Hope for Haiti – A Food Blogging Charity Raffle

Jeanne at Cooksister has put together a great raffle to raise funds for relief work in Haiti. Now you can donate money and have a chance of winning some great prizes at the same time. Just visit Cooksister and see if some of the prizes don’t tempt you into bidding for them. I’ve been having trouble deciding between several signed cook books and some delicious French baking goodies, but I’ve made a choice at last.

If you can afford a GBP6.50 (about $10 or R80) ticket then go and choose a prize to bid for now… the draw closes at midnight on Sunday 28th Feb and prizes can be shipped worldwide. Just remember to note the code for the prize you’ve chosen to enter it at the end of the donation process.

About the campaign:

H2Ope for Haiti is an online raffle that Cook Sister! has launched together with BloggerAid - Changing the Face of Famine (BA-CFF) to raise funds for Concern Worldwide's relief effort in Haiti. They've selected Concern Worldwide because of its long track record and quick response after the quake to provide clean drinking water and water purification tablets. This non-governmental international humanitarian organisation founded in 1968 works around the world to reduce suffering and work towards the ultimate elimination of extreme poverty in the world's poorest countries. Concern International has been working in Haiti since 1994 and had over 100 staff members on the ground when the earthquake struck. Despite losing several team members in the tragedy, they have been quick to act with distribution of supplies.

Concern Worldwide estimates that its initial response to the emergency will last at least six months. The money raised by this raffle will be paid directly into Concern Worldwide's account by Justgiving and will be used exclusively for the Haiti relief effort.

On Cook Sister! you will find the list of all the wonderful prizes from the generous donors - from personally autographed cookbooks to parcels of French baking goodies to original art - there is something for everyone. Unless stated otherwise, all prizes are available for worldwide shipping and tickets cost £6.50 (roughly $10) each. Once you have chosen the prize or prizes you want to buy tickets for, take a note of their prize codes (very important!) and click through to our Justgiving donations page where you will find complete instructions on how to buy your tickets and specify your chosen prizes. Please read and follow the instructions carefully and e-mail my friend Jeanne (emailcooksister AT googlemail DOT com) if you have any questions.

Be My Guest – A Review

I love cooking for people, having friends round for supper or lunch, Sunday lunches for twelve people or one of our festivals with forty. I’m great at tastes and flavours, feeding everyone well, but presentation is not my forte. A le Creuset casserole is one of my favourite inventions, going straight from the oven on to the table. We always eat at a long table in the kitchen end of our main room, which can be extended with another table, and another when necessary. Candles will be there and usually flowers, paper napkins only if I remember and no elaborate place settings. It’s more family kitchen meal than dinner party, even when I am doing a dinner party. It’s not that I don’t like beautiful styling, it’s just that I’d rather focus on the food and it would drive me crazy doing both.

So when I was asked to review Fay Lewis’ Be My Guest, I was thrilled. A book about entertaining might give me a few tips to smarten up my table. The book duly arrived, a beautiful thick hardback with lots of glossy photography. I settled down for an evening’s read on the sofa. And my Virgoan critical facility started to niggle. At first glance it is all about styling. Various beautiful scenarios have been created, with the help of several stylists and we are invited to recreate them at home… without a stylist. The photos are beautiful but intimidating for a non-style orientated person, with a minimum of practical tips on how to create the effects, leaving me with the feeling that I’d have to go on a major shopping expedition at a hip home store to throw a dinner party ever again.

There are lots of delicious sounding menus proposed for various events: a pool party, a tea party, a cocktail party, a festive celebration and so on. The recipes look good, are well-researched and well photographed, but, here’s my Virgo niggle again, I like recipe books that write about the food with introductions that tell you how it tastes or evoke something of the crunch or gooey ooze… tactile writing. I like to read about what I’m going to cook and I’ve just realized that the words are just as important to me as photos in gauging how a recipe will taste. This is just a personal preference, but I’d like to see more writing in this book!

Having said all that, I think this book could be a great help in planning menus and finding achievable recipes, when you want to put on a special event and have everything just so. Just remember that the effects in the book were most likely achieved by several people working together and if you are cooking and styling it all yourself, it will probably take a couple of days’ solid work to achieve the same.

I’ll probably have another read through, pick out a few recipes to try and carry on throwing my food on the table with a scattering of candles and flowers and then have to use kitchen towel for napkins… but that’s just me!

If you want to have another opinion, Homemade Heaven enjoyed the book much more than I did!

Heat, Hearts and Long Division

I opened the door just now to be greeted by a wall of heat that was almost solid to the touch. Greeted is the wrong word though. It was more like the welcome you might get from a bouncer at a happening club when you turn up in a dirndl skirt and a neat blouse. The best option would have been to retreat inside to the cool shadowy interior of our house, but determination to conclude my mission drove me on. The laundry must be hung out to dry.

The summer has at last asserted itself with a vengeance, having had a half-hearted flirtation with autumn most unlike February, who usually doesn’t allow the faintest wisp of morning fog and chill nights to intrude on her dominion of heat. Two nights ago I went to bed with a hot water bottle and winter pyjamas. Today it is heading for 40 degrees and an afternoon spent by the swimming pool.

Middle Daughter made a batch of iced heart biscuits for her grandmother’s 88th birthday today. She also baked them for Valentines Day with a cluster of heart-shaped cookie cutters that were a Christmas present, and lovingly iced each one.


We had trouble getting the icing to the right consistency to pipe but she persevered, making one for each member of the extended family, with their initial on as well as silver balls and sprinkles. Unfortunately they didn’t all get delivered to their intended recipients. By Wednesday there was still a fair selection in the box. I was attacked by the munchies and consumed one or two that had somebody else’s initial on… I have been forgiven and this second batch should make sure that everyone gets a heart cookie baked with love. We used Nigella’s recipe for birthday cookies from Feast and they taste great.


And the good news is that I have finally got long division sussed. For some reason I never picked up how to do long division with remainders at school and it has been a mystery to me ever since. Middle Daughter missed two weeks of school with mumps and tonsillitis and, when she went back, her class were in the throes of long division. She came back with a homework sheet, saying she had no idea what to do. I got her to show me what they had been doing in class and was finally able to figure out the whole process they were supposed to use stepping down the page from each number. I have become an expert on it now and she proudly came back the other day saying that she had got 10/10, so I guess she has got her confidence going again too.

Pizza and Cape Town Food Bloggers Conference

I found another delicious use for our profusion of bite-size tomatoes yesterday. With the weather getting close to a true February scorching summer's day on Valentine’s Day, I deemed it way too hot for a Sunday roast and decided to make pizza instead. Youngest feels hard done by if we don’t have a proper lunch on a Sunday, and pizza is one of the few acceptable substitutes for roast chicken and roast potatoes.

On one of the pizzas I drizzled olive oil and then scattered halved cherry tomatoes, diced mozzarella and a little chopped garlic. When it came sizzling from the oven I scattered some fresh basil over it. It was so delicious that it almost disappeared while my back was turned rolling out the next pizzas and I only managed to grab one piece. Next time I’m making more!

Now that I’m blogging about food again, rather than mumps, I am really excited to discover that there is going to be Cape Town’s first ever food bloggers conference next month on the 21st March. I have been envying from afar all the blogger get togethers that happen in London and elsewhere, so it is wonderful to have the chance to be part of one. Jeanne from Cooksister will be speaking as well as several other experienced food bloggers.

Here is the link to the conference site if you are interested in attending.

RSVP: Please can you let Colleen know as soon as possible if you are planning to attend by contacting her on collywolly@24.com or collywolly50@yahoo.co.uk and leaving her your details so that she can get back to you.

Accidental Harvests

In between all the sicknesses afflicting our household, it has been a time of abundance here on our farm. A lull between the tonsillitis and the mumps had the whole family out harvesting almonds from two of our trees, resulting in a huge basket sitting on the table to be de-husked and often munched straight away, as some of the shells are soft enough to open with your fingers,


a deft twist and a tender milky fresh almond is revealed to be crunched up immediately leaving you wanting more. Even after all this we have a large bowl spilling over with almonds to keep us going on the snack front for a month or two.

We’re heading out to harvest the next two trees with a different variety later today, so more almond indulgence is on the cards.

The fig tree has also been generous this year. For the first time we have as many fresh green figs as we can eat and we have been sharing with the birds too, who leave the skins hollowed out on the tree for us to find if we have been slow to pick the ripening figs.

The tomatoes in the veggie garden have been prolific but my best accidental harvest has been the self seeded tomatoes that we discovered last week, all tangled into a wild profusion at the end of the drainage trench that takes the grey water from our showers, washing machine and basins. Some seeds must have washed down from the kitchen sink and there are three different varieties of tomato, bursting with ripeness and flavour and scattering themselves on the ground when they can no longer cling to the vines. We harvested two big bowls full last week and the small ones were like sweeties to pop into your mouth and let the sweetness burst into it.


I had great thoughts of canning and preserving them, but we managed to polish off that bowl quite easily, what with tomato and basil salads, pasta with fresh tomatoes and herbs, tomato sandwiches for school (Youngest’s favourite) and then this wonderful roasted tomato recipe… well not even a recipe really.

Roasted Tomatoes Not A Recipe
Whenever I’m baking bread I toss some small tomatoes in olive oil, sprinkle them with sea salt and put them to bake alongside the bread. Then we eat them hot or cold squished onto bread or as a filling in tortillas or any other way you can think of. I think they’d work well cooked like this to freeze in small batches. They’d also make a great pasta sauce with some fresh basil thrown in, but we ate them too quickly to find out.


So my canning experiments never happened but we have been enjoying sun-ripe tomatoes without tiring of them all week. Now we are just wondering how we can get them to seed themselves again next year, as we are planning to level the area where they are growing now and make a grassy play area.

Holiday Sick

Last week I wrote a post on soup and happened to mention, perhaps rather too smugly, that I have a freezer stashed full of stock, including turkey stock to fight winter colds and flu. Now the little voice that tells me trite things like ‘pride comes before a fall’, and ‘don’t tempt fate’, is telling me triumphantly ‘I told you so!’

On Monday morning Middle Daughter woke up not feeling well, Youngest had a bit of a sore throat but went to school anyway. As the morning went on my throat started to feel scratchy and my husband was also suffering. The school called me to fetch Youngest early, as she was now feeling sick. In no time I had two sick girls installed on the sofa, one husband in bed and a son who was entirely unaffected by the lurgy still needing to go to school and be fed normal meals.

So my freezer full of stock has been slightly depleted. Vegetable soup with turkey stock for the girls, clear broth with garlic and herbs and a bit of rice for husband whose throat was too sore even for bits of vegetables, lentil soup made with ham stock later on to ring the changes, have been the diet this week. The girls have occupied the sofa for the entire week, sore throats and temperatures and sore eyes and headaches. My throat turned into a head cold, so I did the minimum of work to keep my regular clients happy and spent the rest of the time reading them stories.

My husband developed acute tonsillitis and so is on antibiotics which always make him feel rotten, so he’s mostly stayed in bed. I took the girls to our homeopath, when their fevers still weren’t down on Thursday. They were in better spirits by then and eating well, but I thought they might need something to boost them over the last of it. Middle Daughter turned out to have tonsillitis too, even though her throat only felt a bit sore. Youngest just has a throat infection.

The other day as I was doing my round of the sick beds and sofas with jelly and ice-cream for a snack, Middle Daughter looked up at me and commented,
“It’s like you’re our servant.”
I was momentarily lost for words, but then hurriedly corrected this unflattering image with,
“No, I’m your nurse.”
All I lack is a cap and uniform. The temperature chart is there for all three of them; the thermometer in a little cup of sterilizing stuff. Tissue salts and homeopathic drops to be doled out hourly and two hourly and regularly meals delivered, balanced for nutrition and ease of eating.

Mind you, as our domestic help has been off sick this week, having caught mumps from Youngest, the servant cap feels like it fits too… except that I haven’t done that job very well at all, confining myself to ensuring a supply of clean dishes and clean clothes and ignoring the dust balls and dog hair strewing the floors.

So instead of regaling you with glorious photos of our holidays, swimming in rivers and mountain pools, sunshine and braais, you can picture for yourselves a dusty interior, gloomy with blankets over the windows to keep the bright summer sun from glaring in feverish eyes, the hum of the washing machine and occasional giggles from the girls, who at least have had each other as companions all week on the sofa and have been able to chat away and play games when feeling well enough.

I need another holiday now!

Happy New Year!

A blue moon shining down on us on New Year’s Eve, blue moon with a partial eclipse, it has to have powerful mojo, extra special energy to bring in the New Year. Auspicious in every way.

We all made little banners to take out to the circle before supper, banners to flutter in the wind and carry the energy of our New Year’s intention from old year into the new.

Some of us wrote single words, others wrote a whole screed of intentions, resolutions, inscribed, decorated and from the heart.


Mine were single word intentions, words that I want to grow with me through the next year:

Expand – to grow from internal thinking towards outward action, to expand horizons and think bigger.
Balance – to keep balanced between family and work, myself and others, an even keel.
Joy – to remember to enjoy life as it unfurls, allow joy to come into every day and let go of the anxiety that clouds it.


Our banners fluttered in the wind around the sticks of our circle, surrounded by the flags and windmills left from our Summer festival, as we left the sand pit to go and tend to the roast lamb and roast potatoes, the whole family joining us for a late supper.

A perfect leg of lamb and two big bowls of roast potatoes, buttered leeks from the garden, baked butternut and broccoli, a feast indeed; but the moon rose with a resounding glow and had us all rushing outside to admire it amid the last pink glow on the horizon, leaving hardly touched plates of food on the table. The food pulled us back inside to the table but after that we kept a careful eye on the moon through the window to spot the eclipse: a mere nibble from the side of it in the end but enough to see with the naked eye.


The kids had their pudding first and then were despatched to bed, so that we could sit over ours and try to stretch the meal as late as possible. With coffee, chocolate and nuts we made it to 10.30, but then the others retired home to their beds, while my mother, my husband and I stalwartly kept going, with the help of our books, till midnight to welcome in the New Year.

I confess to nodding off with the sparkle of Christmas tree lights and tinsel blurring together as my eyes closed, but a firework roused me and we rushed out to admire our neighbour’s fireworks (illegal in our dry climate but pretty anyway). The dogs rushed in to hide away from the noise and after a last salute to the moon we went to bed too.

New Year's Day was spent by the pool with full on summer weather at last.

Wishing you all a wonderful 2010 full of joy and positive energy!

Christmas Mumps

Christmas is like a hurricane, sweeping you up in a whirl and depositing you the other side among the debris, not quite knowing how you got there but drawing breath at last.

It smells like Christmas still, Christmas deconstructed, turkey stock simmering as the last vestiges of Christmas feasting are tidied out of the fridge. How can we have got through all that turkey already…and the gammon? Even the jelly is finished. The fridge looks way too tidy and empty.

There are presents still to buy or make but the momentum is gone. Our son’s last minute present making plans were thwarted when he went down with mumps on the Monday before Christmas. Lying on the sofa with a cool pad clutched to his chipmunk cheek he was in no fit state to be stirring lemon curd, or starting a production line of paintings like his sisters. He had just one present made and wrapped.

On the other side of Christmas he surfaced, with a new-found dislike of jelly, as it was the only thing he could eat for three days, and was finally able to make his lemon curd gifts. They are still languishing in the fridge, while he summons up the energy to wrap them and present them to his aunts – the gift-giving frenzy is over, along with the cast off wrapping paper, and the urgency is gone.

Now we are calculating the days until the girls can be expected to show signs of mumps too: +/– three weeks incubation = about when we are planning on going on holiday to the River with friends. So do we go and risk it, packing a large bottle of paracetemol syrup and a week’s supply of jelly, knowing that we’ll be a half hour drive from the nearest town down a bumpy dirt road?

Or maybe they could oblige and get it early next week, so they are starting to feel better by the time we go. Luckily we’ve already exposed said friends to mumps as our son had a sleepover with them just before he went down with it, so we don’t have to worry about sharing the germs!

The positive spin is that it is much better to get mumps before adolescence strikes, so really it’s in the nick of time for these eleven year olds, but our son didn’t find that very cheering while he was languishing on the sofa facing the bleak prospect of a Christmas Day spent unable to indulge in roast potatoes and a surfeit of pudding.

In the end he was able to eat the potatoes, his swollen glands having shrunk to a respectable hamster size, but after four days of not eating he could only manage four potatoes instead of his usual ten!

Christmas is Coming, Ready Or Not

Silent Night is echoing around the house, as the girls learn all their favourite Christmas carols on the recorder.

Paint smears over T-shirts indicate that some serious pressie creation has been going on.

Middle Daughter now has two bagfuls of home-made presents all totally independently made.

Son spends time alternating between computer and book and is relying on a last minute batch of home-made lemon curd to solve all his present dilemmas.

Youngest is steadily amassing her pressies, but is way behind her sister, though keeping her nerve and persevering.

And me? I’ve done the bare minimum of shopping, just enough to provide a present each per child plus the odd stocking filler and am following my son’s example and relying on a last minute painting spree to create the rest of my pressies. Inspiration thrives on adrenalin, I hope.

The Christmas cakes are baked and awaiting their marzipan and icing.
The tree is still growing up at the top of the farm until we go to cut it on Sunday.
The girls have built a stable but we have no figures as yet for the nativity scene. I had the great idea of making our own wooden figures, which fell by the wayside several weeks ago.

And the reason my blog has been such a bare and windswept space…there has been plenty of writing material but a total lack of energy to shape it and put it into words, as the last two weeks have held:
A wind-pummelled two night camping trip with our son’s class, where duct tape was the main element keeping the tents up and poles shattered left right and centre.
Production of the school annual newsletter where each year we are sailing teeth-clenchingly closer to the deadline – this year it was printed at 9am before school’s close at 11am…
Family over here from Australia and consequent feasting.
Son’s class play, where he excelled as cut-throat robber at the first performance and Zeus at the second.
My mother arriving from England for Christmas.
Our belly dancing end of year performance at our house, for which clear floor space was required, a scarce commodity even in our spacious abode.
Much juggling of work with all the above, which made me realize how much more time efficient I could be every week if pushed.

So I am thankful that the girls are keeping themselves so busy with Christmas preparations, churning out cards for me to send to family overseas, keeping the spirit of Christmas alive in our house, so that I can coast along in their slipstream and let the momentum gather in their wake.

Kids love it

Today I was writing up some recipe articles for a client and found the words “kids love it…” tripping nonchalantly off my keyboard, as I assured readers that cottage pie is a really kid-friendly dish guaranteed to smuggle vegetables past the green detector into their child’s diet.

Later this afternoon, as I perspired over a hot stove (the weather was actually hot today for a change), making a chicken pie, I realized how inaccurate that generalization really is.

About a month ago I tried out the chicken pot pie recipe from Nigella’s Feast, which her kids apparently consider the highest treat possible.

"Great," I thought, "finally a way of using up cold chicken left over from the roast other than in sandwiches."

It is always the thighs and legs that get left. My family are almost exclusively white meat eaters; even Youngest, who I used to rely on to eat one drumstick, has now turned her back on it and competes with the rest for the coveted slices of breast. So stuck with all this perfectly good leg meat a pie should be the ideal answer…and Nigella’s kids love it, so mine should too.

It’s quite a bit of work with a béchamel sauce and pastry to prepare but eventually, with a fanfare, I produced a golden pie from the oven and bore it proudly to the table.


It was a resounding flop with the kids, who picked off the pastry and left the filling, looking suspiciously at the bechamel as if it were concealing a dreaded poison. The adults were left to enjoy the pie on their own and it was actually pretty good, lasting for lunch the next day too.

I tried it again today, undeterred by the groans from the children when they detected my foul intent.
"I’m using a different recipe," I assured them, "without the sauce."

I’d had a brainwave that I thought would get past their radar. Why not cook the potato dish they all love, without baking it, and mix it with the chicken as the filling for a pie; a bit of creaminess from the potato bake, chicken tucked in between and some green peas for sweetness, none of that scary white sauce stuff to put them off.

Well… it was better. Our son ate the small slice I served him without complaint, afterwards saying he took big bites 'cos you couldn’t taste it so much. Youngest even had a tiny helping of seconds and Middle Daughter ate the pastry and potato and left the chicken. But it’s still a far cry from Nigella’s big treat for her kids.

So I hereby resolve in future to strike those words from my recipes. All I will say about cottage pie and such like is… "MY kids love this, so it’s possible that your kids will, but don’t bet on it."

A Dogs Dinner

I often struggle to find something to make cold leftover meats interesting for the family in cold weather. If I do baked potatoes then they always want our traditional accompaniments of grated cheese, baked beans and tuna with them and don’t eat the cold meat, which misses the point entirely. So I was really happy when I tried this potato recipe from Nigella’s Feast and everybody liked it – yes everybody, all the kids, even our son, who is so discerning that it’s hard to feed him a balanced diet.

It’s really simple – just diced potatoes cooked in sour cream and milk on the stove and then finished off in the oven with a topping of corn flake crumbs. Nothing fancy but with that soothing creaminess that is the essence of comfort food, and just enough crunch to keep you going back for more.

My husband just got home from a long drive up to Clanwilliam to look at a second-hand car that sounded perfect for us. It was… except that the previous owners were heavy smokers and the whole car was ingrained with the reek of stale smoke, which is almost impossible to get rid of, so it’s back to square one on the car search again.

He’d stopped off at Spur for a steak to keep him going on the return journey and the portions were so huge that he ate all he could and still brought back enough steak as a doggie bag to feed us all again tonight!


The kids were ecstatic – they love steak and I hardly ever buy it. So the dogs didn’t even get a look in and neither did the cats, despite many attempts to get on the table and share the feast. This potato dish went just right with it, along with some garlicky tomato salad.

Creamy potato bake recipe
250ml / 1 cup sour cream
250ml / 1 cup milk
1 kg potatoes
1 tablespoon coarse sea salt or ½ teaspoon table salt
pepper
50g / 1 cup corn flakes

Put the sour cream, milk, salt and pepper in a heavy based pan with a lid. Peel the potatoes and cut them into 1-2cm / ½ inch cubes. Add to the pan. Bring it all to simmering point, cover with the lid and cook at a gentle simmer for about 30 minutes, until the potatoes are tender.

Preheat the oven to 220C/450F. Crush the corn flakes to crumbs. The easiest way to do this is to put them in a freezer bag and roll it with a heavy rolling pin.

Tip the potatoes into a roasting dish, scatter the cornflake crumbs over the top and bake for 15-20 minutes until it is bubbling with a crispy top.

Feet

Feet are fundamental to our well-being and yet we only notice them when they stop doing their job properly.

I’ve been taking my feet for granted all my life, always knowing I can walk anywhere I want to, reserving the right to learn to dance one of these days when I get around to it, expecting them to hold me uncomplainingly when I stand cooking in the kitchen for hours when we have a festival, demanding their services day in day out.

It’s only now that one of them is complaining that I’ve stopped to think how much I rely on them. One of my lateral arches gave me trouble a few years ago. The physio gave me exercises. I stopped buying cheapo shoes and bought my shoes from Green and Cross from then on. I waved farewell to even the occasional wearing of heels and stopped imagining that one day I’d wear those black suede stilettos from my twenties again. (I still haven't thrown those stilettos away, but keep them for the sake of nostalgia and let the girls trip around in them occasionally)

My foot gradually improved and I forgot about the problem again; took my feet for granted once more, even though I now only bought them the best supportive footwear. Occasional reminders kept me on the straight and narrow; back on a visit to England, I found I couldn’t wear wellies to walk the dog and had to buy proper walking boots, and walking barefoot on hard surfaces was no longer the best idea, but my feet worked again.

And now the same one is twingeing again. Suddenly walking the dogs around the farm seems too much to ask , so I’m missing out on the latest family routine of all of us walking round the circle road before supper. I don’t want to go belly dancing tonight in case I make the twinge worse. When we went out for lunch on the weekend we couldn’t just park and casually saunter around the streets window shopping before lunch as I was worrying how long my feet would last out. I can feel that I’m walking oddly, putting my foot down too carefully and probably tensing somewhere else in my leg or back to compensate.

Having something wrong with a foot makes you question your abilities. It underlines all the things that you can’t do easily, if you’re not physically healthy. I feel tentative about everything I do. Whereas I usually leap up to get something or do something a million times a day, now it is suddenly an effort. This little physical insecurity extends into feeling unsure about everything.

And this is something little, a painful twinge in the arch but no more than that. I can't imagine how it would be if it were a serious injury or one that was unfixable. So I’m off to the physio tomorrow and maybe a reflexologist. I want somebody to fix it so that I can have the luxury of taking my feet for granted again; so that I can have a blithe confidence in being able to walk up a mountain, go dancing or just wander anywhere anytime without thinking about it. I want my foundation solid again.

Ten Things Update

A nudge from Marcheline made me realize I haven’t posted for ages. All my writing mojo is being spent on work stuff, so I’m falling back on an update in the ten things format to fill the black hole.

1. It has been raining now for two days and nights, practically without stopping. This is supposed to be summer in South Africa, not in England. Getting a bit worried about the pairs of animals that keep showing up too….
2. We went out for lunch to celebrate our anniversary on Saturday at Bukhara, a great Indian restaurant in town. Excellent food, but I never took my camera so am a totally incompetent food blogger!
3. Youngest brought back a reader from school, sat me on the sofa and read it through to me start to finish. I was really impressed as they start learning their letters from scratch in Class 1 in Waldorf and the others were only reading by the end of Class 2. She is raring to go and catch up with her big brother and sister.
4. My foot has been bothering me all week, with an arch that is misbehaving, so no belly-dancing tonight. Need to go and see a reflexologist or something to try and sort it out.
5. I’ve just received my first ever review copy of a book to review on my blog: Be My Guest by Fay Lewis. Maybe I am a proper food blogger after all! I’m going to try out a recipe or two first, before I write about it so will let you know.
6. Read ‘Little Women’ and ‘What Katy Did’ for the first time since I was a child. Still good stories but I’m wondering what my girls will think of them, with their fine moral lessons set among mild misdeeds, the terrible illness of Beth, and Katie being paralysed for so long.
7. Took our son to the homeopath for some more constitutional treatment. He’s getting dry skin on his face and we don’t want him to get the eczema back that he had as a baby.
8. The children are totally unimpressed with the old Toyota Corolla we are driving about in. We’ve sold our main car and are waiting to get hold of a second-hand Toyota Prado, but it’s taking longer than we thought.
9. We haven’t celebrated Guy Fawkes night since we came to South Africa, and it was a surprise to find out that it is still a big thing in the local communities here, with kids running around setting off fire crackers and throwing eggs and paint at each other. Our dogs were terrified by all the bangs and wriggled right under the children’s beds to take cover.
10. The school Spring Fair a week ago was a hot summer day and I wore my new summer dress for the first time, which seems a distant memory now when I’m back in winter clothes and still cold. Youngest won a prize in the fancy dress competition, dressed as a princess of course.

Designer Labels

Ever since I gave my husband a hard time for cutting garlic on my fruit chopping board, he has had a plan to label the boards and avoid any confusion for the uninitiated into my complex system of wooden boards.

Finally on Saturday he put the kids to work burning names into the wood. I'd envisaged lethal red hot pokers being needed, with major danger to life and limb.

All it actually took was some sunshine and a magnifying glass each and it took only a few minutes. Now they are looking for more wooden objects to practise their new-found skills on.

And I'm the proud owner of some designer labelled chopping boards. There is also one called Meat and another named Cheese.