“Do you have a recipe for this?”
It’s the question I get the most. Pretty tricky one because I use recipes as inspiration and then cook from scratch. But now I can say, “Yes, I even have a cookbook full of my recipes!”
Over the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to make thousands of people happy with food. Small groups of 30, benefit dinners for up to 250 people, or a group on a traditional clipper, sailing on the Wadden Sea. The highlight was the cooking competition ‘The Chefs’ Line Nederland’ on 24Kitchen… Of course there were also many wonderful dinners at home with Corien, our children and friends. Food connects, food brings joy. It’s nice to see people smile when they go home again.
Fair is fair, in our family I am certainly not the only one and not the first with this love for food. My mother is a passionate cook, my grandmother cooked the most delicious dishes at a baron. I am, however, the first to have collected everything in a cookbook. A cookbook full of favorite family recipes from three generations!
Flavors from around the world
My cookbook ‘The flavors of home’ contains over 120 favorite recipes from three (!) generations over a period of the last 100 years. Recipes that have since been perfected by many hands. Furthermore, it is full of foreign recipes through our international experiences from ‘Arab to Zeeland’. From gingerbread from the early 1900s to Indian tandoori chicken and traditional Italian pastas.
It is actually more than a cookbook. You will experience how our food culture has changed over the past 100 years in both old and new recipes, photos and stories.
With this book I want to share the love of food. Really physically share it. That’s why all profits go to the shelter for the homeless ’t Hemeltje in Eindhoven. So that they can cook meals, eat together and offer a listening ear.
Price per cookbook: € 29.95 excluding shipping costs.
All profits are for ’t Hemeltje at Eindhoven
’t Hemeltje is a shelter for the homeless. It is a welcoming place in Eindhoven. A place where there is space, where you can find a listening ear for your story, your concerns and questions. There is a living room where you can meet others and where you can be who you are.
In ’t Hemeltje people from different walks of life meet each other. Twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, volunteers cook a hot meal and we eat together. The aim is to offer sociability and to break through loneliness. I really like that, because for me too, cooking is about bringing sociability and connection!
How nice would it be to do something for this group of people in our society with the sale of this cookbook? That is why I am taking the risk and advance the printing costs for the cookbooks. From the sale of the first book to the sale of the last book, all profits (€ 15.00 per book) go to ’t Hemeltje. My aim is to sell all the books. In this way I hope to raise a nice sum of € 7,500 – 10,000 in the coming years.
About Rokus
I’m Rokus Harder and cooking is my greatest passion. About 10 years ago I took up cooking seriously by catering for small and large groups. I regularly give workshops: baking pizza, making sausage or Italian cooking. Nothing gives more pleasure than cooking and eating something beautiful together!
With my wife Corien I live in Best. We have three beautiful children who have all flown the nest. We like to have fun and often have guests at home for dinner, or for a short or longer period of time. Together we have traveled a lot and lived in several countries, such as: India, Turkey, Libya and the Netherlands.
For years I have combined my passion for cooking with charity. That way I want to do my bit to give more people a better life. I had my own lasagna foodline and raised € 25,000 for Amref Flying Doctors.
Now my latest project is this cookbook, the total proceeds of which I’m donating to the open house and homeless shelter ’t Hemeltje in Eindhoven.
How to order the book
Interested to order my cookbook? You can do this via clicking “Kookboek bestellen” which will route you to a simple form to fill and payment via Tikkie. Or drop me a mail at my special kookbook email account: kookboek@inloophuishemeltje.nl
