You forget just how cold the water is that flows through the taps. How numb your hands become in mere minutes. Unlike at home – in Nigeria where the water from the taps is always warm. You forget how narrow and winding Dutch stairwells are. How steep. How torturous it is to walk down the...
Encouragement. A good-for-your-soul feeling which I’m currently experiencing, thanks to my friends in The Netherlands. A hope that all can and will be.
Another video from the Leiden market, this time focused on ilias of ilias delicatessen, a born salesman! [flickr video=9165049379 secret=ca03b516ca w=500 h=280]
Hollandse Nieuwe Haring. Dutch new herring – of the season. Hollandse Nieuwe is the season’s first herring, which starts appearing at the beginning of June. Only Herring caught between May and July can be called ‘nieuwe‘. Yes, its the season for and of many things, home and abroad. And nowhere in the world is Herring...
Not a single thing has changed. The office is the same – the carpets are still on the wall. The sandwich shop is now a hub: re-designed with upstairs seating. The coffee shop still serves baby cappuccinos, my delight – milky with only a hint of coffee. I ignore the cakes, delicious as they look....
Our ‘dining room voyages’ begin with mint tea – thanks to Morocco and its famous tea culture. We drink our Nigerian version, out of a rather English teapot from Turkish tulip glasses – evidence of our global identity. We love it. Mint is somewhat vital to our family’s happiness. For months, our garden blooms with...
I’ve been away in Edinburgh, where love has taken me by surprise. For love has a way of doing that, doesn’t it? Be it love for man, child, and even city. All my life, I’ve dreamt of loving only a handful of cities –Tokyo in the spring when the cherry blossoms perfume the air and...
Consider this the sequel to the LA Times’s Lemon List ‘100 things to do with a Meyer Lemon’, essential reading for Meyer Lemon buffs. Like me. Indeed one can find a multitude of ways to worship the Meyer. #17: Give a Lemon Lesson. Watch children chomp on it with excitement Below are 34 35 of my...
Do you sense it as well? This grasping at straws. The Meyers are leaving me be. And I sit here, moaning the end of a season, a friendship….a love affair even, …..with Meyers, my Meyers. The strawberries are no better. They’ve turned an insipid colour that I won’t dignify by calling red. For these bear...