Just checking.

Are you all woken out of your chocolate coma yet? I know everyone is dying to know what I actually managed to cross of my list so here you go…

Cody with bunny ears – check, but not due to my efforts. Sabina and Genie already took care of that on Wednesday at home, but so cute I have to share:

Macaroons – check depends on my phrasing – did I write ‘making macaroons’ or ‘attempting to make macaroons’. I solemly swear I will never attempt to make another recipe that is so contradictory and especially not one that comes with 10 commandments and no maid to clean up the mess. On a good note I am now proud owner of 4 little freezer bags filled with different flavoured buttercream.

From left to right:
Rasberry and rose water buttercream, orange and rosewater buttercream, rosewater buttercream, and candied violets and rosewater buttercream. Can you tell we liked the idea of rosewater? Well, that was till we tasted it and realized it reminded us of grandmotherly soap.

Dear macaroon, I am sorry, but you should not be allowed to carry this name - you look like a cookie, you taste like a cookie, you are a cookie!

Chicken with stuffing – biiiig check and happy smile.

Yoga mat – check. Pink – check. Three classes in four days – check (though that wasn’t even on the list I just realized).

Balcony – half check that comes with a good excuse courtesy of all the rain, which made window cleaning pointless. The gooseberries do have a new home though and look quite happy.

There was no writing or chart making though I did draw sunshine and played with Puss in Boots. All in all I was not productive whatsoever. I didn’t even look for any eggs...after all that is a privilege of being all grown-up, I can just buy my own chocolate without having to dig through muddy flower beds.

So objectively I guess one could say that I was being quite lazy for the whole four days. But as my wonderful friend Claire just put it – for the first rainy weekend in the year, one needs to hibernate as the soul requires it. Best excuse to sleep and watch Gossip Girl ever – thank you, Claire!

Four days.

We have established that in regards to men the last week was less than successful. One could in fact call it disastrous without going overboard. Mind you I held my head up high, kept busy and came out on the other side only a bit bruised, but also a bit wiser.
After all that keeping busy and the emotions shut out, I was in a complete slump on Monday. Physically and mentally and I just felt very sorry for myself. The result was some good pasta for dinner and at 9pm I put on my favourite stripy pyjamas, which are actually for winter and still a bit too cosy for the temperatures we have, and went to bed.
I repeated the exercise yesterday and today I met someone that knows Margarete Mead, which makes today officially awesome and me a nerd, but deserves a mention nonetheless. Other than that I feel like I am already on Easter break and here is the to-do list, because there hasn’t been one in a while and I love lists with little boxes to tick off!*

Putting bunny ears on Cody for general office amusement.

Attempting to make macaroons for a second time. This time in egg shape which I think might be a whole lot easier than perfect circles. So I shall call them Easter macaroons. And if they turn out to be round after all (god knows, I have no actual idea what will be harder to make an egg shape or a circle), according to Julia I can simple call them regular macaroons and no one must ever know.

Making the first roast chicken of the year with stuffing. Maybe just stuffing without the chicken. Have I mentioned how much I love this stuff?

Buy a new yoga mat – pink or other – as mine got stolen out of my car. Which means bad karma for the person who did it and a good reason for me to buy a long overdue, new mat. Seriously though – I mean the mat was old, thin, AND stinky (if you do Bikram, you know how it can be), not sure why even a bergie would want it. But someone did alas someone will get bitten in the ass while sitting on it. Karma is a bitch after all.

Attend to my balcony i.e. window cleaning and replanting the gooseberries that are growing like crazy, I might just be able to open my own market stand soon and sell jam.

There will also be writing, chart making, Easter egg hunting in the dunes (unfortunately the kids are usually allowed to go first and by the time you make it up the hill, there is nothing left but paper wrappings, but still … the spirit counts), and on Monday sneak preview premier of The Hunger Games.

For now all I want to do is sleep though…

Happy long weekend, everybody!

*Just imagine the little tick boxes in front of each ‘to do’, my head is fuzzy and I can’t get my computer to make little boxes.

Road trip in German.

So apparently some people thought my notion of feeling like a little bowl of soup was a bit strange. Julia asked me whether I was alright and told me she was unsure if it was okay to ‘like’ the post on Facebook. The truth is I don’t know if I am alright, but sometimes you just have to take it one day at a time and if that doesn’t work an hour at a time will do.
On Wednesday we took it a day at a time and Julia and I did a road trip or as I like to call it in German: Ausflug. Road trip might be misleading for locals as we just went to Stellenbosch. One mustn’t forget though that even if Stellenbosch might just mean commute to the natives to us it definitely constitutes as a road trip. I will admit that living right next to my office may also help any 45 minute drive to feel like a proper get away.
Admittedly the Ausflug wasn’t much more than lunch and ice cream in the end, which made us late for Babylonstoren, but since it was lunch at Casparus and the ice cream dark chocolate flavour, it was well worth it. There would have been macaroons as well, but the lady was so rude that we decided it wouldn’t be fair to the macaroons to buy them from such a rude lady as it would surely spoil our tasting experience. Now I’m thinking that we should have bought them all so they could have lived a happy life in our tummies away from the lady…

(I was craving another portion of salmon soufflé in the evening and almost called to see if they would deliver. I settled for Colcacchio instead, which for once was a let-down, I should have expected since I was actually craving salmon soufflé and not pizza.)

Just a perfect place to eat ice cream and have a chat.

More pictures once the iPhone hipster has internet again and sends them to me. Yes, Julia, that was a hint… *

Vacation diaries.

Things got progressively better after the first incident of the airline almost loosing my luggage. Here is what you have missed so far...

I ate THE best macaroon ever. That is important, especially for my friend Julia to know. 

 I managed to taste myself through 5 sorts of rum punch so far, the highlight being our lunch chez Madame Cannibal yesterday where they offered over ten different varieties, all already stationed on our table.

The result: except for the very fancy lunch spot we found today, which offers punch at a shocking EUR 7 (to give you a comparison, they are usually about EUR 2), they all have too much rum, which makes them quite potent and quite delicious.

Though the travel guide was lying (“short stretches lead steeply uphill”), I managed to hike all the way steeply uphill to the place of 3 waterfalls and a scared the tourists who I met up there by jumping over rocks to get my pictures done. I thought after that hike the risk was worth it.

I escaped the fog and hiked up a little volcano, knowing quite well I would have to make my way up here again: 

I call it Biskop Steps to the power of ten. 

 I had my Dad tell me about 534 volcano jokes.

I learned that there are in fact mosquitos at 1500m height.

I had an afternoon nap here: 

 I managed to order red wine in French fluently. What more does a girl need to know?

In memory of the Macaroon.

I probably have mentioned already that my favourite sweet treats are Macaroons. I like them enough to give them their own label here. I once tried to make them myself, but failed so miserably that it almost put me off eating them forever. Luckily Cassis was close so I just bought myself a cheer me up pack there and all was good with the world. I haven’t attempted since and just accepted that it will be one of these things I just won’t make myself. Same as the fishcakes and that’s okay. Not everything has to be homemade, because it just tastes so much better. Sometimes it actually doesn’t and one has to accept the facts.

I have tried my way through Cape Town’s pastry shops, but the best I have found are still at Cassis. I thought they were a special-occasion-only for their price – I find R5 for a mouthful, well, a mouthful. That was till this morning. I was at the Cape Quarter and decided to use the chance to nip into Daniela’s as I had had one of their chocolate brownies the other night at the blogger meeting and thought it the best brownie ever. Thekla then told me that they were also famous for their Macaroons.

I bought only two and almost fainted when I was asked for R20. That would mean they would have to be double as good as the ones from Cassis. I carried them around in my hand like the Holy Grail for the next hour as I know Macaroons don’t like to travel in purses and tend to crumble when you just look at them.

I may have to add that I usually only eat Vanilla and Coconut, so my choices today were quite out there as far as Macaroon flavours go for me. Maybe not quite an even start into the competition, but Rose and Mint flavour just sounded too enticing to go for plain old Vanilla. Were they as good? Objectively no, but the Rose one tasted like a soap, which I had as a child, smelled. Before you cringe - they didn’t taste like soap! I had a tiny container of little soap sheets I would take for travelling and absolutely adored the rosy smell of them (and therefore probably never used any). Eating this Macaroon just brought that feeling back of me as a kid and the excitement of going on a trip. R10 for a childhood memory preserved – that’s priceless actually.