Today we take a look in the fridge of the Boer family and they will tell us a little bit about their eating habits. They are my best friends, Nienke, Jeroen and their 2 year old daughter Annemarie. Since about a year they became a lot more conscious of what they are eating and I hope it will inspire some people to do the same. They mainly eat vegetarian food, with some occasional fish. A lot of what they eat is vegan though and I love that! The reason they started to eat this way is because of the animal cruelty and they have a mini pig for almost 2 years now. This really helped a lot to make them think differently and to stop eating meat. Apart from all that, ‘Vegetarian options are delicious’ they say! Their milk and butter are always plant-based. Especially the chocolate milk is their daughters favourite, which I fully understand! At the moment there is organic yogurt in the fridge, but she often buys plant-based yogurt too.
Nienke doesn’t have certain days to get her groceries, because as a nurse her hours vary a lot. Most of the time she goes to the supermarket for het groceries and she buys little amounts at the same time. A lot of time she doesn’t know exactly what she has at home already, so she chose to have some products in stock. This way there is always something they can cook. She doesn’t go to only one certain supermarket, but she likes to go to different ones. For practical reasons (Annemarie is always coming) she mostly takes the car, but for some small things she also likes to go by bike or she takes the buggy. She doesn’t go a lot, but she sometimes also likes to go to the market: ‘Especially on a sunny Saturday it’s nice’. She loves the smell of all the different fruit, vegetables and nuts! In the summer she likes to get fruit which are in season, like strawberries and cherries!
On a day off Nienke and Annemarie like to take their time when it comes to breakfast. They drink tea and eat peanut butter sandwiches, with sliced banana or chocolate sprinkles on top and they always have a piece of fruit too, as there is always a full bowl of fruit to choose from. Jeroen takes advantage of that and often quickly grabs a banana before he rushes off to work. For lunch they have salads with toast or crackers, but sometimes as a treat they makes themselves some of their favourite banana pancakes! On working days Jeroen always eats at work and he can choose from a very wide range of foods from a buffet (lucky him!). Nienke is known for her fully loaded lunch bag she brings to work. She just wants to make sure she has a fresh lunch (or sometimes a delayed breakfast!). Very sometimes she also gets something at work, like a salad or a vegetarian soup for example. Dinner can be very diverse as they like to eat a lot of different vegetables and they combine that with pasta, quinoa, couscous or rice and then they have a meat substitute with it or the occasional fish. They prepare everything without salt, because any let overs will go to a very lucky piggy. Of course they snack some too in between their meals and this often is a yummy piece of dark chocolate, a piece of fruit and sometimes they also enjoy some biscuits and crisps.
I want to thank the Boer family to share their fridge and eating habits with us and to tell us how they try to live in a more conscious way.
I hope this inspired you and if it did, please let me know in the comments! If you also like to show your fridge, please send me a message via CONTACT! Thank you! X
This fridgecurious we are taking a look in the fridge of my cousin Mandy and her boyfriend Sven. What is so nice, is that it’s Mandy’s birthday today, yay! Happy Birthday! What is even nicer, Mandy is vegan since October 2016. Before she went vegan she was already vegetarian for 10 years. In the beginning of the transition she found it was quite a lot to take in and to learn and read about veganism, but it’s going very well now and she feels very good! I’m so proud of her that she took this step, as we are the only vegans in our family. Her boyfriend is still omni and so I thought it was interesting to see how they make this work. They both work full time and that’s why they go grocery shopping once a week. This works much better than getting bits and bobs every day. They rotate between 4 supermarkets, but most of it they get at the Dutch supermarket ‘Jumbo’. They only sometimes go to ‘Eko Plaza’ (health supermarket) or the Vegan Supermarket to get some special things. Because the 2nd of March they will move to the city Groningen, going to these supermarkets will probably increase as they will be much closer by then.
On the top shelf of the fridge she keeps all the spreads and sauces. There is a very nice plant-based herb-butter she gets at her local supermarket. They both like spicy food, so there is also a bottle of ‘sambal’, but the thing she is most happy with, is the plant-based mayonnaise from ‘Remia’. She has a jar and a bottle of this. She displayed the bottle in the front of the fridge, especially for the picture, haha.. I love it! The love for mayonnaise is so Dutch, I love it myself and I have to watch out I don’t eat too much of it. She likes to eat it with fries (yum!) and toasties and mix it up a bit with ketchup. I totally get this! Sven likes to drink sparkly water with a light flavour, so that’s what you see on the next shelf. You can also see bell peppers, carrots and cherry tomatoes. They eat a lot of vegetables and Mandy often takes cherry tomatoes and cucumber to work. In the left drawer you can see a package from the ‘vegetarische slager’ (vegetarian butcher) with ‘gehacktbal’, this is not vegan, but vegetarian. 
This is for Sven. He still eats a little meat now and then, but a lot of times he eats the same as Mandy or he goes for a vegetarian meal. They respect and take each others food choices into consideration. This is how they make it work and it makes them feel good. I do think that Sven deserves a compliment though! In the fridge door you can see a lot of Alpro products: butter, milk (Soy, Rice, Almond and she especially likes the Cashew) and yogurt. She likes to mix up the flavoured ones with the plain. Every morning she has breakfast with this yogurt, adding some oats and dried fruit. All the way in the top, you can see ‘Wilmersburger’ cheese. This is vegan cheese and super delicious. They use it to make toasties and often Sven eats toasties with this cheese too. They like the ‘Wilmersburger – würzig’ best.
Planet Manel 