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How one grows into becoming a giant 

To elucidate how one grows into becoming a giant like us without too profuse a violation of the truth, telling tales, however tempting, won’t suffice. We love to joke about it, lamenting about the amount of beatings we had to put up with as a child in order to stampede the sky the way we did, but that of course is just inanity, a smoke screen to disguise the less palatable candor of actually being wolverines, completely clueless when it comes to the virtue of restraint.

Running a household with four voracious children, my mother obviously had to hide all the goodies, the chocolates and sweets she so enjoyed herself and wanted to be able to present when entertaining guests, only enhancing our enticement to hunt and devour in secret, if at all possible passing the blame to a greedier sibling when caught. I was a competent nimrod, but not very adept at pretending, a skill I didn’t learn to master until much later in life, making me a terrific target for the others to point at when summoned to confess.

In my efforts not to be apprehended for my gluttony I once took a small bite out of each and every little chocolate my mum had concealed, thus creating a signature technique my brother and sisters could safely mimic for years after, without ever having to be accountable.

To make matters worse, our talent for overconsumption is boosted by our Dutch culture, encouraging children to eat more ‘because you still have to grow’. Discarding that well-intentioned advice once projectiled into gianthood is no small matter and requires self temperance and control, not given to everyone.
In the past, French restaurants used to serve elaborate cheese platters, based on their French guests’ judiciousness, but this habit has been regrettably scaled back to put an end to Dutch tourists always consuming the entirety, not for its exquisite taste but because they’ve paid for it.

Slowing down life and its many temptations by growing our own food and trying to be as involved as possible in the preservation and preparation of it, reducing processed food to a minimum and regaining knowledge about how much sweat and time goes into this all, has helped. Homemade cheese platter, anyone?


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