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Butternut pumpkin soup
The sweetness of autumn I do love autumn, don’t you? When the leaves on the trees have turned their darkest green and there is a little sensation of coolness on the morning breeze and the air smells just a little more earthy you know it’s time. Time to run a hand over a woolen jumper, time for boots, time for a cozy fire. Time for different pops of color for different flavors in the kitchen. Time to fall in love with a new season! Let’s head to my kitchen for the king of color … Butternut Pumpkin or Butternut Squash soup!Ingredients and preparation – Butternut Pumpkin Soup For 4- 8 people (I cook leftovers or prep a next batch for the freezer) 1 large butternut – cubed (set half aside) 1 large onions – roughly chopped (frozen also works) 3 cloves of garlic (or as you wish) – minced 4 …
Petra of Le Puy Ardouin tests own Tiny House accommodations during lock-down
After a long search for the perfect spot to live in France, Dutch couple Petra and Jan fell for their rustic farmhouse ‘like a ton of bricks’. We can understand why! Among the ancient trees, across a sloping terrain, one can almost touch the sound of silence. Le Puy Ardouin is an earthly place that speaks for itself, that brings you back to simplicity. Sunday, March 15th. We’ve just completed a training course in the Netherlands and plan to drive to France tomorrow morning. We hear that from 18.00 that evening all restaurants in the Netherlands have to close their doors. We’re worried about making it back to our place in France, Le Puy Ardouin, because there’s a threat of a lock-down. That’s why we decide to leave immediately and drive through the night. On Monday morning we’re relieved to be greeted by our dog Lola and our friend Peter, who …
The silver lining of lockdown at B&B Au Passage du Gois
When we asked to find a title or tag line for their blog post, Martine told us that she thought the motto of footballer Johan Cruyff was appropriate to describe their almost 2 months of lockdown. She found a balance in routine, in sunshine and in the wildness of her husband Hemko’s confinement beard.It doesn’t happen often, but for the first time in a long time there was something you couldn’t find on Google. What is a COVID-19 confinement in France, how does it work and when will it be over? But there wasn’t much information initially so, we thought… well, we’ll need to come up with some sort of answer ourselves. We sat around the table and made some kind of a plan of action. We said to each other: we will not be sleeping in, but get up at our normal time and get to work, because time …
Owners of L’Etournerie Gites & Camping Vendée look to the future
We have asked a few Vendéen small business owners to discuss their plans for the future whilst coping through enforced quarantine. In a first installment, allow us to introduce you to Renée, René, Jacky, Emma & Mariecke, a Dutch family who own L’Etournerie Gites and Camping where tranquility, good food, and flowers are central to Dutch-French hospitality in the Vendée!In 15 years, you develop habits. Or maybe a rhythm. At the beginning of the year, you start looking at everything that needs to be done before you can announce that you are ‘open for business’ once again. You tick off all those things and then you put up the sign “OUVERT”. Only this year, a pandemic with the inevitable French government’s announcement of a complete lockdown starting March 17th, threw a spanner in the works. At the beginning, everything was so focused on China that no one in Europe was really …
Vegetarian Butternut Pie – an autumn delight!
Last year in fall or winter, Sky News announced the upcoming UK budget revelation with an infomercial where the main character was a pie… a wintry pie that looked delicious and easy enough to try to make. The infomercial showed the pie being made from scratch, and even without an actual recipe, I thought well, come on, you can figure this out. So, here it is, probably not exact and really it doesn’t matter. Because this pie is delicious, and it’s vegetarian. That makes it pretty much perfect for me. The question was, would my husband -the carnivore- like it too?Ingredients – Vegetarian Butternut Pie 1 butternut squash peeled and sliced into 1 cm portions or in fingers 1 red paprika (bell pepper), washed, seeds removed, cut into chunks 1 medium sized carrot peeled, then washed, and shopped into strips 1 courgette, peeled and shopped into strips Optional: spinach, washed, …