All posts tagged: nuts

Shopping at organic store Het Natuurhuis, Antwerp

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Shop review #26 – Het Natuurhuis is an organic shop in Antwerp, and exists since the seventies. It translates as ‘Nature home‘. Natuurhuis now has three locations in the Antwerp area: one in the city center (Otto Veniusstraat), one at Zuid (Verlatstraat) and one in Merksem (Eethuisstraat). These photos are from my recent visit to Het Natuurhuis in the city center. It is located close to Antwerps main shopping street the Meir, and about 10 minutes from the central train station. It is a fairly large shop (not as big as the shops from organic chain Bioplanet, but about the same size as Biovita in Bruges and Mordan in Ostend). As my visits to Het Natuurhuis are most often on my way back to the train station, I am mostly pressed for time, or too exhausted after some city dwelling to have a relaxed look around in the shop. I have however spotted several vegan items that I would love to take with me, but the vegan icecream from Professor Grunschnabel or the frozen items from De Vegetarische Slager (The Vegetarian Butcher) would not last …

#69 The Dutch Weedburger at Novotel, Bruges **

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Restaurant review #69 – A couple of weeks ago, we went for dinner to the restaurant of the Novotel hotel in Bruges. Since a couple of months, most (or maybe all?) Novotel restaurants in Belgium serves the famous Dutch weedburger (no it has nothing to do with that ‘weed’, it is made from seaweeds ;-). Yeah! We have tasted the Dutch weedburger before on several occasions (see for example here in Texel) and are very happy that this specialty is now also available in Bruges! EDIT (2017): The Dutch Weedburger is no longer available at Novotel! I inquired beforehand with the reception of Novotel to be sure that the Dutch Weedburger is indeed available, and if we could get a vegan menu for two (explaining what we do and don’t eat). No problem. So a couple of weeks ago, we headed out to the Novotel. The restaurant is downstairs in the lobby of the hotel. It’s a very spacious place, with the hotel bar situated in the middle. It looks very modern and stylish, but it didn’t really give us …

A look inside shop Horeca Totaal (1), Bruges

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Shop review #13 – I have visited Horeca Totaal a couple of times. It’s a very large shop aimed at food professionals at the edge of Bruges (just around the corner from organic supermarket Bioplanet). There’s also a Horeca Totaal shop in Ostend. In one of my previous blogposts you can see the tea box that I have bought at Horeca Totaal. Chefs and other food professionals come to get their supplies at Horeca Totaal, but even if you are not professionally engaged in catering bussiness, you can also shop here. When I go to Horeca Totaal, I am still overwhelmed by the place. It is huge! I have too many photos to put them all in one post, so there will be a sequel to this post, focusing more on interesting products for vegans in Horeca Totaal. My impressions from Horeca Totaal – To be clear, it is NOT a vegan shop, and it also has a large butchery and fish section (photos are at the bottom of this post). These are in a seperate – fridge like chambers – of the shop, so you don’t …

Walnuts from our tree in the garden

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Each year, we have plenty of walnuts from the walnut tree in our garden. Although it is still a rather young tree (about 25 to 30 years old), it produces buckets and buckets full of walnuts. We don’t know what variety of walnut it is, as the tree was already in the garden when we moved here. Upon collecting the walnuts from the garden in the Fall (end of September and October), I usually place the nuts inside (heated room) for a week or two, so they can dry properly and turn them every day. Afterwards, I move them to the cellar, where it’s cool and dry. Every once in a while, I shell some walnuts and store the shelled nuts in a jar, ready for use in baking or other recipes. They need to be properly dried to store them like this, you can’t do this when you’ve freshly harvested them from the outside. I like to have some walnuts shelled and readily available, so I can just eat a handfull of them whenever I feel like it! See recipes with walnuts …