In
‘It is official, since 1 June I have been registered with the Chamber of Commerce. It was so exciting, I started my own business for the first time. I still thought: it would be so nice if I met someone at the Chamber of Commerce who knows bacon. Then I came to a Surinamese woman at the counter who told me that she always gets her gingerbread at a special toko in Almere. I brought my sugar-free bacon cake and we ate a piece together.
“Since I tried to conceive between 2011 to 2013 and went through a whole hospital process, I cook gluten-free a lot. At the time I thought it might help me to have a baby, unfortunately that was not the case. But I really like to make gluten- or sugar-free versions of things I like. A while ago I baked a sugar-free and low-carbohydrate bacon cake for a friend with diabetes. And when I posted about it on social media, I kept getting requests from people who also wanted a sugar-free bacon cake.
„I work four days on a permanent basis at the Montessori College, I have varying shifts at Ajax and in my spare time I now bake sugar-free bacon cakes or variants thereof: low in carbohydrates or without gluten and lactose. People can email me to order – I’m afraid if I open a webshop I’ll be flooded. My mom is willing to help with baking, after all, I learned it from her.”
Out
‘My husband earns more than I do, so now and then he pays a little more, but we divide the fixed costs by two. I don’t save for a specific purpose, I just want to have some money on hand. And when someone in the family could use some support, I say: come on, let’s go do some shopping. It’s always nice to give my parents a little something extra, they do so much for me. I also gave them my very first salary.
“Recently, my husband and I went on a belated honeymoon to California. That was very beautiful, only my mother-in-law died that same period, so there were also sad moments. Fortunately, we got married in the middle of the first corona period and she was still able to be there, on May 23, 2020. That was our meeting date five years earlier; we thought it would be so nice to get married on that date. The wedding was of course different than planned, with ten family members, secretly a few friends at a distance and others who watched via a live stream.
“I have not yet worn my white wedding dress of around 2,000 euros. My husband’s suit (who is German) couldn’t come from Germany at the time and I thought it was so pathetic that I ordered a light blue dress online for that day. I would like to have a small ceremony again and then have a drink and dance.”