hunger for freedom.

this weekend i felt a bit sad. it started with friday morning when i woke up to the news of madiba’s passing. on thursday when he actually died i was eating dicke bohnen, my uncle’s recipe du jour, and they were delicious. i gave him an 11 out of 10 and he was quite chuffed. in hindsight i would have expected to know. i mean not some sort of hunger games bang, but i would assume something in the universe changes when someone like him dies and that you would feel that change immediately somehow. well, apparently not, i was just happily eating my dicke bohnen and woke up to the news instead while reading facebook in bed. a bad habit by the way that is on my new year’s list to break.
 
so friday i felt sad and i had a full day’s of casting and that never helps to lighten the mood. except when a very handsome runner told me that he was also a swimmer and was wearing a speedo underneath and would i care to see him in that? there were times in my life when i would have taken him on this offer, but as i was sad i didn’t even care. also we didn’t need any swimmers and why waste my time on seeing a gorgeous man half naked.

saturday it was my friend’s birthday breakfast which we celebrated at kirstenbosch and it couldn’t have been more beautiful. i actually took some photos and will slot them in here soon.
 
for the rest of the weekend i was sad again. I am longing for home right now. as much as i want to put all my enthusiasm into my last cape town months, i can’t. i just want to be home already, dark and cold or not. so yes, a major case of grass is greener on the other side.

in addition i am starting to feel stressed out about the move, organizing, selling things, sorting stuff…all the things i am usually very good at, i mean i get paid for this! – it is stressing me out.

to be proactive i decided on an early shopping marathon on sunday and i must proudly say that i now have 75% of all gifts and i got them in less than two hours. afterwards i was knackered. how i used to shop for a living in new york i do not know.

by the way if you are still looking for a great gift for a food fan, i can highly recommend hunger for freedom by anna trapido. i saw her a few years back at the toffie food festival where she presenting a somewhat interactive journey through madiba’s life via the food he used to eat and the stories about it. some stories funny, some sad, some yummy, some thought provoking, all incredible moving. i must admit that the book has been long on my i want to have and i want to give lists, but in light of recent events it seems especially timely to remind of an incredible man who even has incredible tales to tell about the food he ate.

Secret Society.

I will admit that sometimes I’m a bit envious of wannabe somewhat famous people/blogger for being invited to events which serve free champagne and macaroons. Usually I’m not. I prefer to buy my own drinks and treats and enjoy the freedom of not having to feign excitement over a not so exciting goodie bag. Or having to write about an evening even when it didn’t surpass a re-run of Friends on the entertainment scale. I realized a while ago that in these cases, working an event with easy access to the bar stock can be way more fun than receiving a personalized invitation which will only soothe my ego.

Last Saturday I wouldn’t have minded being an official guest, but attending in the function of mingler, decorator, baby-sitter, food pre-taster, hug giver, and enthusiastic noise maker while eating the food was much better…
My wonderful, talented cousin Thekla was asked to cook for one of the Spier Secret Festival dinners. Her parents own one of the original houses on Dorp Street in Stellenbosch, which they currently rent to Rheta Erichsen, who was hosting the secret dinner. The house itself is magical. It is full of nooks and crannies filled with memorabilia and stories of generations. The centre has always been the kitchen with various family members and selected friends cooking, tasting, exploring, eating, and sharing. It seemed almost logical that such a house would make the perfect stage for a special secret dinner and that Thekla, daughter of the house, should cook, sharing family traditions and even some secrets from this kitchen.

I had won tickets for the Toffie market so Adam, Thekla’s husband, and I started the day by drinking our way through some barrels of Chenin while chatting to old and new friends. We also stuffed our faces with everything there was from dumplings to Eton Mess and smoked cheese braai broodjies, so it was actually surprising I was still able to eat anything at all in the evening, not to mention the amounts.
In the afternoon we made our way over to the house where we were put to work and art&crafts was mixed with bubbly and posset tasting. From there I went on to baby and cat sitting while decorating the garden. While the house is reminds of the wardrobe of Narnia, the garden is as if Alice in Wonderland has sprung to life and the cat perfects it as it looks like the Cheshire cat sans grin. The property is small, but there are paths and a fountain and a pond, tables in different corners, a swing, and a platform which used to host my aunt’s summer bed, but was now converted to a stage for the musicians. That’s right – we had our own private band! Rheta had already decked the trees with lights and I was allowed to add pincushion proteas to the tables and work on perfecting the welcome cocktail.
That was all well and good and a fun way to spend an afternoon, but now I want to rave about the main part: the food. I learned through various historic novels that back in a day when a noble person was holding a banquette they not only served several courses, but each course consisted of several dishes. That’s how I imagine what it would be like if you were to eat at El Bulli every night and that’s what we got on Saturday, but without any explosions or test tubes. Thekla’s whole approach to food is simple and she cooks with an almost off-handed ease. Her menu was based on local, seasonal ingredients and childhood memories of cooking in her mother’s kitchen.

Summer was in the air with the first mozzies and rugby fans roaring over the walls when guests started to pour in. Each host was allowed to pick the amount of people they could cater for, but somehow Rheta was assigned everybody who was left and so we ended up with an eclectic group of almost 30 people and so everything was served buffet style.
We started with a variety of dips, crudité, and pot baked bread which revived the meaning of ‘breaking bread’ and was a nice touch to add for a group of people who didn’t know each other. If you think I got in by nepotism, you are right; if you think I’m biased, you are probably right too, but still…the dips already won over the toughest food critics amongst the guests and it only got better from there. The main starters were a raw Asian salmon trout salad and a plate of artichokes, which led to lots of laughter when Thekla was explaining how we needed to eat them as it involved lots of sucking and licking. And before you accuse me of a dirty mind and because some guests didn’t understand the subtle difference: you suck the leaves and then you lick your fingers and not the other way around.
For the mains we were snaking around the kitchen island and had the opportunity to make new friends over duck and lamb, both falling of their respective bones, rice pilaf with roasted vegetables, and mozzarella with peaches on greens. With smacking lips people went back for seconds only to be told that there was going to be not one, not two, but three deserts, which still required space. And so we also queued for hazelnut apple cake with koeksister ice cream, rice pudding with berry compote, and refreshing Mrs Moxon’s Posset.

After desert I decided it was time for a nap. So holding my full belly I quietly snuck out and made my way home. When I went to bed I dreamed of meals fit for a king and when I woke up I thanked the gods that I can call such a cook family and just invite myself for dinner whenever I need to feel like a queen for a day.

p.s. If you do wonder where the pictures of the food are, which will make you lick your screen, you will need to ask the master of the kitchen herself as my camera refuse to work after dark.

Thekla shot by Walter Koeppe.

Quickie.

I almost can’t sit still to even write this as I just found out that not only got Julia a press pass for Toffie Pop, but that I won an all access pass thanks to this lovely guy just now.

Imagine picture of girl jumping up in excitement here.

This is where we will be for the weekend... In addition I have developed a rather concerning obsession for The Hunger Games series which will be fighting for time with Game of Thrones perfectly accompanied by some rainy fall* weather and family time.

So there… I’m off... back on Monday!
*Yes, yes, I know you call it autumn.

A non-reviewing review.

I’m not a writer, a food critic, or even a blogging socialite. The latter actually scares me a bit.

Despite being none of the above, I do have an opinion and I usually like to voice it. Sometimes at times, when I should better be quiet and in a way, which is ... let’s just say... a little blunt. I guess I can still improve on my people and opinion raising skills. Though not here. This is my blog and I can bloody think and write whatever pleases me. Today it pleases me to write everything I liked about the Toffie Food Festival. You may have gathered this is not an objective review, no one is paying me to write it, so I allow myself to gush over what I think was gushable and nothing else.

It started off well with the goodie bag. Like most people I’m a sucker for goodie bags, and this one was actually very neat. If one wanted to find something to complain, it would be the fact that it was full to the brim and therefore quite heavy to schlep around all day. Poor me. As usual I was way too early and therefore my goodie bag and me had enough time to wander the halls and see all that was on show. The exhibits were slightly quirky yet informative, and the piñata room even gave good advice by spelling out: DON’T HAVE UGLY KIDS.

Toffee or not, they all looked very yummy. I still don’t understand how anyone could have mulled over the fact that there was no toffee to eat when there was so much else. Plus the toffee beer SAB offered was incredibly delicious. On Sunday I started drinking way too earlier thanks to the German (If read ‘ze German’ one more time, I will be really upset. We all get it, yes, Germans have an accent. So do Afrikaners. Ours is nicer.) I was quite proud of the fact that involuntarily or not, he got the most laughs and defied the cliché of the humourless Bavarians. The free beer might have had something to do with that though. 

So afterwards it was straight into the beer hall. I believe in the all or nothing principal, which offered me the option to continue drinking throughout the morning without feeling bad. Mind you, I also had sausage and pie and Peruvian something something fritters, which in hindsight I should have taken home too. Or not. As I may have not had enough space in my stomach for my secret dinner. I drew quite the jackpot as I went to the SAB headquarters and was spoiled by Pete Goffe-Wood, whom I started to have an unofficial crush on after the first bite of the pork terrine we had for 2nd course. The crush became somewhat more official after two more glasses of beer and the baked rice pudding.
 Obviously the whole festival wasn’t all about stuffing my face, it was about the speakers. Except maybe for Anna Trapido’s talk about her book ‘Hunger for Freedom’ as it was accompanied by a 19-piece lunch pack, each item representing a dish with importance in Mandela’s life. One wanted to be careful though with munching too fast. A guy sitting next to me took a huge bite of the prison Christmas cake, just a moment before Anna warned us about how nasty the cake was.

The guy put on a brave face and swallowed without a sound; I was quite impressed.
All speakers were a beautiful mix of – “wow, I didn’t know this”, and “wow, I need to try this”, and “wow, now I’m crying”. I walked out with a new restaurant I want to try with my Dad, a new business contact, an overall feeling of inspiration, and thanks to a goodie bag voucher 2 beautiful, decadent Le Creuset espresso cups. Not bad for a day and half of sitting on rustling, brown paper covered chairs, which surely must have cost some poor interns some nerves.