I’ve worked in offices my entire career. And as anyone who sits behind a computer all day will agree, lunch is often the highlight of the working day… not so in the Netherlands! A singular lack of decent sandwich bars, soup shops, salad bars or jacket-potato joints leaves you with three options: visit the horrendous office canteen (if indeed you even have one), take far more than your allotted half-hour lunch break and try your luck with the speed of a service in a local cafe, or make your own… I did the latter. My colleagues got curious and started asking me for recipes (and, occasionally, to make lunch for them, too) so I began to write them down. And lo, a book was born!
Vicky Hampton’s Working Lunch: the story so far…
Vicky Hampton’s Working Lunch is a cookbook for everyone whose workplace has a kitchen, even if that kitchen has nothing more than a watched-pot-never-boils kettle, a Jurassic toaster, and a surface on which to chop things. It’s for people who are bored of overpriced, ubiquitous ‘ham-kaas broodjes’ and packet soups from the canteen. It’s for busy, working types who are nonetheless keen to eat healthy, simple food made from scratch, but who don’t have the time or resources to spend hours in the kitchen. The 50-something recipes cover salads & dressings, bread-based meals, couscous & pulses, smoothies & soups, and some more adventurous recipes in the decadently named ‘Pimp my lunch’ chapter.
How to invest in the concept
In an attempt to persuade the best publisher I can find to help me make this happen, I am crowd-funding the book through selling shares in it. Each share costs €5, and once I’ve sold 2,000 of them, the money raised is put towards the publishing costs (photography, printing, etc). When enough books have been sold, investors make their money back with interest. Needless to say, I would be extremely grateful for your investment!
To buy shares, visit TenPages and click ‘Koop een aandeel’. More instructions and answers to FAQs (in English!) to follow in my next post… Thank you for your support!