You don’t have to ask Hugo Knowledge how things are going because the answer is always ‘good’, but Froukje de Both did it anyway. “Hugo,” she told his back. He was bent over in the big dream kitchen, but spread when hearing his name. “How are you going? You are baking the eggs … ”To a rhythm that only he could hear, knowledge immediately began to improvise a song. “I am the eggs on the bakke-e-and”-his shoulders moved up and down; There was also a dance with the new song. “Nice Bakke-E-s and …” I started to get into it just when the Both calmly clarified that knowledge was making a Vietnamese dish today, with which the musical interlude came to an early end. A pity, but understandable: work still had to be done. Those Vietnamese pork chops with Nuoc Cham dressing did not bake themselves.
They would taste sweet, sour and salt, had announced knowledge – and yet had Eigen Huis & Garden: Nice life (RTL) Monday especially a bitter aftertaste (I don’t regret this word joke). Shortly before the start of the program, RTL announced that the end is in sight: after 16 May no new episodes are made of the lifestyle program that has been the end of the working day on RTL4 for five years. Nasty news, especially for viewers who are still in the mourning to Coffee time (Rest in Vrede), which was taken off the tube by RTL in 2023. For example, very few programs remain in which it is worked and cooked daily.
Why that type of program exercises such a great attraction on me is difficult to explain, because I don’t like to cook a job. And yet I regularly note the tips that the team of Eigen Huis & Garden: Nice life Gul. Thanks to them, I know how to make a windlight yourself, that a finger plant is hardy, and what steps you can take if your dog snores (the team also belongs to a veterinarian). I do not have a garden to use wind lights, I don’t know what ‘hardy’ means and I don’t have a dog, but it still feels good to know all. As if a layer of knowledge is now stored in me that can be drilled as soon as the time is ripe. Perhaps I form the ideal target group of this type of program: I lack the ability to redecorate a house myself and to stand in the kitchen for hours, but I do cherish the hope that that moment will ever start. That I also have one Mood Board Can make for a utility room. Maybe in about ten years. Eigen Huis & Garden is the dream that fills that gap.
The end of a veneered chipboard
Although not all knowledge gained is left. When my favorite handyman Patrick Uphoff starts talking, that experience is still similar to standing in the range and explained what the difference is between a steel nail and a concrete nail, while gathering the courage to admit that I meant ‘screw’ when I said ‘nail’. On Monday, Uphoff was making the end of a veneered chipboard waterproof. I welcome that, but since three of the words in that sense remain virtually meaningless for me, I will have forgotten that DIY action tomorrow.
But what I will never forget are the contributions of Hugo Kennis, the best -humored chef of Dutch television. It is difficult to digest that he will no longer be preparing world dishes every working day at 17.00 in that gigantic cuisine, even though I have never gotten to try his recipes. Who is going to bake eggs singing at the end of my working day, say ‘hummus’ with a G in front of or giving sausage rolls an Italian touch? A fire letter to RTL seemed inescapable, but when I looked back on Videoland’s episode on Monday, afterwards started playing that of Tuesday. “It’s not difficult-din day,” I heard Hugo say knowledge. I will follow that advice.