Shimeji Mushrooms
It must be something that only people who love cooking can appreciate; the ability to be able to buy the most beautiful ingredients at your own doorstep.
I am not that lucky as the place I live in doesn’t seem to feel the need to create places where you can buy something other then potatoes and regular vegetables. I guess there must be no market for it, although that is hard to believe! I would certainly buy it.
Places like Amsterdam, Haarlem or Utrecht all have fantastic little shops where you can buy all sorts of homegrown produce or from smaller farmers, locally grown. They even have a special “supermarket” called Marqt, where you can buy fantastic stuff all from small producers who get their own space there. So if you go to the bakery section you would get real bread, if you go to the butcher area you get meat from a small farmer. Anyway, I can complain as much as I want; that is not gonna get those shops here, but you never know what might happen in the future. Although with the current climate I am not so sure that is gonna happen.
Red beet sprouts
Ollie (foodstylist) had suggested to me to get a Hanos card. I never figured I would be able to get one as it is mainly for restaurants to buy their ingredients etc. but it was actually surprisingly easy and now I can go there and buy all sorts of lovely goodness!
So on thursday I just had to go there and buy some ingredients for photography (and eating later) so here are a few examples of the stuff that I bought. The mushrooms are fantastic and have a quite pungy flavour. The beetroot sprouts are great but as dangerous when it comes to coloring (my lovely white tablecloth) as is the mother beetroot! 
I had to restrain myself from buying too much stuff, so I ended up buying dried peas, as those I can use for a much longer period… But I will be back many many times! I haven’t even gone into the meat, fish and dairy section yet, knowing that I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself buying things I didn’t need!
