Today is the first day of spring and spring means some of my favorite seasonal produce is almost in sight. I started blanching rhubarb a couple of weeks ago but despite the warm weather we’ve had, it is not quite…
Glorious rhubarb
Categorie: Spring
Soba noodles with cabbage and broccoli shoots
Early spring is the time of discrepancy between what you can harvest from the garden and what you actually feel like eating. In the garden, it’s still the winter vegetables’ show that’s been on forever: the kale we’ve been picking…
Garden jobs in March
This post is a part of a series about the things I usually do/sow/harvest in my garden in a given month. I’ll post at the beginning of each month and at the end of month I check in to let…
Edible flowers, how to grow them and how to eat them
One of the main objections people have to planting edible gardens is that they think that a garden planted with just useful plants won’t be a pretty sight. Well, I think it’s perfectly possible to plant a beautiful garden filled…
Gutsy lettuce salad
There has been a lack of vegetable recipes on this site lately, the reason is that we were on holiday in the Czech Republic and while we had access to lots of seasonal, wonderfully ripe fruit from my parents’ garden,…
Rhubarb cornflour cake
Last week one of my best friends came for a visit. She lives 900 km away and this was the first time she and her family visited us here in the Netherlands. She’s one of my oldest friends and one…
Baby spinach salad with pita croutons, dates and almonds
Since rabbits continue to ignore the spinach on our allotment and there’s also a raised square bed full of spinach (3 different varieties) in our community garden, we harvest and eat spinach all the time. I have by now two…
Rhubarb cream cheese tart
Last time I went to the allotment, our neighbor, a gardening veteran, kindly asked whether I would like some rhubarb. I couldn’t help laughing because the 15 odd plants in our garden are enough even for me and my passion…
Spinach and spring herb torta in a potato crust
What’s eating your crops? Do you have a slug problem? Do you hate cabbage worms making holes in the leaves of your brassica? Carrot fly? Birds? In our organic, very diverse garden, pests are usually not a huge problem. But…
Edible garden in May
These days, it seems every season comes with a superlative: it is either “warmest” or “wettest” or “coldest” or “driest”on record. The current spring is very cold. I do mind as a person who would like to start wearing…
Rhubarb streusel whole wheat muffins
As mentioned before, we have lots of rhubarb on our new allotment. For the first time in my life I have enough of it to make all my old favorite rhubarb recipes and experiment with new ones. I pick an…
Tulips everywhere
It’s spring, we’re in the Netherlands and that means tulips! Tourists from all over the world flock to Keukenhof, the shop window of the Dutch bulb companies to admire the spring plantings. I’ve been to Keukenhof once and was a little…
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…
The queen’s not dead, but long live the king!
As you might or might not know, the Netherlands is a monarchy, a constituent monarchy to be precise. That means the monarch is the head of the state but though he or she has to sign all laws, the parliament…
Nettle lovage spring soup
On our new allotment, there are no nettles. I am sure I will be grateful for that in the long run, but right now, after the long winter largely devoid of fresh greens, nettles are my favorite vegetable. Luckily our…