Still missing Ouma

Ouma hou waak oor my werk kamer!

I have many defense mechanisms against sadness. In the past few years I've build almost impenetrable defenses to get me through all the sadness. From the start I've know that this moat will dry up, and when it does, I might cry for a whole year.
For each situation I've created different mechanisms focused on changing the sad memories into uplifting and motivating physical activities.
When my ouma passed away (three years, today) I couldn't help but feel that she had so much knowledge she hadn't yet shared with me.  How to crochet, how to give stitches, how to cable knit, how to make her fancy beskuit and how keep my room as tidy as hers. This deeply selfish point of view changed into a kind of drive, I wanted to make my Ouma proud! I don’t believe in heaven and hell, but I know she did and I hope she’s having a great time up there and that she can see how hard I’m trying to teach myself all these things.

My biggest defense against Ouma sadness is crochet. I taught myself the basics, with some help from a blue talon-ed woman on YouTube. It doesn't just keep the sadness at bay but brings happiness to me and others, because my guilty pleasure is making things for other people. I think the greatest gift you can give someone is your time, and crochet takes a long time!

Other than crochet, I've tried keeping my room tidy, it seems to work for a few days, but then the Zee wasteland starts forming.
Wilke calls me Zee and he firmly believes that part of my Zee’ness is to lay waste to my room within a day. Not just that, but that I have the ability to devastate any area I start working in.

I’m trying to fight it Ouma, but I think some things are never going to change

On the farm

I’ve finally made the move. I’m officially on the farm.
I’m still getting used to the idea that this is it, it’s done. For the last two years Keiran and I have been living 1500km apart, with brief holidays and overpriced phone calls being the glue that kept us together.
For the last two weeks (my first two weeks on the farm) I’ve been ‘skropping nes’ and trying to find my feet and place here. We've moved into a new room, made a GIANT bookcase out of old teak planks - in the Braam Brink style- and started gardening.

It’s more an idea rather than a garden. Earlier this week I planted a variety of seeds in seedling trays and the suspense of germination is killing me! Every morning I wake up thinking ‘this is it!’ only to be disappointed. It’s almost like getting Christmas day wrong, for a whole week.
My mom said I should make a gardening diary, so I did. The idea for the cover design was a juvenile Tort Boontje pattern, but then the gold pen exploded. Now my delightful golden pattern has a massive misplaced pea pod in it. Sumien says it gives character, I’m not sure I need more character..

Die mense hier kyk myklaar snaaks aan!

Istanbul Patterned

Marble floor at Topkapi Palace

Fantastic ceiling

Painted Tiles - Entrance to Harem

Geometric patterned tiles

Inside Agia Sophia

Yes I would go back at the drop of a hat.

More of less is more

There are quite a few projects I haven't had the time to share with you and this is one of the biggies. Last year Elsje and I worked for Simonsberg cheese and created a dramatic pop up dinner on the Spier theater stage, for the Spier Secret Festival. 

My favourite thing of the whole gedoente was Elsje's balloon wall. In essence it's just a bunch of balloons, but when spaced correctly, it became a beautiful and subtle barrier between our guests and the massive, open stands.

Sometimes more of less is more, in this case the humble balloon made the whole show.

Naughty cookies, no sell

A few years ago I took part in a food market and even though I iced my chubby little fingers to the bone, no one was interested in my cutesy yet rude cookies. At the time everyone was doing over-iced pretty cookies, myself included. To break the mold and move forward, I thought to write terribly rude things, on top of pretty pastel cookies and start a Stoute Koekie revolution.

I made 200 and sold about 12. My 'stoute koekie' industry never made it but at least I learned to ice without fear. Stoute Koekies unite!

HAWK 2013

We officially have a ceiling AND warm water in Betty's Bay, all thanks to Wilke's hard work! The celebrate this as well as HAWK, we are doing another pop up restaurant this year.
Have a look at the menu, let me know what you think and book early, we're running for 5 nights only! This year we are focusing on skewered foods, braaing and exploring fresh, caramelized and burnt flavours.

How I make Braaibroodjies

Braam taught me about braai broodjies. He was always ahead of his time and as my mom puts it, the last of the renaissance men. When everyone was making pasta slaai in the 1990’s, my parents were having long lazy Sunday braai’s with friends and family. I remember Braam would buy a whole snoek by the harbour, back when the harbour was full of cut throat seamen and prostitutes, not the sanitized water front we have today. If I went with, he would always keep a protective hand on the back of my neck in the same way he did when we crossed a road. Once we found the least pap snoek, the merchant would wrap it tightly in old newspaper and we would take it home. We scaled and gutted the fish outside, while my mom fussed about all the scales now stuck to me, the dogs and the floor.
The reason I’m thinking about the fish is because the braai broodjie would get a similar treatment. Braam would buy a cheap imitation ‘sourdough’ at the supermarket and gut it like a fish, along the length of the whole bread. The geflekte broodjie got stuffed like a fish and put in a rooster and braai’d, just like a fish. Sometimes he would make two braai broodjies - one with chilli and one without. To differentiate between the two he would stick a fresh chilli into the spiked broodjie.

As I’m trying to build my own career in the food industry, I don’t miss the harbour, or Braam’s braai broodjies, I miss the feeling of total safety with Braam’s protective hand on the back of my neck.



How to make a proper braaibroodjie

The best braaibroodjie is a minimalistic one. Choose the right ingredients and pair with homemade mayonnaise and you’re on to a winner!

Ingredients:

BREAD: I like to use plain white bread.. If you are feeling flush, buy a fancy bread at a fancy bakery, but in the end I feel that defeats the purpose of the versatile braaibroodjie. If you insist on fancy bread, I would suggest using fancier cheeses, such as white rinds and blues, both of which will stand up to the complex flavours of quality sourdough loaves. To create your masterpiece, cut the whole loaf length ways  as though you are making a giant sandwich. Now add your sauces and ingredients, close and braai. After the giant braaibroodjie is done, cut into finger thick slices for all to enjoy.

CHEESE: You can use any cheese, but unlike the bread, try to buy the best cheese you can afford. I usually opt for two cheeses on a braaibroodjie, one for flavour and one for melt-ability. The ultimate combination is a strong mature cheddar and a fresh mozzarella - for colour, flavour and the perfect melt!

VEGETABLES: Any braaibroodjie needs tomato and onion. The trick is to cut thin slivers of both, to lift the flavours, not kill your palate with soggy, half cooked tomato disks. If you are going for the more grown up braaibroodjie, roast some Rosa tomatoes with balsamic, olive oil and a pinch of sugar. Once the baby tomatoes are soft, remove from the oven and add to your braaibroodjie. Many people also shy away from raw onions… If you are one of the picky ones, caramelize your thinly sliced onions beforehand and add to your broodjie for extra flavour minus the sharp taste.
Remember, braaibroodjies aren't butch, they require great finesse and skill.

FRESH HERBS: Fresh herbs are essential to a good braaibroodjie. For a basic cheese, tomato and onion broodjie, add basil. For more exotic cheeses, use lemon thyme and sage. Dried herbs will not do the trick, so don’t even try to cut corners!

Sauce: The cheapest sauce is the one you make yourself. Make an easy homemade mayonnaise and wow your friends with your culinary skills. If you are roasting Rosa tomatoes for your braaibroodjie, leave the mayo and rather use the cooking juices as your sauce of choice. If you aren’t up to the challenge of making any kind of sauce, use a good quality mayonnaise and mix in some finely chopped gherkin or pickled onion for a zingy tartar style sauce.


More than anything a braaibroodjie is a vehicle for your creativity. By following the above guidelines, even loosely, you can create fantastic braai snacks or vegetarian main dishes.

PS - In South Africa braaibroodjies differ from region to region. You might offend your guests from the Freestate if you don’t butter the outside of your braaibroodjie, while in the Cape, you will equally offend for buttering so rather opt for a drizzle of olive oil…

Coincidence!

I love how similar they look. It’s mind blowing that less than a 100km from where I stay, these delightful individuals came up with the exact same concept, same typeface, alles! Wow! Talk about coincidence!

Engaged city girl

Me and my Fantastic Man, with tropical background.

I guess I forgot to mention that I’m engaged. Engaged to a most fantastic man from Namibia. When we first met, I thought Namibia was some exotic, dry, foreign country and it is, but I recently discovered that half of my heritage comes from Namibia. Ouma Hettie came from Otjiwarongo, and moved to Stellenbosch, where she was one of the prettiest and grandest ladies in town.

She had a hard time, raising 4 children mostly alone, as her husband/my grandfather passed away when my dad (the oldest of the 4) was 10/11 years old. Years later we would go visit her, in Stellenbosch, and play in her manicured garden and sit on her tasteful mid century wooden chairs. Every time we drove through to visit, it would rain and somehow that still effects my view of Stellenbosch. 

More than anything, I think of Ouma Hettie as a lady that kept it together. She chose her clothes with great care and her words with even more. I imagine she could tell you off without you even knowing it. Thankfully she never told me off. She would give each one of us kids a R5 coin when she came to visit. She would tell me I’m beautiful and give me very tight hugs. I would smell like her perfume for the rest of the day.

Years ago Ouma Hettie gave my mom a pair of 1940’s black velvet Bally heels, which my mom would wear to grand functions. I would sit and watch how she got dresses, put on her make-up and finally pull on the velvet heels. She’d curse because no one had smaller feet that Ouma Hettie. I will never be able to wear those heels because as my brother so aptly describes, I have elephant feet. 

I wish I knew more about Ouma Hettie’s time in Namibia. I wish I knew how they made a living, what they ate and how they cooked. I’ll be moving to Namibia soon and while I’m scared of the new surroundings, I’m excited to forge a new future with Keiran. It seems like being a ‘city girl’ is the worst kind of girl you can be in Namibia. At least I’m a city girl with some Namibian roots and the love of my Namibian man, enough to cushion any fall.

Tamaletjie

Tamaletjie is one thing I never knew as a child. My ouma was more a beskuit bak kinda lady. Apparently her mother, my great grandmother, was a sweetie making machine, making toffees and hard candied for any and every occasion. I still have a bottle of rose water my great grandmother made. It’s old and a bit mouldy on top, but the flavour is fantastic. When I open the bottle, the whole house smells like roses.
Anyway, back to the tamaletjie. In standard 1 we had a cake sale, and one kid bought tamaletjies. I bought one and struggled to eat it for the rest of the day. It was a fat disk of caramel, to thick to bite through, to big to stick into your mouth and by then, to sticky to put down. In the end I hid it in the garden, washed my hands and forgot about the whole taai gemors.
Only recently I discovered Phillippa Cheifitz’s recipe for tamaletjie (page 186 of her latest book, South Africa Eats) which isn’t a thick disk of caramel, but rather thin shards of buttery caramel studded with pine nuts.
I immediately tried it, and loved it. I changed the quantities a bit, to include more pine nuts - my vice, but other than that, this recipe is a winner. I’ve successfully replaced pine nuts with sunflower seeds and almonds, so give it a try!

　

My take on tamaletjie, VERY inspired by Phillippa J
2 cups sugar
1 knob of butter
250g pine nuts

Place sugar in a non-stick pan over a high heat. Stir every now and again with a knife (easier to clean once caramel starts forming) until the bottom sugar starts melting. Keep on stirring every now and again until all the sugar has melted and there are no lumps left. The caramel should have a nice deep colour, but be careful, there is a thin line between caramel and burnt sugar. So, at once after all the sugar has melted and caramel forms, add the butter and stir through. The caramel will become a butterscotch colour. Once the butter has melted, add the pine nuts and stir through quickly. Now drizzle the mixture onto a prepared tinfoil sheet, which has been spray and cooked before hand, and using a spatula, spread the mixture out as thin as possible. Allow to set and break the big sheet of tamaletjie into bits.

Kom Dans Klaradyn

I think the dinners went down well. I’m grateful for all the new people I met and all the people that supported me. I was overjoyed when an old friend, Marianne Visser, came to dinner. She is still the nicest girl under the sun and is part of The Creamery, were they make fancy ice cream out of best locally sourced ingredients. Sorry kids, no pink food colouring.
I’m to dazed after all the work to even write about the dinners, but I will leave you with a write up Big Big Joe did about his dinner experience. I’m terrible with compliments, so yes, I'm still blushing.
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Serendipity

By bigbigjoe

A few years ago I heard Philip Tobias define serendipity as looking for a needle in a haystack and finding the farmer’s daughter. Well, I found her. But let me tell the tale from the start.  I’m not much of a fan of foodie festivals and events. Usually there’s too many wannabe’s, has-beens, poorly made and overpriced food, not even to mention the amount of backbiting and eyeball-gouging between under-qualified armchair critics and their over-informed protractors. The unceremonious eviction of Cape Town’s most abhorrent pseudo-foodista by the host at last year’s Toffee food festival left me with a wry, told-you-so smile. “You were right, as usual, to stay away” my inner hedonist told me gleefully, and I left it at that. On Saturday I was invited with to a meal that would change all of my preconceptions. A most welcome phone call mid-morning brightened an otherwise bleak day with an invitation to a pop-up dinner organised by @ToffeeEvents as part of the run-up to this year’s meticulously planned Spier Secret festival. Knowing that the company would be good, I accepted. I had no expectations about the food or the venue, but with the family off to a glorious holiday in Buffels Bay while I had obligations at work, I knew that at the very least it would beat Saturday night television and dinner for one.

The venue in Spin Street (such an apt name considering that parliament is just around the corner) is a narrow room with wooden floors in a building that has likely been under the protection of the National Monuments council for some time. A Weber filled with glowing charcoal at the front door deceived us for a moment before we entered, finding the venue gloriously decorated in what I can best describe as a cross between Brillat Savarin’s Grande Chambre de Saveur and what I would expect the laboratory from Roald Dahl’s short story, Perfume, would look like. A long table, elegantly and intimately laid out for 7 diners, awaited, basking in the golden glow from what seemed a hundred tea candles reflecting from the space blankets used to cover the walls. Drinks (a superb Chenin and Pinotage from Spier) were decanted into glass laboratory flasks and beakers, with a large jar of rock shandy for those intent on abstaining. The cutlery was left on an antique sideboard in jam jars, descriptions of their required usage printed on the paper sheets that acted as place mats also containing a brief note on each dish. We sat, poured, and thus began the age old ritual of dining in tranquillity among like-minded friends.

I can bore you ad infinitum with descriptions of the ethereal beauty of the evening, but in the end, when stripped away of everything else, it is all about the food. There was to be no whistles & bells or foams & gels, thank goodness. Cara Brink compiled the dishes to reminisce about old fashioned Afrikaans classics, and in the process honour and celebrate family, and elders. Between courses she came out to explain and briefly talk about each dish in a shy, clear voice. An absolute absence of any pretence was very clearly on the menu, which at first glance looked deceptively simple. Yet, as most cooks will tell you, simple is easy to cook but the hardest possible dish to do to perfection. What followed was a meal that surpassed any of my last year’s meals at Eatout’s top 20 restaurants, and put many of them to shame. The planned oysters were substituted with fresh mussels steamed to barely-cooked, plump, juicy perfection in their own juices and but a smattering of finely chopped onion, the delicate stems of suringkies adding a momentary rapier-cut bite to the dish.  Served next was a spring salad of tender baby butter lettuce with the thinnest slivers of fresh apple, gooseberry and marinated red onion, dressed in an unassuming honey and oil vinaigrette that brought out the Lady Marmelade in the Chenin, a perfect wine and food pairing if there ever was one. The outydse sosaties that followed revealed an expert chef’s hand: marinated in a properly cooked light curry and onion sauce for four days prior to being skewered with the appropriate dice of delicate pork fat in between the cubes of meat for added luscious succulence, and a dab of dried apricot to tame the excess. This was no bumbling attempt by a butcher’s apprentice, no half-hashed roadside diner’s approach to what should be THE Afrikaans national dish. An accompanying twist on bone-bredie showed insight into the season’s changes and the need for new-found freshness, incorporating peas and spring onions with a light hand into what could easily have been a stodgy disaster. Bits of carrot and hint of mint added to it in the very same way a frisky morning breeze in Spring makes the sunshine all the more welcoming, and it acted as the perfect accompaniment to the rich, sweet sosaties. On to dessert: the abundant dark chocolate terrine would have been welcomed by any Parisian chocolatier. Sides to this included the freshest, feather-light ricotta carefully blended with a bit of fynbos honey, delicately thin slices of almond biscotti and a preserver’s masterpiece in the form of guava fruitcheese. The guava’s had been boiled down gently for a couple of hours with some sugar, and set beautifully through nothing but the use of their own inherent pectin. A small dash of rosewater added further voluptuousness to this artisanal crafter’s dessert reminiscent of the skills I’d thought died out with my ouma. “Marry me, Cara?” my friend Jaques asked jokingly with a mouthful of decadence, earning him an understanding glance from his wife.

Over coffee poured atop a generous layer of condensed milk, the conversation steered towards family and food. Cara told of how she painstakingly recreated the sosaties her oupa was famous for- a man who died before her birth; how she experimented with various ratio’s and gentle spices to come as close to the Ware Jakob as her mother’s palate could recall.  The ladies at the table tittered about the photo of her grandfather and his six-pack on the menu. I told of my grandfather, and his infamous birthday celebrations in early January where he also made the sosaties ritually with a crystal glimmer in his eye up to a week before. My ouma ‘s illness left him a bereft widower, but also a man without any food culture or -skills. In the remaining years of his life he went from being unable to boil water without burning it, to the first and foremost male cook I knew, and those annual January gatherings became more important to us as kids than Christmas. With the adults around the fire, all the grandchildren would laugh, giggle and chase giddily around the house, raiding his vegetable garden or the orchard of summer fruit if our hunger could no longer wait for the meat to come off the grill. We would attempt to outdo one another by eating as many sosaties as was allowed, and proudly hang on to the sticks as badges of honour to be displayed and bragged about. Afterwards, the adults now in contented conversation, we’d wait impatiently for the ritual vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce, relieving our frustrations with the on-going search for the cement patches around the house where my grandfather proudly wrote each of our names in at birth. Since my grandfather’s death I have not eaten a sosatie this sweetly close to perfection for twenty seven years.
In the end it’s never about just the food. Food in itself is not a spiritual experience; it is but a clanging cast-iron pot, a hollow vessel. What gives humanity value is community and friendship, but food is frequently an integral part of the binding, the essential glue that holds together the fragile parts of who we are as individuals. In conversation the dedication of Sophie Dahl’s cookbook was mentioned, where she wrote to her now-husband, Jamie Callum, that it is at his table she wishes to grow old. I could not but help to think that I would not mind at all growing old at a table such as this, and in this company. I am rarely without words, but on Saturday night I lacked the ability to describe the perfection and balance of the evening’s food, my food of preference: heimweë-en hunkerkos. Cara Brink exhibited the most finely honed of skills in that delicate dance between chef and ingredients, the sublime pas-de-deux between host and table guests. She underestimates and undervalues herself. To her I can but send an invitation: Kom dans, Klaradyn

So far, so good.

One of my first attempts at making curried sosaties with

my first ever attempt at making strawberry jam in the background.

We’re halfway through the heritage pop up dinners and not doing to bad. It seems like people are enjoying the food and atmosphere. Most importantly I’m glad that people enjoy the experience. A Pop up restaurant means different things to different people. For me it’s a much needed platform for young cooks to try their skills and test their menu’s without having to loan money or sign leases.
So, thank you Hannerie Visser for giving me this platform. I hope many cooks still get the chance to host their own pop up’s at 12 Spin Street.

UPDATE:

• After boasting about fantastic West Coast Oysters at East Coast Fisheries, I got no oysters due to a bacterial infection in the water. I was assured that it isn’t deadly, but might be unpleasant. I thought it better not to take any chances and opted for mussels, not so glamorous but just as delicious, steamed in a white wine, red onion and celery broth and topped with Surinkies. Even though the oysters might recover this week, I’m sticking to the mussels.

Say No to sad salads

In our family, we like salads with substance. There is no excuse for a sad undressed salad, because my mom taught both her children how to make a good, basic salad dressing.
As with mayonnaise, my mom’s salad dressing is always better than mine. Maybe it’s a lifetime of making it, or just a better understanding of flavours, but my mom always wins hands down, especially when Wilke is the sole judge.
Back to the salad.
You must aspire to create great salads. A good salad is a summer essential and an all round winner, taste and health wise. All great salads also have good dressings.
My mom’s dressing is a basic springboard, add whatever you want, the world is your oyster and you deserve good dressing.
If you want to plan in advance, make a big bottle of this salad dressing (as the recipe suggests), it will see you through a week or two of delightfully dressed salads. If you're scared to commit to a whole bottle, use the same principles, but in much smaller quantities, for an one salad salad dressing.
Finally, before I divulge Sumien’s Salad Dressing, a Grolsch beer bottle is our chosen vessel. We've used the same bottle for as long as I can remember. It still has a ceramic swing top, but I’m sure a new plastic swing top bottle will work just as well.

Ingredients
1 big clove of garlic, finely grated or chopped and pulverized with your fancy knife skills.
1 heaped teaspoon of wholegrain mustard
1 normal teaspoon of English mustard
1 tablespoon of sugar or a good drizzle of honey
big pinch of ground black pepper
generous pinch of salt
white wine vinegar
sunflower oil / olive oil
Method
Put a large funnel into the Grolsch bottle. Now place the garlic, mustard's, sugar and seasoning in the funnel. Slowly pour the bottle 1/3 full of white wine vinegar and use a skewer or suitably thin object to help push through the other ingredients. Once your bottle is 1/3 full with vinegar, top the bottle up with sunflower oil, leaving a 5cm gap at the top. Some people like to use olive oil here, but it can become very overpowering, depending on the type of olive oil you use. I like to use half sunflower and half cooking olive oil in an attempt to be a bit healthy.
Now close that fantastic swing cap and shake. The vinegar and oil will emulsify and create a nice thick dressing. Make this dressing at least a day in advance, if time allows, to let the flavours mingle and mellow out.
　
For the Spier Secret Festival pop-up dinners, my salad is geared towards the wine being served.
Earlier this year I’ve had the pleasure of working with Frans, the winemaker at Spier, and he taught me about the various flavour pairings for Chenin Blanc.
This salad is just that, a flavourful salad, which will hopefully compliment the wine perfectly. This time Frans will be the judge, not Wilke!

Oesters met Surings

Oxalis pes-caprae / Suringkies / Cape Sorrel  image from this website

My mom and I have a thing for oysters. Every time we come back from Betties Bay, after a day of working on our house, we reward ourselves with some fresh oysters from East Coast Fisheries in Gordon’s Bay. Imagine our horror when we heard that some crazy drunk ex - springbok rammed into it. We postponed our next Betties Bay trip indefinatly, until this past weekend.
To our amazement the facade of the building had been repaired and while the builders add the finishing touches, East Coast Fisheries is trading out of the garage next door. I was silently hoping the age old décor had been irreparably damaged by the crash, but no, it was there, in all it’s cheesy, fishy splendour. We hurried into the garage, like drug addicts looking for our fix. Halfway through the door my mom was already ordering the usual, but the lady behind the counter looked at the oyster box,and the last, half open oyster inside it and said ‘ Sorry ons is uitverkoop mevrou’.

For the pop up I’m getting fantastic fresh West Coast oysters, delivered every day, from Southern Cross Seafood Deli. For a bit of pretty I’m adding suringkies, a little yellow flower which grows all over the Cape. As children we would eat them, not because they taste sweet or anything, rather for the novelty thereof. They are actually, as the name suggests, very sour and the thus the perfect substitute for lemon juice in most dishes. Surings also go by the name of Cape Sorrel, or Oxalis pes-caprae for all your scientific types.


Thanks to Renata Coetzee I also know that suringkies are very high in vitamin C and that their leaves contain certain acids that greatly help polishing yellow copper.

Spier Secret Festival Pop Up Dinners

The Spier Secret Festival pop up shop is hosting a two week long pop up restaurant for me and my food. This week they are hosting Yang and her delicious Dim Sum eats. I’m a bit worried about my menu after experiencing Yang’s delightful dumplings!
My menu is built around revisiting traditional Afrikaans dishes and ingredients, some which I love and others I loath. More than anything it's trying to create a flavourful, easy going dinner.
Please click on the menu to see a bigger version!

The sound of the Universe

My mom always tells me that she’s heard the sound of the Universe. She heard it when she was on holiday in Namibia with Braam. They were standing by the finger of god (before it fell down) and she heard this sound, which she recognized as the Sound of the Universe, which was a bit scary and gave her hoendervleis. After my mom tells her part of the story, Braam would say it wasn’t the Universe, it was the wind whistling through the wire fence surrounding God’s supposed finger.
I used to like Braam’s methodical, logical approach to things. I liked how everything could be solved and sorted out, with the right insight and information.

That was until I heard the Universe too.

Recently Keiran took me on holiday, to Etosha, a big nature reserve in the North of Namibia. We camped, braaied and did some serious game watching.
On the last day we drove to a lookout point, which is about a kilometre into the Etosha pan. Usually, when driving around, you would be surveying the landscape with a hawk eye, trying to spot an elephant ear flapping or a lonely leopard whipping it’s tail, but on the pan there is nothing. There is no definite end to the horizon and definitely nothing between you and it.
We stopped at the little turn-around circle and got out of the car. It felt incredibly naughty, as you are constantly warned to STAY IN YOUR VEHICLE AT ALL TIMES.
I stepped over the mini wire fence and walked onto the pan.
I kept on walking until Keiran called me back. He was smiling and asked me if I was enjoying myself. I shouted ‘Yes!‘ and did a little happy dance.
In that moment I felt completely at peace. I wasn’t hearing the universe, but feeling it. The sun was winter bright and warm but not unpleasant. The silence was total with only the crunch of Keiran’s vellies keeping me in this world. I remember standing there thinking that I want to feel like this forever. I want to feel the warm wind, the sun and the crunchy, salty pan underneath my bare feet. More than that I want to feel this ultimate peace within myself, knowing it’s me, my Liefste and a never ending horizon.

If my mom can hear the universe and I can feel it, maybe my children will be able to change it. For the better hopefully.

Dinner - keeping it in the family

Matchy Matchy : My mom loved dressing me, as seen above, Sumien in fancy tights, me in crazy feline bodysuit.

It is so cliché these days to say you grew up with food, but I did.
I have fantastic memories, from then I was about 6 or 7, of Ouma, my mom or Braam making dinner in the summer. They would wait for the outside world to cool down, before we could eat, so we could sit underneath the big oak tree. The children (usually Wilke, Nils and myself) had to clear the table and do the dishes. In the kitchen, Wilke and Nils would compete to see who could handle the most English mustard or chili sauce.
I also have nightmare inducing memories of picking, de-pipping and juicing hundreds of Pomegranates. After making the juice, we spent the next few months drinking, cooking and freezing it. Today when I open the deep freeze I almost want to cry because there is still some of that hateful purple juice, biding it’s time in forever froze, laughing at me.
More than anything, I grew up with a table. Each evening we would sit down as a family and have dinner around our speckled marble table, chipped and cracked with years of use. Come hell or high water, we would have family dinner at around 8pm every night.
Over the years I think dinner has become the great glue that keeps our family together. My dad used to pray before every meal, saying a very traditional Afrikaans prayer: ‘Seen ons met die gebruik van hierdie gawe en maak ons opreg dankbaar daarvoor, in U naams ontwill, Amen.’
He wasn’t a religious man, not in a church way, but he believed in the greatness and silence of the mountains and in the perfection of nature. I think his prayer was an ode to his father, who passed away when he was still young, but he never really told me why he prayed.
We don’t pray before dinner anymore, but we remain grateful even though life has been tough on us recently. We carry on, we fight back and we keep our dinner traditions alive. Even when we buy pizza we try to keep it civilized, eating by the table with plates, cutlery and candles. Recently my mom has relaxed a little, turning a blind eye when Wilke and I devour pizza with our hands.
Currently there is a movement away from the TV and toward the dinner table and the communal or family dinner has become quite grand. I never think of our dinners as ‘grand’ because I still vividly remember with a ‘grill’ sitting next to Ouma, eating lamb stew, with her nibbling and slurping every single bone, trying to get to all the murg.
In my opinion the glamorization of the family dinner is a bit misplaced but I think it is essential and should be part of any household, big or small, with or without the nibbling and slurping.

Things my Ouma used to say to me...

My Ouma was a big feature in my childhood. Before she moved down to Cape Town, she was a teacher in Witrivier. I think the only reason she initially agreed to live in the Cape was because she had a handful of grandchildren to teach here. So Wilke, Nils and myself all got taught, Ouma's way, how to read, write and count. She had endless patience with us and allowed us each two sweets a day, even though she knew we would take a few extra is she wasn't administering our daily sweetie collection.
She passed away two years ago and I still can't help but wish she could be here, to see us all through the 'final' phases of becoming an adult. Ouma Hansen was the voice of reason in our young lives and the rock to hold on to when things didn't work out ('Ouma,Wilke and Nils ran away from me!') and I think all her effort paid off, none of her grandchildren turned out bad... we're just all a bit off beat.

So, in honour of Ouma I'm making a whole range of products to hopefully keep generations to come on the straight and narrow. It will most probably just make people nostalgic, but that's okay too!
The current range consists of tea towels, posters and cards with 8 Ouma sayings. If it goes well, I want to print a whole lot of new things, so stay tuned...

en hou duime vas!

Hand printed posters!

Tea towels on seeded cotton.

 Ouma, in haar jong dae.

Kamers

The past month has been a race against time. Elsje and I are taking part in a massive gift fair called Kamersvol Geskenke. At first we thought it might be fun, let’s do Pretoria. Somehow it has snowballed into doing all three shows and we are working like ‘trek osse’ to finish everything. Citi Sprint is coming to pick up our two boxes this morning and I can’t help thinking that we don’t have enough… But what if we don’t sell a thing?

Through all the worries and minimal cash flow we are trying to be brave and look good while doing it.

So here’s hoping that our boxes will arrive safe, we will arrive save and that I will still have my sanity by the end of next week.

　

Cake bunting I made, which you can buy at our stand(!) next week at Kamersvol Geskenke, Woodlands, Bloemfontein.

Pop up report back

This is a long time coming, but here are some photo's of the Epping inspired pop up I did with Hannerie Visser. I'm still obsessed with paper, as you can see, but my new love it for beetroot risotto, a dish I first made for Stefania. The beetroot juice gives the risotto an earthy flavour and a serious punch of pink colour.

Thank you for all the support, expecially to Sam Woulidge and Sune Horn. It seemed as though people loved it, I hope they did because I would love to keep on doing this!