Bread is very important in The Netherlands. It is usually served for breakfast and lunch, but not for dinner, even though the French habit of serving French bread with hot dinner is slowly taken over. There are many kinds of bread available, white, brown, rye and whole meal, large breads, rolls and buns, specific raisin breads from different regions, "milk bread" (made with milk instead of water), "bus bread" (baked in a round form), "casino bread' (square form) and "tiger bread (with a special crust). We always buy "cheap bread"...with 4 quickly growing kids we consume about 2 loaves of bread per day and cannot afford to be too fashionable.
With the bread, cheese is served, ham and cold cuts, and sweet things like jams and hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles, nowadays in dark, light, white, mixed and even pink), apple syrup, honey, chocolate flakes, chocolate spread, hazelnut spread and speculaas. The latter became so popular, that it was commercialized into very tiny speculaas cookies in boxes, called "schuddebuikjes" (shaking bellies). Muisjes (aniseed comfit) are eaten with Dutch rusks, especially when a baby is born. Historically they were pink, but nowadays there is also a blue version, in case the offspring happens to be male. For the daily bread, there is a version called "crushed mice", which is a kind of white powder ,which consists of aniseed and sugar. Peanut butter is also popular, but Dutch families cannot agree whether this belongs under the savory (and thus healthy) spreads or under the sweet ones. This distinction is extremely important, as Dutch children are always forced to eat a certain percentage of their bread in "healthy" form.
The dinner menu is often reigned by the trinity "meat, vegetables and potatoes". Where the Italians and the French see the potato as a vegetable, the Dutch definitely don't: the potato should be served next to vegetables. In Oriental cooking you may use rice as a side dish, but the Dutch in general cling to their potato, boiled, fried or mashed. Vincent van Gogh depicted that already more than a century ago in his painting "The potato eaters". You may wonder, what was on the menu before the 16th century, when the potato had not reached Europe from South America yet. "Uitsmijter" is another popular dish, slices of white bread with ham or roast beef, fried egg and sometimes salad or vegetables.
Furthermore the Dutch have their "festival food", like speculaas and pepernoten on Santa Claus' birthday, and apple turnovers and oliebollen on New Year's Eve. Another festival is "Flag Day", when the new herring is brought in from sea.