Finally, I can start harvesting from my vegetable garden again :). We already have fresh lettuce for weeks now and I have also been able to pick and use the first pepper. Today, the first two zucchini were large enough to harvest and the cucumbers are also coming along just fine. My cabbage is growing fast and I also pulled the first onion out of the ground to see how big they already are. Big!

The tomato plants are full of tasty thick tomatoes, but they still have to turn red, so I can also harvest them when I need them. It’s still something special for me to walk outside while cooking to get a bell pepper or onion from the garden to use in my dish. In the Netherlands, it’s not custom at all to have a vegetable garden so I didn’t know anything about it. That probably makes it so much fun. It feels so “back to nature” :), it has something primitive. I really enjoy it so much!

You can also really taste the difference between freshly picked vegetables or those from the store. Especially with the tomatoes! The tomatoes from the store have almost no taste and are very watery, while my tomatoes have a delicious full flavor. The vegetables in the store, on the other hand, all look perfect while mine come in all forms and shapes, but that doesn’t bother me at all. They are delicious!

Bine has been infected with the »mushroom virus« by a neighbor. Never heard of it? No, it does not resemble the Coronavirus at all, don’t panic ;). He loves going to the woods to look for (and pick) mushrooms. He now knows exactly which ones are edible and which ones are not and it has really become a sport for him to try and find them. Nowadays, he also knows better in which weather conditions they grow and he has the best chance of finding some. These are mainly Porcini mushrooms and Cantherelles. He prepares them for himself, with a fried onion and egg. He’s the only one in our household who eats mushrooms, so luckily he doesn’t have to share them, haha.

You still see that a lot here, people looking for and picking edible products in nature. Also plants for tea, such as Lungwort. The tea from the dried flowers is very good for a cold on the respiratory tract. Or the young leaves of the dandelion. You can make a delicious salad with boiled egg and potato and some mayonnaise and vinegar. We also have a cherry tree in the garden that gives delicious sweet cherries ….. when the blossom does not freeze, that is. Our cherry tree always blooms very early in the spring, so there is a good chance that there will still be frost while the tree just started blooming. This means no cherries. Last year and again this year we had nothing :(. Such a pity! But the year before it was so full that I froze a lot of cherries and we ate them for months.

It is funny to see that almost every year a different product suddenly does very well or very badly. Last year, for example, I had a lot of large tomato plants, but maybe only 10 mini tomatoes in total, while the year before I had so many tomatoes that I made sauce and put it in pots. However, last year, I had a lot of peppers that I also cleaned and froze and then ate for a whole year. The year before I had a lot of cucumbers and last year not at all. So every year it is a surprise to wait and see what will grow well and what will not. We didn’t have any lettuce last year, although you would think that it really grows soooo easily that it’s almost impossible to go wrong. Well, I managed to go wrong with it. No idea why. But I’m probably doing something wrong. Fortunately, I can always go to some neighbors for advice and that’s how I still learn something new every year :).