Even iets wat mij persoonlijk behoorlijk raakt. Ik tuin zelf bij volkstuinvereniging ’t Karveel in Lelystad.

En ik hoop dat dit mag van de moderators.

Mien toentje :)

De gemeente onderzoekt ons gebied als mogelijke locatie voor woonwagenstandplaatsen.

Ik ben niet tegen nieuwe woonwagenstandplaatsen. Ik begrijp alleen niet waarom daarvoor een bestaand en actief volkstuincomplex zou moeten verdwijnen.

Hier is jarenlang aan gebouwd: tuinen, fruitbomen, houtwallen en speciale ouderentuinen zodat mensen ook op hogere leeftijd kunnen blijven tuinieren. Voor veel leden is het bovendien veel meer dan alleen groenten verbouwen: het is ontspanning, beweging en sociaal contact.

Onze ouderentuinen die we in 2019 hebben gerealiseerd.

We hebben daarom een petitie gestart voor behoud van het complex. Die is inmiddels meer dan 800 keer ondertekend.

Ik deel hem hier omdat ik vermoed dat mede-moestuinders begrijpen hoeveel tijd en liefde er in zo'n complex zit. Als je ons wilt steunen: tekenen en delen wordt enorm gewaardeerd.

Petitie: behoud de volkstuinen aan de Bosweg

Wrote this as a blog post originally, but honestly it became too relatable/funny not to post here as well.

This one dates back to my very young self. I must have been around five years old at most, as I don’t remember my younger brother being in the picture yet.

The background of this kernel panic is set at the house of my great-grandparents on a beautiful warm Sunday somewhere in the early afternoon, just before dinner.

Before I start this story, there’s something important I should mention.

I’m on the autism spectrum, and food can sometimes be surprisingly difficult for people with autism.

In Dutch we have a saying for this issue, although it is not specifically related to autistic people:

>Wat de boer niet kent dat vreet hij niet.

This translates in English to somewhat like:

>“If it looks unfamiliar, the Dutch peasant brain rejects it immediately.”

And that is exactly what triggered this particular Kernel Panic.

I asked my grandmother what was for dinner.

Her answer:

“Goulash.”

Kernel panic in progress!

CEO Bob immediately demanded an emergency meeting.

>“Goulash? What the heck is goulash?!”

The Smell Department issued multiple warnings:

• Unknown aroma profile detected
• No matching records found in the food database
• Suspicion levels rising

Meanwhile, the Eye Department confirmed:

• Brownish substance present in cooking container
• Texture unclear
• Threat assessment inconclusive

Bob, or rather… ME, immediately made an executive decision:

There is absolutely no way I am eating whatever is currently cooking in that pan.

What happened next still surprises me to this day.

I told my grandma that I wasn’t going to eat it because I didn’t like the way it looked or smelled.

All she said was:

“Okay, that’s fine. But you’re not getting any treats until you’ve eaten your dinner.”

That afternoon I walked into the kitchen several times to see whether I was ready to eat my goulash.

After all, I really wanted that sweet treat!

But every single time I saw the goulash with white rice, my stomach dropped and the system once again reported:

“Nope.”

Short circuit

This was the first food-related kernel panic I can consciously remember.

It definitely wasn’t the last.

Over the years I experienced quite a few food panics and short circuits.

To name a few:

• Pizza for a very long time? HELL NO. Too unpredictable!
• The first time I ate a cordon bleu. No big deal, you would say. But cheese and ham inside meat? NOPE!
• Christmas dinner at work: deer loin with sauerkraut. I would probably love that now, but back then? Absolutely not.

Thankfully it became much better over time, and these days the list of things I actually eat is pretty extensive.

Still, food being recognizable and predictable helps enormously in my case.

Delayed short circuit

And a delayed short circuit and hard “NOPE” from my factory also occurs sometimes.

The first bite gets accepted.

The post-processing department, however, may still reject the entire food item several seconds, minutes, hours or even days later.

Honorary mentions in that category are:

• Carpaccio. Initial system acceptance succeeded. Follow-up encounter resulted in catastrophic rejection.
• Raw endive mashed potatoes. First encounter: tolerated. Second encounter: emergency gag reflex activated.
• Cold shrimp dishes. Factory unable to process shrimp below operational temperature range.

And to make things even weirder:

I genuinely love cooked endive.

But raw endive mixed into mashed potatoes?

Absolutely not! No way! Nope! Nein! Nee! Njet! Never!

Apparently my factory classifies cooked and raw endive as two entirely separate species.

So yes, sometimes I genuinely feel like a culinary barbarian.

Somehow my factory permanently linked certain foods to certain temperatures and preparation methods.

Cold food belongs in the dessert category.

Ice cream? Fine.

Pudding? Fine

Cold tomato soup as a dinner starter?

Critical computation failure!

And then there’s the weird exception:

Lettuce for dinner.

With cucumber, small pieces of apple, other fruits and a boiled egg?

Somehow my factory considers that the perfect dinner when it’s warm outside.

One thing became painfully clear over the years:

>The internal food protocol database is wildly inconsistent.

Closing words

Sometimes I genuinely wonder:

Am I the only one with these strange unwritten food rules inside my factory, or are there more people like this?

Or, put into factory perspective:

Surely I can’t be the only person whose factory maintains a bizarre undocumented food protocol database…

right?