Veggie burgers: Sweet potato and goat's cheese burger

So I thought it was time for me to let go of Mark Bittman's burger advice, and strike out on my own. I had a couple of burgers in mind, and then the recipe guide of the Albert Heijn also made some suggestions for spring burgers, but in the end I stuck with the first thing that came to mind when I thought about making my own burgers from scratch: sweet potato burgers. With some kind of cheese, preferably goat's cheese.
I Googled a couple of recipes and checked out my own previous work, and all of this combined I came to the following recipe:

Ingredients
400 g sweet potato, peeled and rasped
100 g goat's cheese, in small pieces
1 onion
2 toes garlic
2 eggs
3 tablespoons oats
chives
parsley
pepper

Chop the onion and garlic and combine with the sweet potato. Add all the other ingredients and combine to a mixture with your hands (this will turn your hands a nice bright orange, which was just in time for King's Day today). Leave to rest for about 10 minutes.
Then shape 4-6 burgers out of the mixture. Heat sunflower oil (or any other kind) in a frying pan and bake for 5-8 minutes on both sides. Serve any way you like.

Sounds pretty easy, right? Well, a couple of things didn't really go as planned.

Pre-burger mixture. Looks like I was making a carrot cake burger.

At first, I added only the one egg, but this didn't really work. The mixture was a) too wet and b) not in any way coming together as burgers. So I added another egg (which made two in total, as stated above) to help with the combining issues, and then I added more oats to help with the moisture. This all helped somewhat to get a proper burger mixture.

Carrot cake burgers a-baking.

Then for the burgers: I made four, as I was joined by my trusty burger tester, but they were way to thick. This meant that both sides were baking nicely, but the middle part was still pretty wet. Also, it made turning them pretty impossible. If I'd made six (or even eight) burgers out of the mixture, it would have worked out easier. The amounts were okay for two people, although maybe you could tone it down to 300 g sweet potatoes for two people (I only add a salad, nothing like chips or potatoes or anything). They were pretty unsteady to begin with, and their size didn't help, so these were the least consistent burgers I've made so far.

Sweet potato burger mess.

So they looked pretty messy. But what about the taste? Well, they tasted really really good. The overall taste was sweet (what can you expect, with sweet potato?), but not too sweet. The sweet potato came through nicely, as did the goat's cheese. The herbs were not that prominent, but they added something.  The texture was also really nice: crispy on the outside and quite moist on the inside. Very, very far removed from any meat burger you'll ever eat, but that's the whole point of vegetarian burgers!

I'd call this a burger success, although as with all my previous burgers, there are some points of improvement. But that's why we call it an experiment! Can't wait to try some of my other ideas.

Veggie burgers: Nut burger

As promised in my spring veg burger post, the next type of veggie burger I've attempted was the nut burger. Again, I tried the easiest type in The Fat Vegetarian first, figuring that I have to crawl before I can run (or something like that). The most basic nut burger recipe is called 'Quick nut burgers', and that is what they were; done in a breeze.

Nut burgers are made with nuts, obviously, which gives them the protein richness lacking from the spring veg burger. But are they better in other ways as well?

Ingredients

1 onion

150 g nuts, raw (can be walnuts, pecan nuts, almonds, cashew nuts or any other kind)

80 g oats (not instant)

2 tablespoons ketchup, miso, tomato puree or nut paste (I used curry sauce)

1 tablespoon chili powder or other spice mix

salt and pepper

1 egg

peanut oil (Mark specifically states to use peanut oil or any other kind of flavourless oil, as otherwise the burgers will simply taste of oil)

Like with the bean burger, you need a food processor. Chop up the onion until fine. Add the nuts and oats and pulse to combine. Add the ketchup, spices, pepper, salt and egg. Pulse until the mixture combines, but it is good to leave some bigger chunks in there. Add some more moisture (water, wine, soy sauce) if the mixture is too dry.

Leave the mixture to settle for a couple of minutes and then shape four burgers (it is probably a good idea to do this with 'wet hands', although the recipe doesn't state this specifically, as my hands were covered in oats and bits of nut afterwards). 

Heat the peanut oil in a frying pan, bake the burgers for about 5 minutes on each side, and serve any way you like.

Sounds pretty familiar, right? The recipe is pretty much like the bean burgers recipe of my first attempt and like those consisted mostly of beans, these burgers are basically made of nothing but nuts. The mixture looks pretty similar too.

 

Pre-processing mixture. It felt like I was making a very healthy breakfast.

Post-processing mixture. Doesn't look too appealing.

Right, this might be good time to mention that I have two cats in the house, but they had nothing to do with making this burger mixture...

The mixture was a bit dry. I added the right amount of moisture at the right moments, but somehow it didn't feel the way the bean mixture felt, so I was pretty convinced these burgers were going to fall apart upon baking. Anyway, after shaping the mixture into four burgers, I was determined not to flunk on the baking aspect again. I was gently reminded of this by my meat eater fellow burger tester, so I heated the oil for a bit longer to properly sear the burgers. 

Too much searing going on...

Yes, well, I may have overdone that a little bit. Also, two of the burgers did actually fall apart into crumbly pieces, but the other two turned out fine (if a bit black).

Pretty burger end result.

Right, so what were they like? Surprisingly not-dry! For something that fell apart in the pan, the burgers were pretty moist. Also, very very tasty. Nutty, a little bit spicy, probably what flavour experts would call 'umami'. My meat eater burger companion thought these the best burgers so far. And they were stomach filling! It took a while to finish them off.

I would add some more spices next time, and probably add a bit more moisture to keep the burgers from falling apart, but otherwise this was probably the most successful attempt so far.

Now I feel like I've had the main three categories of burgers: bean burgers, nut burgers and potato burgers. You can always make burgers out of tofu or seitan, but I hardly ever eat that normally, so I don't really plan on turning those into burgers. So with the three main burger food groups under my belt, I feel ready to experiment with some more combinations, flavours and textures. I'd love to replicate the sweet potato burger I had in a restaurant recently, and I also want to attempt a black bean burger steal from another restaurant. Also, I'd like to add some cheese to some of my burgers, just to see how that turns out. And maybe some vegetables, apart from the peas. The possibilities are almost endless... I will keep you posted on my culinary experiments!

Veggie burgers: Spring veg burger

After my first attempt at a home-made veggie burger, I was in the mood for more. In The Fat Vegetarian (I'll stick with that name for now), Mark Bittman lists a one per season of the year. Officially it is still winter, but with the balmy 16 degrees we've had last week, it felt more like spring to me. So I decided to skip the 'robust winter veg' burger in favour of the 'spring burger with fresh veg' (again; I'm translating back from Dutch so the actual title in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is probably different). The actual recipe calls for green asparagus, which I thought was a bit too early, so I replaced those with green beans.

Ingredients:
450 g potatoes, in small cubes
salt
3-4 tablespoons of butter (tablespoons is a weird quantity to use for butter)
100 g green asparagus/green beans/snow peas/etc
150 g peas (can be frozen, defrost before use)
30 g mixed herbs (parsley, mint, chives, etc)
pepper

Right, so I forgot to buy fresh herbs. I had some very sad parsley that survived the winter, so I used that, but it was closer to 3 g than 30. You can do without, but I do think the burgers are probably a lot better with the actual amount of fresh herbs.

Boil the potatoes with a little salt for 20 minutes.
Melt one tablespoon of butter in a pan and bake the asparagus/green beans/what have you for a couple of minutes. Add the peas and herbs (if you have them), sprinkle in some salt and bake until hot. Put into a big bowl.
Add the potatoes and mash together. You can leave in some bigger chunks but make sure everything is well combined (this sounds to me like the 'fine breadcrumbs' stage of pastry making; something that works on the page but you can never be sure is actually happening in real life). Sprinkle in some pepper and salt. Leave to set for a couple of minutes.
Shape 4-6 burgers out of the mixture (you don't need wet hands for these, shaping went pretty easy). Melt two tablespoons of butter in a pan, add the burgers and bake for about 5 minutes on each side. They should be browned and stick together properly. Serve any way you like.

So this recipe basically lets you make mashed potato with herbs, and then makes burgers out of that. Sounds a bit weird, but works surprisingly well.

Veg baking and potato boiling in process.

Baking the mashed potato lumps.

 Okay, so this looks pretty weird. It is literally mashed potato, beans and peas baking. Also, I set the fire too low again, which meant two of the burgers were nice and brown but the other two were sad and soggy and kept falling apart. I should really keep in mind to keep the fire burning higher when I bake burgers. In this case, they could hardly dry out as the potato mixture kept everything pretty moist.

The end result.

So, weird as they may look, they actually tasted really really good. The beans were probably not the best addition, as they didn't add anything taste-wise and were still a bit hard, but the potato/pea mixture was great. My meat eater fellow diner agreed; these were a lot better than the first attempt, but also better than some of the burgers you find in restaurants (although I ate a sweet potato burger the next day that was divine). Also, they are actually pretty healthy. If you leave out the sauces (you don't actually need to add any sauce) you're basically eating your two veg a day. Not a lot of protein though, which is kind of the thing vegetarians need to get from burgers. In that respect the bean burger was the better choice.
I do wonder what these taste like when you actually add the proper amount of herbs, so I will be making these again to find out. Probably without the green beans, as they don't really add anything, but then again you could make these with loads of different kinds of veg and still come out with a pretty decent burger.

Next up (unless I change my mind): nut burgers!

Veggie burgers: A first attempt

So I'm a vegetarian. Have been for all my life. Also, I like to eat burgers. Not hamburgers, obviously, but veggie burgers. These come in all shapes and sizes: travelling through the USA I was surprised at how inventive and tasty some of these burgers can be; sweet potato burgers, bean burgers, but also soy burgers with nice spice or texture mixes added. In The Netherlands, the amount of veggie burgers on offer is growing steadily; if you're lucky, you'll get one from the 'Vegetarian Butcher', a big meat-replacement producer. If you're even luckier, you'll get a homemade burger.
Now I don't really eat shop-bought veggie burgers at home, because burgers aren't really healthy and the few evenings I spend at home during a week I actually want to eat something that's good for me. Lots of veggies. Lots of protein. Not a lot of fat or carbs.
But wait a minute. Doesn't the term 'veggie burger' actually tell you these are made of vegetables? And if you leave out the fries and the fatty sauces, add in a salade, isn't that actually a pretty decent meal? Am I now just deluding myself because I smell a new project coming and want to dive straight into it? All true!

So I've decided I'm going to try and make some veggie burgers myself. From scratch. I'll get a meat eater to join me every time I make one for dinner, just so I can get the opinion of someone who hasn't been that used to eating veggie burgers. I'll make a little project out of this, no idea how long this will be, but we'll see.
I made my first burgers yesterday evening. I have a cookbook called The Fat Vegetarian in Dutch, not because you get fat (at least I hope so) but because it has over 2,000 vegetarian recipes. It's by American food journalist Mark Bittman, the English title is a pretty boring How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (you probably don't sell many books in the USA if you put the word 'fat' on the cover). Mark covers all kinds vegetarian burgers and burger-like recipes; meatballs, meatloaves, schnitzels, whatever you want (also a ton of other recipes, as you probably wouldn't fill a cookbook with 2,000 veggie burger recipes). The only downside to this cookbook is that it has hardly any pictures. Also, it's pretty heavy. On the upside, it has a reading ribbon, which is one of my favourite things in the world.

Anyway, I decided to start simple, with the 'simplest pulse burger' (I'm translating back from Dutch here, so it may well be called differently in English). The recipe is supposed to cover 4 people, but we were hungry so we had two burgers each. I'll share the recipe with you here, for anyone crazy enough to follow me on my veggie burger journey.

Ingredients:
- 250 cooked beans, or a 400 g can, drained. Can be any type of bean: black, red, kidney, or even chickpeas, lentils, whatever you want. I used a can of kidney beans.
- 1 onion, quartered
- 40 g oats (not instant)
- spices: I used pepper, chili pepper, ground garlic and paprika
- 1 egg
Mark tells us to add extra liquid if we need it, but I didn't.

You need a food processor to make this. Basically dump all the ingredients in the food processor and pulse a couple of times until you have some sort of a mixture. Don't make it too smooth, Mark tells us. I probably made it a bit too smooth. Leave to settle for a while.
With wet hands, shape 4 - 6 burgers out of the mixture. Leave to settle again.
Pour some oil in a frying pan and let it heat for about 1 minute. Put the burgers into the pan and heat for about 5 minutes on each side. Serve any way you like.

Now, doesn't that sound simple? Easy breezy!
Just a couple of things:
- oats? What am I, a horse? Also; oats are corse and grainy, what are they going to make my burger taste like?
- why can't my mixture be smooth? What's it going to do?
- wet hands? Really?
- how is this wet mess of things ever going to resemble a burger?
- how is letting things settle going to change anything?
- how is this wet mess of things with chunks of onion and egg ever going to be tasty?

But lo and behold. It actually worked out fine.

The mixture pre-settlement. Do I spot an oat?

So it does look a bit like a weird mess at first. But if you let it settle for a while, the oats seem to soak up some of the moisture, and also the egg does some sort of binding magic. No idea what happens, but the mixture felt pretty nice and consistent. Almost like how I imagine minced meat to feel (not that I'd ever thought about that before).
The 'shape with wet hands' works like a charm, too. The burgers don't stick to your hands but do stick to themselves. Neat!

The burgers a-baking.

Then when you bake them, you should actually turn the heat up pretty high, and add lots of oil. To someone used to baking burgers this probably sounds pretty logical, but for me it was one of the first times, so my burgers became a bit dry as I had to fry them for longer to get them to brown. Also, a couple fell apart upon turning, probably because they hadn't browned/bonded enough on the bottom. But they came out pretty well.

I like big burgers and I cannot lie...

Okay, so the taste was not super. It was fine, but somewhat lacking in taste. You couldn't taste the onion that much, nor the oats at all (luckily). Will have to add higher amount of spices next time to get some flavour. Because they were pretty dry, we added a pretty big amount of chili sauce to get some sort of taste out of them, and also add some moisture. Funnily enough, the meat eater enjoyed the taste of the plain burger more than I did. The texture was good, again a bit dry, but not unpleasant. All in all, a pretty good first attempt, I would say!

So this was my first try; it's also one of the easiest burgers in the book. I may have another go with a different type of pulse, or I may upgrade to a whole other kind of burger altogether. Mark lists loads more options, and beside him there must be loads of other veggie burger recipes out there. I'll keep you posted!

Garden murder

So I'd been cultivating my windowsill vegetable patch, which wasn't all that great space-wise, but it was growing along nicely. But as you may have gathered from the title, it has suffered from a murderer. A serial plant killer.
To refresh your memory, the plants I had growing were spinach, green beans, cherry tomato, endive, courgette, watermelon, fennel, radish, gherkin and red beet. The spinach was starting to get into flower, so I picked all the leaves that were edible (about 10 or so), put them in a salad, and had a nice meal of them. I took pictures, but they have been lost along with my poor bricked phone.
Next up, green beans. I hadn't even noticed, but some of the little white flowers had started to drop off, and where they had fallen off small green beans were growing. The plant itself was also pretty small, so I had to pick some of the beans to prevent the thing from collapsing, and to make sure the other tiny beans were getting some nutrition. So I ate 3 of my own green beans in my risotto last Sunday, and I was pretty well able to distinguish my own from the other supermarket-bought ones (they tasted better, but the texture was not so great, a bit rubbery/chewy). And I still have some beans left growing, so I will make another mini-meal out of those sometime soon.
Those were the success stories.

Another photo I have lost, less unfortunately, is the one of my spinach plant after my killer cat knocked it off the window sill. There were dirt and roots and leaves everywhere, and he'd started to eat from it as well. Then, I came home to find all the beet plants on the floor, because he had pulled them out of the ground and just left them to die. I could have put those back, but they still had very small roots (no beets to be found) and I didn't think they would make it as they'd already gone pretty limp.
At that point, I moved some of the more precarious plants (the beans, the watermelon, courgette and gherkin) upstairs to my bedroom, to prevent them from being slaughtered as well. I thought the serial plant killer wouldn't touch my tomatoes (nightshade, should be poisonous), endive and radishes (bitter) and fennel (too big a pot).
I was right on two accounts, but one day I came home to find my endive completely eaten away, just a few sad little green parts visible. Not that I particularly like endive, it was the plant I was least enthusiastic about getting (maybe apart from the watermelon on practical accounts), but still, it was part of my garden. And today I came home to find most of my radishes uprooted. Not that there were any radishes underneath, just pretty small root systems, so again it hadn't really been growing properly, but it's the principle that matters.
Anyway, spinach, beets, endive and radishes have been murdered off quietly and efficiently, mostly while I was at work. I'm starting to think the cat was suffering from the lack of attention due to my caring for these plants, although the lack of development on the beets and radishes may tell you something about how green my fingers really are. So maybe it was just plain boredom. Or puberty.

Five down, including the thyme that perished earlier, six to go. The beans are still growing nicely, which is good. The cherry tomato is getting pretty big, but no signs of flowers as of yet. The fennel looks like it's doing okay, but I have no idea what's going on beneath the earth; it may be another failed attempt at a root vegetable. The courgette, gherkin and watermelon are getting a bit out of hand, and I'm thinking of moving those to my parents, as their own veg patch failed to deliver and they have the space to actually grow these things.
All in all, not really something I could eat myself full on, let alone make a living out of, but still, any result is a better result than I expected on the outset. And the lack of snails and other natural hazards is more than made up for by my own feline plant danger.

Windowsill veg patches

Remember those veg patches I told you about last year? You could get them this year as well, if you spent 15 Euroes on groceries (someone in the marketing deparment must have gotten higher targets). Now I don't usually spend that much on my shopping, but other people I know do, and they were kind enough to donate their veg patches to me, because of my supposed 'green fingers'. So in the end, I got 11 veg patches, which I was going to raise in a gardenless home.
Also living in this gardenless home is a hooligan kitty, who likes to eat everything it can, and otherwise destroy things it can't. So I put my veg patches in a little plastic greenhouse, to protect them from kitty harm.

Veg patches in protective casing

Cute, hey?
They are: red beet, green beans, cherry tomato, spinach, radish, fennel, thyme, endive, gherkin, courgette, and watermelon. Yes, watermelon.
As you can see, in this picture some of the plants had already started to grow, while others were hiding underground. I put those plants big enough (according to the very precise instructions on the little cards) into bigger pots, planting them out to their individiual wishes. They were growing nicely, apparently safe from feline harm.
In the end, I had four little patches left in the green house: thyme, gherkin, courgette and watermelon. And this is when the kitty disaster struck. One day, I had just gone out to get some groceries, and when I got back I found the thyme upside down, and all the little cards pulled out. Which meant that I had no idea which was the gherkin, which the courgette, and which the watermelon. I made an educated guess, but I'm still not sure whether I am raising the correct plants under the correct name...

Anyway, they all sprouted! 100% success rate!
I planted out the remaining mystery plants to their (probable) specifications, and for a couple of weeks now, my window sill has looked like a mini jungle.

Fennel, radishes, green beans, spinach, cherry tomato, and red beets.

Endive, possibly watermelon, possibly courgette, possibly gherkin.

You may notice that the thyme is missing. After my 100% success rate in sprouting, I somewhat failed in raising, with the thyme never really growing properly, and finally just disappearing into it's container. But still, 10 plants is more than enough for just a windowsill.

The spinach is starting to flower, which means I will have to eat it soon. All the other plants are still miles away from producing anything, but it looks nice, and apart from a bit of watering and turning (they really like to grow towards the sun) they're no bother at all. And best of all; no slugs!

Jamming

So we're having a loooot of strawberries in our garden this year, so much even, that we decided to make strawberry jam. I hardly ever eat jam, actually only at high teas (with scones) or when we're staying in a hotel that doesn't have any other bread spread things for breakfast. My SO does eat a lot of jam, in very varying tastes, usually provided by his father, who also has lots of fruit in his garden. But for our first try, we decided to make just plain old strawberry jam.
So we saved up the strawberries from several days, even the slightly slug-eaten ones that we'd usually throw out, and then we weighed them all and turned them into jam. We had about 800 g of strawberries in total, which is quite a nice harvest. It took a while to clean and slice them all, getting rid of the dirty and partly-eaten bits, and then we put them in a pan to heat up.

Strawberry pan.

Then we added what is called 'jelly sugar' in Dutch, I have absolutely no idea what it's called in the rest of the world, but it's the sugar that you put in to make jam. Usually you add the same amount of sugar as you have fruit, but with this sugar we had to add less, so that took a bit of calculating. We also added a big squeeze of lemon and lime juice, because just strawberries and sugar is way too sweet.
After boiling it all for a while, the jam was transferred to the jars, with some big strawberry pieces still in there. You can boil it down for longer and get a really smooth jam, but a bit of texture is nice to have. These pieces do mean that you get jelly in the bottom and more strawberry pieces at the top, because they float on the more liquid part, but that does make it look kinda nice.

Blurry jam transfer.

Split-level strawberry jam.

Then it was a case of putting on the lids and letting them cool, until we could put them in the fridge. The lids of our new special strawberry jam jars didn't fit quite as well as we'd hoped, so we're going to have to eat those a bit quicker than we thought, but I don't imagine that's going to be a problem. We tasted the jam when it went into the jars, and it's really nice, sweet but not to clingy, with a nice sour note. As I said, I'm not really much of a jam-eater, but of course I'll try our own home-made jam when I get the chance.
We still have loads of strawberries in the garden, some of which are still green and some of which are just becoming red, so we'll be eating 'normal' strawberries (maybe with cream) for a couple of days as well. But this was a very nice home-grown food experience already!

Garden update - in bloom!

Remember the veg patches I wrote about a while back? Well, they have gotten bigger. A lot bigger. As did all of the other stuff that we bought for our vegetable patch. Somehow you always start off with lots of small things, thinking that most of them won't take and you'll have plenty of space for those things that do grow. But then suddenly everything is growing and getting bigger and sprouting unpredicted leaves and flowers and what not, and we start dreaming about a bigger garden again...
So how are things doing? Well, of the 7 'veg patches' (aubergine, broccoli, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, thyme, spinach and endive), the thyme never really did anything, and neither did the strawberries. I don't really know what happened to the spinach or the endive, they may still be around in some of the smaller pots, but I've kind of lost track of them.
We planted the 5 proper broccoli plants out into the garden, only for them to be eaten by the ferocious slugs that prowl our garden at night. So the only things left are the aubergine and the cherry tomatoes, and they're doing really great!

Cherry tomatoes and peas

(Now I took these pictures with my phone camera, which appears to be the worst camera in the history of camera phones, on a really bright day, so bear with me.)

So apart from the small supermarket veg patches we also have some other plants which we either got as small plants or which we planted out from seed from last years crop or from housewarming gifts we had a couple of years ago. The peas in the picture above came from a packet that we bought about 4 years ago, but surprisingly they still managed to become proper plants.

Our vegetable patch on 1 June

So this was the 'bit plot' about 3 days ago. We've had a lot of rain and even more sunshine in the days in between, so everything has grown out a lot more since then, but I didn't want to bother taking another picture. The sticks are all anti-kitty protection, because they do like to dig their holes in this area.
On the far right you can see our potato plants, which we grew from potatoes that had sprouted roots after being left out too long. Next to the potatoes are the broccoli plants. The biggest one, the one on the left, is actually the remainder of the supermarket veg patches which we grew from seed, the others were bought as small plants. In front is a small row of onions (actually lasts year's crop; they were too small to eat, so we left them in the shed and planted them out again). Behind them is a line of cucumber plants which we  grew from seed, and behind those is a line of beets, also grown from seed. Then we get to beer slug, who tries to keep everything from being eaten (these things are wonderful: you fill them with beer, the slugs want to drink the beer, they fall in and drown. Much better than spreading poison. Works perfectly with pots or jars not in the shape of snails too). The courgette plant on the far left has already been savagely slaughtered, as you can see. All the way behind the beets you can see our leeks, which were bought as really small plants and are really doing well. There is a kind of empty area in front of beer slug that may or may not contain any seed, I'm not really sure what happened there.
Apart from this plot we have some smaller pots containing the aubergine and possibly the endive or spinach. We will plant these out into the ground if and when space appears, but as I mentioned before, these plants do tend to get larger and larger...

So much for vegetables, what about fruit? Well, our apple tree, after its bumper crop of last year, decided not to do anything at all. No flowers, that is, it's sprouting plenty of leaves. But there will be no home-grown apples in our future.
The strawberries on the other hand...

...doing better than ever!

We're usually on holiday when the strawberry season hits, but this year we won't be going anywhere in June or July, so there will be loads of lovely strawberries to eat!

In short: our garden is in full bloom (both figuratively and literally). Even with the attacks of the snails and the extremes in weather, I think we will manage to grow some things this year, so we will be able to eat from our garden again. Which I still think is one of the best things; eating something you've grown yourself, preferable from seed. It always tastes better than store-bought stuff. And maybe next year, we'll have even more space...

Veg patches

So most of you will probably know by now that we have a small vegetable patch in the back garden, in which we try to grow some food, with various outcomes. Potatoes, apples, pumpkins and strawberries appear to love it here, while carrots, lettuce and cauliflower don't really want to do anything. This year, we're sticking to our success stories, and therefore we've already put the potatoes in the ground (in a different place than last year, of course).
We started quite early this year, because the major supermarket chain in the Netherlands decided to jump on the whole 'authentic food' bandwagon and give out miniature vegetable patches with every 10 Euros of groceries you bought. Technically they're not only veg patches but also herb gardens, as you can also get stuff like thyme and rosemary, but they called them 'moestuintjes' (= veg patches) nonetheless.
I've talked to several (freelance) marketing professionals in the last few weeks who cannot comprehend how this supermarket chain has another 'hit' by giving away stuff that most people usually turn up their noses at, but somehow little boxes are popping up left right and centre on the window sills. How many of these will actually turn into proper plants or be planted out when the time comes remains to be seen.
Of course, we will take our little plant proteges very seriously. We got 7 'patches' in total: aubergine, broccoli, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, thyme, spinach and endive. Luckily, most of them are plants we've already grown and/or plants that like our soil. We've put the first 5 of them in their boxes already, and the broccoli and cherry tomatoes have come up really quickly, so we've put them in bigger pots ready to be planted outside when the temperatures get a bit higher. The thyme is now also showing two very tiny leaves, but the aubergines and strawberries don't appear to be doing much as of yet. We won't put the leaf vegetables out until about halfway through April, because these tend to grow pretty quickly and we don't want to see them wither away in the cold March air.
Apart from these new plants, we still have a lot of strawberry plants from last year, plus the apple tree, and a lot of pumpkin seeds from the two pumpkins we grew last year (and didn't eat, because I really just like to look at them and marvel at the fact that we've grown these things in a small, shaded garden in the middle of the city). We may buy more peppers at some point, but with the 'free' veg patches our own patch is filling up pretty quickly. Hopefully, this will be the last year we grow stuff here, as we are now seriously looking at moving to a place with a bigger garden before next spring. But even if we get half the amount of food we grew last year, I'll still be a happy gardener!

Choux try-out

The Great British Bake Off has finished again, leaving us with a huge gap to fill on Wednesday evening. But also, many baking ideas.
One thing I've been wanting to make for a very long time is choux pastry. In the earlier Bake Off seasons, this was presented as one of the most difficult things to make, apart from filo pastry. Now, in the later seasons, all the contestants can just whip up a choux no questions asked, although they do explain that it is a tricky thing to get right.
I've investigated the stuff, and discovered that it is in fact twice cooked dough; first you cook it when you combine butter and flour with boiling water, and then you cook it again in the oven. What I'd like to know is who ever thought of this first, and why anyone in their right mind would want to tip flour into boiling water and then beat in eggs without having them scramble. Because the resulting dough isn't really all that special, it's actually pretty tasteless, and has to be filled with some kind of cream to be appetising.

Anyway, the ingredients list is very short:

125 ml water
50 g butter
65 g flour
2 eggs (beaten)

Preheat the oven to 200 C.
Put the water and butter in a pan and heat on a gentle heat until the butter has melted. Then bring the water to a boil, take off the heat, and quickly dump in all the flour at once. Start stirring frantically until the mixture forms a ball-like dough and comes away from the sides.
(I never thought this was actually going to happen on the first try, and that I was going to waste a lot of water, butter and flour in the process, but lo and behold, it worked!)

Ball-like choux pastry sans eggs.

Now add the egg mixture a little at a time, beating thoroughly between until all the egg is absorbed. At this point, I realised I might have used a bigger pan, because the mixture kept sloshing over the side due to my vigorous beating.
When all the egg is absorbed you have nice shiny mixture, which you can pipe in whatever shape you want onto a baking parchment. I made some eclair shapes and some choux bun shapes.
Then it goes in the oven for 10 minutes at 200 C, and after that you turn the heat down to 170 and bake for another 30 minutes or until they are golden brown all around. I've found wildly varying baking times for these, so this is what I did, but I've also read recipes where they tell you to turn the heat up instead of down after the first 10 minutes.

As soon as they are done, take them out of the oven and pierce them to let the steam out. I was too late doing this with some of them, which means the steam will turn back into water and soak your choux buns, making them sloppy and inedible.

Leave to cool completely, split open, and fill with your favourite cream (I used whipped cream). You can drizzle chocolate over the top if you haven't forgotten to buy dark chocolate (which I did, and I felt too lazy to go back to the store).

Eclairs filled with whipped cream (no chocolate).

Choux pastry in itself is pretty tasteless, as I already mentioned, but these were quite okay when filled with whipped cream. I am going to make them again pretty soon, letting them cook a bit longer and letting out the steam earlier, so they don't turn sloppy and we can actually eat all of them. But for a first attempt, it went a lot better than I'd ever expected!

Apple cake

Our apples have been steadily growing bigger and redder, and after another few attempts we have conclusively decided that they are not fit for normal 'eat an apple' consumption, as they are far too sour and tough and somehow just plain yuck. But that doesn't mean we can't put them in other stuff! I've made two apple crumbles already, and yesterday I made an apple cake. This is a recipe my grandmother used to make when my mom was little, but it's not one of those teary-eyed family heirlooms because frankly, it's too simple to put into words.

Ingredients
200 g flour
200 g sugar
200 g butter (softened)
2 eggs
(baking powder)
apples
sultanas/raisins (soaked if you're using dried ones)
cinnamon

Pre-heat your oven to 180 C.
Simply mix together the flour, sugar and butter and add the eggs when the mixture becomes too tough to handle. I added some baking powder because my flour was pretty old, but you can leave that out. Mix thoroughly for about 3-5 minutes and then put into a rectangular baking tin (which you've lined with baking parchment etc).
Cut the apples into little slices and put these on top of the cake mixture, slightly overlapping (in Dutch we call this 'roof tile style'). I used three small apples and my baking tin was filled, but you really just have to try how many will fit. If you have some left over you can always sneak them in between some others.
Dry off your raisins and sprinkle these over. Also sprinkle over some extra sugar and cinnamon.
Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes, until it's dry in the middle.

There is cake mixture underneath, hard to see at this point.

Now the idea is that the cake will spread around and over the apples, partly covering them, and leaving nice 'apple trails' on top. This usually works, but this time, probably because I used baking powder, the cake went a little crazy and gobbled up most of the apples:

Hello cake!

So usually it looks like the bit on the top left, but hey, who cares what it looks like anyway?
It tasted great, moist in the middle and nice and crunchy on the sides. I wanted to add some lemon zest in the mixture but it's a good thing I forgot as these apples are really too sour to be adding some more. But if you're using quite sweet apples, lemon zest may be a nice addition.

There are still lots of apples left on the tree, so I may be trying out some new apple recipes soon, maybe even a tarte tartin if I'm feeling very adventurous!

Red velvet cake (a leaner approach)

I've been fascinated by red velvet cake ever since I had a slice at an American exchange student's party a couple of years ago. Both the strange redness and the extreme sweetness make it an interesting, and also a very American, cake. Only an American would make a cake that screams 'look at me! I',m red!' as loudly as this one, and only an American could suffer the intense sweetness of all that sugar without wincing. However, I had completely forgotten about red velvet cakes until the Great British Bake-off started again, and someone made a red velvet Swiss role.
So I looked up several recipes, most of which on American websites, and I was completely bowled over by the amount of calories you are supposed to put in. There was one recipe that required about a kilo of butter, a kilo of icing sugar, and 8 eggs. These are really not normal amounts for cake making (in my book, at least).
So I went for a more British approach, and picked Lorraine's three tiered recipe, selecting the middle tier (23 cm) as the cake to make. The ingredients were still vastly beyond any limit, so I halved them. For the buttercream I did something completely different, because I refuse to put 600 g of icing sugar in with 300 g of butter, that makes the whole thing just too sweet, especially with fondant icing added on top. So I changed the ratios there a bit. Also, I used a recipe that requires food colouring instead of boiled beets, as I've had enough trouble with beet stains in my life.

Ingredients:
175 g butter
175 g sugar
3 eggs
150 g flour
25 g cocoa powder
baking powder
25 ml food colouring (red, obviously)
500 g rollable fondant icing (white)

buttercream:
100 g butter (softened)
60 g icing sugar
100 g cream cheese

Preheat your oven to 180 C.
Grease the tin and line the bottom with baking paper.
Beat the sugar and butter together until fluffy. Beat in the eggs one by one, then add the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and a pinch of salt. Add the food colouring (I did this little by little, because the whole thing turns an outraging shade of red which then dies down as you mix the thing). Put in the cake tin and bake for about 40-50 minutes (I forgot to change the baking time to the lesser amount of ingredients, so I ended up with a slightly burned and very dry cake).
When it's done take out of the oven and leave to cool completely.

Red batter

For the buttercream, mix together the butter and icing sugar until fluffy. Add the cream cheese and mix again.

When your cake is completely cool, cut in halve and sandwich the halves together again using the butter cream. Cover the entire outside with the remaining butter cream (this will go better if your cake is not dry, with little red crumbs sticking everywhere). If you have any indentations, use the butter cream to fill them for a more even end result.

Buttercream-covered crumbs

Spread some icing sugar over your work surface and roll out the fondant icing until it is very thin and large enough to cover the whole cake. Transfer onto the cake (this is surprisingly easy) and press down gently so that the icing sticks to the butter cream. You can decorate the cake using anything you want, but I thought this was enough of an exercise for one day.

Slightly burned brown-redness

So, the end result was pretty dry and a bit over cooked, but still quite edible. You can taste the cocoa coming through, and the butter cream was not too sweet. The fondant icing makes for a nice look, but it doesn't really add anything to the taste. All in all, halving the ingredients still made for a pretty decent cake, I can't imagine how rich it would have been with the full amount of ingredients. Still, a very nice cake to have made, and I foresee some red velvet cupcakes in my future, as I still have quite a lot of food colouring left over. And this is one of those 'I'll never be able to do that myself!' cakes that I can now cross of my list.

Garden update (3)

I could simply add photos to the previous post (when my computer was refusing to cooperate) but so much has been happening in the garden that I think it deserves a new post.

To begin with, have a look at these marvellous strawberries. A second crop is growing on the plants as we speak, but I'm afraid they won't nearly be as big and tasty as these ones were...

June strawberries

We removed some of the apples from the apple tree to lighten its load, and then I turned these apples (tiny, very very sour, but ripe enough (the seeds were brown, which is the main point, I was told)) into an apple crumble.

Miniature apples

Also, another pepper has been developing, and now we have two:

Peppers!

And one thing I forgot to mention last time are the beans (green beans, to be exact) which have staid very low but still produced some very nice beans. But those have already been eaten, I'm afraid. As have most of the leeks, before they sprouted flowers
We've also eaten the first of our potatoes, which has produced really a lot of offspring, some of which almost too big to fit my hand. We can eat 2-3 times from this first one, and we put 5 in the ground, so I'm thinking that leaving your potatoes to sprout roots and then put them in the ground because you don't know what else to do with them is working out pretty fine. Their 'alpha' potatoes, which normally grow on Malta, but with the warm and dry weather we've been having also seem to thrive here.

Our courgettes and pumpkins haven't started flowering yet, but they're producing lots of leafs that haven't been eaten by the slugs, so I'm hopeful they will do something yet.

And finally, this weekend, our trial aubergine also went to work, and produced this:

Baby aubergine

Yes, that is a baby aubergine. It's about the size of my thumb as we speak, but we're hoping to make it into a proper sized purple egg.
I never would have guessed that a garden this small, with so little attention given to it, would produce this much food! Just imagine what we will do when we get a proper plot on our hands. One can only dream...

Garden update (2)

So last time around it took a while for a 'garden update'  to appear, but this time I'm going to keep all of you posted. Because a lot has been happening in our garden, much of it good, some of it less good.

One of the not-so-happy things is the fact that a looot of slugs have chosen to call our garden home. And they have an appetite. Strangely enough, they're also eating the leafs on the potato, which I thought would make them sick but somehow only seems to make them bigger slugs. Otherwise, they love eating fresh strawberries, especially during the night when they're just doing their final ripening before we take them off. And also young courgette and pumpkin plants, with their tiny leafs just coming out, are wonderful food.
The good thing is that we did have strawberries, and several other edible things actually growing. The only thing that failed massively were the carrots, of which exactly 3 showed some fizzy leaf, which then disappeared after a while (whether the slugs were involved, we don't know, it may be that they're just unhappy growing on our clay soil). But we've had a loooot of strawberries, which in true strawberry fashion were ripe during Wimbledon, so it's been a week since we had the last ones. Otherwise, we've had some broccoli, and the leeks are really starting to become proper leeks. We've eaten some already and are going to have to eat the rest of them soon before they start flowering and become inedible.


Our apple tree also did surprisingly well, its little branches laden with apples. Every rain storm or gust of wind I'm afraid the weight of the apples will break the branches, but so far it's holding up pretty good. Then there are the aforementioned potatoes, and we've gotten a new batch of courgette and pumpkin plants for a do-over. We're also having a pepper plant (one small pepper already growing away) and an aubergine plant, which doesn't really seem to be doing a lot. And both of our berry plants are still completely without leafs, but we do have a lot of butterflies around from the caterpillars that ate all those leafs, so I guess it's been good for something.
In the non-veg area our thyme plant has been eaten twice, we just put in the second reserve in the hope that this one will survive. Most of our other plants are doing really well, especially the butterfly-bush, which is attracting a lot of bees, butterflies, and other nectar-loving insects. Sadly, it's also attracting our little neighbour girl, who likes to pull off the flowers because they smell so nice. But all in all the garden is doing a lot better than I expected, given the lack of sun, abundance of rain, and lack of attention from us. We'll see if the potatoes, peppers, apples, courgettes, pumpkins and aubergines turn out to be any good later in the year. For now, it's most used to enjoy the wonderful weather we've been having.

PS: I was going to add some photos, but my computer is being especially difficult tonight, so pics still to come.

Tiramisu

It's been a while, but it's made such a lasting impression that I still remember it crystal clearly: the day I made tiramisu for 12 people.
We'd rented a holiday home with our sailing group (we usually sleep in the boats but this year wanted to go a bit more, well, grown-up) and after the weekend most of us went home again, but a small group stayed in the home to enjoy the rest of the week. On Wednesday, we had a last-evening-dinner, which featured Pizzarette (baking your own miniature pizzas in a miniature oven with miniature ingredients). The evening before, I offered to make dessert for everyone, probably tiramisu. The response was so excited that I simply had to follow up.

To make tiramisu for 12 people you need:
375 ml whipped cream (unwhipped)
125 g white sugar
6 eggs (you only need the yolks - I froze the egg whites to make meringue at some later date)
750 g mascarpone
8 tbls liqueur (I used Amaretto)
250 ml espresso coffee (cooled)
375 g ladyfingers
cocoa powder

Mix the whipped cream with one tablespoon of the sugar until it is almost firm (this is a difficult decision to make, I stopped just before the 'firm peaks'  stage, but as all the rest of the preparation takes so much time your cream will become less firm again anyway) and set aside. Split the eggs, and in a separate bowl mix the yolks together with the rest of the sugar until it is pale and fluffy (at least 5 minutes). Add the mascarpone bit by bit, mixing well in between so the mixture stays light. Spoon in the whipped cream until you have an even mixture.
Stir the coffee with the liqueur, and dip one side of a ladyfinger into the mixture (it's easiest to use a shallow, rectangular bowl; also, I dipped in the non-sugared side of the biscuits). Then put the ladyfinger in the serving bowl, with the wet side up. Repeat for half the ladyfingers. Pour half of the mascarpone mixture over the ladyfingers. Repeat with the rest of the ladyfingers and mascarpone mixture.
The mixture will be quite wet and liquid at this point, and I thought that it would never set. But after a night in the fridge (prepare at least 4 hours before serving) it was nice and firm! Dust liberally with cocoa powder shortly before serving.

Tiramisus ready to be devoured.

I had to use two bowls, as I didn't have one big enough. Officially it's supposed to be round, but given the shape of the ladyfingers I preferred the rectangular bowl.

I wasn't really expecting much from this, but this tiramisu is seriously good. If you add the mascarpone in very small amounts and whip it long enough it all becomes very smooth and airy. It's about 100000 calories per portion, but it doesn't feel like you're eating something incredibly heavy.
We were with 10 people in total, as it turned out, but both bowls went home empty and scraped clean. And just Sunday we were barbecuing in the park with some people from the sailing group, and they were asking after the tiramisu again. So if you want a dessert to impress, give it a try!

Garden update

I called this post 'garden update' to give an update on an earlier post I wrote about our garden plans - but it turns out I'd never actually written said post. So I guess it's just a first garden post for this year, following up from the first-ever post about our new garden from April last year. Ahum...


This year we moved around some plants that weren't doing too well in the spot they were in, such as the grape, which was pining away in a dark and wet spot. Then we dug out some plants that had gotten a bit out of control (mint, anyone?). But that is not all. Of course we also have the strawberries, aforementioned grapes, and the artichoke still left over from last year. But now we get to the good part: we also put lots of new vegetables in.
We have created a dedicated vegetable patch, which now sports broccoli, leeks, onions, carrots and potatoes.

Dedicated vegetable patch area

You can't actually see the carrots, onions or potatoes in that picture, but the top ends are poking out a tiny bit. The potatoes were actually less planned than the other things: we had some that were left in the cupboard to long and started sprouting roots, so we decided to put them in the ground and see what happened. What is happening right now is that they're putting little purpley bits through the soil, so I think they are doing good. We're growing the carrots and onions from seed, which is a first, so we'll see how that goes. Obviously, we bought the leeks and broccoli as small plants, otherwise they'd never gotten this big this quickly.

But there's more (and I honestly have no idea where we're going to put these when they start growing properly): we also have several little greenhouses filled with even more veg.

Baby vegetables-to-be

From left to right you can see rocket, radishes, and peas. They have all been sown from seed, and kept nicely snug and warm in their greenhouses. The peas are a little bit less enthusiastic, but they are coming. Somehow, somewhere, these will be put into the ground once the weather gets a bit warmer and they get a bit bigger. We planted out some rocket last year, which came up but then disappeared under a massive courgette that was groping its way through the garden. We had radishes in the garden at our other house but the snails ate them all, and tried peas before but they never really did anything. So, this is sort of our 'second chance' box.

I'm very curious to see what will grow and what will wither in our new garden, and I fully intend to keep you (more) up to date!

American impressions

So the last three weeks I was in America. This was my first time to the other side of the big Atlantic pond, and it's made quite an impression. You have some sort of image in your head of what a country or its people is going to be like, and when you actually do visit you realise all your (subconscious) preconceptions and stereotypes are based on nothing much. Below you will find some things that I noticed, or talked about, or that are just maybe interesting to know or realise. I have only been to the north eastern part (NYC, Boston, some New England, Cape Cod, New Jersey, and Washington DC), so what I say here is probably generalising those areas only, but I wouldn't know.

- There really is a Starbucks on every corner. There is also a McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts, Wendy's, or Whole Foods. These are never to be found when you are actually looking for them, if you are hungry or in need of free wifi. Also, there are very many small supermarkets and privately owned stores, cafes, and restaurants, which have somehow managed to survive the big chains. We usually went to them instead, as I can have a Starbucks coffee here in Groningen too, if I want to.
- All these shops and stores and restaurants and public transport buildings and what not have a surplus of employees. The Apple Stores are the biggest in this, but generally in restaurants or cafes there was about double the amount of personnel as one would have in a similar European setting. All of these people are very friendly, curious to get to know you, and desperate to please you. As there are so many, they are generally bored, and will be very happy if you talk to them. Also, it's simply polite to say "no thank you, I'm just browsing" than ignore them. I've had some really great conversations with people sitting behind desks or helping out in stores who were just doing their job and interested in getting to know me. I realised that some people just saw them as stupid worker bees that you can ignore when you feel better or smarter than they, but really, these are smart people just trying to earn some money. And they aren't earning a lot of that, so do tip. I was surprised at how happy people are when you give them a tip, even though the US is supposed to be the "big tip" country where you tip at least 15-20% in restaurants (in Europe it's usually 10%, although most people just forget doing it).
- In big cities, people don't greet each other, talk to strangers, or give each other random compliments or services (like holding a door open). When you do do these things, people are generally very happy and outgoing, again eager to help and be nice. In small towns, the situation is the reverse: everybody greets everybody, talks to them, gives them compliments, and helps them out, and if you don't do these things you are generally regarded as strange or outlandish. In big cities, most people ignored us and the fact that we spoke Dutch amongst ourselves, in small towns, some people looked at us suspiciously when doing the same thing.
- Most things are relatively cheap. Hotel rooms in big cities are expensive, of course, but the amount of service you get for the money is pretty high, so overall that's good. Food is cheap too, although alcoholic drinks are expensive. Public transport is really cheap, as is petrol, which is interesting as in Europe both are expensive. A lot of toll on roads and bridges, some of which are ridiculously high, while others are strangely low. Government sites and museums are almost always free or charge a low fee, stand-alone museums or other attractions are very expensive. Once you are inside them, the food is also pretty expensive without being of a great quality (a 12$ sandwich at the US Open which was a soggy 'ciabatta' just containing cold, greasy "grilled vegetables" and some weird hummus paste was the absolute low point). Do mark that most prices are without sales tax, which can be anything from 7 to 20%. If they say "2 donuts for 2$", you will have to dig in your wallet for coins if you show up with just 2 dollar bills in hand. You don't have to pay tax on books, which is something more countries should have.
- Nature is everywhere. I can now see why Americans don't make a big thing about nature loss; they have so much of it. Everywhere there are trees and fields of grass and beaches and rocks and hills and mountains and what not... In cities this is less, of course, but still they are not all concrete and asphalt, there are many trees and parks and grassy edges. But the forests we saw from the plane, stretching all the way from when we first saw the tip of Canada to the suburbs of New York, are just one example. I envy their big country, where there is so much space for everybody that they did not need to cut all these beautiful forests down, like we have done here. Also, a lot of wildlife. Many species of birds and butterflies bigger than my hand. We saw possums and skunks and huuuuge turkeys walking (or laying dead, sadly) by the wayside, and beautiful whales and dolphins in a marine sanctuary. I can now also understand the stress some Americans have over here when there are bugs or other creatures: they have some scary ones over there. Luckily we didn't meet any of them (except in the zoo), but nature is still really and truly nature over there, the good and the bad parts.
- There are a lot of dogs. I have never seen this many dogs in 3 weeks before. Perhaps related, but I'm not sure: many children. Young children, babies, you name it. They somehow disappear around the age of 10, but below that, you'll see everything. Parents with 3 young children in tow in the middle of NYC is not a strange sight. You hardly ever see them on the subways. Also, many tires on the side of the freeways. No idea why, but many people seem to lose their tires. Finally, a lot of joggers. Everybody seems to be jogging at some point of the day. Which brings me to the next point...
- Most people are obsessed with being healthy. To an extreme degree, I would say. Interestingly enough, most of these people are actually overweight and probably in a pretty bad condition. They eat healthy by choosing the "veggie lovers" pizza at PizzaHut, and then take the bus back to their hotel. I have had some very strange looks over ordering some dishes filled with ricotta or some other kind of cheese, while Americans ordered the "salad", which usually comes with some kind of fried thing (bacon, shrimp) and more dressing than I could wade through. The actual amount of fresh vegetables is usually pretty low. Also, the actual amount of movement these people have is very low (every day some Americans staying in our DC hotel asked us which bus or subway line we took, and every day they were amazed that we walked everywhere. I don't think they believed us, as they were complaining about the subway station being 7 blocks from the hotel, and that the walk was so hard...). Taking cabs everywhere and sitting behind your desk for 10 hours straight drinking coffee and eating bagels isn't going to go away with a jog in the park. But sports are important and a big part of the culture, even though most people aren't able to practise them. Also, corn syrup in everything. Most of the "jams"  are just corn syrup with some fruit juice (and colouring agents). I've had pizza slices that tasted sweet and sugary. (If you do want to eat pizza, find a good Italian. American pizzas are huge and fatty and they'll leave you hungry about an hour later, whereas Italian pizzas are just filling and taste a lot better, even though they are a quarter the size...) The positive thing is of course that people are willing and trying to be healthier. The sad thing is that they don't really know how to, and that it's almost impossible to do with the amount of junk that goes into their food.
- In a last point, I think few Americans could have written this post. Not only because it is somehow looking at their society from the outside in (although it is extreme how quickly you adapt to your new situation, and how strange some European things now are to me (Americans walk slower, and the handle to flush the toilet is usually on the left-hand side while here it is on the right, to name a few things)). But especially, because in "the land of the free", people are really and truly free. They can choose whatever they want, and others don't chastise them for it. I heard very little complaining while I was there, very little gossip, and many people who were in terrible situations were positive and nice. They are free to wear clothes that others wouldn't ever dream about wearing without getting strange or dirty looks, free to eat breakfast at 9 in the evening or get a pizza at 8 in the morning, free to visit their great national museums or complain that too much money is going to them, free to practise their religion, not get health insurance, get a job after high school, or get a child at 16. You may see this as bad things (in Europe, governments usually have these strict campaigns trying to discourage or encourage people), but the point of the matter is that they can choose. It took me a while to figure this thing out, but in the end, I think it is a good thing. In the Netherlands, the government decides so many things for you, that usually people a) don't think for themselves anymore and b) complain and gripe about everything. They never feel like it is their decision or possibility to change things, as they are being "taken care of". Now I know many Americans are in shitty situations that they did not choose for themselves and would love a little help, so it isn't the best system either. But overall, on many points, I think the American outlook on life is more positive and healthier. I wouldn't mind living there for a couple of years (I've said this about many countries, so this is not really a big thing, but the point is that I would never have said this before visiting) and I am very sure I will travel there again!

Garden produce

Yesterday we had our first garden-grown broccoli for dinner. Well, that actually makes it sound bigger than it was: we each had 3 pieces, as the broccoli itself was still quite small but had already started to flower. Now we've had quite some visitors to the garden lately who had no idea how broccoli is actually grown, so here's a picture I took about a week ago:

Our broccoli buds.

Yes, broccoli is a flower. The word actually means "flowering top of a cabbage" in Italian (I got this from Wikipedia, btw, my Italian is not that fluent). I don't know why so many people are surprised at the way broccoli grows, but it's always nice to learn something new, right?
Since my last gardening post there have been some changes: we now have (apart from the broccoli) 3 other vegetables growing in the garden: tomatoes, peppers, and winter leeks. The leeks replaced the beans (legumes, actually) that were slaughtered by a buch of slugs (same for the rocket). The strawberries and radishes are of course long gone, and the artichoke plant does not really look like it's doing much, but we'll keep it just to see whether it does something next year.
So, the tomatoes. We actually went for a store-bought version here, because the ones we grew from seed were just too tiny to produce flowers (or so we thought, they now have some very very small flowers, so something may still happen there. The store-bought tomato plant came with flowers in place, which have by now turned into some lovely tomatoes:

Cheating with tomatoes

I hope they will turn red before our big vacation, so we can actually enjoy them!
The pepper plant is also store-bought and still in flower, and the leeks are still very tiny at the moment, but they're supposed to grow until November/December. The grape plants have some veeeeery tiny grapes which we hope will get bigger in time, but last year the total harvest was 3 grapes, so we're not holding our breath on that one.
Apart from these functional plants, we of course also have some nice flowers, to keep the insects happy and thus to keep us happy.

Our own white rose.

Our rose (which we've had for a while now, but which doens't seem to get any bigger) had just one flower last year, so I'm very happy with the turnout of this year. There are some other flowers on the lower stems, which hadn't opened when I took this picture, so it looks even better now.

Alcea rosea, in good Latin.

I just found out that this is called a "Common Holleyhock" in English. Well, we call it "stokroos", which means "stick rose", so neither name is very favourable. Anyway, we've had these ones for 3 years now, and they've been doing great all along.

Clematis show-off.

They (meaning the housing association that owns the building) removed a whole wall of ivy from our garden last year, as it was getting into the roof tiles and window sills of the people living above us, and to replace it we put in a clematis, which is less damaging and nicer to look at. I'm never sure whether I like these plants, they look a bit too show-offy for me, but still, they're flowering nicely.

Butterfly central.

And finally a nice combo shot of our butterfly-bush and hydrangea. We've had both of these for a couple of years too now, they are both in corners of the bit of garden that gets the least sunlight, so I'm not sure whether they are totally happy, but they look nice and the butterfly-bush attracts a lot of butterflies and bees and bumblebees, so that's good.
That's the end of the tour for now, hopefully I can get you one more update some time in autumn, when most of the fruits of our labour should be in!