I have not been very adventurous in my Christmas baking this year. Out of the 7 kinds of cookies I made, 6 were recipes I had made at least twice before. The problem is, most of the Christmas cookies I…
Christmas spice cookies with lemon glaze
Auteur: vera@gtc
Chocolate almond sticks with cardamom ganache filling
My husband’s grandma who lived to the blessed age of 93 years was a very sweet lady, always cheerful and interested in what we were up to when we would visit. She would tell stories about how, when she…
Brussels sprouts and kale salad
We bake a lot of cookies this month. It’s okay. We share. We also compensate by eating Brussels sprouts and kale salad for lunch. Not to punish ourselves, but because it is actually really good. I have a thing for…
Speculoos pumpkin butter
Look, I don’t say you should lie to your children. But sometimes… it’s necessary to give them a slightly moderated version of the truth. Unfortunately, the older they get, the more difficult it becomes to fool them. They figure out…
Christmas cookies hall of fame
Yesterday we celebrated Sinterklaas’s birthday, ate way too many pepernoten and speculaas and sang all the Sinterklaas songs. It turned out I know the lyrics of some of the songs better than my Dutch relatives, which I think should entitle…
Edible garden in November
November is the month when we put the garden to bed before winter. I did a little weeding of the empty beds and put in a layer of mulch. This year, besides straw and cocoa shells, we’ve also used shredded…
Brussels sprouts, winter squash and quinoa salad
This salad is what I think of as a vegetarian (vegan even) all-in-one holiday dish. It’s colourful and festive. It’s got some traditional components and some less traditional.The bitterness of the Brussels sprouts is nicely balanced by the sweetness of…
Coastal edibles
When I teach a gardening course, we always do a short introductory round first, when everyone shares a little about how and where they garden and what their wishes for the future are. Every now and then, somebody will say:…
Caramel Apple Jam
Apple is a fruit of mind-blowing variety – some six thousand (or more) apple cultivars exist spread throughout the world. It is therefore infinitely sad that the shops only give us access to about a dozen of them. In the…
Kale bruschetta
Kale is one the most popular Dutch vegetables and it’s grown a lot and eaten often during the cold months. It is apparently one of the things that the Dutch miss the most when they move to another country. I…
Edible garden in October
In the month of October, I am sorry to say, our vegetable garden has been sorely neglected. I was teaching forest gardening at a permaculture design course, and right after that, we left for a week in England to visit…
Roasted grapes with camembert and herbs
This year has been a great year for almost every kind of fruit. Everyone with an apple tree of any size is overwhelmed by the harvest and giving fruit away. We have the first ever mini kiwis on our kiwi-vines.…
Plum and hazelnut brown butter cake
I once read a cookbook by a French pastry chef where he narrated how he made up new desserts in his dreams. I don’t make up new recipes in my dreams, at least as far as I know. But during…
Rotolo di pasta with squash and spinach
We slaughtered the first winter squash. I hereby declare the fall season open. No matter fall officially started three weeks ago, but the moment I start cooking with squash is the moment I truly embrace the change of season.…
Elderberry buckwheat pancakes
There’s so much to pick and enjoy in fall, apple orchards and pumpkin patches to visit. But it would be a shame to forgo supernutritious fruits that you can usually get for free: elderberries. The large shrubs/small trees are so…