I am a doughnut snob and that is a good thing. I do not settle for less than perfection, which means that if I want doughnuts, I have to make them myself, and that means I only have doughnuts about…
Real jam doughnuts
Categorie: Winter
Pumpkin sage soup
There are many important dates in the calendar of the gardening cook: the last frost date and the first frost date, the first rhubarb harvest, the first asparagus, first ripe tomato… And just this week we reached another one: we…
Winter greens and poached quince salad
A terrible thing happened regarding quince last year. Because I love quince, but have no way to fit a tree into my garden, I planted one in my parents’ garden in 2010. Last year, the tree bore the first fruits…
Winter salads from the garden
Unlike many of you, we are having an exceptionally mild winter this year. We have had few frosts so far and they did not even kill the calendulas. My husband is so longing for snow that he starts checking the…
Berawecka
It is still January and because I don’t want to be the reason behind someone’s wavering resolve, I am not going to tell you about the doughnuts I made on New Year’s Eve (yet). But I thought it might be…
Seeds old and new
January is the quietest month in the gardening calendar – it is cold outside and it is too early to sow anything, whether outside or indoors. Starting plants too early when there’s not enough natural light only results in lanky…
Mushroom, spelt and kale soup
We went for a walk this morning, just the two of us. The weather was beautiful, the temperature just below zero and the sun shining. We walked to Kristalbad, a water retention/ water purification area about three kilometers from our…
Red cabbage slaw with ginger-yogurt dressing
In the last post I wrote about failing to stick to all but one of my 2013 resolutions. That, however, did not stop me from making a whole list of brand new resolutions for 2014. Which means that I am…
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…
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…
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…
Kale salad with orange vinaigrette & community gardening
One of the most fun and most rewarding projects I did last year was initiating a community garden. Every year we organize a neighborhood plant swap and plant sale, which is great, but I thought it would be nice to…
Gingerbread Guinness Cake with Poached Pears and Cream Cheese Icing
When I was little, we used to spend a good chunk of every summer vacation at my mother’s friend’s house in a very small village in the western part of what was then the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. There were always…