love+making peace

 THERE is an enemy in our midst. Its name is Kitchen and its soldiers are pots and pans and dough that won’t prove. I’ve made a flopped beer bread, a flopped batch of cookies, an okay plate of pasta and a cake – where the icing split irreparably and no amount of quick chill or re-mix could save it. On top of this mess I managed to decorate it like a five-year-old. I hang my head in shame. Or would-be shame if I didn’t have the pleasure of cool beers and company while cooking.

Two tins of soon-to-be-flopped cake mix... I left out the coffee, I think. After that nothing really happens, which is the problem - a bit 'Waiting for Godot' really...

The sauce, a rich cream infused with black pepper, garlic and mushrooms simply did not reduce properly. A missed opportunity really, because it still looks workable here.

In my paltry defence I did conjure an amazing oxtail stew, served with couscous. I did this by mustering the very last of my soul’s resources in one lacklustre effort… goodness knows what I put in there but it was great. Either that or poor starved Tristan and poor starved me were so hungry for home-cooked food that we thought it was delicious – our stomachs elaborately tricking our tongues into sustaining our bodies.

Of course, Tristan “loves” everything I make. Bless him, even if he is a terrible liar.

Cooking provides a certain sort of balm for the soul – even when it flops. The rituals and traditions, the whole process has the effect of drawing you closer to yourself. I recently read a line from a novel by an Afrikaans authoress that read “by looking down to the ground I know where my strength will come from”. How true, eating connects us to the earth and cooking is the way in which we achieve this connection.

I think I am waxing lyrical again, so I’ll get to the point:  I blame Fancy Apron for my cooking failures. All that lovely fabric and wonderfully bright turquoise and brown loops. It gives you a feeling of ‘all gear no skill’. Damn you Fancy Apron that brings to mind hundreds of proper Afrikaans ladies in the kitchen from 4pm each day, wearing fancy aprons and cooking meat and two veg with instant pudding every single day for their litters of kids, husband, relatives etc. You know the sort of women I mean! The sort who only bake on special occasions and when they do they use lard and a cookbook that the National Party commissioned in the 40s – thanksverymuch. The sort who only ever sip sherry at New Year’s and who are so resourceful, so avidly frugal that they never buy clothes… only ever patterns and reams of material that will never match, but convincingly mimic what they have seen in a magazine. In other words, the sort of women who raised me. 

I have an ancient copy of this treasure, first published in 1951 and penned by the Domestic Goddess and Duchess of Frugal SJA De Villiers. Warning: must enjoy cooking with lard.

 For the long weekend my friend is coming to visit us on the farm, and I’ll be cooking something fierce. In my way then, I have made peace with the kitchen and will spend my weekend trying to prove that good triumphs over evil cooking flops. I shall also be wearing Fancy Apron, even if it conspires against me.

On a side note, I am busy reading a lovely novel, cosy in bed – and the question arises ‘what shall we eat tonight?’…

 Aren’t we incredibly lucky people?

Love+bitter, bittersweet

I HAVE been quiet for a while as the hard work of many weeks culminated into a semi-final and final round of a musical battle that, surprisingly, ended up leaving a swell of pride in my chest. Yes the sound was dodgy and the engineers were shocking, yes there was limited seating, yes yes yes… But it is the process that counts, the adventure. Well done to everyone. It was a bittersweet ending to a long journey filled with excitement, listlessness, anger and growing pains.

Goodbye the bright lights and the late nights

Our pastures on the farm have officially turned and we are buying bales like mad. The end of summer is also bittersweet, no more grass and balmy nights, but no more AHS, West Nile or other bugs either.

A kiss to build a dream on

Ponies at the bale

Ponies stare me down

Soon to be bleached yellow

The 'forever pasture' turning, slowly

Finally, I have to make mention of the bittersweet passing of a beautiful and talented young ocean-goer. A national-team body-boarder; a Springbok. Sun-bleached hair and youth and talent snuffed out in Cape Town’s icy waters by a white shark. It means the end of filming permits and hopefully chumming, which is a contentious topic, hotly debated by pundits. I don’t like the practice and I celebrate its end in our waters, but mourn a life well-lived but cut short. RIP David Lilienfeld, you beauty.

Love+rambles

I’M staring at a pack of environmentally friendly pencils, gleaming bright green in the lamplight. I’m thinking of their practicality, their old-time value and how best they can be displayed in my new digs for my four-day weekly stints in Johannesburg. My mind is rambling, I have so much to say but I can’t seem to streamline my thoughts. My thoughts right now, read as follows: a huge important meeting tomorrow (urgh), organising my new digs in Big Smoke, painting that bathroom on the farm and getting the smaller camps set up (a few smaller camps, I have found, are always useful), autumn and winter to come, grass, cooking, minor success with our Friday night show despite the embarrassing photo shopped press pictures - it occurs to me, I have first-world problems today.

Here goes the blog, pardon the mess…

My three days on the farm expire way too quickly – can’t wait for a repeat visit Saturday. I absolutely love cooking in winter and for two reasons: 1) I get to cook hearty home stews, pies and other lovely winter meals 2) standing close to the wood-burning stove is the warmest, most comforting place in the whole of our rickety old farmhouse. This Saturday, I’ll be cooking a stew of oxtail in red wine served with couscous. I still have that cake to bake! Farm time spells simplicity and love winning, even after a trying week. On the farm there are no colleagues nagging for a take-out, if you want to eat you’ll cook it, on a fire that you’ll have to build yourself. 

Ancient, useful.

 Autumn is in full swing, and we tend to have colder weather there than in the city. It was fantastic to snuggle up at night and feel the crisp bite of winter in the mornings and evenings. Winter on the farm can be a marvellous time – if you can get over the fact that we are chronically skint from having to buy bales of grass. We found a good source of teff – a preferred hay type here. It is fine grass, very nourishing and quite expensive. We’ll be trying to acquire as much as we can in the next week or two.

The logistics of getting anything onto the farm is a nightmare, never mind bulky bales of grass. The closest big town is 60kms away. Couple that with the fact that it is hard going over the farm road and looming winter becomes a nightmare. We’ll manage something, we always do.

On Sunday evening, the wind blew frigid and the temperature gauge in my car read 10.5 degrees Celsius. Of course, on a night like that our ponies will break out of their camp for a quick wander about the property (the huge 1200 hectare stretch of farm). We caught most of them, and seeing as they’ve no way off the property, we left the remaining four out wandering for the night.  We had to, the cosmos flowers are shoulder high and the night was pitch black. On Monday morning they were lined up at the gate waiting for breakfast. Love wins.

My accommodations over in Big Smoke are improving as I’ve mentioned: my own little flatlet with my own little patch of garden. Bliss. I go a bit soft in the head if I can’t feel grass under my feet and if I’ve no privacy. This is such good news.

We’ll be painting the bathroom on the farm – we are painting it ‘putting green’ simply because that is the paint we have lying around. The bathroom is creepy, so we don’t think the green will do much to make it much creepier. So we will paint. I should add that we’ve threatened to paint for the last two years… Let’s see how far we get.

Love the space you’re in, you’ll never regret it.