Game Ranger or Chef?

Our nine year old son has wanted to be a game ranger for a long time now, since Animal Planet came into his life when he was about five (before that he wanted to be a pilot). Last week after they had been watching Aladdin, my husband asked the children what three wishes they would ask for, if a Genie appeared in their lives. Our son gave serious consideration to the question.

His first request was to have the materials he needed to make all the projects in his The Science and History Project Book. This is a brilliant book that a friend of his had. He requested it for his birthday present and has been browsing through ever since. It has hundreds of different things you can make, from rockets out of plastic bottles, volcanoes with bicarb, flour and vinegar, suits of armour and foods from different cultures and times in history.

Next after due thought he said he'd like to be a great artist. He gave me more details later. Though he likes the painting he does at school, it's a bit too simple and he'd like to learn to paint like Grandpa, doing very detailed watercolours.

The third wish he would use to set the genie free, like Aladdin did.

Our hearts swelled with parental pride at this mature and considered disposal of his imaginary wishes!

On Thursday, as I was wrestling in the kitchen with some naartjies to make clever naartjie sorbets for the upcoming birthday dinner, he came and sat down with something on his mind. The great question was, what did he need to do to become a game ranger and if he went to college to do that, could he also study to be a great artist? Plus he thought he'd like to open a shop to sell all the things he was going to make from his Science Project Book. If he was working as a game ranger, would his boss let him open a shop right there, so he could keep an eye on the shop while he was working? Then maybe in his holiday time he could do his art. How much holiday did I think he would get as a game ranger? And what would he need to know to run a shop? He thought that even children who were just used to plastic guns from big toy shops would find something they liked in his shop, maybe the suits of armour and swords.

We had a half hour conversation on his career aspirations. I think he has the makings of an entrepreneur, as by the end of it he had shops in several different countries with managers and a team of people that he'd trained to make enough things to sell. My husband then threw some more ideas into the mix, that maybe he'd like to make wild-life films and earn enough to buy his own game farm, then he could open his shop there and sell to his visitors.

He also has the makings of a chef. He recently rediscovered his Cooking with Herb - Herb the Vegetarian Dragon cook book, that he loved when he was small. His grand plan was to cook something from it for Dad's birthday dinner, maybe the spaghetti sandwich or the strawberry slush. My elegant dinner plans were preserved by a diplomatic suggestion from Dad, that he would like him to cook supper on his actual birthday, just for the family and that maybe he could find three recipes for Dad to choose from. This was duly done and the menu decided - Dragonian Quesadillas with spicy tomato salsa. It didn't matter that he doesn't like tomatoes, he was doing this recipe for Dad and maybe he'd try a bit. I questioned the availability of tortillas in our neck of the woods. He reassured me. There was a recipe for them in his Science Project Book.

So yesterday, after the birthday cake was disposed of, we got out the recipes to see what we needed to do. The Science Project Book obliged with a recipe for Aztec Tortillas. He duly measured out ingredients, kneaded the dough, carefully divided it into twelve and weighed each piece to see that they were even. Rolling them out thin needed a little help, but he did half of them before handing the rolling pin over to me and getting on with grating the cheese. He came into his own with the frying of the tortillas though, timing them to the second and flipping them with panache.

All this took a lot of time. 'One minute each side for twelve tortillas, that's twenty four minutes, I think supper will be at quarter to seven'. He was right. I swiftly did the salsa for him, mashed some avos for guacamole, as he concentrated on the tortillas. A whole hour and a half of hard cooking and the birthday supper was on the table. The quesadillas were light and crispy, the salsa spicy (just right for Mum and Dad) and he had triumphed!

His next idea is to get up very early and make them for breakfast and take some to school too.

Sometimes I get nostalgic for the baby years, but nine is a whole new voyage of discovery that delights at every turn.

Five More Things Meme

Cooksister tagged me for this meme ages ago, but a rigorous regime of cooking, baking, power cuts, and birthday preparations have kept me from my computer for the last few days. I'll write a full report of the first grown-up dinner party that I've cooked in living memory, soon.

What were you doing 10 years ago?

We were living in our photographic studios in London, running them as hire studios, old warehouses enmeshed in a triangle of train tracks, with a mezzanine for a bedroom and lots of white studio space everywhere else, but no windows to look out of. We were just about to get pregnant with our first child, and rushing over to South Africa as my father-in-law was dying. I was still working on a few walking holidays in Italy each year, the last one to be in September, when having just found out I was pregnant, I was suffering from being 'off food' and so the joys of a gourmet trip in Tuscany were lost to me.

Five snacks you enjoy:

Toast and marmalade
Vegetable crisps
South African rusks
Raisins
Chocolate

Five songs you know all the lyrics to:

Away in a Manger
Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
Green grow the rushes O
Summer Loving - Grease
I got friends in low places - Garth Brooks

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
(I hope this is in pounds, rather than rand, otherwise one million won't cover it!)

Pay off the mortgages of all the immediate family.
Hire a school bus for the high school kids, that I give lifts to, who hitch 25km to school every day.
Visit all my friends and family on a leisurely, luxurious, world tour.
Eat out in all the wonderful restaurants I've been reading about in all your blogs.
Provide some of the buildings that my children's school needs so badly.

Five bad habits:

Procrastination
Escapism
Untidiness
Waiting till the petrol gauge is on red before filling up.
Leaving receipts in my purse till it reaches exploding point

Five things you like doing:

Reading in front of the fire.
Eating good food not cooked by me.
Looking at a distant view.
Baking.
Filling the house with friends and food.

Five things you would never wear again:

Silver lipstick, which gave an unhealthy pallor to the skin though I'm still quite tempted by the silver nail polish that I wore with it.
Stilettos - my feet can't take anything other than comfortable shoes these days.
School uniform - any uniform.
Blouses with ruffles, ruffs and metallic gold thread stripes down them.
Miniskirts, though I'm in complete denial about this as I still have about four of my favourite Jigsaw mini skirts from the early Nineties in a suitcase upstairs.

Five favourite toys:

My Canon digital camera.
My blog.
Secateurs - pruning is my best bit of gardening and the only thing I do consistently.
Astrology books - western and Chinese, I find it all intriguing.
Crystals - from trips to the Scratch Patch with the kids, that sit in my pocket, smooth and polished for my fingers to turn over - right now it's a gorgeous piece of blue lace agate with delicate lacy stripes.

A Cluttered Mind

Two things resonated with me from this post of Charlotte's. The first that she finds it hard to ask for help and expects herself to be able to go it alone and the second the eternal housework dilemma. How, if you're not very good at housework yourself, to train your kids at least to have some idea of keeping the house moderately liveable in?

The asking for help thing is also a big hurdle for me. I always assume that everyone else has enough on their plate already and that the least I can do is sort out my relatively-unimportant-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things troubles without bothering them. So a retreat into a non-communicative comfort zone with general anaesthesia of a nice, undemanding book until I feel better, is my usual response to stress. The current interruption of blog posting, probably reflects my current struggle with the transition from cosy cocoon of stay at home mother, where I'm comfortable and confident in my abilities to bake bread, sew funny things out of felt and kiss things better, to the economic demand that I find my feet again in the strange and scary working world. I'm trying to straddle the two by working from home but it's a slow process building up a freelance business from scratch and it needs a lot of self-confidence to go out there and market yourself. I'm trying to be philosophical and read it as the universe using economic necessity as a kick up the b*m, to make me shift out of a comfort zone and stretch previously unsuspected muscles. Sometimes the philosophy slips though and chocolate and a Katie Fforde are the best recourse.

I love Katie Fforde not least because her blurb claims that her hobbies are ironing and housework but unfortunately she is too busy keeping up with the sitcoms to indulge in them. Her heroines are usually balm to the reluctant housewife, cheerfully untidy and chaotic, which makes me think that she is like that too - we're best friends already.

The divide between the untidy and the very tidy isn't quite so polemical in the blog world as, say, the hectic daycare debate that springs up and ruffles feathers at regular intervals, but there does seem to be quite a bit of sympathetic bonding between fellow messy mavericks, with bewildered incomprehension of the opposite camp.

The joys of house work haven't yet claimed me. I'm one of the clan proud to proclaim that a messy house is a sign of creativity and yet there is always a slightly defensive note to the fanfare. However much I know that I feel more comfortable when the house is looking a bit rumpled, hate it when the book I'm reading gets tidied away and can only find a jumper if it's just where I left it, I still feel that I should be tidier and teach my children to be too. This usually results in a rush of ineffectual clearing up, getting irritated with the kids when my handiwork gets rendered nul and void by another layer of played with detritus, then a surrender to the force majeure of chaos, until the next time my Virgo sun sign asserts itself.

One of Charlotte's commenters suggested a helpful site for the housework-challenged. I visited and perused its pages thinking that maybe I could do some of this, until I read the section of basics which included detailed instructions on how to achieve a shiny sink, involving soaking it in bleach, rinsing it extremely well and ever after drying it tenderly with a cloth after every use...aaaaagh! If I ever invested that much effort in a shiny sink I would be held hostage to it, standing guard over it day and night to ensure that everyone who came near gave it the same TLC. Gone would be the days when the kids could wash their sand-encrusted hands/toys/plates in it and get away with a minor request to use a bucket next time. My fleeting interest in gaining brownie points and becoming a better housewife was abruptly curtailed as I realised the devastating effect it could have on family life. Another of Charlotte's commenters remembered her mother's passion for keeping a clean house and how the children always used go next door to play. I jumped firmly back on to the messy = friendly house bench.

I've settled for decluttering as a means to improve the surface visibility in our house. Decluttering seems to be the Feng Shui of the moment. Getting rid of the excess stuff that is why your house is so untidy in the first place, and trying to change the mentality that makes you hang on to things that you don't use any more, makes more sense to me than spending hours cleaning, only to have it look exactly the same minutes after three kids and four dogs explode into the house. At least decluttering seems to last for a few days.

A mouse visitor in the larder inspired me to try the method. Our larder was getting harder to get into as the pile of stuff at the far end was making a bid to take over the entrance. The counter was overflowing with half used packets of this and that and boxes of empty jam jars filled the storage space. A few hours spent being ruthless on the weekend and I have a gleamingly clear counter space, can see the floor and there is even room for the cats to get in and catch that darned mouse...unfortunately the hall is now cluttered with the excess boxes of jam jars, which I still intend to keep for jam-making in strawberry season, and more boxes destined for the garage with all the recycling..!

Now whenever I need a morale boost I can go and stand at the door to the larder and admire its orderliness, and as long as I keep my back to the hall my halo glows brightly.

Winter Holiday

Winter in London is a long drawn out affair of short dull days and chill, damp weather enlivened by mild, muggy weather with the occasional crisp, frosty day. Snow always a rarity in a city warmed several degrees by the exhaust fumes and central heating systems of its seething masses! The twinkling festivities of Christmas lights give way to the endurance of January and February before brave spring flowers raise hopes of warmer days and sunshine. It is about survival, SAD and battening down the hatches.

Here in the Western Cape of South Africa winter is a more light-hearted affair. The days never get as short as they do in Europe. In between the periods of winter rainfall, (which we welcome as a blessing and insurance against summer drought) we get days of bright sunshine - cold nights and foggy mornings, but then the sun breaks through to tease off our layers of warm clothing, until the children return from school in T-shirts, laden with armfuls of shed clothes.

The Breede River

For some reason we seem more likely to go on holiday in the winter holidays than in the summer. We go to the Breede River with friends and just chill for a few days, pooling the children and the cooking duties, so that everyone gets plenty of time to lie around reading books, fish, eat rock buns and braai. The chill is actually a night time thing, when we huddle in the rather hard beds of a rental house, while the day's warmth exits through the minimally insulated roof until our breath mists. In the morning we stay in bed, with tea, rock bun and book, until the sun penetrates the mist and its warming rays thaw us until we are mellow again.

Fishing rods, rock buns and coffee

The children kept each other busy for hours. The first project they set themselves was to build a house in the reeds, working hard to clear out some dead brush that filled a natural hollow in the reed bed, then forming a cooperative chain gang to cut and stack reeds with which to build extra walls and roof. Our son was in his element, having recently saved up enough money to buy himself a Swiss Army penknife, here was the perfect use for it. Youngest took on the important job of receiving the cut reeds and stacking them neatly, while the others formed the middle of the chain ferrying them from cutter to stacker.


Elaborate 'experiments' with river mud, employed most of the plastic cups in the house.

Fishing with river prawns as bait from the boat and the jetty brought in large quantities of river weed. Luckily the cooks weren't relying on the catch to provide supper.

The river was still and smooth on a winter afternoon, ours the only boat to ruffle its surface. In summer we would have been on a major boat highway, with motorboats and waterskiiers hurtling past and a summer afternoon wind competing for attention. Today it was us disturbing the water birds and the peace of the still winter afternoon.

The background narrative to our four days at the river was Catweazle. I took it along and our friend nobly took it upon himself to read aloud to the children at any time that they needed a little quiet time... or we did. Gales of giggles ripped around the house at Catweazle's confused grappling with the 20th century and a few chuckles emerged from bedrooms where the other adults were pretending to be still asleep. Probably Catweazle was the reason that we didn't catch any fish - a chapter in the boat caused enough uproar to send them fleeing down to the river mouth!

This is the colour of winter at the Breede River - bright aloes set the stony, dry hillsides on fire.

Ex-pat Meme

I found another meme that I couldn't resist joining in with at Charlotte's Web. It is the Ex-pat meme. I don't particularly label myself as an ex-pat, with no language barriers and a lot of similarities with English culture here (though before I offend a whole bunch of South Africans, also a whole lot of unique qualities too!), South Africa doesn't have the feel of a Foreign Country to me. Since I have started blogging, though, I have found a huge community of like-minded bloggers residing in countries other than their native ones and the experience does seem to give us all a whole lot in common, especially that of bringing up our children in a different culture to the one we grew up in. If anyone would like to join in consider yourself tagged.

5) Name five things you love in your new country

• The views of the mountains and wide, open spaces.
• The sunshine
• The wonderful fresh fruits in the shops and the gardens. Trees loaded with lemons for the picking, though not in our garden yet unfortunately.
• The pioneer spirit and maak'n plan attitude and that it, as yet, doesn't suffer from the European overburdening of rules and regulations on every single aspect of daily life.
• The variety of people, language and culture.

4) Name four things you miss from your native country

• Old buildings and the sense of history and continuity
• Green fields and hedgerows, spring flowers - primroses, daffodils, bluebells, cowslips
• Family
• The proximity of Europe and its diverse foods, languages and cultures

3) Name three things that annoy you in your new country

• The lagging behind in telecommunications, we've just got a 24 hr wireless connection but the international portal is still so slow. This is why I still haven't really got to grips with You Tube.
• Banks, though that applies to most countries.
• We're talking annoy here, which implies minor irritation, so I won't get into the major political issues of which there are plenty to rant about. How about picking a mild one - that in a country with year-round sunshine and an electricity shortage, too dependant on an elderly nuclear power station for most of it, solar panels are still not widespread and are expensive… could Eskom, the only national power supplier, have useful contacts in the government?

2) Name two things that surprise you (or surprised you when you arrived) in your new country

• Seeing people crammed into the open back of bakkies (pick-ups) driving down the fast roads.
• That major supermarkets run out of ordinary things and don't have more in the back. At the moment it's Cadbury's Hot Chocolate, which has been off the shelves for about two months, they have other brands but the children like Cadbury's..! Maybe what you're after will come in a couple of weeks later, maybe it won't.

1) Name one thing you would miss in your new country if you had to leave.

• Our lovely house and farm with its view of the mountains.

Hell freezing over?

I read this on Ryze.com when I was dutifully networking this morning. It gave our muscles such a great workout, with the gasping and spluttering with laughter that I thought I should share it with you:

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington Chemistry mid-term.

The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well :

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell.

Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A"

Angel Party

"An angel party " she said, when we discussed her upcoming seventh birthday.

"Fine, that's no problem" I replied.

Then I started thinking about it. How should an angel party be, how would an angel treasure hunt work, what treasure would angel treasure be?

I wandered the shops in search of any little trinket with an angel motif. Nothing. The angels had been knocked out of the running by those pervasive, persuasive fairies. The fairies had taken over the sparkles and shoved the angels into storage, whence they'll emerge triumphantly singing Halleluja, only at Christmas time, which we all know doesn't start till October.

Inspiration was also lacking on the treasure hunt clue front. The fairies of the previous year had had flowers as clues, but I needed angelic inspiration to come up with anything that would pass muster with a group of seven year olds.

I returned to the shops, a bigger centre this time. But forgot my glasses. Eventually tracked down in a craft shop a bag of small charms that could possibly be angels, though without my glasses I wasn't quite sure. Held them at arms length to try and focus better but in the end resorted to accosting another shopper to ask what she thought. She hadn't her glasses either, so passed them to her daughter.

"They're angels and they say Season's Greetings", she replied in a patient tone.

I hadn't been aware of any writing at all. I ditched them, thought laterally and blew the treasure budget on pink and silver chocolate coins, some mini rainbow pens, big shiny marbles and star stickers.

The day before the party arrived and I still hadn't worked out the treasure hunt. I'd decorated some white duck festhers with gold pen to go in the treasure boxes, made origami star boxes to hold the goodies and it all looked pretty, but what would lead them to the treasure? Pirate parties have long stories of buried treasure, army parties have special missions, what do angel parties have?

Eventually my own guardian angel took pity on me and sent inspiration my way. Feathers as clues, each with a gold letter on. The Class 1 children are learning a rhyme for each letter, that they all know, so the rhyme could be the clue. So simple! T is tall, tall tree, D dirty door, G golden goose, R racing rabbit etc. Treasure Hunt sorted.

We watched the Diana concert the night before the Birthday and I cut up paper and gold doilies for the little angels to make their own angel books as a craft activity. I usually just rely on the children to play and have the treasure hunt as the only organised activity, but this time there were a few children who didn't really know each other, so making the angel book was to be an ice-breaker.

The birthday girl herself came up with the Smartie design on her cake, arranging them in the colours of the rainbow, on her actual birthday morning, as I left the baking to the last minute, after having over-faced myself on the treasure and book preparations the day before!

The party went beautifullly, the angels took care of us all and the sun shone, the birthday girl had a wonderful day, with not a tear shed.

Retrograde Inaction

It's useful to have a scapegoat and I can confidently say that it is all Mercury's fault that I haven't posted for a week. Mercury is retrograde at the moment,which I only discovered yesterday, but which explains the series of mixed up phone calls and miscommunications that have been flourishing recently. Mercury is the planet of communication and when it is travelling backwards through the heavens it sends all our communnications awry. That explains the confusing phone call last night when my cell phone rang and a friend started talking about a whole series of arrangements that I knew nothing about. I finally interrupted and said it was me, and it took a little while longer to work out that she'd thought she was answering her phone (to someone else), though I knew it was mine that had been ringing. And another call which my husband answered in a feeble, suffering from a bad cold, grunt to be met with a long, drawn-out groan. He, leaping to worst possible scenario, thought it was his sister in a dire emergency, only to find it was a friend teasing him about his wan voice...he wasn't very amused, even when his heart beat returned to normal! All these tricks that Mercury plays, when it is reversing through our charts..and it is retrograde until the 10th, though the fact that I'm posting again may mean that its influence is becoming less severe!

If you want to read more about its effects from the experts here is an explanation and here are the dates to watch out for.

Five Questions Interview Meme

I blithely put my hand up to be interviewed by Johanna, of A Passionate Cook, in this interview meme that is doing the rounds. She writes a wonderful food blog and is also blending cultures as an Austrian living in London and travelling lots. She put five questions to me to be answered on my blog and, to pass on the meme, if anyone would like five questions from me in return, just sign up in the comments. I got so into her first question that it has made a post all by itself and I could have written more but I'll save the book version for another time!

The whole world is slagging off British food – you’ve grown up with it, but also travelled widely. What is the food of your home country: wheat or chaff? And do you cook it for your children now?

Wheat! I think that British food has never really recovered its reputation since the war and rationing made it a pale shadow of its former self. People had got used to doing without, using substitutes instead of fresh ingredients, boiling up vegetables and scraggy meat together and calling it stew. When the economy recovered people looked to Elizabeth David and Europe to revive their cooking skills and palate, and British food became the dire province of institutions, in people's minds at least.

That said British cooking is actually alive and well, but is best sampled in the home of a good cook rather than in a restaurant or pub. In fact I can only really speak for English food, as Scottish and Welsh food have their own traditions and I'm not all that knowledgeable about them.

My mother brought us up on a mixture of English cooking and French inspired dishes and is a very good cook, so I grew up eating English food as it should be. I absorbed English recipes at home, many Italian and French ones on my travels and these days my culinary repertoire is a mixture of them all. I try to feed my children a wide range of food styles including stir-fries and spicy Indian dishes but what they really like best are the English staples.

The best of English food is comfort food, nursery food, food that kids like, simple and unfussy. A Sunday roast of lamb, beef, pork or chicken, roasted with some herbs and an onion in the tin, golden crispy roast potatoes, vegetables steamed just long enough, gravy made from the meat juices and a slosh of wine, this is pure culinary poetry and is the star of the English food brigade holding its own against its European rivals!

Cottage or Shepherd's Pie is another classic that is pure comfort food for the family, maybe not impressive enough to serve to guests but one that features every other week on our menu here in winter, in fact I'm cooking it tonight. Sometimes I get moans of "I don't like Shepherd's Pie". But when the plates come back for seconds and thirds I'm not that convinced. Bangers and mash, with good butcher's pork sausages is another, as are baked potatoes alongside any stew. In fact potatoes feature strongly altogether in many forms. My stews and casseroles I can't really claim as English Cooking, they have amalgamated with French cooking, taken to the (wine) bottle and no longer remember their origins!

I haven't even started on the puddings, which is probably where English cooking shows its most creative variety. Summer pudding, made with bread and berries, treacle pudding, fruit crumbles with custard, milk puddings, fruit fools, mince pies, apple pies - there is an endless succession of ways to end a meal. When I was growing up every main meal finished with a pudding. Nowadays I only make them on Sunday, when we have guests, or for special celebrations, when as a family we make several rather than just one because it is just too hard to choose between all our favourites!

What has been the best part of emigrating to South Africa – and what are the worst bits?

The space and views that we have here on our small farm, together with the South African sunshine are an amazing contrast to living in a small terraced house in London. We share the farm with several of my husband's family and have a safe little community where our children can run between the houses and have a freedom that hardly exists in city living. Something about our view of the mountains feeds the spirit too.

We have landed up just down the road from a multi-cultural Waldorf school, which is great for our children as they get to learn about the whole variety of South African culture and are in an educational environment that suits them too.

On the food front we get wonderful fresh fruits in season, that are plentiful, ripe and cheap and have never seen cold storage. We are in the middle of the Cape Winelands, so can drive across country and have a wonderful meal at a wine estate, when we have visitors. There are loads of beaches, Table Mountain and loads of outdoor activities.

On the minus side - when I first arrived I looked in vain for the vast array of organic products that I was used to in London supermarkets. There is far less consumer choice here, as it is a smaller society and far from other countries so that imports are expensive. I adapted of course and being out in the country, where I do just one weekly grocery shop, have got used to making and baking most of our treats at home, also baking our own bread, making jams and generally being a farm housewife!

The other infuriating thing for us computer-dependant business people is that communications technology is way behind Europe and the US, still hardly shifting from the monopoly of one company, so we have to put up with slow connections, connections falling over regularly etc.

Every one of us copes differently with living abroad and as cultures mix, do you immerse yourself in the culture(s) of SA or do you strive to maintain your own, for yourself or maybe for the sake of your children?

I think we've evolved our own family culture, blending a bit of South African, a bit of English and a bit of our own invention. My husband's family is South African but his parents came here from England after the war, so there is a strong strain of English culture adapted to South African life. We've fully embraced the braai as a summer weekend activity and my son supports South Africa in the rugby and cricket. The children learn Afrikaans and Xhosa at school and come home singing songs in those languages, though I have yet to learn either language, despite being a linguist in European languages. We have cut and pasted the English traditions of bonfire night and Christmas mulled wine and mince pies into a Midwinter Celebration here and our Christmas is a summer version of my English Christmasses.

Given the choice, who would you employ as your personal (celebrity or not) chef?

Nigella Lawson. My personal chef would need to be at home in a house full of children and dogs, produce delicious meals without too much formality and be good company. She would be just right. Nigella if you would like a busman's holiday in South Africa, you'd be very welcome here!

Which memory of a food moment do you cherish the most?

For the first few days after our first child was born all my senses seemed to be enhanced. I don't know whether it was the after-effects of the epidural or just hormones, but colours were brighter, Battersea Park looked fresh and lush and food tasted fantastic. I can still remember the flavour of a goats' cheese from Sainsbury's, with bread and tomatoes, as if it were the best thing I'd ever eaten. I even gave a rave review in the hospital questionnaire for their food…so it must have been an altered sensory state!

There are lots of other more gourmet moments from restaurants around Italy, but this was the first thought that leapt to the page.

DIRECTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEW MEME
1. Leave a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. Please make sure I have your email address.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment, asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Snapshots to Preserve for Posterity

Sometimes I have the urge to freeze-frame a moment with the children, preserve it intact, to bring out and gaze upon when they transform into teenagers and might logically be expected to try my patience occasionally...not that that ever happens now of course! It's the ordinary every day moments that usually go by unrecorded, usually not even getting a mention in my blog. Today they get to go on my blog lest I forget.

Food shopping with youngest, who is now interested in the origins of her food. I'm browsing in the meat section for free-range chicken, which occasionally graces our local supermarket.

"What's this?"she enquires.
"It's stewing lamb."
"Where does it come from?"
"From sheep."

"What's this?"
"Beef... from cows."

Determined to get things clear, she announces in a clear, penetrating voice, that includes all the other shoppers:

"So that's a dead sheep and that's a dead cow."

Turning vegetarian never seemed so attractive!

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A rainy winter's day, yet another one (this is an extraordinarily English winter we are having this year), when using the sofa to practise their 'jumps' is enough to keep all three happy for hours. I wanted to hold on to the memory of just that - simple pleasures and the three of them cooperating, taking turns and inventing elaborate rules for their game.

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The children going through our 'oldies' albums, choosing Billy Joel and my 9 year old son informing me that he likes No.s 1 and 4 best..that is My Life and Fashion (the one that starts 'What's the matter with the clothes I'm wearing'), dancing along to it with a grin on his face, whilst I reflect that in less than 3 years he is probably going to be the teenager from the song and forswear Billy Joel, and all his parents' music collection, for at least another 20 years, as hideously uncool.

I remember at eleven, thinking Abba was a cool sound to do Lego to, one year later realising my mistake. It only took another twenty years for Abba to be danced to with a pinch of irony... now I happily wash up to it, any consideration of cool long departed through the window.

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The children getting ready to run down to one of the aunts' houses on a weekend morning, while we are still dozily reading at the breakfast table in dressing-gowns and pyjamas. A spell of blissful quiet ensues and I realise that for the first time ever, the older two have actually helped youngest find shoes, put them on and done up her shoe laces for her, and they've all gone out together... usually there is a frantic screeching as they are ready and waiting outside, inching down the hill, while she isn't even dressed and has no idea where her shoes are and is urgently summoning us to help in case she gets left behind.

WTSIM Apple Dumplings

Apple and mulberry dumpling

This month my entry into WTSIM.. dumpling is more of a voyage of culinary experimentation than a recipe to be triumphantly passed on and heralded as an unqualified success. Johanna decreed stuffed dumplings to be the theme this month. I come from an English background where dumplings are to be found unstuffed, floating in stews, to bulk out the meat and sop up the gravy - robust fillers for hungry labourers and school children. I'd never before eaten a stuffed dumpling, let alone cooked one.

Coincidentally, I am reading Elisabeth Luard's Still Life at the moment. It is an account of her travels around Central and Eastern Europe and Scandinavia in the mid-Eighties, researching traditional country recipes for her book European Peasant Cookery. I love her style which is forthright, inquiring and persevering and am lost in admiration of the quantities of pickled herring and black bread that she managed to endure and, more to the point, persuade her accompanying husband to endure, in the pursuit of more enticing culinary traditions. She starts her journey in Munich and as she traverses Austria is challenged by a mammoth meal which culminates in four plum dumplings per serving. She offers the recipe and, with the WTSIM event in mind, I thought I'd spend a blustery Saturday afternoon conducting my own dumpling research.

I compared Elisabeth Luard's recipe to Johanna's suggestion and also found an Austrian cookery site here. All the recipes looked pretty similar and though I had no plums, I thought I could try with a combination of apples and mulberries. I'd already come across the concept of using potatoes combined with flour to make a dough, from the Italian potato gnocchi, that I'd once helped make in a family home on my travels through Italy. They are savoury, served in a tomato sauce, so I was interested in how the potato dough would turn out with a sweet filling.

I slightly softened the apple chunks in a little butter first, as the recipe seemed to demand soft fruit. The potatoes duly cooked, peeled and mashed, I made up the dough, divided it into twelve and started wrapping the fruit. This was achieved reasonably well, though I didn't know quite how much fruit to try and encase, and odd corners of apple chunks insisted on poking through then the mulberry juice also wanted to escape.

I ended up with twelve tidy balls and set to boiling them. I danced attendance expecting disaster but the cooking was achieved uneventfully, no exploding dumplings and I felt quite pleased. The final step was to fry breadcrumbs in butter to coat them in. I think Elisabeth demanded too much butter though, as they ended up soft and glistening rather than the crispy coating described, but here they were - dumplings on a plate.

The acid test of consumption was where I encountered a hitch. My chief tasters lined up with bowls in anticipation, sprinkled the dumplings with sugar and cinnamon and I awaited comments. I was none too confident, as adventurous eaters they are not and my first exploratory tasting had come away with an impression of rather doughy potato flavour.

Well the verdict came in: youngest rejected the dumpling, due to its tasting of potato (in indignant tones) though she ate the fruit from inside. My son returned the whole thing barely nibbled at. My six year old sprinkled on more sugar and consumed the whole thing with gusto, soon ready for seconds. My husband loyally tasted it, though I knew he'd find it too heavy, but he nobly ate half his. I.. well, in the spirit of culinary curiosity, I ate one and then a second, to examine how I could have made them lighter, fluffier or generally more appealing. This excess of fervour made it rather hard to contemplate cooking supper a bare couple of hours later with my stomach still loaded with dumplings!

I'm putting up photos so that you can all tell me where I went wrong. I think I needed much more fruit in the centre and to have made the dumpling coating much thinner, though I don't know how well they would have stayed together if they were too thin. Should I have seasoned the dumpling dough with either salt or sugar? Should I have dried them on paper towel before enveloping them in the crispy crumbs? It's very hard to judge, when I've never eaten the genuine article as prepared by an expert. I only know that mine were way too heavy and the dough rather bland.

Dumpling post mortem - please help with the verdict!

Nevertheless, it was stimulating to try cooking something so completely different to our usual fare, though I've a long way to go before I'll be doughty enough to tour Eastern Europe Luard style on a diet of herring, tripe, black bread and sauerkraut!

Here is Elisabeth Luard's recipe anyway:

Plum Stuffed Potato Dumplings

500g/ 1lb floury potatoes
25g/1oz butter
1 tablespoon cream
1 egg
275g/6oz plain flour
12 small plums (I used 2 apples and ½ cup mulberries)
12 small sugar lumps
½ teaspoon salt

to finish:

75g/3oz butter
4-5 tablespoons breadcrumbs
cinnamon
icing sugar

Boil the potatoes in their skins till soft. Peel them while still hot and mash with a fork, together with the butter and cream. Leave to cool for 10 minutes, then mix in the egg and flour. Knead until it comes together in a soft dough. You may need more or less flour, depending on the potato consistency.

Prepare the fruit. If using plums take out the stones and replace with the sugar lumps. If using apples cut into chunks and toss in a knob of butter over a gentle heat until just starting to soften (2 minutes). Divide the dough into 12 pieces and form into a ball then flatten to make a disc. Put the fruit in the middle and squash the dough around it and seal making it into a closed ball of dough.

Fry the breadcrumbs in the butter with a sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar until just crisp.

Bring a large pan of water to a simmer. Lower as many dumplings in as fit without crowding. Bring back to a gentle simmer and cook for 10-12 minutes until the dumplings have floated to the surface and are white puffy and firm.. Remove, rinse quickly under cold water, then toss in the breadcrumbs to give a coating.

Serve sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.

Any tips on achieving the perfect dumpling are welcome. My six-year old would happlily eat them again, once I get up courage for another attempt!

Here is the WTSIM dumpling round-up, if you would like to see the huge variety of successful recipes contributed.

When I was 25

This was started as a writing prompt and is a powerful memory stirrer. I read Charlotte's post, which set me off reminiscing, finding some similarities and many differences in our experiences. Then even though I've already posted once today, I had to follow through, write and post before the memories faded and my 25 year old self disappeared back into the mists of time.

When I was 25, I turned my back on the full-time office job, with the travel company I was working for, and returned to the itinerant nature of tour managing, travelling with the clients on their walking holidays in Italy. I'd done one season and then accepted the office job at the end of it, which I'd coped with reasonably well over the winter months. When spring came and the other Tour Staff flew off to sunnier climes and Italian food, I chafed under the demands of office life and decided that I wasn't cut out for it after all. The decision was a huge relief and as I turned 25 I headed back to Italy to breathe the aromas of Tuscan cooking once more.

When I was 25, I had the confidence to meet a group of unknown clients at the airport and drive them off in to the countryside, with the enjoyment of their holiday entrusted into my hands. I always had pre-trip nerves, like stage fright, especially being a shy person, but I did it over and over again. I'm glad I was that person then as it gives me a memory of that ability to cope and trust in myself, to refer to now if ever I doubt my abilities.

When I was 25, I thought nothing of driving from Pisa to Oxford in 24 hours on my own in a Landrover, driving through the night on the French autoroute, sustained by Pocket Coffees (chocolates with a whole espresso concentrated into its liquid centre) with a cargo of Italian cheeses and a whole ham, unsure whether this was a legitimate import or not but driving through the Nothing to Declare at Dover anyway.

When I was 25, I had my first (and only, fingers crossed) car crash, when a new driver swerved across the road into me, writing off my beautiful butter-coloured Peugeot 205, breaking a bone in my foot and my nose and wrecking beyond redemption a beautiful soft scarf in the autumn colours of the Tuscan hills, that I'd bought in Italy. It left me with my foot in plaster for a month, back home revisiting the comfort of child-like dependance, with my mother in attendance, and appreciating the convenience of fully comp. insurance.

When I was 25, I thought I'd better catch up with my friends on the property ladder and bought a flat with a friend in London. That is where I'd been off to at the time of the car crash. Due to being immobilised for the whole month of February, I left all the house-hunting to my friend and, as time was running out before the season would be sending me off to Italy again, I found myself, without much thought on my part, a North Londoner in Willesden Green, when by inclination I subsequently discovered myself to be a South Londoner - and there is a cultural difference that goes with the divide of the Thames! I indulged myself by buying my first ever bed, double of course, even though there was no-one to put in the other side, with a wonderful pocket-sprung mattress, which has survived to this day, but is now our spare bed. The flat ended up being merely a base to return to after my stints in Italy, a winter perching place, and I got to know all the routes to South London very well!

25 was a time of being young, free and single, when my earnings could be spent on myself, and although they weren't huge, I could afford to trawl the London markets and sales for frivolous items of furniture, ridiculous clothes and bric a brac. In between intense periods of work I had cavernous spaces of free time to spend at the Everyman Cinema watching old Italian movies, explore London and read.

When I was 25, I was still five years from getting married and three years away from finding the right man, so there was an empty space, or rather, a sense of circling looking for the direction I was supposed to be heading in, I was marking time, knowing that I wanted to marry and have children one day, but not knowing what to do in the meantime, apart from experience life as it presented itself. Maybe I could have relaxed and enjoyed it more if I could have looked forward five years, but that tension of uncertainity is all part of life's rich tapestry!

Belly Dancing

A couple of months ago, the grapevine brought to my ears rumours of a belly-dancing class being held nearby. Now belly-dancing had never been one of my ambitions, had never even entered my consciousness as a possible activity, but out here classes of any sort are few and far between. We had a yoga class going a couple of years ago, but then the teacher moved and as I am terribly un-self-motivated and need a class environmnent to keep up with any form of exercise, I relapsed back into the 'I get enough exercise running around after the kids' mode.

My informant swore that belly dancing was fun and that she came away from it feeling several inches taller. It was close by, just a few women and my son's school teacher was teaching it. So I went along and it was indeed fun. Abdominal muscles I'd forgotten ever existed came back from hibernation and I did feel taller. I was several weeks behind the others, but managed to get the hang of some of the moves. The main thing is to keep your head still while moving hips or chest muscles. It's not just about doing alarming rolls of belly muscles luckily. My favourite move is one called maya that is a hip figure-of-eight on its side, side to side.

I missed a session one week and came back to find that we were all set to give our first performance - horrors! - I was only just getting the hang of combining arm and body movements. One of the girls was leaving though and had proposed a strictly family party, combining with the drum and marimba group. They were to play for us and we would listen to them.(A marimba is a type of xylophone with wooden keys)

So yesterday, Midwinter, was the day. I'd got out a sequinned skirt, sewn a length of jingly coins onto a black top, borrowed a jingly belt (belly dancing just isn't the same without the jingles, you're making music with your hip circles), put on some eye make-up, which I'd also borrowed as it is so long since I last used mine they've practically dried up,, and driven to another farm where we were to dance on the lawn.

We had a beautiful still night with stars, after a day of the berg wind, a warm wind from the mountains that inevitably brings rain a couple of days later, but in the mean time makes it unnaturally warm for midwinter. Performance nerves were helped by the semi darkness and the minmal audience. All but two of those present were either dancing or playing drums or marimba - I'd left my family behind having their supper, as an audience of small children giggling at their teachers and mother wiggling their hips, seemed to be surplus to requirements..

We performed our set dance that we mostly remembered and kept together, except for occasional instances of landing on sprinklers, then relaxed and listened to the musicians perform. In no time our jingly hips were twitching in time to the music and we started some impromptu dancing to provide a jingly percussion for the drummers. I haven't danced so much in years. I now need to find my own jingly belt, so that I can practise at home!

Midwinter Fire

The weather gods must enjoy our winter festivals... they certainly smiled on us last night. After a blustery Friday evening, Saturday dawned still and sunny, and stayed that way right through till the evening, which was ideal: still and starry; chilly and clear. As I'm writing on Sunday afternoon, that window of perfect winter weather slammed shut and it is raining once more, but who cares, now that the bonfire has burned to ashes and the lanterns have had their chance to shine.

Bonfire building and lantern creating kept everyone busy all afternoon and built a strong sense of community, with a deputation of children constructing an elaborate pyrotechnic volcano to be lit before the bonfire.

At lunchtime, I'd belatedly discovered my ultra-efficient notes from last year that I had forgotten even making, detailing quantities of soup and mulled wine, bread and puddings. Having failed to match the vat volume, I hurriedly threw another batch of butternut soup together, wondered about producing another batch of bread and generally pondered the catering conundrum, while the menfolk bent their minds to the important task of supporting South Africa against Australia in the Tri-Nations rugby match. Luckily we just won, so they were able to expend the rest of their energy on lanterns and fire duties.

The stunning array of lanterns were carried on sticks in a procession down an avenue of light to our circle and hung around it. Beautiful. A delicate, new, crescent moon peered over the brow of the hill at the proceedings, before shyly retiring over the horizon.

My son and his friend with two adults played a round of recorder music in the circle, with my steady hand bearing the music and a paraffin lamp, then my sister-in-law read St Francis' prayer and we all took turns to read our home-grown blessings. Then licensed pyromania erupted as the volcano was lit, sending sparks heavenwards, a multitude of sparklers whirled and the main bonfire took off, flames shooting straight up in the still night air.

Mulled wine to warm hands and stomachs, then soups, a thick butternut soup with a hint of cinnamon and a robust lentil soup, rich and smoky with ham stock, plaits of home-made white bread, and sausages braaied and eaten in rolls kept us sustained outside till the childrens' usual bedtime, then we trooped inside to see if we had any room left for puddings. It was a hard decision but everybody tried to do justice to the guava fool, chocolate pudding, jelly, apple pudding and puff pastry squares.

Two families stayed the night so the children were able to build another fire sculpture in the morning...
needless to say, they were only supplied with matches to ignite it once the adults were summonsed to provide an attentive audience!

Our house is smiling contentedly to itself today, still humming with the energy of forty friends and family, all working, talking, playing, creating and building together.