It’s STRAWBERRY TIME! I don’t know about you, but we’ve been eating strawberries pretty much every day for the past two weeks. Our appetite for strawberries largely exceeds what our singly strawberry bed can supply but luckily our neighbours have…
It’s RHUBARB TIME!!! In case my use of all caps and exclamation marks has not clued you in: I AM EXCITED! Another clue as to my love for rhubarb is the number of rhubarb recipes on this website: no less…
One of the ‘jobs-in-progress’ in the garden is moving our rhubarb plants to their new location. We have many (25? 30?) rhubarb plants but since our new garden is 5 times bigger, I want to keep them all and possibly…
Today is my daughter’s birthday and this is the tart she has asked for. Which should be all the information you need before running to the kitchen to make it, because when it comes to tarts, Esther is the pickiest…
This year we left our vacation a little later than usual. Though the reason was mainly that I had to finish my manuscript (I only sent the last chapter to my editor the night before we left (of course)), it…
From the time Esther and Sebastiaan were quite little, as a way of playfully teaching them about food and taste, we used to organize little family tastings. If we grew three different varieties of strawberries, we would have a tasting…
It may not be fair but cute always wins. A case in point: these berry tarts. I made them for our tea party on Sunday, but there was lots of other delicious stuff too. There were 32 of these tarts…
If you’ve been around since last year, you might have read my post about the abdication of queen Beatrix and her son Willem Alexander succeeding to the throne. The post also includes a picture of our whole family (my parents…
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…
My daughter loves tarte tatin. My sister, conditioned by having worked in Paris as an au pair for a year when she was eighteen and studying French afterwards, loves it even more. Upon their request I made tarte tatin several…
Do you remember how everything was better when we were young? The summers endless and the sun brighter? I also clearly remember that wild blueberries were plentiful every summer. I remember how I went to the woods to pick them…
Summer solstice, the longest day of the year, is an important date in the garden calendar. Besides some vegetables that are especially sensitive to day length, being better sown past this date (fennel, Oriental brassica’s), it also marks the end…
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…
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…
Sinterklaas is to the Dutch what Santa Claus is to the Americans and 5th December here is what 24th is in America. The two saints might look somewhat similar (red cloths, white beard) but it is Sinterklaas who is the…