From Dutch kitchens to English countryside, my life has been flavoured by the places I’ve called home.
I’m Wilhelmina, born and raised in the Netherlands, where I grew up in a kitchen where cooking from scratch wasn’t a trend, it was simply how things were done.
My mother cooked. Really cooked. Every day, for the people she loved. From an early age she gave me something I didn’t fully appreciate until much later — the basics. How to use good ingredients, how to trust a recipe, how to feed people properly. Over the years I’ve watched that knowledge quietly disappear. Ready made food has made cooking feel optional, and somewhere along the way an entire generation lost the confidence to simply stand at a stove and make something from scratch. That’s partly why The Traveled Table exists.
Life had other plans for me beyond the Netherlands. I lived in China, then California, and somewhere along the way my palate quietly transformed. New ingredients, new techniques, new ways of thinking about food, each place left its mark on how I cook. What I make today bears little resemblance to what I was cooking forty years ago. But it started there in my mother’s kitchen and that journey brought me exactly here.
My kitchen cupboards tell the whole story. Overflowing with herbs and spices gathered from a lifetime of cooking across cultures, they are the evidence of a life well travelled one recipe at a time. My heart lives in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flavours the warmth of cumin, the brightness of sumac, the richness of olive oil, the depth of pomegranate molasses. But I’m just as likely to pull out my Dutch baking recipes or lose myself in continental pastries and breads. Our palates are never static, and I’ve learned to embrace that evolution rather than resist it. Some weeks I crave the comfort of Dutch stamppot; other weeks nothing but za’atar and tahini will do. But whatever I’m cooking, I’m cooking it from scratch because that’s where the magic lives.
Now settled in England’s Hampshire countryside with my English sailor husband, I find myself on a mission: to make cooking attractive again. Not fancy restaurant cooking or Instagram-perfect plating but the kind of cooking that fills your home with delicious smells, brings people together, and creates memories around the dinner table. As an interior designer I approach food the way I approach a room: with attention to colour, texture, balance, and the stories that make a space or a meal feel like home.
The recipes you’ll find here have travelled, because recipes travel just as much as people do. Mine have arrived from all directions a dog-eared book, a friend’s kitchen, a scrap of paper, a dish tasted somewhere I can no longer quite place. They found their way to my table and became part of how I cook. Some are rooted in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean traditions, with Dutch comfort and continental baking woven through but their exact origins? Often delightfully unclear. If you recognise something of yours here, I hope you feel honoured. Your food found its way to my table, and that is the greatest compliment I know how to give.
Whether you’re rediscovering your kitchen, building your confidence, or simply tired of asking “what’s for dinner?” I’m glad you’re here. Tie on your apron, get your pots and pans out, and let’s make cooking attractive again.
Welcome to THE TRAVELED TABLE