Sunday, August 26, 2018

B is for a Butterfly from Belgium

Heleen, on a short trip to Belgium from her native Netherlands, surprised me with this one. It might be my first Belgian stamp ever. It shows a Red Admiral butterfly, and has a symbol for 'world' rate (outside Europe, basically) with a built-in airmail indicator. 



I love the little caterpillar she added to the envelope at a very early hour in the morning :) .



Inside were two postcards, one of castles, and one irregularly shaped like a serving of Belgian fries - I think that is mayo on the fries - which to me is disgusting, but to Belgians is clearly how it is done. I doubt it would have traveled all that well through the mail, so nice that it was in the envelope.



For more links to postage with a B theme head over to Sunday Stamps.

18 comments:

  1. Always like butterflies on stamps. I've been to Ghent but missed that amazing castle, how did that happen. I think we must have been on the 'wrong side' of town. No I don't like mayo on fries either although in the Netherlands you seem to get other choices such as tomato ketchup, curry etc.

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    1. I don't really like any of those options! Cheese, sure, salt and vinegar, sure.

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  2. Je préfère les frites sans mayonnaise même si c'est une mayonnaise maison ,la meilleure façon de manger les frites est dans un cornet avec du sel ,il parait que les meilleurs frites sont cuites dans de la graisse de bœuf et dans le nord de la France !

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  3. That is such a cool envelope design! I imagined that the butterfly stamp is just passing by and would be flying off to the next envelope (only in reality it couldn't as it has been glued on this one).

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    1. Heleen is always so creative, even with minimal resources, time and maybe sleep :)

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  4. that stamp shows so much detail on the butterfly - it is stunning!
    Oh, I LOVE mayo on the fries, way more than ketchup. And I just love mayo on a lot of things in general, mmmmm!

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    1. Yes, a pretty stamp. As for the rest, just no :)

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  5. You have just lost all your Belgian readers... :P

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  6. Happy to see the mail arrived well, despite of that sleepless night, and thank you for posting!
    And thank you - and all - for your kind comments :-)

    Frites with mayo I think good (sorry, Phillip), but better is the (Dutch, I think not Belgian) combination named 'friet speciaal', which consists of fries with mayo and curry and chopped onions. Though the amount of mayo is not as large as pictured in the Belgian shaled card (after all, we are Dutch :-) )
    An other combination I like is 'friet saté': fries with saté sauce, that is brown peanut sauce, a bit more fluid and spicy than peanut butter (which we put on our slices of bread / sandwich).

    Cheese on fries is new to me, what kind of cheese?
    And salt and vinegar I've heard of, but apart from salt, usually added by the fries baker, I've never tried fries with vinegar so far..
    Nice to read about all habits and preferences of all stamp lovers here :-)

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    1. Any hard cheese that grates easily - so cheddar, usually. I usually think of salt on vinegar on fish and chips, rather than on chips alone.

      So many options around the world!

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  7. There has been a shortage of Red Admirals in our garden this year. This is the most colourful Belgian stamp that I have seen.

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    1. Sad to hear about your butterfly count being down, hope they bounce back next year.

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