that doesn't surprise me, as if you get into EDC or what in my bag, you will nearly always find a knife on the pockets or more then one but here I am the only one with a knife
this is not true and a complete misunderstanding of statistics. Knife crime, as reported by UK parliament for England and Wales, was 50,500 incidents in 2023 (newest data i could find quickly). In the US there were just under 120,000 incidents involving a "knife/cutting instrument" in the same year. The US has a population of well over 300 million people vs just 60 million for the England Wales area. Yes, the number is bigger but per capita this comes out to ~82 incidents per 100,000 people in the UK vs ~35 incidents per 100,000 people in the United States. Far lower than the UK. So no, knife crime is not "far more common".
Just like we have a problem with gun violence, yall have a problem with knife violence. Trying to pretend its not happening or 'over exaggerated' doesn't help anyone. Its an issue your country needs to address just as we need to address ours.
@@NoHope_ Yep and just like every country the UK Politicians just stick a plaster/band aid over it and pat themselves on the back over how good a job they've done, while leaving the underlying courses still there and festering.
Still too many
@@NoHope_ 'Knife crime' in the UK is defined as _carrying_ a blade of 3" or more. Knife _violence_ is a whole other matter - and that's where the USA still leads the UK. (The US definition of knife homicide is also 'using a knife or cutting instrument', while the British definition is wider, including things such as screwdrivers and broken bottles. Even so, it is still smaller, in the UK, per million of population.)
3:35 Every Dutch household has a "Kaasschaaf".
I'm an American who occasionally drinks tea, usually making a single cup with the microwave or using my stove top kettle. There's nothing like the sound of the whistle when the water is ready.
doing tea in the micro is a crime.
@@waragh Boiling water. I add the tea-bag after the water is hot, of course.
Once had an electric kettle similar to above; it lasted 22 years, made by GE Canada. Now I have glass electric kettles made in China. Each lasts about 11 to 15 months. Heating on a stove is inefficient, especially since the latest rate increase.
3:49 Bulgarian here, the pepper roaster is used around early autumn to roast a lot of peppers and then make spreads from them to store for winter. Also this shouldn’t be more expensive than €15, so whoever is selling it for €60 is seriously profiting from it.
Funnily enough I bought 24 Swedish dish towels/wettex from Costco in the USA yesterday! lol. I’m in love already they’re so nice. 😂 had never heard of them until I saw them in the store. The prints were cute and we always need dishcloths and for
My parents have a Verjaardags "Birthday" calander. It's outside of the Netherlands.
My Dad is Dutch, my Mum is Irish. Mum refused to keep it in the bathroom, so now it is in the kitchen, so you look at it while you are cooking. Reasonable compromise I think.
The mangel you saw was an old style one that existed before electric was common place. They are much smaller and sleeker now. We have one and mangled sheets for your bed is so much better. That is what hotells use to get them so flat. They usually have bigger industrial version though.
I had a Bulgarian flatmate at uni last year and I can confirm, Bulgarians really do love their roasted bell peppers
You’ve NEVER heard of”Benelux “?, it’s shorthand for Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg
It's not a common term here in the UK which is probably why he hadn't heard of it, but good to know.
@@violetskies14 I've heard it used in the UK for many decades.
The Dutch bottle scraper looks genius. I always struggle with my bottles of moisturising cream. They have a pump mechanism that never gets even close to finishing the bottle, but the cream is so thick most won’t come out without some vigorous shaking. It could use a little rubber disc that slides along the handle so you can leave it in the bottle and cover the opening.
Yeah, we tried to implement the bottle recycling scheme in Scotland, but the Secretary for State for Scotland (on behalf of the uk government) over-ruled our parliament… and the uk courts let him.
Worst part is, we used to have it on Irn Bru glass bottles!!!
Curse Westminster blocking good stuff we try to do...
ISTR that the Scottish government tried to mandate this but cocked the scheme up.
@@elaineb7065 I mean as an English person I think a general "curse Westminster" is appropriate for a ton of reasons. The government suuucks. At least you guys get a devolved government that cares about you and tries to do cool stuff for you. We're stuck with just..... Them. And they only care about London and the south.
@@Fred-gu6pkMy understanding that it was to be based on proven technology from Europe. They’d created a company and the big supermarkets and retailers were on board with the idea. I honestly feel that it could have worked enough that the idea could have been tweaked and refined enough to make it work properly over time. Even if it hadn’t worked initially, it was still worth trying- especially when you hear that Boris (allegedly, but hopefully untrue) wasted £100 million on a feasibility study for his ‘Garden bridge’.
thatcher's ghost is still alive and kicking :(
In the uk when you move home the last thing you pack is the kettle so the first thing you do is make a cuppa.
9:15 "Benelux sounds like something that gives you diarrhea"
As someone who's from a Benelux country and who's recovering from a stomach flu, I concede that you might be onto something.
Hahaha
In various states in the US, glass bottles do still have a deposit that you can get back if you return them. I know California does it, so does Michigan. It is far from universal however.
In California it is for aluminum cans, glass bottles, and several other container types. I don't recall how Michigan handled it off hand, but I believe it was similar.
Connecticut, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Oregon, California, etc. - lots of places have it! And most of those states it's for plastic bottles, glass bottles, and cans.
Grew up in S IL, and there was a glass bottle deposit when I was a kiddo. Assume it's still around? There was also a facility that would buy metal, I assume aluminum, cans.
There are modern mangles btw, we used to use them in the cleaning department of our uni. They´re great for ironing big pieces like bed linen - you just sit there and run the linen through big heated rolls that iron a whole double duvet cover in a few seconds.
I find it hard to believe students cared to iron bed linen, I'd be dubious about them ironing things that actually need it.
@Electric999999 the cleaning department - meaning the cleaners. Each summer our uni hosted summer schools and the halls turned into de facto hotels. Cleaning department hired students like me for a few months to run that show.
my grandmother had a mangle that was attached to the top of the top loading washing machine. The water would drain back into the drum.
You don‘t use the same towel for the sauna and drying up after swimming or whatever in a German sauna. You have different towels for different purposes. At least you have two of them. One for the sauna (where you’re literally supposed to sweat) and another one for drying and so on after you showered you’re self clean after the Sauna Gang or after swimming or whatever.
The UK does have ‘wettex’, they’re just not popular because Brits like to put things in dumps. We have ‘Spontex’ and remember even having them growing up in the 90’s. 100% they’re better than paper towels. We do also use the chunky cheese graters, although you can also get a pedicure item which is exactly the same thing, though slightly smaller (I’ll leave that one to your imagination).
The spurtle reminded me of the little wooden thing we use for honey, though I have no idea what they’re called.
Usually called a Honey dipper (but also a long list of alternates)
The dish drying cabinet is in every single house/apartment in Taiwan. It's actually used to store the dishes as well. You don't even have to worry about putting them away. Fixes your wasted space issue!
I'm Norwegian and live alone, so I don't need a dishwasher. I remember seeing a cabinet like that many, MANY years ago, and thinking - even as a kid - how smart that was. It isn't that uncommon in some European countries, but not in Norway anymore. I'm renovating my kitchen in a few months, and I'm definitely going to have one of those cabinets made! 👍
I'm in the US and have a cheese slicer like the one you showed. I actually grew up with one like that and then got one for my house too. I love it! Makes very thin slices.
Germany has had this "pant" (pfand) system for a relatively few yerars, but here in Norway we've had it "forever". I'm 65 now and cannot remember a time when it wasn't there. When I was a kid we used to collect beer bottles from the drunks on the pier in my home town Tromsø and buy single records (45's) and stuff. It could be quite a good hustle!
9:54 Handwarming by an "Waschlappen" took me some time to stop laughing.
I live in Michigan and we recycle bottles and cans. We pay 10 cents per bottle and can when we purchase them
filled, and then take them back to the store when they are empty and get the deposit amount back.
3:21 IKEA in the UK sold a cheese slicer like that. I have one because confession: I am concerned about using a grater and grating my fingers as I am a klutz. It's the HJÄLPREDA and I bought one 2 years ago for £2.
I have one of those apparently danish cheese slicers, but made of metal. I once slipped and cut my pinky open with it. Right to the bone. The tip of my pinkie still feels numb to this day. Been using a knife ever since. You just have more control, and the knife requires less force.
3/10 - Would not slice again.
@@NevelWong I too have maimed myself using the cheese slicer. And not just once. Us Swedes use those slicers every day but no one else hurts themselves like I've done.
Maybe cheese tools aren't made for people like you and me 🤷♀️
Hint: use a wire cheese slicer. Not only you can control the thickness of the slice, but also it's a lot safer since it doesn't have a "slicer edge", you slice with the wire (it doesn't work so well on the *really* hard cheeses, becausethen you need a lot of strength, but it works fine in like 95% of all cheeses)
In Sweden we had Pant long before we started with recykling. We were first in the world and started with pant on glass bottles 1885. It was a way for the companies to get there bottles back and save money when they didn’t have to buy new bottles. Almost a hundrad years later, in 1984, we also put Pant on aluminium cans and 1994 on PET bottles.
Public bins in Copenhagen have sometimes a holder for your 'pant' makes it easy for people collecting them. There is 'pant' on softdrink bottles, cans, and glass bottles. 'pant' is about 1/15 of the bottle price
We have them here in the Netherlands too! Also in Freiburg, I noticed that people would just put the pfand bottles next to the bins when having a party in the park.
The Finnish dish drying cabinet goes above the bench on the wall. So it is both where you dry your dishes and store your most commonly used dishes and doesn't take up bench space. Well at least that is how my sister in law explained it when i was staying with her and my brother in Helsinki.
Obviously will work best in dry countries rather than humid countries closer to the equator.
When I moved to Sweden I stayed in a temporary furnished apartment and it didn't come with a spatula but you bet there was one of those cheese slicers.
Cheese planers allow you to slice thinner, which for many cheeses is essential. Flavors can otherwise be overpowering and consumption happens quicker than enjoyment. Obviously not for all cheeses, but those of a medium hardness (what's known as "Halbhartkäse" here in Switzerland) would be very well-served with a planer.
The experience is kind of the difference between taking a perfect bite of cake, savoring each individual flavor, vs. shoving the whole piece in your mouth - both can be fun in their own ways, but the fun lasts a lot longer with the first option.
Lots of cheese grating things! We (British family) definitely have a slicer like that, its great for certain types of cheese. Can't name any as they're the ones I don't like! My Dad uses it all the time! We have a cheese grater that looks like the electric one but is still manual, you spin a handle and push the lump into it. Useful for larger quantities when making pizza or something!
I'd instantly recognise a mangle and know how to use it but my house is basically a museum, we have plenty of things that are Victorian including my great grandma's piano, a grandmother clock and a pedal sewing machine (which is just used as a table in the porch). I'm surprised they didn't recognise a mangle as they're still used in baking for pastry or pasta, although obviously those are smaller!
My mind got blown when I found out that not all countries celebrate birthdays with their countries flag. This is so common in Denmark, that our flag often is just referred to as the Birthday flag. I think more countries would get a better relationship with their flag if they started using it for birthdays like us :D
the dutch have a kaasschaaf. the cheeseplaner mentioned in the video. almost every household has it and a lot of dutch people are supprised to learn it`s a danish invention. and we have statiegeld (pant/panft) on bottles and cans now. 0.10 cent for small bottles/cans , 0.25 for big bottles. benelux is a area in Europe, existed of Belguim, Netherlands and luxemburg.
More importantly: we have different cheese slice maker thingy’s for old cheese than for young cheese! Because the young cheese is stickier and you’d want thicker slices since the taste is less strong ;-)
"a danish invention" - Norwegian, not Danish. But extremely popular in Denmark (and the rest of the Nordics). The same Norwegian inventor also invented a butter slicer but that one never went popular.
10:00 isnt that just a common absorvent kitchen cloth? I havent seen a home without it in Spain (and im gonna bet Portugal and France aswell). idk why it wouldnt be used everywhere. They can be used way more than 15 times and it is common to also clean bathrooms, glass or anything like that.
As a Swede I couldnt live without the cheese slicer, wettex dish cloth, shoe horn and the butter knife. I use them probably every single day. For food I have to give a shout out to Julmust (which outsells coca cola), lingonberry jam and Semla. But those I dont eat all the time ☺or do I? lol
I've always lived in the USA, and I've always had a cheese planar in my house; I assumed they were well known! And there are SEVERAL states you can turn in bottles/cans for cash (CT, ME, OR, WA, CA, etc) -- so you'll always find people going through bins in those states, too. Not just a Germany thing!
edit to add: ps - an electric grater is just a food processor with the grater attachment 😅... every house in the US has one!
My mum had an electric mangle on top of her top loading washing machine in the 60's. No tumble dryer then so most things, especially large items like sheets, were passed through the mangle to squeeze out all the excess water before hanging out on the line. Loved wash day when the kitchen smelt of steamy washing detergent.
I feel like there's a difference between a mangle: cast iron frame, wooden rollers and hand-cranked like Evan's illustration, and a wringer: motor-driven with rubber rollers. My mum had one, too, attached to the washing machine like yours, and I think the brand was Acme. It was superseded later by a standalone spin-drier.
@@jonathanrichards593agree.
@@jonathanrichards593 My mum's had wooden rollers not rubber ones and it was made by Hoover (I'm in the UK)..you could swing it out to the side of the machine and it had a detachable handle to hand crank it separately from the machine, you could also alter the gaps between, a bit like a pasta machine, for different items and with sheets she would start with them a bit wider, gradually adjusting them until a sheet would be so well squeezed it didn't need ironing. My job would be to help hold it up from the back whilst mum fed it through...got shouted at if I let it touch the floor..l.ol
We always called it a mangle.
In the US here and I'm loving the dish drying cabinet. Think about it. You gotta put em in the cabinet after they dry in the dish drainer anyway, right? so... Just put em up wet and you're done.
Oh I can already hear the Norwegians running to the comments saying that they invented the cheese slicer 😂 and yes it's definitely worth it if you have cheese on bread!
The dish drying cabinet is also a Baltic thing, it’s very common in Lithuania and I understand they have them in Estonia and Latvia. It’s all possible they have it further east too.
Speaking of Duolingo, congrats on reaching 99 in Spanish.
My grandmother's mangle didn't take up floor space, it was attached above the washing machine. It must have been a fantastic idea when it was introduced as it could remove so much water from the wet washing making it lighter to hang out and easier to dry in a humid city like Auckland where she lived. Many spinning machines I've used haven't left the washing as dry.
As a German: My family also has a bathroom birthday calendar! Didn't know it's a Dutch thing lol
I am also German (now living in Norway), and we had birthday calendars, but never in the bathroom. I had my own one in my own room when I grew up, and my parents still have one in the living room.
You probably also have the mitten washcloth then. At least in our German family, it was a very common item.
@@RadicalRootz Yes, of course we have it! Waschlappen, as we call it in Germany, are indeed very common as far as I know
@
There we go :)
I have one of those calendars. I married a man who was Dutch and learned all about them. I've had one ever since.
I've always had one of those cheese slicers. Canadian here. They just slice cheese thinly.
The recycling bin pickers happens in Canada too.
I think the Danish slicer is something else. it fixes a block of cheese and its a rotating slicer shaves off the top. you have to adjust it and move it down. Seen it at every hotel in Copenhagen.
I remember one of these bei g present in my Australian childhood home. You don't see them much any more.
Hmm... This sounds very much like a "Girolle" to me, which is a Swiss item for a specific cheese named "Tête de Moine". I wouldn't be surprised if this showed up in a hotel in Copenhagen.
Yeah, the one he showed a picture of was just a very plasticy Norwegian one.
As someone who married a Bulgarian, you have no idea just how important Tschushkopek is in Bulgarian culture. As a country with hot summers and freezing winters, canning and bottling is still important and Lutenitsa is one of the most important dishes for this process. It's like Bugaria's Kimchi season.
German here and I do have one of those cupboard drying racks in my minuscle kitchen. Love it, otherwise the space wouldbe cluttered constantly. The wettex we just call "Schwammtücher". Standard here, used to be plastic spongy, now there are cotton version that feel the same 👍🏻 Just to help your pronunciation of "Cacio e pepe"... the second "c" is a "tsch" sound... it's something else otherwise... Loved the cheese puns 😂 Huh. the spurtle looks like a nostepinne...
When i was a kid in Chicago in the 60s we had a mangle in our laundry room although i never saw it used.
But it was a padded roller surface with just a press hinged above it that you could push down with a lever.
It was electric so you'd get it hot, spread a garment across it, and press the lever down for a minute or so, and you'd have ironed an entire garment at once. Much easier than ironing.
They're more common in commercial laundries.
The thing you showed was more like a wringer from the 19th century before things were electrified. Our mangle was a table top appliance.
Mangle, otherwise called a wringer. They were not uncommon, attached over top loading washing machines, in the days before spin drying was perfected. We had one into early 1970s
That'd explain where the expression "through the wringer" comes from.
They are still very common here in Sweden. Pretty much everyone who lives in an apartment would be familiar with them here. They are almost obligatory in these sort of 'neighborhood laundry centers' (you cannot really call them public, they are part of a neighborhood/building full of apartments so only available for those who lives there). I don't know of anyone that actually owns one of these for private use though.
I thought a mangle was a tool for flattening bedsheets after washing them. And it was also slightly warm, so the (sometimes) damp sheets got both super crispy flat as well as completely dry. My mother used one when I grew up, but somewhere along the line it disappeared and I can't recall ever seeing one for the past 20 years or so... Perhaps people stopped caring if their bedsheets were wrinkled as long as they were clean.
@@evawettergren7492 Traditionalloy they weren't heated. Their job was simply to squeeze as much water out of the laundry as possible in the days before spin drying cycles in washing machines. It seems you can get heated ones now though.
6:13 It's also called a flessenlikker, or bottle-licker, which I find more fitting.
The Dutch have acquired a reputation for frugality over the years, so anything that allows them to extract that little bit more out of their containers seems so appropriate.
Here in Oregon we’ve had the Bottle rebate since….. the 80’s? 90’s? Either way, a long time. And we have, I believe one of the highest return rebates in the country with 10 cents per bottle.
1971.
1971 was actually when Oregon’s Bottle bill was first introduced.
@ ah. That makes sense why I remember it being a thing as long as I’ve been alive! The program 11 years older than I am
I think most states have one now, but Oregon remains the highest deposit. Every year someone gets caught and prosecuted for smuggling in aluminum cans from AZ to California. Cali's deposit is higher than AZ's. And the same from Cali to Oregon.
We had the Wettex cloth here in Australia when I was a kid in the 1950s. I can even remember the radio jingle for it.
Also, the 'pfant' or bottle deposit is big here and gets 10c for every bottle or can. Drink bottles, beer cans, anything with a bar code gets the refunded deposit. There are 'Return and Earn' stations all over my city where we throw the bottles into the opening and the machine counts the bar codes and prints out a shopping voucher for a supermarket or we can select a local charity.
In the UK in the '60s & '70s I remember "Corona" - a fizzy drink sold in glass bottles which you could return to get a deposit back on. I have no idea why we stopped doing it!!!
Bc “the corona man’s coming tomorrow morning” means something very different now 😂
@@jezmy2006 it stopped because they stopped using glass bottles
My Dad used to have to deal with fraud on returnable bottles, not just Corona, he worked at Schweppes, and had enough fun with people stealing full bottles, but there was also an illicit trade in empty bottles where they would end up paying for the returned bottles multiple times. I think it was casual drivers being bribed. I know at one point they were tracking to see if publicans were returning more than they ordered.
@@stevenwilliamson6236 Corona uses glass botles in NL and is the only InBev product that does NOT have a deposit on the bottle, unlike all their other bottled and canned beers.
The U.K. has been recycling for several decades. Glass was first (soft drink bottles in the 1950’s , 3d in the former currency for returning empty bottles), there is still a procedure for returning beer bottles this way to pubs. Glass is now routinely collected from British households in large bins monthly. Paper and cardboard are recycled in the same way. monthly. Most plastics (and all plastic bottles) are collected this way too, monthly. . Excess, we take to recycling centres, either outside supermarkets, or designated council centres. Batteries, old make up, broken toys, special plastics etc are recycled in store in supermarkets. Toughened plastics are recycled in certain pubs. Small electrical items (TVs, kettles, toasters, shavers, any items like that) go to the recycling centres. Same for garden waste, house renovation materials, though you can arrange with the council for these: to be picked up (sometimes this is at cost). Furniture, the council again. This all happens across the whole of the U.K.including remote areas I if the Scottish highlands. 🇬🇧😀
You can also take electrical items to shops that sell them, such as Curry’s, even large items such as televisions. You don’t need to have bought the item from them. It’s part of their obligation under recycling legislation.
I worked for a printer in the UK and we had regular orders from a client to print birthday calendars, although not sure if it was meant for the bathroom.
Flessentrekker is also called flessenlik. I have mine since january 1977, so the plastic waste is minimal.
Wettex is the best! Many uses- one of favorites is for dusting. Wet the wettex and wring it out and dust away. When you collect to much dust just wash off and continue.
Also good for mopping up spills.
And cleaning glass because its doesnt leave streaks or fibres.
I am excited for mine to arrive
And when its worn out, your wettex goes in the garden compost!
Love these and use them daily! I live in the US and was given these as a housewarming gift years ago - they’re totally worth getting excited about!
I never thought it wasn't a generally used item in other countries, we have them too in Portugal! Although they are commonly called "pano Vileda" (lit. Vileda cloth), because the Vileda brand (a german brand) is the the main seller.
We have Wettex in Australia
7:50 There are about ten states that have bottle and can deposits. In Oregon, it's ten cents on beer, soda, tea, juice, still drinks, and water. (Wine, milk, and spirits excluded.) There is an cooperative of retailers that operates a bottle return service. If there isn't a Bottle Drop location within about a mile of a store, the store has to accept the returns itself.
My (German) mother has had a birthday calendar for decades, but on the fridge, not the bathroom.
When a german friend of mine visited me I heard him laughing his ass off in the bathroom because of the birthday- calender. Untill then I thought everybody did this, and not just us dutchies.
In my (Norwegian) home it was hung up in the kitchen as well.
4:52, do you not store your plates and glasses in a cupboard once they’re dry? This is drying and storage combined. Is it not saving space and time?
Oke, so I have the Verjaardagskalender, washandjes , multiple cheese slicers ( different ones for young soft cheese and aged cheese) , we also have Statiegeld (pfand) for plastic bottles, beer bottles and cans. I know the flessen-trekker ( we call it flessen-likker ) but don’t own one and the electric kettle is such a basic, how else do you quickly make pot-noodles or cup a soup 🤔🤣 guess i’m pretty Euro-standart
I am a Dutchman who has been living in France for more than 20 years. Here in France they do not know this 'tradition'. And yet that calendar hung on the wall here for a long time. But given my age (63 years) more and more crosses appeared on the calendar behind the names of family members, neighbors and friends who had since passed away. That I just removed the calendar. :((
The UK has a food processor that has a grating attachment. Much cleaner and more multifunctional.
Ya, I was thinking the same thing for here in the US.
The mangle is used to squeeze the water out of clothes before hanging them up to dry. It wrings out the water. Washers used to have a mangle on them.
You can get grating/slicing attachments for a kitchen mixer/machine instead of a separate device (and not hard to clean). The Danish cheese slicer - even this American has one but I don't know why.
in Poland usually people have electric kettles if their stove is electric as well. If it's gas, you have an old school kettle you put on the stove