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is a type of traditional pottery from the Netherlands, handpainted in a blue, red, green and yellow floral pattern, originally made more than a century ago.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!