Yesterday we went to the International Specialist Nursery Days at Bingerden. A wonderful event held in the historical gardens of one of the country’s oldest estates where specialist nurseries bring their collections and only your iron will and the fact…
Probably the best investment you can make if you have a vegetable garden is sowing a packet of asparagus seeds. Yes, you have to wait 3 years before the plants are strong enough to take regular picking, but after that…
It’s been almost exactly six months since Sinterklaas, the good old saint and Santa Clause’s Dutch cousin, showered us with presents and then swiftly left for Spain. I can’t blame him for wanting to live in a more favorable climate.…
When I teach a gardening course, it always includes lunch. I serve a freshly picked mixed salad from the garden to show off the variety of greens that you can grow. This is especially impressive if the course is in…
The only spinach in my childhood was a frozen puree. I had no idea what the plant looked like and it is a testimony to my parents’ cooking skills that they were able to turn the indiscernible khaki mass into…
Some of the questions I had to answer while typing the recipe: – How do you draw a snowflake? – If you could control one element, which would you choose? (Answer: water) – How do you say “strawberries” in French?…
Do you grow broccoli rabe (also known as crimi di rapa, broccoli raab, turnip broccoli)? If you don’t, but have a veg patch, however tiny, please, consider it. In Joy Larkom´s classic `Grow your own vegetables` which makes most other…
As I mentioned before, the holidays of my childhood were rather different from today. We celebrated International Workers’ Day (compulsory) and International Women’s Day (ditto) but I hardly knew anything about, say, Halloween. I was however aware that in other…
Because I was born in an Eastern European communist country, and my husband grew up in Western democracy, our childhood memories are sometimes rather different. To him, 1st May has always been just the day after Queen’s Day. But in…
Last Monday, the whole Dutch nation celebrated the Queen’s birthday. This might lead you to believe that queen Beatrix was actually born 30th April. Not so, it was her mother’s birthday. But upon inheriting the throne, the queen very wisely…
The wonderful thing about perennial vegetables is that in spring they grow a lot faster than their annual counterparts. Because they start growing from well established roots instead of having to germinate first and make roots later, in our edible…
It seems that the two main harvest from the allotment at the moment are rhubarb and daffodils. No problem, I like both a lot. They both signal the start of a new garden season; daffodils are the first flowers that…
We all know that pulses are good for us and that we should be eating more of them. Especially vegetarians and vegans should, because pulses are a great source of protein. The trouble is, pulses require a bit of planning:…
I am sad. This week we heard that we will lose our allotment. The land is on lease and the owner wants it back. After 40 years that it had been used by the organic allotment association (during which the…
Isn’t it funny how when you have leftover egg whites all recipes you come across call for egg yolks and vice versa? Or does this just happen to me? A couple of recent baking projects left me with 4 egg…