My least favourite politician is coming over for dinner, what do I serve him?

Had to be a HE. I love female politicians, the combination of the opposite sex and all that power talk is too good to hate. So lets assume I get a call from the office of politician Mr X. and they say that he would love top pop in for dinner in a couple of days time. They transfer some cash into my account (its recession time folks, and no politician deserves a free meal) and ask me to whip up something that will show him how I am likeminded people think about him. Go global the office says, don’t hold back. So, I go onto some food website and ask people about what food they would cook for their least favourite politician. The site crashes, but before that happens I have kind of figured my four course meal.

You can stop reading now and simply comment, or soldier on.

I decide on a set menu with an Oriental theme. Let’s be honest, most of the weirdest things know to be palatable come from China, Japan, Korea, etc.

Starter: Pig brain Soup – This dish is eaten throughout the Far East. This soup is quite yummy (they say) once you get past the lumpy bits of floating brain. It would take me a lifetime to get past that. Mine would be Thai influenced with coconut milk and Thai red curry paste.

Appetizer: Shirako Maki (see picture) – sushi made from cod sperm sacs. Yes, raw fish sperm rolled with seaweed into sushi. As you can imagine, these sacs are pretty delicate and you cannot roll them too tightly into a maki roll as the will burst and…. (Will leave you to imagine what I mean)

Main course: This dish is the ultimate. Braised horse penis. Yes, horse penis is eaten quite a lot in China and other countries with weird people and name like Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Usually served at traditional weddings, it is considered a mark of respect to be offered horse penis. Women are however not encouraged to eat it as it causes a deep voice and aids the development of facial hair. But it’s good fro the skin. A risk worth taking? Husky voices are sexy; you can always hook up some chemical hair removal job. The braised penis will have Chinese five spice, with an extra touch of star anise for that aniseed flavor.

Dessert – Durian ice cream. This is quite a let down after the three courses I described above. Durian is actually quite nice; I had some in Singapore a couple of years ago. The only revolting thing is the smell. Man, it stinks. It’s so bad that’s it’s a crime in Singapore to carry it when using public transport. Most airlines don’t allow it on their planes. The durian ice cream is a bit stiffer than normal ice cream, so imagine cold sweet pap/polenta and you are close.

So, there you have it. My four course meal for my least favourite politician. I would expect him to bring drinks, but if not then I would serve him some rice wine vinegar with pickled snake hearts.

Yummy. What would you remove from my menu, and what would you replace it with?

Restaurants can do their bit for global warming

Ok, I have just finished reading Thomas L. Friedman’s latest book; Hot, Flat and Crowded. The book got me really thinking, and I find myself looking at way of being ‘green’. I attended a workshop at a five star hotel in Johannesburg recently, and couldn’t stand how my fellow attendees would request the aircon to be turned up and down every hour. I suggested we simply open and close one of the doors to regulate the heat. It worked, I smiled.

Besides being the right thing to do, going green can also have financial benefits. Let’s look at the blog’s area of interest: food. The most obvious one is going organic. You save a fortune in chemicals, etc. and organic produce fetches a premium. If only they could relax the requirements for a farm to be certified organic. That would definitely better the lives of many African farmers. My dad used to drive to surrounding rural areas, and get kraal manure for our garden. To this day, our garden remains chemical free. The ‘green gold’ that grows wildly in some patches is testimony to this.

What can restaurants do to help the green revolution? Firstly, they can operate smart. Do we really need restaurants to open from 10h00 till 22h00? Lets be honest, no one on a Tuesday morning is going to order a T-bone steak and onion rings, unless they went out the night before. This is what I would do if I were a restaurateur. Let’s assume I own a steak house. I would open for lunch and dinner only. This way I don’t have to keep my grills on the whole day. My lunch menu would be smaller meals, which are fairly quickly to make. Offer salads and stir fried veggies instead of starch that takes longer to cook. If I have stews as part of the menu, these would be prepared in the early morning.

I would also encourage other restaurants to follow suit. I would tell the pizzeria next door, that chances of people having pizza before sunset on a weekday are pretty slim. They are better off opening at 15h30, incase some people decide to leave work early. The deli selling gourmet Italian breakfasts and sandwiches should close by 17h00.

The’ less is more’ maxim is also part of operating smart. How many times have you sprained your wrist trying to hold and page through the monstrous menu. I now wonder how many trees it takes to produce the paper in some of these menus. A board against the wall, or go techno and have a flat screen TV (sola powered of course) displaying your menu. Keep your menu items as few as possible, and change the menu every few months based on availability of produce.

If you take one of these fifteen page menus, walk to the kitchen and ask the chef when he last prepared the beef stroganoff on page 8, he would in all probability shrug his shoulders. But the fridge has to carry the ingredients, in case someone feels like a stroganoff. Think of the place that offers ice cream in the middle of winter. The freezer is packed with ice cream tubs that will have to be eaten by the staff.

Through analysis of patron patterns and having suppliers in close proximity, a restaurateur can keep his stock to an absolute minimum. This can easily translate to fresher produce.

There, I challenge restaurants to develop and implement a ‘green programme’ and lets see how that goes.

Winter- time for some comfort food.

Change of season brings about many changes. People dress warmly, people stay indoors more. Some even acquire new partners. Time for change.

The change from summer into autumn was a confusing one for me, and that probably explains my inactivity on the blog. Everything is uncertain in autumn, even the brain. I doubt a lot of marriage proposals are made during this period. Needless to say, it’s my least favourite season

Back to my topic, winter and comfort food. Winter is good food season. Summer is all about braais and eating al fresco. Lets be honest, it’s the ambiance we enjoy at braais and not really the food. How many times have you been to a braai, only to receive half a chop of mutton and still conclude that the braai was good? Or you sit outside at a restaurant and eat luke warm pasta with sand particles and still smile at the world passing by?

Winter is the exact opposite. Good food, no pretensions. It is recipes that have outlived generations. Take an oxtail stew for example. It’s been there since time immemorial, and the whole experience of making it, checking every half an hour how things are going. The disintegration of the onion and celery. Heaven in a pot! Some might argue that oxtail is not comfort food, as it is not as easy to prepare as the classic comfort meal, bangers and mash. Comfort and simplicity differ from person to person.

Yes, oxtail is simple to make if you ask me. Dust oxtail with a mix of four, salt and pepper. Brown, then remove. In same pot, fry garlic, celery and onion. Return the oxtail; add rosemary and some bay leaves, half a bottle of good wine, and some stock. Season and allow cooking for a couple of hours. Its little variations that make the difference, like adding a can on cannellini beans towards the end, or a spoon of whole grain mustard.

Winter is also the time when you miss your mom’s cooking the most. You don’t miss the restaurant you went to for your company’s end year function. You miss food that is cooked from the heart.

My comfort food top three ……..

Oxtail with mash

Tripe eaten with steamed bread

Roast lamb and potatoes

With the current economic woes, let’s dig for old recipes, and get some comfort and loving in the kitchen.

Let’s start a petition to save the corner cafes

Last week, a colleague managed to persuade me not to bring lunch from home. We would go for a ‘grease up’ he said. Greasy food to me is fried chicken (I sometimes pour lemon juice over it to minimize the grease effect) and I assumed it was trip to the local KFC.

Grease hour came, and we grabbed our wallets and took a walk across the street, and walk in the opposite direction from the KFC outlet. Sunnyside has new fried chicken outlets popping up each day, so I assumed we were trying out a new one. Walk down Esselen Street, well drive down Esslen and you will see what I mean. Chicken outlets are to this street what casinos are to Las Vegas.

How wrong I was. We walked into a corner café, and it brought back so many memories of corner cafes. The smell of hot oil. The old guy behind the counter with the off white vest, and a pen tucked behind his ear. The queue of regulars coming in to get their fix of fried food and a free peak at the newspapers. The hustler outside trying to sell you something. What I like about corner cafes is that their food is made to order, size wise. I wanted a couple of slices of bread, a small russian and chips and a can of Coke Light. After looking at me funny, the old guy yelled;”One Chinese and chips, three slice and a coke light.” My colleague wanted the humongous russian. His order was yelled out too;”One Nigerian and chips, quarter loaf and Stoney”. Don’t ask me how the russians get these interesting names.

I was very wary of some word or phrase other than my order being said. this is usually the code when they are serving a non regular and the kitchen stuff should use the previous day’s chips. Be careful of phrases like ‘lalile’, ‘sheshile’ and ‘the usual’. What is usual about my order should be your question. That being said, I still love corner cafes and its sad to see them disappearing and making way for pricier franchise joints. They are and will remain a part of this country’s food history and together with roadhouses and street vendors should be protected and supported. The health fanatics should give us the freedom to choose if we want to indulge in some greasy food, once in a while or now and not force us to eat this and that wrap washed down with this and that smoothie.

Everyone who grew up in Mthatha will remember a place called Jimmy’s Fruiters. Although not in a corner, it had all the hallmarks of a corner café. I remember trips walking back from the municipal pool, past Jimmy’s and you buy the usual stuff: Erica butter (what happened to that?), freshly baked bread, Mello Yello and some fried chips. Oh, and some polony. The place rocks up to this day, with long queues just before lunch for their chicken gizzards.

Almost every town or suburb has its own fast food landmark. There is generally an inverse relationship between the affluency of the area and the number of fast food joints. The richer the area, the less likely you are to see a fast food joint. They get replaced by spas. Try picture a roadhouse in Sandhurst.

I hope our kids will also get the chance to enjoy the Nigerians and Chinese. And like us, go and sell empty cooldrink bottles and use the money to play Pacman.

Sunninghill meets Chennai meets Marrakech - Gastronomic Sessions 1

A while ago, some friends (female) had this idea of a theme dinner for a group of about 15 people. I put the female in brackets because none of my male friends would come up with such a wonderful idea. The decision was taken on fusing Moroccan and Indian cuisine and yours truly had to cook, or rather do most of the cooking as some other people would definitely help on the day.

The plan is to have members of this group hosting an evening on a rotational basis; the frequency is still to be decided. The first session was held on Saturday, 1 March in Sunninghill and it went off pretty well. Everyone had a great time, with the last people leaving at about midnight. The ladies dressed up for the evening, and some of the guys probably thought there would be some belly dancing. Next time, fellas.

Let me start of with the menu:

Indian fish cakes with cucumber raita and a lemon pickle as a starter. Main was mechoui (roast Moroccan lamb), chicken korma, couscous salad, spinach cooked Indian style and butternut roasted with cumin based spice mix. Oh, and some naan bread to mop up the korma gravy. Cocktails flowing the whole evening, desert was a fruit salad with mint leaves and syrup with an Indian twist (cardamom and cinnamon).

Although Indian and Moroccan cooking use the same combination of spices such as cinnamon, cumin, coriander, etc. the Indian dishes tend to be spicier. My take on that is the following: Indian cooking generally uses the cheap cuts of meat and thus relies heavily on the curry sauce to liven up the dish. Moroccan food is usually more flavourful with a more delicate hint of spices.

How was the food received? I will be honest, I had my initial fears. Firstly, I didn’t know how my mates would take to couscous. Lets be honest, its not at the top of darkie ‘must eat’ things. The more worried moment was when I was doing the veggies while people kept coming to the fridge for a beer or a glass of wine. I did a rewind to my drinking days and remembered how I didn’t really like veggies when inebriated. I was wrong, these people have refined palates and quite a number remarked on how the curry and cream added something special to the spinach.

The cocktails were a nice touch to the whole theme, with the hostess making sure that non drinkers were also catered for. Cocktails have this gay thing about them, but in the company of friends who know your sexual orientation, who cares?

For some people, it was the first time meeting but food proved to be a great ice breaker, and before long everyone knew quite a lot about the other person. Let me not go into detail there, and simply let the pictures do the talking.





The Gastronomic Darkie in action………..

Fish cakes with cucumber raita and lemon pickle

Too many cocktails

Clockwise (from top) Chicken korma, gravy from roasting tin, mechoui, couscous salad (with peppers, sundried tomatoes and mint) and roast butternut

Help me understand the economics of breakfast

Been a while since the last entry. The lack of meat has really had an adverse effect on my thinking. Going well so far, just difficult when lunch time at the office comes. You walk into the staff eating area and you find your colleagues feasting on grilled chicken, burgers, stews, etc. Not a nice feeling. As a result I have my lunch thirty minutes before they do.

The meal I look forward to the most is thus Saturday breakfast as this is when I put a temporary halt to being vegetarian. As you can imagine, I go quite heavy on the grease either cooking it at home or going to the nearest coffee shop. I am not really a fan of those buffet breakfasts. I am quite fussy when it comes to breakfast and my tune is this: from pan to plate in less than a minute. I just don’t like those metal dishes with those warmers underneath that have sausages kept warm in their steam for thirty minutes. Worse with the bacon, as it tends to go hard when not eaten immediately. The scrambled eggs sometimes have this moat of water around them. Not too pleasing to the eye.

Last week I tried to calculate what would be cheaper, going out for breakfast or making my own. A no brainer I hear you say. Well, it’s not as simple as that. Let’s do a comparison using a group of three people: me, the madam and a hung over mate of mine.

A traditional breakfast consisting of two fried eggs, two rashers of bacon, two pork bangers, grilled tomato & a slice of toast goes for R29.00. Let’s make it R37.00 as one would include a glass of juice, cool drink. The bill for three people is thus R120.00

Cooking at home would come up to this:

Half dozen eggs – R10.00
Pack of bacon – R20.000
Litre of juice – R10.00
Sausages – R20.00
Tomatoes – R5.00

That comes up to about R65. I haven’t added the bread, butter, etc. assuming you already have these in your fridge. Still, its cheaper to make your own. That makes sense. It would obviously not make sense to make b

My confusion is with the buffet breakfasts. If it costs you about R22.00 to get a good, filling breakfast then why do people go and spend R80.00 on a buffet breakfast? That doesn’t make sense to me. A quick search has revealed the most expensive breakfast, which includes a 100g steak would set you back about R50.00. Still, that’s a saving of R30.00. So why do people do buffet breakfasts?

Not only is it not a romantic thing (in my humble opinion, mass produced food is a turn off) but surely its also not healthy to eat that much at the start of the day.

Buffet dinners I can understand because some of the stuff they make there might be a bit difficult and time consuming, but not the breakfasts.

For the next couple of weeks, I am 71.5% vegetarian…

After thinking long and hard about what to give up during Lent ( I have never given up anything), I decided that I should make up for all those times when I gave up nothing and go big. So, I decided on meat. Then I remembered that in our African culture it is very rude to refuse food from other people, especially meat. The final decision was this: no meat from midnight on Sunday/Monday morning till midnight on Friday/Saturday morning. This is because weekends have sport, birthday parties, etc. and there is meat involved. Weekends are also the only time one gets to sit down and have a proper fry up breakfast, and I just couldn’t give that up.

It has been three days now, and its going very well. Early days, I guess. I have a couple of cookbooks so I shouldn’t battle with some decent nosh and should save me a couple of rands too. The first day, I made this Afghani aubergine casserole and thought I would share my revamped version with you. Instead of grilling the aubergines, Reza Mahammad (that gay looking fella on BBC Food) fries them. The dish becomes too oily for my liking. We all know how aubergines mop up all the oil when you fry them.

Cut about 600g of aubergines into 1 cm thick slices. Salt lightly and drizzle with olive oil. Put on a roasting pan and roast for about 20 minutes on 180 °C, turning it after ten minutes. The aubergine should be slightly brown. While this is roasting, fry some garlic and green chillies in vegetable oil, and add a can of chopped tomatoes that are blended into a smooth liquid. Add a teaspoon of ground cumin, a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of sugar. Let this simmer for twenty minutes into a sauce consistency, and add salt and black pepper to taste.

You then take a shallow baking tray and spread a third of the tomato sauce. Pile a layer of the grilled aubergine, and then sprinkle some chopped mint. Add another third of the tomato sauce and then repeat the process. Put this in an oven and bake at 190°C for 30 minutes. The end dish looks like a vegetarian lasagna without the white sauce, and is lovely with naan bread or rice.

This dish actually gave me hope that this period will actually be quite enjoyable. At first I thought I would have to buy those ready made Arabiatta sauces and frozen vegetarian pizzas. Hopefully, when I write next week my spirits will still be this high.

So…. if you love meat and want to visit me, don’t come during the week

Let’s give some respect to the producers of the food we eat….. When we can.

I had to put the ‘when we can’ part. I had a lengthy talk about this with a friend who was delighted about some ‘meals in minutes’ website that had been forwarded to her. I asked her why she wants to cook meals that fast. Food, in my opinion needs to be cooked for a reasonable period of time to get the flavors going. Try frying a mutton chop and some herbs, spices in butter and using the same stuff throw one in the oven and grill it on moderate heat. There is a huge difference. I like to think of myself as a Gordon Ramsay kinda guy; I don’t like food that is cooked with a micro wave, or worse a pressure cooker.

Why do I think food needs to be cooked in what is gastronomically called a loving manner?

It boils down to acknowledging the work that went into growing the vegetables you eat or raising the cow that end up as a rib-eye steak on your plate. It takes a lot of nurturing and sacrifices from the farmer’s side to get the animal to be in a condition where it can be slaughtered and sold. A lot of love goes into raising animals; you do get attached to them. Farmers will walk through rain to find lost sheep, rush a sick calf to the vet who might be two hours away. My parents used to raise chickens when we were growing up. Slaughtering them was a bitter sweet moment; happy for the meat but sad that there would be one less chicken to feed and chase around. To ease the pain, mom would lovingly cook the chicken with spring onion, carrots salt and chicken stock.

I understand that we live very hectic lifestyles and one cannot be expected to do roasts and oxtail stews after work on a daily basis. There is, however nothing wrong with stir-fry or Carbonara pasta once in a while. Quick to make, decent nosh. Or making a genuine Alfredo sauce, as opposed to the store stuff you simply mix with boiling milk. Why kill the flavour of nice, aged ham with chemicals?

The ‘meals in minutes’ brigade can argue by saying that farmers now raise chickens in half the time it used to take and get birds half the price. If you religiously eat that kind of chicken, then you shouldn’t be reading this blog. You should be Googling for the world record for the fastest grown chicken.

I look forward to the day when people go back to cooking food, as opposed to the current practice of preparing food. Micro waving frozen veggies can’t be called cooking. I would rather buy the precooked meals at our super markets than do those. Atleast those were cooked, I hope.

Honestly, if you can’t set aside thirty minutes an evening to make a meal, then you seriously need to rearrange your schedule.

Yes, I made the NO TO MEALS IN MINUTES thing. Took me thirty minutes, same time it should take to make your fastest meal.

The demise of padkos.

Where did the practice of preparing food for road trips die to? More importantly, what brought about its death?

When I drive home for Christmas, there is a spring about an hour away (now that the road to Lusikisiki is tarred) from home where my dad used to wash his car when we went to Kokstad for December shopping. He always paid a visit to the dealership he bought his cars from, and said he wanted them to see that the car was in a good condition. Either didn’t want white salesmen to look down on him for driving a dirty car, or wanted to show them that blacks could take care of cars. I suspect the latter.

It used to take us about two and a half hours through muddy terrain to get to this spring and we had a set routine when we got there. Dad and the three lads would wash the car, and mom and my sister would whip out the flask with coffee, sandwiches and cold chicken. Then we would continue on our way to Kokstad to do groceries and buy the gifts that Father Christmas would give us.

I really used to enjoy those trips, as well as the ones across the Transkei to my mother’s home. For those who do not know Transkei, there are no service stations along the way, and the food in the ones in town is below par. Except for a place that was called Golden Egg in Mthatha. You thus had no option but to make your own food for the road. This December I drove the same route to Kokstad en route to Mount Frere with my mom and I asked her why she didn’t bring food along. She laughed and said that the trips now take less than half the time, and the cars are faster. A five hour trip then can now be done in less than two hours.

I think from a rural point of view she is right. Roads used to be gravel, more like mud actually, back in the day and you spent half the day driving from one end of the Transkei to the other. People in the Republic have had tarred roads forever, but you don’t see an X5 parked in the middle of nowhere and people munching sandwiches and the like. I think two things are to blame here: airlines and service stations.

Lets be honest, very few people these days would drive from Johannesburg to Cape Town. Its just too long, and probably costs the same as flying there. A huge number of people that used to drive long distances now simply fly and hire when they arrive at their destination. What about the ones that cannot afford to fly?

These guys now make use of the convenience stores at the filling stations along the country’s major routes. Eating while traveling is no longer cool, especially parking under some mimosa tree in the Free State and having a roadside lunch. It’s better to stop at the filling station and order a hamburger or Dagwood and watch the world go by.

With GPS things have moved a notch up. It can actually tell you the nearest restaurants and you simply get their number through directory enquiries, and then your food is ready when you get there. No time wasted.

An inevitable product of the middle class: gourmet junk……..

I think the pioneering spirit of the middle class (all races) is going to give birth to a new way of life in terms of junk food. Come to think of it, I think gourmet junk is already here.

Junk food hasn’t really changed much since the days we were kids. You simply progress up the quality ladder as your financial situation gets better. You start of with Chomp, graduate to Kitkat and then you make it to the Top Deck and Mint Crisp. Tax payer status affords you the luxury of buying Lindt and company trips overseas are incomplete without a trip to the duty free shop.

Gourmet junk can be classified into two categories: upgrade junk and nouvelle junk.

An example of upgrade junk is the chocolate analogy I have mentioned above. Local chocolates are no longer good enough; it will has to be Lindt and Toblerone. It has already become company etiquette to bring a bar of chocolate for your colleagues when you go on one of those ‘benchmarking’ trips overseas.

Pringles used to be the gourmet crisp of choice, but the tonsil scrapers from Woolies seem to have taken over. This must have something to do with the Pringles packaging. I can’t imagine a boerseun being able to stick his hand in that container to grab the last five or so crisps. The Woolies ones are very innovative in flavour, and are cut from potatoes and simply fried, not like the others that are probably ground into a paste, moulded and dried into corrugated crisps.

On the cooldrink side, its no longer classy to buy two-litre bottles. That is student fare. You buy the sexy, 200 ml cans. Ideally Coke Light, Lemonade or Ginger Ale. The brightly coloured, tongue staining soda is for your country cousins.

Sweets have also had some form of revolution. When was the last time you had chocolate éclairs? These days its about sour this (still called sweets though), snake this, worm that. Truly speaking, the change here has been the packaging. You no longer have to buy a packet of 144 sweets that takes a month to get through.

Nouvelle junk is something altogether. It is delicacies that we can now afford to buy and eat en masse. Take dried fruit for example, it used to be a treat a couple of days ago but these days you find people snacking on dried mango everyday. Biltong has also undergone a facelift, it no longer hangs above the counter at your local butcher; you now get it nicely packaged in convenience stores. In a few years time, I am sure we will see free range beef biltong.

Cheese platters are also migrating towards nouvelle junk. Cheese used to be something you only ate on special occasions, skewered with polony at kiddies parties or Melrose spread. Apartheid deprived blacks of gourmet cheese like Brie, Gruyere, Gorgonzola, etc. Nowadays we even know the deli guy on a first name basis.

Junk is undergoing an evolution and with every evolution there are those that sadly do not make it.

I miss those fish flavoured Kreols, the ones that looked like Niknaks. I also miss Fruit Chews.

Maybe we should petition to get Kreols back.

Did we ever have a market culture in South Africa?

Thanks to DSTV and BBC Food, I don’t have to travel to the corners of the globe to see what other people eat as well as their culinary habits. That is why I was the cheese guru at a recent New Year’s Eve braai I had with some friends. Most of my fellow darkies didn’t know what to do with the platter of cheese, crackers and blueberry preserve.

I have always marveled at how food plays an integral part in some societies and the town/village life thus revolves around the market. The food market in Marrakech (see attached picture) is the size of four football pitches and is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The hallmark of markets is fresh produce, well relatively speaking. Markets in Chennai might not sell you the freshest produce, but by Chennai standards it is very fresh. This is due to the absence of a long logistics chain that involves a central collection point, grading, distribution, etc. Its from farm to stand within a day.

My first encounter of a ‘market’ was in the former Transkei. There was a place called kwaNtozonke near the Mthatha taxi rank that was set up by the government to house informal traders in one building. This serviced mainly the people who commuted by taxi. It was only later on in life that I finally realized why my parents never bought from the market. It wasn’t really s market, but more a hub of informal traders. None of the people grew the fruit and vegetables they sold. The bananas were still trucked from Durban, the apples from the Western Cape. Prices were cheaper at the super markets and the fruit fresher.

As a country that relies so much on agriculture, I have always been surprised at the lack of markets in South Africa. My mom still grows vegetables on her two hectare plot in the middle of town, and she sells some to neighbours etc. Most she gives to needy kids at her school, who in turn help her with the garden chores. The absence of a market in my hometown has thus had an impact on the amount of pocket money I got as a student. It probably saved me from being an alcoholic. Story for another day.

You will get a market or two in the big cities in South Africa, but although these start as food markets other goods such as crafts from Zimbabwe, kangas and counterfeit soccer jerseys. Food then becomes an added feature.

Is the absence of markets brought about by people growing the same things in their gardens? I don’t think a market selling tropical fruits in Limpopo would survive if it serviced the local economy. Everybody has a mango tree in their back yard.

Or am I just too blind too see that markets cannot really survive in world where supermarkets have a monopoly over the food industry?

Time will tell.

Ladies, let me help you out!

If one were to do research on why most relationships ultimately fail, you would probably find sport as one of the reasons why most of them fail. For real! They will never tell you this though. Same goes for weddings. I think the reason marriages fail is because people get this urge to address a crowd of friends, family people. etc. The guy getting married has never really addressed 300 plus people, and the wedding is his entrée into public speaking. For some it’s also the last. If you want to do it again; the only way to do it is to get a divorce and remarry!

Ladies need to understand that sport is to men what shopping is to women. Men are lucky because shopping is pretty costly and not an every weekend and Wednesday thing. In a good season, my beloved Arsenal can play up to fifty games and I watch all the ones they broadcast. No lady can drag a guy to 50 shopping sprees. Except the British WAGS and people like Khanyi Mbau.

You need to be part of this sport obsession we have, and not fight it! Here is a scenario: your man’s team is playing at 16h00 on Saturday afternoon. Your first option is to moan about this and insist on equality in the living room, want to watch the series channel or worse still, bury the remote control. Secondly, you can use this time to get closer to your man.

How to you get closer to your man while he is watching sport? Food! This is what I would call ‘real quality time’. My lady slips out an hour before the game and returns with some fruit, crackers and cheese, and something to drink. That would not only stop me from biting my nails but would also give me a chance to teach my lady a thing or two about sport. Even place bets, etc. on who is going to score and all that stuff.

The food has to be something that is easy to prepare and eat. Sushi, chicken wings, a fruit salad, etc. would work well. Dried fruit would also work well. Is also vital to make sure the guy is well hydrated, sport is pretty tense affair and emotions can get a bit heated.

Trust me ladies… This is the real way to a man’s heart. Embrace the sports lover in him and take care of his needs during the two hour affair with the other love of his life. Console or congratulate him in the way you know best at the end of the game.

Set a condition though: This quality time is for you and him only, it will not happen when his mates come over to watch sport.

Reliving the aromas of an African Christmas............

I have received a lot of heat from mates of mine who opted for the gammon and turkey Christmas lunch. Comments ranged from 'get on with the times' to ' its not our fault you cant find turkey and gammon eLusikisiki'. Well, I will try and get on with the times and hook up some turkey some time this year. Not for Christmas though, it just wouldn't be the same without the slaughtering of the sheep.

Which brings me to my topic.

This is to describe (as best as I can) the aromas that my enlightened friends, as well as the squeamish are missing out on.

Sorghum beer

Sorghum beer has this yeasty smell, not too far from Guiness. The beer is brewed in a separate room from the main house, and the aroma fills up the whole room. It blends well with the smell of home made ginger beer which is also left to ferment in this room. The brewing room is kept under strict guard and only a few people have access to it.

Tripe

Tripe to the uninitiated smells like dung and droppings. That's the way we love it. Supermarkets clean it into this snow white thing, and thus lose that dung whiff. My mom braises hers first, and then lets its simmer overnight. That is the smell we used to wake up to on Christmas day as we went to the living room to look for gifts from Santa Claus. Perfect with freshly baked bread as a breakfast, especially for the hung over people.

Sheeps head and trotters

Food for men. The head that is. The trotters are usually eaten by the boys or female members of the family. The head can be best described a delicacy, eating it is an occasion. It is prepared by first burning the fur over a flame, and then scraping it off. It is then washed and simply boiled with water. Best served cold, it has a burnt wool smell. Parts to go for are the ears and tongue.

These three are unique to South African, and to a large extent African homes. In today's world we live in flats/townhouses where its impossible to brew sorghum beer or slaughter. Trips home thus provide us with an opportunity to enjoy tripe, etc. and savour the aroma.

Maybe I will do some gammon and/or turkey over New Years, but definitely not for Christmas. Hold on! People are hung over then, and all they want is a braai and more tipple.