When I was young, I remember often coming down to the kitchen early in the morning to find my mom next to the stove, a wooden spoon in one hand, a book she was currently reading in the other, absent-mindedly…
Fall vegetable soup
Categorie: Soups
1 butternut squash, 3 dishes
If you’ve watched my video about the 7 winter squash varieties we’d grown in 2016, you’ve heard me talking about what I call ‘one-meal-squash’ varieties. I prefer squashes that don’t get too big so that we can use a fruit…
Sinuses clearing garlic soup
Tomorrow we get a visit from Spain – Sebastiaan is participating in an exchange program with a school in Valencia, so there will be a Spanish boy of as yet unknown age staying with us next week and then Sebastiaan…
Italian courgette & basil soup
You may look at this photo and just see soup. But you’d be wrong: it’s not just a soup, it’s also a solution to a problem. Several problems, actually. First: The problem known as ‘drowning in courgettes’ most gardeners are…
Andalusian soup salad
A couple of nights ago we were doing the dishes, which is the time when Remco usually fills me in on any noteworthy news. I do not follow the news very actively and he does and as I often tell…
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…
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…
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…
Spiced parsnip soup
I have trouble growing parsnips. Well, not so much growing them, because they’re one of the vegetables that mostly grow themselves. The problem is, I often forget to sow them. I think it has to do with the fact that…
Eye-popping soup
Last week we went to England. It was spooky-misty, like a set for a Sherlock Homes mystery. We enjoyed it. The little figure in the sea is my son, who was not going to let the fact that it was…
Real Mushroom Soup
I’ll always be grateful to my parents for teaching me to recognize different kinds of wild mushrooms. In an extreme case, it’s a survival skill – my daughter who is currently obsessed with the Hunger Games series, commented how strange…
Leek and potato soup
For all the frantic sowing, March is probably the leanest month in the vegetable garden. The window sills are getting crowded with seedlings, and many a bed in the vegetable garden has been sown under the protection of fleece, but…
Split pea soup
The Elfstedentocht was cancelled. We were this close! Even the date was set (last Sunday) and hundreds of volunteers were sweeping the snow off the ice and transplanting ice to places were it was not thick enough. And I imagine…
A soup of toasted parsnips with porcini
I have 2 large jars of porcini. Have I just made you jealous? Dried porcini mushrooms cost a fortune in the shops, I know. But mine were for free. We picked mushrooms in the summer, cut them in thin slices,…
Cauliflower soup with Gorgonzola and pickled pear relish
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…