My friend Tereza is the best kind of visistor you can get. Every summer we try to spend a few days together, the last few years usually at my sister’s house: three moms and six kids of all ages. Tereza…
Savory strudel with chard and blue cheese
Categorie: Vegetables
Broad beans and peas salad with basil dressing
Broad beans take a pretty long time to arrive – they are just about the first vegetable I sow outside (this year it was as early as the end of February) but it takes until June before we can harvest…
Garden Connect – June update
Garden Connect is a project that we’re participating in this year where gardeners from around the world grow identical 2 by 6 foot (60 x 180 cm) gardens, compare and share growing methods. Here’s an update of what’s happening in…
Chinese noodle salad with citrus, snow peas and spicy cashews
Being a freelancer and working from home most of the time can get a little lonely. Nobody to discuss ideas with, drink coffee or gossip. Little feedback too: I send my articles out into the world or give a lecture…
Chickpea, spinach and feta parcels
Though it’s still more than a week till summer officially starts, you wouldn’t know it by looking at the thermometer. The days are hot interrupted by a few storms, a walk through the garden yields a handful of assorted ripe…
Spinach and strawberry salad with goat cheese
You know how many people feel an inexplicable attraction towards a certain country and its language? I know someone who spends every vacation in Ireland, a woman who learns Spanish for no particular reason and I even heard of a…
May garden salad
Hengelo, the fairly small Dutch city where we live, boasts one restaurant awarded 1 Michelin star. The restaurant, as is customary these days, claims to be using seasonal, locally sourced ingredients in their menu. Almost exactly one year ago, when…
Chard, ricotta and saffron cakes
Do you grow chard? We do, lots of it. It is such a dependable vegetable, at least in our climate. The funny thing is, you never see it at grocery stores, only health food stores usually sell it. But it…
April in rearview mirror
Sometimes it’s really good to look back. I looked up the pictures of our allotment in April last year and when I put them side to side with this month’s pics…wow! We’ve come a long way! At this point we…
Garden jobs in April
This post is a part of a new series about the things I usually do/sow/harvest in my garden in a given month. I post at the beginning of each month as inspiration for other (aspiring) gardeners. At the end of…
Nettle quiche with sesame seed crust
If nettles are not touted as the next miraculous superfood, it is probably just because it is a little hard to successfully market a common weed. If they were difficult to grow and could only be imported from distant countries,…
Chickpea yogurt dip
Last week we celebrated Esther’s 14th birthday. Which means that somehow, inexplicably and in a blink of an eye, our sweet baby with head full of hair, turned into an independent half-way grown-up human. The picture on the right…
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…
Beetroot, carrot and apple salad
It’s the kids’ spring break this week and we are at my sister’s in the Czech Republic. We might be disappointed by the lack of snow and winter conditions in general, if the weather weren’t just so beautiful. We are…
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…