Do you have weeds in your garden? I hope you do – at least a few. Because if you have none you must either be an OCD gardener who puts the rest of us to shame, or you spray herbicides…
Seasonal salad – weeds
Auteur: vera@gtc
Edible garden in April 2015
It is the kids’ spring break and tomorrow we’re leaving for France for a few days. I would like to take this opportunity to say how awesome it is to have kids who are big enough (and willing) to help…
Tagliatelle with chard, kale, currants, walnuts and brown butter
While I’m sowing spinach, carrots and beets and planting shallots anywhere I see an empty space in the garden, what we are harvesting are vegetables sown what seems like a lifetime ago. The kale and the chard that we’d been…
Seasonal bouquet – spring bulbs
Left to right: narcissus “Ice Follies”, Muscari armeniacum, hyacinth “White festival”, Scilla bifolia, Narcissus “Cragford”, crocus “Jeanne d’Arc”, blue hyacinth (might be “Blue Star”) April means the first cut flowers from the garden. A bit of beauty in the middle…
Homemade cream cheese with herbs
Because my sister hates cooking (her words) it is not often that she becomes a source of new recipes for me. While my love of food is what drives me to cook, it does not do the same for her.…
Seasonal Salad – early April
As mild as the winter has been for us (with a total of one day when the temperature did not come above zero), as cold is the current spring. Which means I am delaying sowing directly outside, (except for some…
Edible garden in March 2015
People, if this is spring, I want a refund! What a difference from last year. There was a hail storm yesterday (actually several) and the ornamental plums on the other side of the street which are my barometer of spring…
Easter Lamb Cake
Even though the way we celebrate Easter and the dishes we serve for our Easter brunch vary a bit from year to year, there are two food related Easter traditions we always keep. On Saturday we will decorate eggs (with…
Spring bulbs, 1st round
Truth be told, in early spring I do not spend that much time in the backyard. For this, the Dutch climate is mainly to blame (today for example it is cold and raining). I do get the necessary jobs done,…
Buchty, sweet Czech buns
15 years and 10 days ago, my beautiful star-eyed daughter Esther was born. At that time I was already practically living with my husband in the Netherlands but getting a residence permit turned out to be a very lengthy and…
Seasonal Salad – March
Last Friday I was invited as a guest teacher to the Permaculture Design Course in Deventer to answer the participants’ questions related to vegetable growing, edible forest design, mulching, improving soil fertility and anything else they wondered about. Since the…
A week of eating from the garden/ winter
As the winter is slowly coming to an end, the homegrown provisions are running low and it becomes impossible to harvest enough for a full week of meals. We are digging up the last parsnips, cooking the last homegrown dried…
Apple, goat cheese and caramelized onions pizza
Back in October when we hosted our apple harvest dinner (four dishes each featuring a different apple variety), finding a vegetarian main course with apples turned out to be the biggest problem. Esther, as the true child of the 21st…
Season 2014 in the vegetable garden
February is a difficult month. I know I should be making plans and ordering seeds, but the garden looks rather barren and no matter how long I’ve been gardening, it is difficult to believe that with a bit of input…
Nearly candied quince
The general rule for pruning fruit trees is that it’s best done when the trees are dormant, during a cold and dry spell. That, for those of us living in the Netherlands, constitutes a problem. The winters are often not…