Fevered Words

How many words are there in me? I'm challenging myself to find out at the moment. I know that there have been too few words left over to flow onto my own blog this week. They're all being diverted at source and filling up other pages.

I've just started a writing job for a new food web site. They want a blog post a day and an article every week, so I'm just trying to get into a regular flow for that. The site's not live yet but I'll give you a link to it once it is.

I've also started another blog on Just the Planet, a luxury travel web site that launched recently. It's full of all sorts of gorgeous places that I can only dream of visiting. My blog there is about the years I worked in Italy and my food memories of picnics and gourmet dinners and is called Pecorino and Pears. I haven't got very far into the story yet, but do come by and visit.

With my first foray into freelancing in full flow, I got brought down by the flu this week. At least it was a fever that had me shivering and clutching hot water bottles on an extremely warm spring day, when the girls were demanding to be taken swimming. Having taken them swimming I retired to the sofa for the rest of the day, downing tools and losing myself in a Georgette Heyer, the perfect panacea for all ills.

The girls were great. Having established that I was out for the count, they just got on and played together for the whole afternoon. The next day I had planned to take them out for a holiday treat, while their brother was at his cricket course, but I was still too weak and feeble, super-glued to the sofa. They bore the disappointment well and enacted innumerable four act dramas with their toy animals, middle daughter helping youngest with making sandwiches at snack time, as I dozed through the sound track of their play. I slept through lunch time with never a complaint from them, when usually they tell me they're hungry about twenty times a day.

I'm much better now. Having disposed of a Katie Fforde yesterday and used up my reserve stock of blog posts, I got back to work on the computer today, under the guise of resting. My husband was the one who had to go and attend the 'prize-giving' of our son's holiday cricket course and then he took all of the children to see Ratatouille. They came back full of it, so now we need to add it to our DVD collection. They are so used to watching things on video or DVD that they expect to be able to re-watch everything about a hundred times, until they know it by heart.

Snippet

The girls' games mostly seem to be derived from their watching of Animal Planet at the moment. They assemble pairs of toy animals and enact family life with them. The facts of life hold no mystery, at least in the animal kingdom. Yesterday I gathered that their Bambi video is just as influential in forming their vocabulary.

Youngest with a pair of toy zebras: "They're twitterpating and now they're having a baby and everybody is really happy to see the baby."

Spring Festival and Fever

We were in two minds whether or not to postpone our spring celebration this year. It being spring, that change over season of alternating sultry warmth and chilling winds, everybody has succumbed to the latest cold and flu virus. Our son missed the last day of school on Friday, as his chest was so wheezy and tight and he'd been coughing half the night, the girls were both full of colds and my husband was also not feeling so great. I was the only one still germ free.

By Saturday morning people were all ready to come, the children were feeling better and though my sister in law was now prostrated with cold and overwork, we decided to go ahead with it. Far less exhausting than dealing with the children's disappointment had we put it off.

So I set to baking and ignored the suspicion of a sore throat that tickled insinuatingly about my tonsils. Quiches, white bread plaits, two chocolate puddings, a crustless milk tart and a batch of crunchies all succeeded each other in and out of the oven. The rugby world cup was duly watched and dissected, and the phone rang at intervals as more guests reported in sick until we were down to twenty-five.

The surviving friends, albeit most of them with sniffles, came and set to work cooking and making flower garlands, some with real flowers and rosemary, some with tissue paper and card or raffia. Others rebuilt the archway and decorated it with flowers from the garden and the children made little posies of flowers to go round the circle and then got digging to make a water feature. Sprinkles of rain sent everyone pelting inside at intervals but by the end of the afternoon it was clearer though cool.

The theme for our spring festival is water, water and flowers, so we carried brimming jugs of water down to the circle to the ethereal tune of a recorder duet, smelled the rich jasmine scent from the flowers around the circle, and gave thanks for all the rain we've had this winter, for friends and family and we sent our thoughts back out to all those who couldn't be with us.

Back in the house the loaves and fishes principle was in full force. The table stretched to fit us all, chairs and stools enough, a veritable feast spread out from everyone's contributions. The children ate, disappeared outside in to the darkness for their favourite festival activity of playing chase outside at night, until mindful of colds and coughs still lurking we summoned them back in far too soon with the lure of pudding. They then settled down to watch Narnia while we dallied over pudding and coffee and my sore throat made a bid for domination.

This morning after a night of more rain, a beautiful rainbow stretched over the hill behind our house as if in blessing of all our activities. And my throat is better, reduced to mere cold status with hot water bottles and tissue salts liberally applied through the night.

Spring means Snakes

Spring is triumphing over winter, yellow and pink daisies have succeeded the white ones, two balmy days in a row have woken up the flies, the miggies (pronounced muchies with a nice phlegm-raising rasp for the ch(!), those irritating gnats which in England we called midges) and the fiercely biting horseflies. At lunch the snake warning was solemnly pealed over our children.

All winter they are free to run about among the restios and the bushes, barefoot if they please, the snakes are hibernating then. Once spring warmth wakens them to emerge sleepily into the warm sun, we sternly have to curtail the children's exploration. Every year at about this time we gather them together and announce that there is to be no more bush whacking, shoes are to be worn, they are to play in the clear areas.

The snake bush code has been drummed into them since they were tiny. Stick to the paths, don't poke in any holes, wear shoes, if you do see a snake, FREEZE! Most of the snakes that we have in our area - the Cape cobra and the mole snake, will escape rather than attack, as long as you give them space. It is only the ugly puff adder, that stays still pretending to be a stick, that doesn't get out of your way if it can.

In our five years, touch wood, I haven't had any close encounters between the children and the snakes. I think it helps that we are usually escorted everywhere by a phalanx of dogs, whose snuffling and foraging will have given adequate warning of our advance.

Our farm worker Leon though, with his quiet tread through the bushes, frequently encounters the cobras. A couple of times one has made its way in to my sister in law's house. The huge kerfuffle, as armed with sticks and long boots they tried to persuade it back outside, sent it slithering up a convenient roll of thick paper that was leaned against the wall. They were able to fold it over at the ends and carry it carefully a long way from the house to be released. It was the aftershock of discovering that they had been sitting on a sofa, underneath which a snake had been cosily ensconced for several evenings, that left its mark.

The mole snakes are actually beneficial. They are not poisonous and keep down the rodent populations, in particular the enormous moles that excavate our whole farm into a desert of sandy heaps. Unfortunately when people see a snake they don't stop to enquire it's name and many of these are killed mistakenly for a cobra. We have a policy of relocating cobras rather than killing them, if they are making their homes too close to ours, though the atavistic urge to dispose of the threat succinctly with a stick is hard to resist.

I always feel sad when I find another dead snake in the road and the population explosion among the moles also makes me feel more kindly towards the snakes… as long as that don't try to share my house with me and they keep away from my children.

Playing with Fire

A sudden realisation came to me the other evening, that I am no longer the mother of small children. As I was getting supper ready I called to the children to help. "One of you go and light the fire and the others come and lay the table, please," I yelled.

A few years ago the idea of actually telling my child to help himself to matches and apply them to paper and pine cones would have horrified me. Matches resided on high shelves in those days. Maybe once my son was nearly six we allowed him light the candle for supper, as we cautiously hovered over him.

Now in winter it is one of the older children's chores to build and light the fire in the evening. They served an apprenticeship of watching Dad build the fire and being allowed to put the match to the finished work of art. Now they are learning for themselves how to stack the wood for it to catch, but often I find them stuffing in a second batch of newspaper, when the first lot burned itself out without affecting the logs in the slightest.

The secret is in the pine cones. Once in a while we take a sack and wander up to the top of the farm, seeking out dry cones. We then stagger back heavy laden with enough free, non-toxic, fire-lighters to keep us going for a few weeks.

This year the older two have also become interested in learning how to cook supper, so they were initiated into the art of lighting the stove gas burners and using oven gloves to pick up hot pans. I carefully showed them how to do it all safely, told them in advance that if ever they burned themselves to go straight to the cold tap and hold the burn under the water for a long, long time.

Sometimes I wonder whether I've got too laid back though. A few days ago Youngest, who isn't quite five, wandered through from the sitting room with the box of matches, asking for help as she couldn't quite get the match to light. She'd insisted to her brother and sister that it was her turn to light the fire and wouldn't let them help her. A four year old attempting to light the fire, unsupervised by an adult?! Please don't tell the social services in Europe or they'll be there at the airport to meet us when we go home to visit!

I went back with her and lit the match holding it in the middle, so that I could pass it safely to her. She touched it to the newspaper in a couple of places and was quite pleased with herself for accomplishing another of the grown-up tasks that her brother and sister now do routinely.

Now I know how it was that my husband, who is the youngest of six, has so many hair-raising tales of the things he got up to as a child. Once a mother has been broken in by the first couple of children, the younger ones are free to experience life with far less cotton wool tucked around them!

Whether its weariness, or the realisation that children are far tougher than you initially thought, when you returned from hospital with your first precious bundle, or just that your expectations of normality are set by the oldest child, I've come to realise that in our family at least the youngest child gets to try new things at a far earlier age than the oldest ever did.

Apple and Lavender Cake TGRWT #6

Apple and Lavender Cake

Over at Vanielje Kitchen there is a culinary challenge afoot, to combine the flavours of apple and lavender into a recipe that works. I love a challenge and I love lavender. Our bushes have flowered throughout this wet winter of ours despite what we soft South Africans consider the relentless cold. The lavender bushes regard us bemusedly as we shiver. They keep on flowering until a hard frost lets them know winter is here, rain, rain and more rain just encourages them to new growth.

The lavender flowers were there and the fridge was groaning with apples, so on Saturday I decided to have a mega baking day and make up for empty biscuit tins that have reproached me from the counter whenever I tore my self away from the computer in the previous week. When it comes to working from home the baking is the first thing to go - the bread has to be done and gets fitted in somehow, but cookies and rusks have been in short supply recently.

Once I'd tried out the crunchie recipe from Vanielje Kitchen (it's a good one, try it!) and turned out a batch of rusks, I gazed musingly out at the lavender bushes. I'd made some lavender cookies before, rich in butter that mellowed the strong lavender flavour. My thoughts then turned to a rosemary cake recipe from Nigella's Feast that I love. It is a simple plain loaf cake kept moist with apple and flavoured with rosemary. Quite simple to adapt to use lavender instead and I thought it would work well. It did!

So here is the recipe:

Apple and Lavender Cake

1 large or 2 small eating apples
1 fresh lavender flower with stalk
juice of half a lemon
1 teaspoon caster sugar
1 teaspoon butter

For the cake batter:
225g / 8oz butter
150g / 5oz caster sugar
3 eggs
300g / 10oz plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 or 2 more lavender flowers

Preheat the oven to 170C / 340F and grease and line a large loaf tin (450g / 1lb capacity).

Peel core and chop the apple and put into a small saucepan with the lemon juice, teaspoon of sugar, teaspoon of butter and the lavender flower. Cook over a low heat with a lid on for 4-8 minutes until the apple is softened. Leave it to cool so that the lavender infuses the apple with its flavour.

Once it has cooled remove the lavender flower and process the apple to a pulp in the food processor. Add the rest of the butter, sugar, eggs, flour and baking powder and blitz to a thick cake batter. Spread half of the batter into the lined loaf tin, sprinkle some of the tiny lavender florets over it, then put the rest of the batter on top. Scatter another sparing amount of lavender florets on top then sprinkle another tablespoon of caster sugar over the whole surface. Bake for about 50 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in tin.

We're just about to finish the end of the cake with our tea today. It has kept really well with the apple moistening it and the delicate lavender aroma lent it an elegance and interest that has turned every tea-time into a treat.

The rustic, less elegant angle

Of Pelicans and Potatoes

I don't usually feel like I'm living in a foreign land. The little part of South Africa where we live has integrated into my personal landscape and feels like home. There are no lions or giraffes in our back yard to declaim that this is Africa with a capital A, nor even any baboons in our sandy hills, to raid the house every time we leave a window open.

Just last week though, every morning as I drove down the 3km dirt road to take the children to school, we have been treated to a pelican fly-past. Pelicans still manage to seem exotic to me - their disproportionately huge beak and ungainly body in flight seems like an illustration from a children's book, their huge wings flapping solemnly out of an Animal Planet documentary. And here they were every morning at the end of our road. One of our neighbours has a dam that for the first time in years is brimful with the winter rain and the pelicans have been spending their spring break there. Then just as suddenly they were gone.

One thing that has been more English than African this winter has been the weather and we have even been talking about the weather just as much as the English are supposed to. We've been used to winters spent tut-tutting about the lack of rain, dire statistics about the dams being half empty, warnings of summer drought, all the while enjoying the clear winter sunshine. So a real winter with proper rain that goes on and on with a few sunny days scattered in between, dams 100% full for the first time in many years, we don't quite know what to do with.

One thing I thought for sure, the farmers will be happy. But no! Doing my weekly shop today, I saw that the price of potatoes had gone up yet again, a 10kg sack now costs almost double what it did a month ago. In horror I asked the fruit and veg manager when they would be back to a normal price again. There's a national shortage of potatoes, he told me. The weather has been too cold and wet, the farmers are struggling with all the vegetables, onions too.

On Monday it looked like spring was finally here to stay. It was so warm that the girls insisted that they wanted to go swimming. However much I told them that the water would still be freezing, they were not convinced. So to keep them quiet I took them down to the pool to see for themselves, sure that they'd put a toe in and leap out again in horror. They then spent fifteen minutes happily frolicking in 16C / 60F chilly, chilly water, while I photographed the carpet of daisies that is lush after all this rain, and I had to drag them out protesting, in mean, mother mode, fearing that they'd catch something old-fashioned like an inflammation of the lungs.

The next day we were back to lighting fires and filling hot water bottles as yet another cold front passed overhead. I'm sorry Melbourne but we seem to have got your share of winter rain as well as ours this year, I wish we could send you the overflow.

Middle Angel

I always used to say we'd have either two children or four. I had an idea that three was an odd number, that someone would always be left out, that the middle child got lost in the no-man's land of in between. Lo and behold, we have ended up with three children. Not really by design, we just ran out of stamina before we reached four.

Our middle child seems quite happy with her position in the family. In fact she is the one who most often doesn't get left out. She can go off with her older brother to do 'big' kid stuff, leaving youngest clamouring behind. Or she can do girl stuff with youngest when big brother has his nose firmly entrenched in a book.

I've noticed recently though that she is woefully under-represented on my blog. Older brother steals the limelight with his role of breaker of new ground in the family. Parental admiration for the latest brilliant achievement does tend to be freshest for the oldest child. Relief that our child has made it through another of life's hurdles gives a poignancy to the applause, whereas with the second child we have no doubt that she'll follow in his footsteps and be equally brilliant, so our enthusiasm is tempered by experience. Youngest makes the headlines of the cuteness front, she is the last connection to baby and toddlerhood and we record it lest we forget.

So today I thought I'd write about her, our precious middle child.

She loves drawing and produces a prodigious volume of pictures, all of which are given to someone in particular, their name painstakingly inscribed on the back. Her page is filled with colour and light. Images of angels and fairies imbue her vision with magic and an awareness of spirit. Their luminosity comes in part maybe from her Waldorf education, where they are taught to fill the page, and use colour in an emotional way, but for the most part it is her beautiful soul shining through.

A few vignettes from the last couple of weeks:

She is standing just inside the door, waving a pink,sparkly fairy wand and declaiming 'Wingardium Leviosa'. She looks out and sees a beautiful rainbow stretching across the sky. A look in her eye that says she knows she didn't really do that, but just perhaps there is some magic about.

She and youngest have been busy outside for hours. We are going across to my sister-in-law's house for my birthday lunch and call everyone. The girls appear carefully holding a mini Smartie box. I look quizzically at them, as they know not to eat sweets before lunch. She quickly explains that they've got some ants in the box. They've been building them houses and feeding them with Cream Cracker crumbs and now they're going to 'release' them. We are taken on a guided tour of the ant's houses, beautifully decorated with flowers and liberally sprinkled with cream crackers.

A half hour at her aunt's house that she dedicatedly spends hopping out the shape of every letter of the alphabet one after the other.

An earnest conversation one evening before bathtime: she is saying that sometimes she is scared in the night, but doesn't want to wake us. She is the quiet one who keeps everything in, any emotional trauma being dealt with face down on her bed, only allowing us to comfort us later once the worst is over.

If our son has a bad dream, he has no qualms in demanding our attendance, if he goes to the loo in the night, no idea of muffling his footsteps, we all know about it. She on the other hand glides silently through our room to the bathroom and muffles her sobs in bed if she is frightened by a dream or a noise.

I told her that it was fine to wake us up or come into our bed if she needed to, but she remained unsure. Then she said that sometimes she couldn't feel her angel, when she was scared. She seems to be poised at some sort of emotional and spiritual watershed, finding the parameters of her own life space. As I tucked her up and kissed her goodnight, I reassured her that the angels are there even if you can't actually feel them. An emphatic nod from under the duvet.

Of course there is all the prosaic stuff of being seven, the hilariousness of her friend being 'in love' with one of the boys in her class and her emphatic declaration that she doesn't like any of the boys in her class. The fact that she can talk in an endless stream of consciousness when the mood takes her. Her instinct for colour and fashion putting her clothes together with style even with no role model to follow in her mother. The dexterity which meant that as a baby she could undo childproof bottles now enables her to chop garlic finely for me and construct wonderful 3D paper pictures.

She has a phenomenal memory for songs and stories and it is her that we all go to for help when we lose something. She can usually remember seeing it somewhere and track it down. She has sparkling blue eyes that see the stars, with a sprinkling of angel dust in them.

Dog Decisions

'how to decide when to put down an old dog'

This showed up as a search term that found my blog last month. It was eerily prescient, because though I don't remember writing about the issue at all before, during the last two weeks we have had to make the decision ourselves for our ancient and doddery border collie, in previous posts mentioned as Senile Dog.

She had got wobblier and wobblier, struggling to heave herself up off the floor, occasionally falling over, and has even lost interest in her blood feud with her daughter. She would bark loudly, for form's sake, whenever Poppy ventured near our house, but the light and enjoyment of battle had gone out of her eye. Her meek granddaughter also sensed that the time was approaching, when she would become alpha female of our house and has on several occasions bowled her over snarling and snapping.

Being the procrastinators and moral cowards that we are, we put off the decision for as long as possible, hoping that nature would take its course and she would just go in her sleep one night. It is the first time that either of us have had to take this final responsibility for an animal of ours and it feels a little like playing god, do we really have the right? How do we explain it all to the children?

The final straw came last night. She had been fairly incontinent for several months now, and clearing up poo had been a regular chore. A stomach upset turned the chore into a health issue, so we took the decision and I drove her to the vet this morning.

We'd talked to the children about it already. Told them that when an animal is very old and in pain and not enjoying life any more, it's kinder to put them down. That the vet gives an injection that sends her to sleep and she dies in her sleep. Youngest wanted to know if that happens to humans as well. I told her not. A discussion on the rights and wrongs of euthanasia would have been way too much. They were fairly phlegmatic about it all. After all they're veteran watchers of Animal Planet, plenty of vets have crossed the screen and made hard decisions in front of the camera.

We lined the back of the car with an old blanket, reversed it as close as we could get to the door. As I led her tottering along the path to it, I felt like I was leading her to the gas chambers. Common sense banished the emotional overreaction and we heaved her in. The older two children were at school but youngest came with me, everybody else was out at work or meetings and she wanted to be part of it.

The vet had said that Vygie (the name of a spring flower, roughly pronounced fakie) could stay in the back of the car to do the deed, as we wanted to take her back home to bury her. She used to belong to a dear friend of the family, who died of cancer five years ago. We'd looked after her two dogs while she was sick and then they became ours. Vygie was always Ursie's dog though and we felt sure that her spirit was just waiting to take off and find hers, so we planned to bury her near the white stinkwood tree that we had planted in memory of our friend.

The vet was lovely, very kind and explaining exactly how it all worked. We stood outside, sheltered from the drizzle by a canopy, with youngest holding my hand. We were both amazed by how quick it was. Five seconds and she just relaxed completely and peacefully.

Back home we'd chosen the spot for her grave and asked Leon to dig the hole for us in the afternoon. We were waiting for everyone to be back from work to hold a little ceremony for Vygie. The children had picked a bouquet of fragrant flowers and herbs to go in with her, rose scented geraniums with their enveloping aroma of massage oil, wilde daggas spiky orange flowers, rosemary and lavender.

At the end of the day, during a lull in the rain we went out to the chosen spot. Leon's hole was cavernous and big enough for a small pony, the soft, golden sand of our farm heaped high around it. Some vygie plants stood by to plant over her once the enormous mound of sand had been replaced. We lowered her in as gently as we could, threw down the flowers and then took turns wielding the ceremonial spade. Youngest had decreed that we should sing Hark the Herald Angels Sing, so a cheerful tune rang out as we worked. Ding Dong Merrily on High followed and we felt Ursie's spirit laughing uproariously with us.

Later on my sister-in-law rang our friend's daughter to let her know that Vygie had gone and described our ceremony. She amazed her by bursting out with 'But Hark the Herald Angels Sing was Mum's favourite song!'

So Vygie is at rest, her spirit cavorting and frolicking in the joy of reunion with her mistress and we feel our connection with Ursie is still strong too.

The Colours of Spring

Sunshine emerged triumphant today, after being smothered by grey and blustery clouds for the school spring fair yesterday. A Sunday Roast followed by this wonderful fruit and almond tart, that I read about on Herschelian's blog, left us groaning under the weight of good food, so after a slothful half hour on the stoep we set out for a walk around our farm.



Walk isn't really the word for our family's progress in spring. It's more of an erratic leap from flower to flower, exclaiming, summoning others to witness its splendour, then competition among photographers to get the best angle and light, with children and dogs vying to get in the shot.

White daisies and fiery gazanias compete to invade what we used to call a lawn.

The daisies furling petals as the sun gets lower, but these wild gladioli shine on.

These tiny flowers must have escaped from Teletubbyland!

The deepest pink pypies we have ever seen are flowering this year. All the rain has got the flowers in a frenzy of blooming.

Delicate wild lobelia.

In our circle a tiny almond tree that grew from one of our own almonds, left there after the autumn, harvest festival over a year ago, having survived summer against all odds, puts out new leaf to welcome the spring and is joined by a single, self-sown daisy.

All this perambulation leads us back to my sister-in-law's house for tea. Luckily lunch has been shaken down just enough for us to sample her newly baked swiss roll, filled with home-made apricot jam. And we wonder why we never feel like any supper on Sundays!

The children still manage to be hungry for supper, so I go home and cook them plain rice and baked beans, our son's favourite meal.

Table Mountain Birthday

Blouberg Beach last September. The mountain keeps an eye on us.

Table Mountain is ever present in our lives here. It looms benevolently over Cape Town, enfolds the city in its skirts and even makes its presence felt way out into the country where we are, drawing our eye every morning as I drive the kids to school, gladdening our hearts when the top is free of clouds and we can see its classic profile, communicating its energy even when it is engulfed in fluffy cloud. It has a powerful aura.

For the kids a trip up in the cable car is a rare and longed for treat. Rare because it is expensive, prices aimed at tourists, locals are expected to walk up. In winter though from May to September they have a special offer, two kids per adult go free, so we try to achieve an annual trip up. Of course you can't plan too far in advance. The weather can be extremely contrary and the mountain tends coyly to gather a blanket of cloud around itself and shrug off visitors at a moment's notice. Last year we thought we'd go up on my birthday, which would have got my ticket for free too, another special for SA residents, but wind and cloud swept the plan away. This year we gave it another try.

I spent the morning looking out of the window at the passing clouds - the top of the mountain had been visible when I took the kids to school, but was there a cold front on its way? Every now and again I rang my husband in town to get him to look out of the window for a mountain top visibility report. When I fetched the kids from school the mountain top was still there but lines of sea mist seemed to be drifting towards it and fluffy clouds were puffing voluminously in its direction. After having fed the kids, I rang once more to make the decision - in the hour it would take to get there the weather could have changed again so it was a gamble. We threw the dice and decided to go for it.

We met up at the bottom of the cable car laden with spare tops and jackets but miracle of miracles the sky was clearing, the clouds off to party on the Paarl mountains instead. The cable car swirled us up the side of the mountain effortlessly in minutes, revolving as it went so everyone got to see the 360 degree view, then we emerged onto a sunny plateau, on top of the world.

Bright sunshine, cool crisp air and a feeling of soul food being replenished cocooned us with well-being. The children clambered over rocks, we ambled along winding paths, sat on a rock to open a birthday present and eventually made our way to the restaurant for exorbitantly priced ice creams.

Yellow daisies in bloom all over with me in the distance

It was so beautiful up there, looking into the distance to see our hill, watching the wisps of clouds above us and the long line of white cotton-wool puffs out at sea that reminded me of a camel train across the desert, that we hardly wanted to come back down to reality again.

A birthday cake awaited us however, nobly baked by my sister-in-law, so we dealt with the rush hour traffic with admirable equilibrium and made it home in time to cook supper and eat cake for pudding. My son had added enough candles to light up the room, but still not as many as my advanced age demanded!

Braai is South African for Barbecue

I wasn't born to a braai culture, I married into it. Barbecues in my childhood were a bit of a novelty, juggling English weather and recalcitrant charcoal to produce smoky burgers and sausages. Only when I found the South African I was to marry, did the finer points of cooking over a fire penetrate my consciousness.

Our wedding lunch in an apricot orchard here in South Africa was a braai of exceptional quality. Whole beef fillets encrusted with sea salt and black pepper, carefully cooked over glowing wood embers, tender as butter and rare inside, were the centrepiece of a South African feast. Under the auspices of his family I learned about cooking vegetables in foil parcels straight on the coals to achieve smoky, caramelised succulence - onions, butternut, potatoes. My husband, the braai master, has an unmatchable way with the tongs, turning the meat and foil packets frequently, so that they cook evenly without burning and has now refined his braai technique to use a Le Creuset casserole with a dash of wine in, at the edge of the braai, to finish off the sausages in, which produces a heavenly jus tasting of smoke, wine and sausage spice to be soaked up with plain boiled potatoes.

When we were still living in South London, we braved the neighbours' displeasure and English weather to produce many a varied barbecue, to refute a certain Radio 2 DJ's blasphemous assertion that to make a barbecue edible you have to precook everything in the oven first. In a European city you are handicapped by the smokeless fuel laws. Charcoal is OK but to get a true South African flavour to your braai it must be cooked over wood embers and there are even certain woods that are considered the best for braaiing over, the finer points of which I have yet to grasp. (For a full-on introduction to braai culture here is a site wholly dedicated to the fine art of the South African braai)

August in South Africa is however the off-season for braais, at least here in the Western Cape where we're having the wettest winter in decades. We may have barbecued in the rain in England, intrepid desperation driving us, but here we wait for the weather, assured of several months of summer and then only limited by the strength of the south-easter winds.

The deadline for WTSIM is today, the rain is pelting down outside and on Saturday when I could have braaied in the sunshine we were too busy making daisy chains, photographing flowers and lolling in the sun to set about building fires and photographing food. Such are my excuses! So for the WTSIM meatless barbecue event hosted by Cooksister, I'm having to relive last summer's braais and choose some of our favourite braaied vegetables to share. Looking back through my photo files though I discover a lapse. No photos of the vegetables to prove their existence. We must have gobbled them down too quickly. Please forgive me then if the photos are of the meat. I'll try to describe the vegetables and hope that you can visualise them without the pictures.

Our usual family braai centres on chicken wings, coated in a spice mixture that is patented by my brother-in-law. To go with it we often have a coil of lemon sausage or boerewors and a veggie pack wrapped in foil. Last summer a friend gave us a fresh marrow from his vegetable garden and on his recommendation we decided to try it on the braai. It was delicious. Thick slices of marrow, seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper, seared with grid marks on the outside and juicy with a delicate smoky flavour within.

Barbecued Marrow Slices

Take one medium sized marrow, as fresh as can be. Cut into thick slices (approx. 1.5cm / ¾ inch) and peel. You can leave the inner seeds in till after cooking. Brush both sides generously with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Then leave for a while for the oil to soak in. Cook on the grid, turning every few minutes, until the slices are cooked through and easily pierced with a fork. Serve straight from the fire as an accompaniment to the meat.

Barbecued butternut squash takes on a wonderful sweet, smoky flavour when cooked in foil on the embers, caramelised edges melting into inner softness, which I intensify with a liberal dash of cinnamon, to create a satisfying vegetable dish with enough flavour of braai to make vegetarians feel loved. Do plenty though because the meat eaters will also be clamouring for some. Warning - the cubes can go past caramel to charcoal if overcooked. It needs a thick layer of foil and an attentive braai chef to turn the package every so often

Butternut Squash cooked in foil on the fire.

Make a double layer of heavyweight tinfoil, which is big enough to fold over on itself to make a parcel. Smear a generous layer of butter over the centre part. Peel, de-seed and cube the butternut squash. The cubes should be roughly 1 - 1 ½ cm (½ - ¾ inch). Put them on the buttered foil. Season with salt and pepper and a generous sprinkling of cinnamon. Put several more slivers of butter on top of the butternut squash. Fold the foil over the squash and make into a loose parcel, folding the edges over securely. Cook directly on the glowing embers at the edge of the fire and turn carefully every five minutes. It should take about 30 minutes but could need a little longer depending on the heat of the fire. Open the parcel carefully to check and watch your fingers, as plenty of sizzling steam will rise up from the squash. The squash should be tender and starting to caramelise at the edges.

Vegetable kebabs

If we have vegetarians to a braai I usually do some vegetable kebabs for them and remember to keep one side of the braai grid meat free.

An assortment of red, green and yellow peppers, mushrooms marinaded in olive oil, herbs and lemon, or yoghurt and spices, alternated with chunks of courgettes and soft dried apricots, all threaded onto wooden skewers, brushed with the rest of the marinade and cooked over the fire makes a delicious vegetarian substitute for meat. The edges of the peppers char slightly, the apricots caramelise and keep the vegetables next to them moist and the marinade flavours the absorbent mushrooms and keeps them succulent.

A braai isn't just about the food though, it is a social activity, an opportunity for the family to gather around the fire, watch the sun go down, put the world to rights over a beer or a glass of wine and to cuddle up under blankets and smell your supper as it cooks in front of you.

Five Minutes of South Africa

I'm sitting in my car at the scruffy petrol station on the corner by the squatter camp, on my way back from dropping the kids at school. The courteous pump attendant is filling the car, washing the windscreen and checking the oil. My mind drifts after my eyes. Various groups of men and women wait patiently and good-humouredly at the roadside, standing waiting for a taxi or a bakkie to pick them up for work, for a lift to town. It seems to me to epitomise the slower pace of life, Africa time, where you can't be in a hurry, because who knows whether you'll have to wait an hour for a lift or a minute. Patience is a survival necessity, patience and acceptance. A good lesson for me, as I always seem to be in a hurry, always two minutes behind time on the school run, too time conscious altogether.

I look above the heads of the people and through a gap in the trees to see a cloudy sky with the sun piercing through to pick out the rocky face of Table Mountain in the distance, its benevolent eternal steady energy embracing us from afar.

Three people stroll into view, two men and a woman. It looks like they're on their way to work in the bottle store, which is still locked up. The tallest man is wearing a black beanie, black top and jeans, on his back he carries a bright pink rucksack, Barbie ingenuously beaming her candyfloss smile to the world. I smiled in return, trying to imagine a big man anywhere else in the world unselfconsciously going to work with Barbie hitching a ride.

The pump attendant takes my card and smilingly says that they're going to have to open a car wash here. I look down at my clay-encrusted car and give the usual answer that there's no point, as we live down three kilometres of dirt road and it'll be just as dirty again by the time I get home. I realise that some of the patience of the people and steadfastness of the mountain has communicated itself to me, at least for the time I've been waiting as he strolls unhurriedly to process my card. I've been reflecting instead of fretting at the delay and taking away a few bright images as souvenirs.

Malva Pudding Recipe

Malva Pudding with Apricot Jam and Gazanias

Some of you gave such a rapturous reception to the crustless milk tart recipe that I thought I'd try out another of my sister-in-law's recipes for this typical South African pudding as a contribution to Johanna's hosting of Sugar High Friday. The theme is local sweet specialities.

As an English girl transplanted to South Africa I've done a fair bit of transplanting and dissemination of some of my native recipes but have also adopted plenty of local specialities, in particular buttermilk rusks which I try to have always on hand in case of emergencies ... like a cup of tea needing something to dunk in it. Recently I've been expanding my culinary repertoire and trying out a few more classic South African dishes from my sister-in-law's generous recipe book - I might not have managed to get my tongue around Afrikaans in the five years we've been here, but I'm enjoying learning a new dialect of baking.

Almost every restaurant in Cape Town has Malva Pudding on its dessert menu. It is one of those ubiquitous dishes that one has to side-step diplomatically, as a tour manager organising menus for a week of dinners for clients on walking holidays. If you're not careful you could end up with a gastronomic tour of Cape Town's Malva Puddings! That's not to say that it is not a good choice. It is rich, delicious and indulgent and has to be tasted at least once on a gourmet tour of Cape Town. Along with many other traditional South African dishes it gives a nod to the Netherlands for its origins. Essentially a rather homely baked cakey pudding, its restaurant version soaks itself in a rich, creamy sauce to take on a mantle of decadence, while elegant versions serve themselves up with a few poached apricots alongside too.

No-one seems to know where the name Malva pudding came from - suggestions range from a traditional accompaniment of Malvasia wine, a heavy dessert wine, to a woman named Malva creating it back in the mists of time. In my quest for enlightenment I stumbled upon this fellow searcher, who tells it all so well and though far more persistent and enterprising in her research got no further than I did.

I tried out my sister-in-law's recipe to make a dessert to follow our Sunday lunch of roast chicken and roast potatoes. Hers is a home version rather than restaurant one and gives details for the cake without drenching it in the creamy sauce. It produces a comforting cross-between steamed pudding and cake, with a tantalising hint of the apricot jam that flavours it and a pleasing, almost caramelly overtone. It is served warm with custard and cream alongside and is reminiscent of the best sort of English comfort food, perfect for a family winter lunch. Leaving out the stage of drenching it with the sauce makes it a lot less rich and calorific, but does mean that you can eat a lot more of it! If I were making it to impress and indulge guests I would probably choose the rich version with the sauce, so I'll give that to you as well.


Malva Pudding Recipe
Serves 6-8

1 heaped tablespoon butter
3 heaped tablespoons apricot jam
1 egg
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
½ cup sugar
½ cup milk

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the beaten egg and jam and beat together. Add the dry ingredients and milk alternately and stir into the mixture. Pour the batter into a greased round dish approx 21cm / 8 inches. Cover either with a lid or tinfoil and bake at 180C / 375F for 30 minutes until the top is browned and a skewer comes out clean. Serve warm with custard and cream.

If you would like to try the rich and more traditional version of Malva Pudding, and I think it should be done once in a while, here is a recipe for the sauce to drench it in as soon as it leaves the oven.

Sauce
1 cup cream
4oz / 100g butter
½ cup sugar
60 ml hot water.

Warm together the ingredients until the butter has melted and the sugar dissolved and pour over the pudding as it comes out of the oven. You can prick holes in the top to help the sauce soak in.

With the sauce incorporated into the Malva pudding you hardly need anything else to accompany it, the cream being already inside! Just for appearances sake though you might like to serve it with a conservative dollop of vanilla ice cream, or a few poached apricots and a drizzle of cream. The other compromise is to reserve some of the sauce to serve alongside the pudding rather than letting the whole amount soak in.

Several recipes that I found while researching the origins of malva pudding used a lot less apricot jam than this one, but I liked the amount of flavour that it gave, still subtle but definitely apricot. I used our home made apricot jam, which is just about lasting out the year until the next apricot season. I like that it connects the pudding to the things that are plentiful in this land, apricots loading the trees in November and positively demanding that you make jam with them to conserve this abundance for the rest of the year.