I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I put the sat nav postcode into my phone and it directed me to a field full of very unimpressed Friesian cows. Turns out there is a subtle but crucial difference between Tzummarum the village and, well, a farm track three miles west of Tzummarum the village. The cows and I shared a moment of mutual confusion before I did a mortifying three-point turn in front of what I can only assume was the local cattle judging committee.

By the time I actually found the proper road into Tzummarum, my stomach was making noises that would have startled those cows. The village itself is one of those impossibly neat Frisian places where every house looks like it has been pressure-washed by someone with strong opinions about guttering. The holiday home, when I finally rolled up, was a proper charmer - thatched roof, tidy little garden, the sort of place that makes you immediately want to light the barbecue and open a beer even though it is eleven in the morning and you have not unpacked.

The kitchen, I discovered with relief, was actually equipped for human cooking rather than the usual holiday home lottery of one blunt knife and a saucepan with a handle that requires welding. I had grand plans. I was going to cook like a local. I was going to master Frisian cuisine and return to Britain with the confidence of someone who could identify suikerbrood in a police lineup.

My first attempt at self-catering began with a trip to the supermarket in Franeker, about ten minutes away. I filled my basket with local cheese, some proper Dutch butter, and what I believed to be bacon but turned out to be something called katenspek, which is essentially bacon that has been through some kind of delicious smoky transformation. I fried it up that evening with eggs and felt genuinely smug. This was living. This was integration. I ate it standing at the kitchen window watching a man across the lane meticulously sweep his already immaculate pavement.

Day two brought ambition. I found a farmers market in Bolsward, another short drive, and became briefly obsessed with a stall selling nothing but varieties of dried sausage. The woman running it spoke exactly zero English and my Dutch extends to "alstublieft" and "dank u wel" said with desperate enthusiasm. We communicated through pointing, nodding, and me holding up fingers to indicate quantities like someone playing a very rural game of charades. I returned with dried sausage, a wheel of aged cheese that smelled like it had opinions, and something the woman had pressed upon me with such insistence that refusing felt like it might cause an international incident. It was fermented cabbage. I am still not entirely sure what I was supposed to do with fermented cabbage, but I respect its confidence.

That evening I attempted to make stamppot, the Dutch mashed potato dish, because how hard could mashing potatoes be? Very hard, apparently, if you are me and you have overestimated your potato-to-kale ratio by a factor that can only be described as catastrophic. I produced a green substance that tasted correct but looked like something you would find in a pond. I ate two bowls out of stubbornness and spent the rest of the evening in a state of profound potato-based introspection. There is something humbling about failing at mashed potato in a foreign country. It makes you question your life choices, your upbringing, whether your mother secretly despaired of you.

The local bakery in Tzummarum itself became my salvation. Each morning I would walk down for fresh bread, occasionally a suikerbrood if they had it, and once something called kruidnoten that I initially mistook for dog treats because of their alarming uniformity. They were not dog treats. They were small spiced biscuits that I ate by the handful while pretending to read a book in the garden. The bakery woman started recognising me and would have my usual half-ready before I reached the counter, which felt like the greatest achievement of my adult life.

I did manage one proper success. On my final evening, with the last of my market cheese, some local ham from a butcher in Harlingen, fresh bread, and a bottle of wine from a shop whose owner had patiently explained the difference between various Dutch wines in the manner of someone explaining gravity to a toddler, I assembled a meal that required no cooking whatsoever. It was perfect. The sun went down. The thatched roof did its cosy thing. I had finally understood what holiday eating in Friesland was about - not mastering anything, not integrating or achieving, just buying good things from people who cared about them and not ruining them on the way home.

I left the fermented cabbage in the fridge for the next guest. Some traditions, I decided, were not mine to complete.