Foodie Penpal Lapkritis/Foodie Penpal November

To be honest I am stuck. I appreciate a lovely and fragrant parcel from a Dutch girl Milou but I literally bogged down. Haha!
I have found my parcel late in the evening on my house landing and could feel the aroma at once. Aroma of anise! Yes I like anise in my spicy tea, but I didn't try anise in other things in fact. Especially in baking. The parcel from Milou was heavy and I was curious (as always when you get a box from somebody :)) to open it. I opened and found lovely things - tea, pickled small onions, and two block of anijsblokjes. Those two small boxes with white sugar blocks infused with anise made all the parcel smell so cosy and winterish. Milou wrote me two cards with explanations about stuff in the bocks mostly about that strange anijsblokjes. In fact, as I started googling about it I have found that Dutch just LOVE everything with anise and those infused sugar blocks reminds childhood for everybody. Can you imagine? Milou took really huge risk to send anise.licorice related stuff as many people can't stand those :) But some googled facts about anijsblockjes/ anise/licorise got my attention:
- Dutch consume 4 kilos of licorice per person per year. OMG!
- Anijsblokjes are another variety on the Dutch addiction for licorice.
- Tell any Dutchman that you can't sleep and they will tell you to ''dissolve 1 anijsblokjes into a coffee mug of warm milk, drink before bed and you'll sleep like a baby'' Yes Dutch drink those sugar block dissolved in milk and Milou wrote the same for me. Hmm, I will try it in my tea someday I am sure, but can't imagine myself drinking milk, especially warm milk, especially sweetened warm milk with any flavour :)) But Tea time is coming :) or anise into coffee, what about that? 

Hey! I got an idea! Spicy gingerbread cookies! or cake with spicy sugar! Yey! My idea to use two block of anise blocks! 

Also I didn't tested pickled small onions but I got an idea to use them to stuff meatballs with pickles inside. Cute, hah? 

What about teas? It was almost finished as we have cold weather here so we drink teas in the morning, afternoon, in the evening, for starter, for main meal, for dessert.. Kidding of course, but that how winter in humid Scottish weather looks like... not fun... cruel in fact!

So thnak you Milou for a spur to be creative and for Your Dutch parcel! Really thanks and it will be used for sure!