Last weekend, I went to visit some of my favourite paintings at Mauritshuis: The Goldfinch, by Carel Fabritius, the view of Delft by Vermeer, and the still life with cheese by Clara Peeters. [This is an excellent essay from Vittles that references Peeters’ work]. The rooms were too crowded — it was a Sunday afternoon, to be fair, and we are still in tourist season here in the Netherlands — but other than A Girl with a Pearl Earring, it is quite possible to pause for more than a moment in front of a piece of art. (My favourite museum visit this year was the KMSKA in Antwerp; incredibly calm, everyone there to view the art or take it in, rarely a phone around.)

The description of Peeters’ work on the Mauritshuis website (adapted from ‘Clara’s Cheeses’ by Edwin Buijsen), reads to me like a strikingly Dutch interpretation of the work — that the abundance of cheeses could be an allusion to the harmful effects of excess eating, and makes note of the idea of transience. Contrast this with Silvia Malaguzzi’s Food and Feasting in Art, whose entry on cheese states that it could be a considered a ‘miraculous gift of Providence’ and that when it is included in paintings with the Madonna, it is an “allusion to her maternity within a symbolic perspective of spiritual rebirth, linked to the fact that its production involved a process of transformation.”

Or perhaps it is just a plate of beautiful cheese. The documentation of Peeters’ work always makes note of the self portrait she entered into the paintings; perhaps she was adding herself into this plate of bounty?

What I do love about Peeters’ art is how it often feels like a still life that I could have taken just yesterday. I don’t mean this in the way that everything is still the same as it was when Peeters made this work: it is more a comment on how strikingly modern it still is. I think it is a trap to be lured into this idea that living in the Netherlands is like stepping back in time, which these days has come coupled with an explosion of influencer content (much of it driven by expats escaping ‘fascism’ to sing odes to life in a center-right country) about the cutesy ways of life here and the streets of old Delft/Leiden/Amsterdam/Utrecht/pick your Dutch city here. But outside of the cutesy old towns are cities that look just like anywhere else, and within some of the old centers and cities is the racism and anti-refugee sentiment that is just as much entrenched as one might expect.

It is true, yes, that this scene of cheese could just as well be a painting made in the weekend market or in the aisles of the supermarket, or on any table that one might espy while on a walk in the neighbourhood. But whether the context is the perils of abundance or the miracles of transformation, there is an ordinariness to the act of cheese; in fact, who is actually stopping to photograph their cheese now? There is an a second-nature way in which everyone seems to make broodjes met kaas, as if it is genetic, a skill hardwired, second nature, the layering of cheese on cold bread; always perfectly parallel; there is nothing artistic about it, it is inhaled within seconds. The cheese plakjes in krentebollen, the cheese stuffed into everything: kaassnack — my favourite Dutch snack for the first two years of living here — kaasbol, kaas croissant, any which way of cheese into a piece of bread. Perhaps there is no romanticism to the rounds of cheese; it is just food, just there. Perhaps what Peeters is then showing us is the art of taking a minute to admire what we have.

Other things of note, in random order:

• I was very struck by this painting by Jan Mostaert - Jozef verklaart de dromen van de bakker en de schenker - with the detail of their dreams, the food on the table, the brilliance of the green linen.

• A perfect sandwich (an invention of my Dutch partner, who has no qualms about mixing foods, with often horrifying (to me) results): a paratha, with a plakje of kaas and beef salami. I usually add shatta or chili oil. It is perfect.

• Last note on cheese: I cannot stop thinking about the cheese in the Cyclops’ cave in The Odyssey.

• I have had a tremendous run of luck on Vinted this season — great shorts for the summer, a very fun woven bag — which led me to the dress of my dreams*, which I was sure was not my colour or style or the dress of anyone’s dreams (I only bought it because it seemed like featherlight cotton, and I could wear it at home during the heatwave). It arrived on an absolutely insanely hot afternoon and I put it on and now all I want is to live in it and and engineer social situations that allow me to be in the world while wearing the dress of my dreams. It is the Malibu dress by Soeur, and it is the dress of my dreams, and perhaps yours, but if it isn’t, please let me know if you see it floating around on a resale site. (I have already bought another.)

• So many good books. I watched The Odyssey and just finished reading Madeline Miller’s Circe, as good as everyone (in my Instagram DMs/life) has said it is.