Confession: I’m buying my house based on thuisbezorgd.nl
Adeline loves food, a lot and often, both at home and out. Usually that goes well, but sometimes it doesn’t. This week, she’s baring all.
How great would it be if I were some kind of Nigella Lawson? I can already see myself standing in a huge kitchen, wearing an apron, with some casually applied baking powder in my hair and my fingers in dark chocolate melted au bain-marie. The reality is a little different, I’m afraid. And I only really found that out when I made an offer on a house this week.
Outside Amsterdam, they still have kitchens
In Amsterdam, there’s this phenomenon where houses are sold without kitchens. Estate agents still dare to ask €10,000 per square metre for them, by the way, but that’s beside the point. So I made an offer on a house with a kitchen, but then again, it was outside Amsterdam; they still do kitchens there. Only, while viewing it, I heard myself say: pretty big, huh, that kitchen? Maybe part of it could be taken out. And suddenly I was one of those people with no appreciation for food. The type of person who values convenience, for whom cooking seems like a chore, and who has poké bowls delivered to work because they don’t make them in the hamlet where I live (true story).
Checking Deliveroo straight away
Where I should be busy with cadastral details, the boundary line and burying myself under mortgage stuff, I’m browsing thuisbezorgd.nl to see how much bigger the selection gets now that I’m going to live closer to a medium-sized city. Then I immediately check Deliveroo to see whether it has any pulse at the new postcode at all (which, unfortunately, it doesn’t). But suddenly I do see options.
Delivery times go from 45 (!) minutes to 15; this is excellent news, people. I see tacos, I see a Papa John’s, I even see Vietnamese food with a rating that makes your mouth water. Suddenly I have 9 options for ordering sushi, instead of just one. I can have such a divine pizza delivered by 11 different pizza places. And they even have more than the average 13 reviews that restaurants in my village manage. Two peak above 3,000; you can almost call them professional delivery drivers. I’m going from 16 mediocre-I-wouldn’t-actually-want-to-eat-there restaurants to 36 I-can-even-order-healthy-if-I-want delivery buddies. 36! I couldn’t even order that much in one month. Mamma mia.
Easy to cheat
Meanwhile, I’m still wondering how this could have happened. I used to be at the greengrocer’s market at 7 a.m. to find a reasonably priced pumpkin for soup, and I knew when romanesco was in season. I tossed toppings for bruschetta, added pinches of things to vinaigrettes and stirred pans with wooden spoons. Maybe I shouldn’t immediately strangle that kitchen in the new house, but give it a chance. It and me together, à la Nigella. Although it is easy to cheat with all those delivery drivers nearby.
Hot noodle soup with thinly sliced beef and homemade beef meatballs… I’m already craving it.
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