Boerenbont

Sometime in the mid-1970s, before moving to Canada, my mother bought Boerenbonten dishes at the Albertcuypmarkt in Amsterdam.  Boerenbont is a type of traditional pottery from the Netherlands, handpainted in a blue, red, green and yellow floral pattern, originally made more than a century ago.  Still popular in the Netherlands, Royal Boch out of Belgium continues to make and sell it.

The Boerenbont became my mom's "good" dishes and over the years as she travelled back and forth to the Netherlands for vacations, she expanded from the original cups, dinner and luncheon plates, serving and soup bowls to almost every piece available, including a teapot, salt and pepper shakers, dessert dishes, juice cups, cups and saucers, a gravy boat and much, much more.  Every Christmas and birthday dinner was served off these dishes, and I knew my mom would react with "gezellig!" (cosy!) whenever we set the table with them. 


Christmas dinner being served by my mom back in 1979

About six years ago my mother moved into my house and brought the Boerenbont with her, destined to be my good dishes.  A lack of room in my kitchen resulted in them being stored in my basement in a container and I never got my act together to bring them out at the more important meals.  It was probably a disappointment to my mother because I had always loved them but they were just going unused.  She even suggested selling them.  However, when my mom moved into a nursing home we constructed a separate kitchen for my cake design business in our basement.  Many of the specialized baking tools I was storing in the armoire in the livingroom beside my upstairs kitchen moved out and the Boerenbont moved in!  Just like my mom did before me, I now pull out the Boerenbont for special occasions!  It makes me feel great to continue this tradition and finally own a set of "good" dishes! 



Christmas dinner 2011



Family dining

Meals were always an event growing up.  In our tiny Amsterdam home, the table was smack-dab in the middle of the livingroom.  Pushed towards the wall when not in use, pulled out when needed, the first order of business was always the tablecloth.  The table was already covered in a couple of tablecloths - some sort of oilcloth to protect the table and then covered with a woven cloth with awesome tassles for style.  I loved playing with those tassles and if I close my eyes I can still feel them in my fingers.

At mealtime, a cotton cloth would be hauled out and placed overtop of the cloths already on the table.  I remember the table always being soft while eating from the layers of tablecloths.  There was quite a superstition associated with the tablecloths.  A fresh-from-the-wash cloth would inevitably get dirty the first time in use - a gravy drip or a pudding slop.  Then my mother would say that she wouldn't wash it for just one spill and wait until it got good and dirty before washing it again.  Of course, nothing would spill on it again and finally it would just get washed anyways.  A clean cloth would be broken out and the first time in use - a spill! 

We always ate together at the table.  That was the very important ritual at our house.  We ate family style with plates of bread and toppings at breakfast and lunchtime, bowls of steaming hot food at dinner time.  It made for lots of family time, talking, laughing and enjoying each other.  Oh, the life lessons we learned there! 

We did occasionally eat lunch away from the table.  My mom would ask if we wanted "camping bread".  It was always met with a resounding "yes!" and off she would go to break out that special kind of bread.  Open-faced sandwiches would appear on plates and we would sit in the living room, right beside the dining table (!) and enjoy that incredibly delicious lunch, tasting so much better than when we ate at the table.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered "camping bread" wasn't a special recipe baked up by the baker, just regular bread eaten on our laps!  In the innocence of youth, it was a mystery why it tasted so much better!

Eating at the table for each meal didn't end until my husband and I moved into our first apartment.  We brought a bunch of hand-me-downs with us, including an old table, but I think we ate at it twice and after about a year we got rid of the table.  Our apartment also had a bar that we could have eaten at, we didn't do that even once!  We lived like students (well, I was one!) and ate out of our laps.  For five years!  We never invited anyone to dinner because there was no place to eat once we got rid of the table.

One of my greatest joys when we moved into our first house was the delivery of our newly purchased dining room table.  We visited many, many stores, but eventually settled on a beautiful solid maple table with 6 chairs (I wish I could have justified more chairs and a sideboard, but alas...).  That was 15 years ago and we still have and use that table every day.  For every meal.  The four of us gather and eat together.  We try to wait until everyone is sitting to start eating (sometimes that is hard if you are really, really hungry!)  I have happy memories of lots of great meals shared at the table with family and friends.  I hope to have so many more!

My first cookbook

My dad used to get those Reader's Digest book suggestions in the mail and one day he noticed a cookbook that he thought would be perfect for me, for my first cookbook.  He ordered it through the mail and when it arrived, he hid it away to give me for Christmas.  Nine days before Christmas that year he passed away of a devastating heart attack.  After more than a decade of heart troubles, his heart finally could do no more and at fifteen, I had lost my beloved father. 

The days and weeks and certainly the holidays that followed were the darkest period of my life.  On Christmas morning, I still received that cookbook; the last present physical present I would ever receive from him.  My mom told me the story of him picking the book for me and how excited he was to give it to me, as well as her struggle to find where he had hidden it when it had arrived in the mail. 

The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook, for many years, the best cookbook in the world to me!  So many wonderful recipes, so much information learned.  I never made the soufflé on the cover (I just realized that!) but so many other wonderful recipes came to life for me, ones that I continue to use in my day to day cooking, including lemon ice, moist bread stuffing, roasts, turkeys, desserts, pancakes, etc.  It became a reference guide for how to set the table, how to lay out a buffet table, menu planning, how to prepare and cook any vegetable or fruit, the Canadian equivalent name of cuts of beef, roasting times for turkeys and chickens and so much more.  I wish he could have known how much joy it has brought me, how many people I have fed with recipes from its pages and how much I have missed him over the years.

My oldest daughter turned thirteen this week, and while we had already spoiled her (early) with an electronic book reader, we didn't want her actual birthday to go by without a little something.  We decided it was time for her own cookbook.  Since starting my business, I have relied more and more on my girls to help around the house and she has stepped up to the plate (no pun intended!) with meals.  It has been awesome.  She started reading my cookbooks and we decided it was time for her to have her own!

She was thrilled to get this gift, The America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook, in fact, she squealed with delight!  The girls and I faithfully watch the tv show on PBS each week and I already had the regular (read: non-healthy) version of the cookbook that she had been checking out.  She has already read her cookbook like a novel and has come up with a number of great ideas for meals.  She now gives me tidbits of advice on how to prepare vegetables and rice, meal suggestions and recipes.  She looks for recipes that are suitable for our family's special dietary needs and searches for ways to make a recipe fit our life.  It is such a gift to have her helping me, sharing my love of cooking with me and taking the first steps to becoming a wonderful cook.  But the biggest gift of all was that I was able to witness her face when she received her first cookbook.  I hope I can love her and the meals she is going to make for us, for many more years!

Two challenging weeks in the kitchen

I'm not a gadget girl.  I like a paring knife to chop onions, a chef's knife to chop carrots and a serated knife to cut bread.  A classic pepper mill, a cutting board, some sharp scissors.  I need a vegetable peeler and to open a bottle of wine, I just want a classic restaurant corkscrew.  A couple of heat-proof rubber spatulas, some wooden spoons, some stainless ladles and a good quality can opener.  Some cast iron pots, a couple of non-stick frying pans and my beloved le Creuset Dutch oven, along with some stainless steel pots.

Each summer we spend two weeks at a wonderful cottage.  The first year we went, I brought a few of my tools (just in case).  The list has grown every year.  It stems from a combination of being pickier and forgetting what they have.  My favourite knives, cutting boards and pans are a must!  Still, I struggle.  This year, for example, I didn't bring my can opener, because the cottage has two.  However, one left my can with three large uncut spots, the other was the cheapest kind of opener that left huge welts in my fingertips.  I left my scissors at home and the two pairs at the cottage had trouble cutting through just about everything!  Oh yes, and we went pepperless for two weeks.  We used the barbeque, but everything else was cooked in the two pots I brought from home.  The water is not safe to drink, so every bit of water used for cooking or washing has to bottled.  There is no dishwasher, so we struggle with keeping up with the dishes - I resorted to paper plates and cringed at every meal, being an environmentalist at heart!  And for some reason this year, there were hardly any dishtowels!  I go through about three per day in my upstairs kitchen (where I have a dishwasher!) and five or more in my downstairs one!  Here, I struggled with 4 for two weeks, obviously I resorted to a laundromat.

Having said all that, it wasn't camping (which you could probably imagine is not my thing!) and two weeks away from the regular schedule was wonderful!  Meals are simpler at the cottage and there is a strange sense when buying groceries that the end is in sight.  At home, any leftovers can go into the fridge without thought towards using them up.  At the cottage, everything has to be finished within the two weeks.  The extra eggs get made into French toast for breakfast and devilled eggs for lunch.  Cheese is made into grilled cheese and cut into chunks for snacks.  That home-made salsa I brought was used for nachos and tacos and dipping.  The last few days is a crazy mish-mash of meals using up any and all leftovers, I guess it is part of the cottage appeal!

As we approached day 12 and 13, I started allowing myself to think of my home kitchen(s) and I really started missing them.  Part of it is just that I like my own stuff.  I also missed having a dishwasher and the familiarity of my things.  We are home now, and the glow of our cottage vacation has faded.  But I haven't forgotten the simpler life and the closeness of our time together that the cottage offers us.  That cosy kitchen is a special place that feeds my family as nature and relaxation feeds our souls.  Until next year!

My childhood meal from hell and how I am repeating the cycle

I think I was 5 or 6.  Dinner sat before me on the table.  It was hideous!  It was monstrous!  It was vile!  I was not to leave the table until my plate was empty.  The night seemed to last forever.  How was I ever supposed to finish this horrible, disgusting, revolting plateful of food that teased me with its grossness?  My parents had long ago finished their meal.  My brother (in the same predicament as me) and I still sat there, hoping the food would magically disappear from our plates.  I remember our parents' irritation with us at not eating this meal.  Finally, in disgust, my parents said we could go straight to bed instead of finishing the food.  I couldn't choose that option, because it would mean missing the only five minutes of daily children's programming Dutch television offered.  No, I slogged on, while my brother chose to go to bed hungry.  He cried and cried (small house, our shared bedroom was right beside the diningroom/familyroom).  I tried to offer him comfort him by calling out to him that I would tell him what he missed on our television show.  I must have finally eaten that dinner from hell and I am pretty sure my mother never served it again.

 

Fast forward 35 years.  I found falafels at Costco yesterday.  An awesome vegetarian option!  Not tofu, not gas-inducing beans and no animals had to die for this meal!  I sauteed peppers and onions and mushrooms, served it on pitas and added tzatziki.  I thought it was wonderful.  Three out of four of us ate it right up!

About my family - in addition to my husband, I have two tween daughters: two wonderful young ladies who are special in their own ways.  One loves horses, nature and food, especially dinner; the other one loves dance, fashion and breakfast and lunch.  While one of my girls will try any kind of food, loves most everything she tries and could eat all day, my other daughter has always been a picky eater.  Born premature, diagnosed with anemia at 5 months, she weighed 10 pounds at 1 year old.  She has always been healthy, but the food thing has caused strife between my husband and I since she started on solid food.  I believe she will eat when she is hungry.  If she won't eat her dinner, I figure - whatever!  Her choices are fruit or something equally healthy or she can wait until breakfast.  My husband thinks she will suffer greatly if she doesn't eat dinner.  And it isn't easy.  I once served a tofurkey, and it was awesome!  Miss Picky bawled.  Just bawled about it.  She just couldn't eat it.  We still tease her about that one.

So back to last night,...  I was excited about this meal.  While the rest of us ate, Miss Picky hummed and hawed, picked at the pita, fished out some peppers, "accidentally" dropped a falafel ball on the floor...  It was torture.  For her and for me.  I was so irritated with her.  I wasn't feeding her garbage, it was yummy!  It was saving an animal's life.  It was healthy.  It wasn't tofu.  I read her the ingredients - chick peas, celery, carrots, cilantro, spices...  I wanted to yell at her to go to bed without supper.  She had tears about it.  I left the table in disgust.  Finally she finished.  I won't be serving that meal again...  I ask you, is that such a horrible meal?  Am I such a horrible mother? 

So back to 35 years ago, that horrible meal my mother served me?  It was an omelette.

Eetsmakelijk!

That is how every meal started - eetsmakelijk!  (It is pronounced ate-smack-u-lick.) It is the Dutch way to say Bon Appétit. While there is no direct translation, I always tell people it is a way to encourage others to enjoy their meal. And it was such a normality at our house that a meal felt strange if it was not said by each person.

There are a number of variations, perhaps a regional phenomenon, something my husband and I discovered one time on a bus tour through Holland. As the bus driver dropped each person off at the end of the day, he yelled out “smakelijk eten!” My Canadian husband looked at me in confusion - he understood the word, but recognized it was mixed up. Imagine his further surprise when he heard someone call back “eetse!” My favourite version is the one my youngest brother came up with. He went through a strange stage where he said everything backwards. Now, I am younger than him, so this is my recollection: I do not think he walked around speaking backwards, he would just hear a word and instantly say it backwards. One night it happened during dinner. As we called out “eetsmakelijk!” he answered with “kijlekamstee!” It stuck, he continued to say it, long after every other backwards word was abandoned. This had to have happened over 35 years ago. Today, the tradition continues as my 10 year old wishes us “kijlekamstee” before we eat! I love it!

Oh goodness - back in 1978 I was ready to have some eetsmakelijk!  It is the wrong way to use the term, but come on!  Look how excited I am to dig into that... yes, a ham, covered with strange fruit formations!

Before the beginning...

My relationship with food was determined even before I was born.  My parents were teenagers living in Amsterdam during World War 2 and survived the "hunger winter" of 1944-1945.  Dealing with the constant hunger caused by the Nazi's pilfering of the Dutch food to Germany was a theme often talked about in my house when I was growing up.  In fact, if I ever complained about being hungry, I would hear the appropriate retort of "you don't know what hunger is!" 


Dutch ration cards

It was during that time that my dad's pet rabbit became dinner.  Maybe that was always the plan, but I believe he thought it was a pet, not destined to be his meal.  I think my father's family survived the war because my grandfather had some sort of foresight that caused him to buy and store cigars before the war.  During the war he traded them for food.  My mother had a more difficult time and tells tales of cooking dried beans someone had acquired that wouldn't get soft no matter how long they were cooked (they were very, very old!), of stealing a carrot from a farmer's stand out of pure desperation, of the horror of the final winter without heat, without water and without food.  The situation was so bad that if by some miracle some food was found, in order to cook it, any wooden object that could be found (including door frames and attic beams) had to be chopped into matchstick sized pieces to fuel a makeshift stove made out of a coffee can. My mother did eventually spend some time outside of the city at a farm where she was able to eat more regularly.

Even after my parents got married in 1950, meat was still only available in limited quantities, and in my years growing up at home meatballs were an inexpensive regular and a favourite (always with a little nutmeg, and not before we each had a little taste of the raw ground beef!)  My parents always taught us to clean our plates, I would have to take another boiled potato to mash and suck up the leftover gravy on my plate, I guess because bringing a plate back to the kitchen that had leftover gravy on it would be a waste!  I'll never forget the sound of my dad's fork scraping over his plate getting the last of the food off.  Without exageration, I tell you that his plate was often so scraped it could be put directly into the cupboard without anyone ever thinking it was still dirty!


My parent's kitchen in Amsterdam after the renovation in 1968 (still referred to as the "New Kitchen"!)

It probably had a lot to do with the times, but I don't think my mom was an adventurous cook.  The vegetables she made were always overcooked and the favourites were Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale and cabbage.  She also served a lot of meatballs.  And then the nightly starch - potatoes and gravy, potatoes and gravy or potatoes and gravy.  I don't believe my parents enjoyed a meal if it didn't have gravy.  My parents were always thankful though, they remembered when they didn't have anything to eat. 

It wasn't until we moved to Canada that my mom started showing an interest in recipes and variety.  She enjoyed some cooking shows on television and she also credits her time at Weight Watchers with teaching her about portion sizes and trying new recipes.  After my dad died in 1983 she started relying on a lot of frozen food and even today her tastes are simple and easily satisfied.


The Canadian kitchen.  This home was a place of pride and joy for my parents.

I cook very differently than my mother ever did.  I like to cook from scratch, I like to try new things, but I have a lot of limitations on my ingredients.  And there is a story about how all that came about.  Well, I'll start that journey on another day.  For now, as you eat your next meal - eetsmakelijk!