The story of 2001 trees.

I’m still seeing a bit green and haven’t quite come back into the real world completely. So I will keep my Reforestfest recap brief and just tell you that instead of the originally announced 1000 trees, we planted 2001. Though the 2001. was a bit of a mistake as it was supposed to be 2000. But when the time came around to plant the final tree there was 1 little tree extra and everyone thought we may as well put it into the ground too so it wouldn’t feel left out, and voila we had planted 2001 trees.

It was simply the best weekend ever and full of exciting firsts for me…

I volunteered to sleep in a tent. And loved it.

I wore a head lamp, felt like the last unicorn, and was quite upset when I lost a battery within an hour of our arrival. These little buggers are very useful on a dark camping sites. Luckily I had some chaperones and a bright moon to show the way.

Call me a girl, but pink bubbly is appropriate anywhere.

I ate porridge with butter, brown sugar, and cinnemon for breakfast and think it is the best thing ever!

I danced in the forest at night.

I got down and dirty and planted a tree. And another one. And then some more.

A bit of a mad smile, but I was in fact enjoying myself.

I saw a big mole snake. Yuk. Exciting in the not so nice way.

I did yoga under a 1000 year old Milkwood tree with my hair down (Can you imagine? Me – doing yoga without my bun? Unheart of, but I loved every moment of it…)

Yoga mats warming up by the fire, getting ready for class.

I shared a mug of hot tea and milk with some friends and realized the act of sharing something makes it so much better.

I smiled for 2 days straight, but did not shower.

I learned how to break a tent down.

Shoes chilling in the forest.

A thank you to the sponsors will follow tomorrow. I’m still a bit lost in the forest today....

A good place to be a bit lost.

The cowboy and the hedgehog.

Do you know the Cowboy phenomenon? I'm not sure because if you don't travel the subway daily it may not be very evident, but coming from years of subway travelling in NY I know it well. It is the way how most guys will pretend to be a cowboy, having so much in between their legs that they just can't keep them shut and therefore will take up two seats. I'm not sure what came first – cowboys for a lack of subway just walking with their legs wide apart to impress the ladies and regular guys these days just imitating cowboys or them actually being too, well, big to sit like a normal person i.e. girl. At least the cowboys were just funny to look at, these days it is just plain annoying and rude – especially if you are on an overcrowded subway with no air-con in summer.

Anyhow – today I have a lot more sympathy for the cowboys at least, because I spend yesterday afternoon on a horse and now need to move my leg with both hands when I want to cross them.
Needless to say that is was still very worth it, because trotting on a horse amongst vineyards with your friend on a fine Saturday is just a lekker way to pass time.

This got me thinking today about things to be grateful. Which I usually wouldn't share like this because quite frankly I hate these happy blog lists. No offense to people who do, they just always seem a bit forced to me – especially coming on a Sunday. But this week I really learned to count my blessings, alas here we go with things I am grateful for this week:

Having the only horse who ate vines and managed to pull out whole bunches while walking. I thought he was just really relating to me – I love wine, he loves vines.

Having the urge to run to a yoga class and managing to stay in the room though I was full to the brim with sushi. Though the urge part is probably what I am most grateful for. It is quite beautiful to really have the urge to do something, which will be somehow meaningful or just plain good for you.

Having a co-worker who buys me pink bubbly for no reason. I am still quite chuffed about it somehow. It sits in my fridge and it makes me happy to look at it. Thank you, Mark!

Changing my winter wardrobe to summer wardrobe and finding my old favourite dress and re-finding a dress I didn't think I would like anymore. Now I like it again so much that I am wearing it now and don't even mind freezing.

Reading “The Elegance of the Hedgehog”, a book so unbelievable beautiful it makes me laugh out loud, cry, and go to bed quite early so I can be with it.

That is that. and in line with my whole French practise I say merci for a grand week.*

*And yes, my French hasn't progressed any further than that. I know, I know...

My high club.

Sometimes I get overexcited about silly, stupid, little things. Especially when there is nothing else going on in my life, deserving a proper amount of getting excited over. Last night that wasn’t the case. Last night was a bungee jump of excitement for me. The recipe for that was simple and didn’t involve great heights except the ones my mood went. All that was needed was a bottle of bubbly, a sabre, a bit of guidance, and voila I sabred* my very first bottle of bubbly. Two hours later I still felt the adrenalin rushing through me. Okay, maybe mixed a bit with one of the six glasses of wine I tasted after the sabring. Though they are definitely not main reason for the rush I felt, really. Just look at it:

My favourite bubbly and my newfound favourite way of opening it.
Mind you, Nigel was literally holding my hand and moving it, but he was quite nonchalant about it, letting me take all the credit.
The one day I had already been taking so many pictures that I got sick and tired of it and left my camera at home, thinking what excitement can possibly happen at a wine tasting? Am I really going to be taking pictures of Chardonnay? Hm, no. But Murphy’s Law would have it that I got the chance for a great photo op, though in my case it wasn’t so much chance as begging and pleading, and no camera in sight. It would have been a stunning picture since it was a proper sabre too. Engraved it came with a bag/case/whatdoyoucallitforsabres and looked all dashing and swashbuckling. Cathy told me that her husband can do it with a tea spoon. In a way that is quite impressive. In another way it is not. It is having high tea with the queen versus a drink with Jack Sparrow.

So there...I feel like I have moved to a new club - the mile high club of bottle opening.

*Yes, I know it's not, but it should be a verb too.

Das Wort zum Sonntag.

In case you wonder what I'm doing on this beautiful Sunday evening: drinking bubbly and nursing a severe case of what I believe is a mix of PMS and Sunday blues. After conversing with two friends whether it was okay to drown my sorrows with bubbly all on my own, and the unison answer was yes, I opened the Old Man's Sparkle. The first glass is still a bit warm, as I usually tend to keep these R90 treasures in the cupboard for special occasions, not in the fridge for easy access, sorrow drowning drinking.

If you wonder what got me so blue, I'm actually not quite sure myself. My attempt at spring cleaning was not completely successful, but not a devastating failure either, so that can't be it. Mind you, not sure how non-cleaning would make me blue anyhow. I did watch a sad BBC show about the killing of tuna in the South Pacific, which spoilt my dinner a bit, which is therefore still untouched and marinating in the fridge. Though I know that I am not the Über-philanthropist (is that word even accurate when applied to tuna?) and will be happy enough again to eat it tomorrow.
I also did cut my finger quite badly while chopping croutons for my Caesar Salad. My finger is fine, but literally felt the impact of the huge bread knife for hours after. Plus this salad made me overeat and stuffed me too much to go to 5 o'clock yoga. Bummer.
Other than that? Nothing official. So I guess it may just be the usual amount of hormones, dreams, and unanswered questions that keep bothering me today. I will deal with it, but why suffer more than I should? I'll let the Old Man help for tonight and know that at least he is not French*.

*Have I mentioned that I have given up Gauloises? Which seemed to be less difficult to be given up than other French things I may add...

P.S. Here is what ultimately made me feel better yesterday: meet the sea dragons, my new favorite animals! I almost burnt my food, but I had to give in, film and share. Yes, I am well aware that this makes me a nerd, but I think they are just awesome and they made me laugh...

David Attenborough and BBC's Life rock!

Elephant luck.

I feel I have been absent for ages, so this is not a proper post, but more of a ‘just saying hi’ as I have just emerged. I was in a bubble so to say. My weekend didn’t start very well as I had a huge row with my mother on Friday evening. Not ideal considering that I will be seeing here in less than a week and it kind of spoiled my pre-trip excitement. The weekend was therefore not spent packing and buying last presents, but washing away my sorrows with bubbly. Literally. Well, almost. Thekla at least used the bubbly to wash her clothes and the driveway. That sounds sad, but it wasn’t. It was good for my soul as I got the feeling that at least the South African part of my family loves me to bits. Yes, I know that is not the truth and I am being a drama queen. No need to tell me, I’m already snapping out of it.
Yesterday I wasn’t. I was having a mental hangover from the weekend which might be due to the bubbly as well as the fact that I haven’t eaten anything but Poor Man’s Meal dinners for the last few days. In case I haven’t mention, I love salty food and salt in general. The result was me waking up every hour or so on Sunday night, drinking two litres of water throughout the night. So of course I wasn’t rested at all yesterday and this made me so cranky, I didn’t even go to yoga. Bad idea. Even worse idea to substitute yoga with drinking red wine and eating chicken burgers.

This morning I decided now it was time to change my life and got up at 05h30 to greet the day.

...

You didn’t believe what you just read, did you?

No, of course you wouldn’t. I did get up at 05h30, but that wasn’t voluntarily as I had to teach class. I hope now that after doing it twice that my body will realize that it can, in fact, if needed, get up that early and mustn’t wake up 6 times during the night in a panic because it thinks it have overslept. Either way, class was great and I am even feeling remotely happy and at ease with the world already - and it’s not even 10am yet.
So that’s it for now, just saying hi and showing you something pretty, I am very much in love with right now:

No, unfortunately no picture of the hot French man who was in class this morning and very worth getting out of bed. If I were to know I would get one of these every morning, I would easily get out of bed before dawn all the time!

What's cookin', Pastaholic?

After lots of Pastaholic stories and how I came to be one, I’ve decided that it is time to actually show what kind of pasta I usually eat. The ritual that happens in my house about every other night finally documented. If you are hoping for a recipe, don’t. I don’t do recipes, a fact that almost caused my last boyfriend and I to break up. Which we did eventually, but not due to recipes or lack thereof. I also don’t do complicated so if you really wanted to re-cook what I made last night, you could just take the ingredients and put them all together. It’s quite simple really.
I had a somewhat serious hangover yesterday. I came to realize that may have been because after bubbly and red wine I decided to almost single handily finish a beautiful bottle of desert wine as everybody else was going for the grappa. No headache though, which speaks for the quality of the wine. Regardless, I wasn’t a happy girl and whenever I get niggly due to too much alcohol, I start day dreaming about pasta. Obviously that is not the only occasion when I think of pasta, but this situation is a sure, reoccurring thing. Through the grapevine, I found two new food blogs and got very inspired by Chris’ Vongole. I got intrigued by the pictures, yes, but even more so by the suggested combination of drinking rose champagne with pasta. Where have I been all my life?? I mean I love pasta, I love rose champagne. I sounds like a match made in heaven.

Pasta + rose champagne or pink bubbly as we would call it here = Perfection

I’m not sure why I have been sticking to stupid old red wine with pasta when it clearly calls for a nice cold bottle of Old Man’s Sparkles. Though to be honest here, that wasn’t the plan for last night. Because I’m a) scared to make vongole by myself and b) I had a date. So if there was to be any drinking done, it would have to be in company. Not ideal for the way I felt.
Then I stars magically realigned. First I found this recipe from Sweet Paul, which was so profound and so beautiful and did not require any vongole and then my date cancelled.
You know you have become too good of a single if you are happy when a date cancels just so you can stay at home and eat pasta. But the feeling was good and I’m sticking to it. Here is what I did last night:

I love trying new pasta shapes and though this one wasn’t quite as exciting as I wish it would have been, it worked perfectly for what I had in mind.

Fresh prawns from Woolies – I totally lucked out as my store usually doesn’t carry them and I seemed to have found the last packet. They were delicious.

I’m not sure of their proper names, but these are blackish/green/red tomatoes from PnP. I am totally obsessed with them as they are full of flavour and the colouring is just freakishly cool.

Garlic, of course.

Parmesan grated two ways.

I forgot the lemon zest, but it actually turned out – it did not matter. And with or without the rose champagne (I was being good yesterday, so I can go to &Union tonight) it was so good, I could not not finish the entire pan.

Modern family.

This post has been long time in the making. Namely all of last night as I kept dreaming about it. Wild dreams they were, also including the Frenchman, a long haired sexy stranger, and IKEA. Anyhow this is not about any of them, this is about my wonderful family, which I have shamefully neglected in this writing.

We are the Schwagers. Technically not even half of us – me included – is officially called Schwager, but we all share the same Schwager-esque characteristics, so no one really cares about the technicalities of a last name. You ask what characteristics I’m talking about? It’s hard to describe, one has to experience us to understand that we are just not a normal family.
One is the sheer size of us. They just don’t make families that big anymore these days. I tried to do a little family tree, so you can see the extend of my South African family and understand the connections better, but I got too dizzy and gave up.
Yesterday was Carmen’s and Nikki’s birthday. Nikki is my cousin, Carmen is Nikki’s cousin, which for the sake of ease makes her my cousin too. After already having a pre-birthday dinner with the extended family, whatever that may mean for ours, on Sunday; Nikki had asked me to come over for some bubbly last night.
So after yoga I rushed home, changed, put petrol in my car and arrived a little while later in Hout Bay with bottle and birthday card in my hand. I rang once, I rang twice and by now the dogs inside were going gaga, yet still wasn’t in. A few phone calls later the mystery is solved as everyone ended up at La Perla and unfortunately no one had told me. I was promised huge amounts of bubbles over the phone and so I drove all the way back.
La Perla, you must know, is something like an extended living room/kitchen for my family and so to no surprise, I walked into their bar area completely decked out with various cousins, aunt & uncle, nieces, nephews, enough drinks to feed an army, and a very shamefaced Nikki. Due to it being her birthday she was of course gracefully forgiven immediately for the faux pas of not telling me the venue change.
What followed was a beautiful evening of celebration with a family on best behaviour for a change (Oh ja, we all can do very different too...). The restaurant brought out beautiful little plates of prawns, risotto and lamb, and tiramisu birthday cake... Glasses were never empty....The birthday girls were smiling, the kids laughing... Cousins, sitting in a corner, giggling, sharing old stories, which I had to promise not to repeat in writing today. Don’t get excited, because as a birthday present to Carmen I decided I shall keep that promise.

It was a Schwager family night to remember. Good to remember for the next time, when we all scream and shout at each other again as we do ... just like any other normal family.

P.S. I just tried it again – the family tree thing. First online, then by hand. Really wanted to include a chart, but it’s just not working. I didn’t even know which side of the paper to start.

Bubbling violets.

I do blame my mother for my addiction to Champagne. I must have inherited it from her or something. The bubbles seem to run in our blood and nothing feels more intoxicating to us than hearing the plop of a cork, the swishing sound when you pour a glass and the smell of the first tiny bubbles rising up.

She was always a snob when it came to Champagne and so am I.

Christmas tradition at our house asks for Champagne year after year. One year my Dad dared to offer us a bottle of Mumm (an okaaay German sparkling wine), which he had gotten as a present from someone. He thought it suitable for his beloved family on Christmas Eve. The family wasn’t impressed and went on strike till he forked out money and sent my brother to the store to buy two bottles of Veuve. Crisis averted.

Later my parents discovered Crémant from Alsace. Even though we all drank and liked it, it was still lovingly duped 'Elsässer Plörre' by my mother. Plörre, a slang word from the western part of Germany,  is defined as:

Alcoholic drink which sight makes you afraid you may wake up with a hangover the next day.

Highly unfair to the drink in question, but we just wanted to be snobs as the Crémant wasn’t from the Champagne and the name stuck despite my Dad’s protests. Today he goes along with it and offers me a glass of Plörre the second I step of the plane.

Ever since moving to South Africa I have been in heaven. Living in a country that has mastered the art of making Champagne, I have drunk myself through an extensive collection so far and would blame my cousin and her pool deck for it, if I needed someone to blame. I don’t.

Imagine my excitement when my new favourite wine shop The Mill offered a M.C.C. and Champagne tasting evening. I may have drooled a little bit over my desk when I signed up for it. My food poisoning left me slightly worried if I was going to be able to make it, but true to form my stomach was basically begging me for some bubbles yesterday.

Usually work is quiet these days, but Murphy’s law kicked in at around 4 o’clock and made my boss, who was coming with, and me run around like crazy maniacs till the last minute. I had no idea how I was going to manage ‘tasting’ the bubbly as opposed to gulping it down by the time we arrived. We both just needed a strong drink badly and have had no time for the usual late afternoon office G&T before. Luckily for us the day turned around the moment we stepped into The Mill. A glass of bubbly called ‘Sparkles’ was put into our hand and though the name sounded too cute to be good, we took about a sip or two to be convinced. Nigel, the owner, was a star - once our glasses were empty he had them refilled within a second. He said he is just very good at spotting empty glasses, but I do believe he can read minds.

Me (thinking):  Refill my glass, this is yummy, please someone, refill my glass, please, someone –

Me: Thank you, Nigel.

Once we spotted crackers on the table (we had been worried about that as the Murphy’s law kick in had also prevented us from getting dinner before), we were set to go and do some serious tasting. It wasn’t quite as serious due to the facts that a) we were allowed to pour our own glasses – bad idea, b) Australian jokes being told – bad, but funny, and c) a guy at our table who told a story about opening a bottle of expensive, vintage Champagne at the top of Lion Hill and how it led to holding the cork and watching the bottle fall – bad for him, but really funny.

I learned that I am either not such a snob after all or just plain ignorant as the bottle of a 2000 Guy Charbaut Champagne didn’t nearly impress me as much as a bottle called The Old Mans Sparkle from Groote Post. I think I tasted violets in a bottle and am surprised that the bottle I took home arrived unharmed and made it through the night. After so heroically sustaining from drinking it all by myself last night, I think I will finally treat myself to a nice little wine shelf.  The old man shall be the first bottle of little treasures on it and stay long enough so I can take a picture at least.