Much in cooking is about finding the right balance – the elusive point when all the components of a meal are complementing each other while none is overshadowing the others. Only then does a meal taste “just right”. But there…
It seems a long time ago, but at midterm we went to England. The weather was much better than one is justified to hope for at the end of October and the skies were a brilliant blue most of the…
Yesterday I wrote an article about the 2011 season in the vegetable garden. So far, here in the Netherlands, we have experienced the warmest spring with the lowest rainfall in more than 100 years, followed by a cool and gloomy…
When my daughter made her top 10 fruit list, she decided that the number one had to be kaki, the Oriental persimmon. Not surprising: the scientific name of kaki “Diospyros” means “the food of the Gods” and others have admired…
As someone born in central Europe and currently residing in the Netherlands, I hardly have a reason to celebrate Thanksgiving. However, that does not stop me from imagining what I would serve on this last Thursday of November, if I…
You may be surprised to hear this but: Santa Claus is not real! You see, he’s a mere copy of the real thing, which is Sinterklaas. Sinterklaas was here first! Sinterklaas who lives in Spain, in a huge house with…
Few vegetables earn their keep in the garden the way chard does. Not only can you pick the leaves for months and if the winter is mild well into the next year, the plants are very beautiful too. Because of…
Birthdays usually present an opportunity to bake a cake that is too complicated, rich or time-consuming for lesser occasions. And I mean occasions like “it’s Monday and it’s been raining the whole day”, because I do bake cakes for such…
This year our harvest of pumpkins and winter squash was dismal. That may sound a little dramatic, but here are some numbers: last year we harvested on average 20 spaghetti squash per plant, this year it was just 3. The…
The popular parenting advice says that in order to prevent your kids from turning into picky eaters you need to involve them in the process of food preparation. I totally agree. It worked wonderfully when they were two, three, even…
Because I come from the Czech Republic and my whole family lives there, this is where we go every summer. We usually pick lots of mushrooms and blueberries, but the wild growing damsons sadly only start ripening towards the end…
From a freakishly summery September with all the sun and warmth we did not get in August, we fell right into autumn. It rains more often than not and we started unearthing gloves and scarves. But I am not complaining…
It looks like a quince, it smells like a quince and it is rock hard, just like a quince. What is it? Well, it is almost a quince. It is a relative, it is Japanese quince. Though the Japanese quince…