on the mountain with Juno

Last week I went up Table Mountain for lunch with the Shillington/Grimsrud/Kusler families. It was a seriously beautiful summer day in Cape Town.

It was also hot as heck. Very hot and very sunny. Sunburn central.

Anyhoo, before too long it was nap time for Juno but at midday on top of the mountain there wasn't much in the way of shade. Her parents, being the resourceful folks they are, made a plan.

She slept like a baby, which luckily comes naturally. After lunch Junerific entertained us with her new funny faces and fledgling straw skills.

Love that face at the end!

holiday retrospective

Brace yourself...this is going to be a lengthy and picture-filled post.

Way back in December, which feels like ages ago now, we kicked off our holidays with a trip to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens for Carols by Candlelight with our friends Linda and Anna & Graham (and Juno, who was dressed as an elf). We picnicked, watched the sun go down, lit our candles, and sang our little hearts out.

Christmas Eve found us with the entire Crede family for a massive feast that concluded with all sorts of treats not the least of which was Sarah and Andreas' rumtopf. Christmas day began with breakfast with Sarah, Andreas, Hannah, Dave and Sue. We chowed, popped the homemade Christmas crackers Sarah made, and then went inside for presents and stockings. Later that afternoon we had a massive braai (BBQ) with the Credes and then went home to spend the next 12 hours digesting.

I sewed Hannah a super girl cape for one of her pressies

Part of our Christmas present to the family was a three course brunch on Boxing Day. The food was great, but playing with Hannah was probably the best part.

To end Boxing Day Brendan and I went up Table Mountain in the cable car. The table cloth (cloud cover on the mountain) was coming in thick, but that didn't stop us from enjoying some tea and dessert up at the top. I also saw my first dassies on the mountain. Did you know these little whipper snappers are the closest living relative of the elephant? Well now you do.

And then there was New Years Eve. Brendan and I got up at 5:30am and zooted up to Langebaan (about an hour and a half up the coast) to have breakfast with Anna, Elke, Graham, Dan and Juno. I baked us a pumpkin pie and we all over-indulged in true celebratory fashion, because eating croissants, brie, ham, and bubbly alone simply wasn't enough. After that all the menfolk went off kite surfing and the womenfolk (and babyfolk) went up to Paternoster (a town a bit further up the coast I have likened to a very windy, Afrikaans Greece) for lunch at Oep ve Koep. And oh what a lunch it was. I'm still dreaming about it. By 3:30pm Big B and I were zooming back to Cape Town to host the fam that night for a New Years Eve feast. We served baked camembert with a tomato pesto, caprese skewers, and prosciutto, ricotta and roast tomato nests for starters. This was followed by a chilled cucumber soup. The main course was an Asian vegetable stir fry, peanut noodles, and surf & turf (sesame crusted seared tuna and steak). For dessert there were mini rhubarb and custard souffles. It all went down a treat. We played some Taboo to pass the time until midnight, and got to ring in 2012 with Ant and Kate joining us on skype. Brendan and I ended the night by grabbing a glass of champagne and walking down to the ocean. We talked about all the excitement in store for 2012, which we have deemed our rock star year. Our three month South American adventure is now less than a month away. We will move into our house in May. We hope to travel to the States in July to see friends and family, and perhaps to Turkey in September (cross those fingers!). I'm going to start a new job and have the goal of running a half marathon. Brendan is going to keep churning out the publications and might just run that half marathon with me. Next Christmas will likely find us in York with the MB fam and hopefully next New Years Eve we will be in Paris, smooching under the Eiffel Tower. Oh la la! And even if half of these things don't happen, 2012 is still going to be one rockin year...I can just feel it.

Paternoster lunch spot

amuse bouche: calamari bobotie

watermelon gazpacho

sandveld potato dumplings with mushrooms, dune spinach, almonds and pine nuts

nectarine pavlova

mini rhubarb souffles

an app to facilitate our countdown to 2012

Happy New Year!

And on the morning of January 1, 2012 what was the first thing I ate? Leftover pumpkin pie in bed. Any year has to be a good one when your first food is pie!

Happy New Year to one and all! Here's to every plan and goal and dream coming to fruition!

xx

Cloth

Yesterday was our second wedding anniversary, the cloth anniversary. The bulk of our celebrations of marital bliss took place on Saturday, though, when we went out to the Warwick wine estate for a Big 5 wine safari, wine tasting, and gourmet picnic. We were lucky enough to have *pristine* weather, which made the day feel all the more festive. The safari was a hoot. Eight of us rode around in a big Land Rover type thing and we "spotted" the big five wine grape varietals. We now know that:

cabernet sauvignon = lion (bold flavor)
cabernet franc = elephant (a taste you'll remember for a long time)
merlot = leopard (subtle taste)
pinotage = buffalo (very strong, aggressive flavor)
sauvignon blanc = rhino (distinctive nose)

We rode up to the top of the vineyard to enjoy the views of both Table Mountain and Paarl Rock and have a glass of sauvignon blanc.

see the silhouette of Table Mountain in the background?

Once we hunkered down in our lovely picnic spot, we gave pressies and feasted.

We both did our best to include the traditional gift of cloth. I gave Brendan some honey and coconut coated apple rings, a t-shirt I put a funky design onto, and a Kindle with a hand-sewn cloth cover. I got a gorgeous hot pink Le Creuset mug, a meter of block printed fabric I have been lusting over from a shop in Kalk Bay (I am open to suggestions for what it should be turned into!), and a pair of lovely heart-shaped earrings. The picnic was scrumptious: caponata salad, sun dried tomato puree, green bean and feta salad, salami, camembert, cheddar, smoked salmon with buttermilk dill dressing, two loaves of ciabatta bread, biltong and brandy pate, smoked smoek pate, and dark chocolate brownies for dessert. Yum.

Last night, we enjoyed a bottle of Spice Route pinotage (served at our wedding) with some sesame-crusted seared tuna steaks and sushi rice salad.

Then we scooted down the road to share a mini lemon meringue with Anna & Graham. I love having wonderful neighbors. All in all, it was a great start to what will be an exciting third year!

wildflowers

This weekend we ventured out of the city to Darling to catch a glimpse of the wildflowers. We packed a picnic and hoped for a leisurely afternoon in the sun. We didn't quite get that. The flowers were great, but it was BUGGY. A zillion little gnat-like things swarmed us immediately. It was a race to see if we could finish our sandwiches without ingesting a dozen or more of the little suckers. So no lingering among the flowers, but they were lovely to spend a bit of time (and as a consolation prize we went to Groote Post for a wine tasting).

In fashion news, I have two items to report:
1. My darlingest niece is now borrowing my clothes. She only needs about another ten years to fit into them.

2. We babysat our favorite neighbor's super wonderful little girl Juno. We dressed her up like a Mexican. It was awesome.

this week

On Monday the MB parents left Cape Town to go back home. We had a wonderful two week visit during which, among other things, we celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary (!!) with a very special dinner.

On Tuesday I made some heavenly macaroons. The simple coconut kind, not the fancy and incredibly complicated French almond kind. I'll take simple over complicated any day. In need of a macaroon? Just ask Becky Brown.

On Wednesday I got stuck in an hour of Cape Town rush hour traffic (something I am wholly un-used to) and resigned myself to the fact that this will be the story of my life for the next five Wednesdays while I conduct a workshop out of town. But my oh my, what a view to be stuck with.

On Thursday Brendan called me out onto our porch to see the rainbow over our neighborhood. These beauties are a wonderful byproduct of our rainy winters. I also channelled my inner Julia Child and made the most *EPIC* and delicious boeuf bourguignon. The six hours of effort were fully worth it.

And today is Friday. We are going out for a big sushi supper. Life is good.

weekend in Limpopo

I'm pleased to report that I've ticked another South African province off my list. Last weekend Big B and I flew out of Cape Town in the wee hours of Friday morning to visit our friend Lucy. Lucy was a housemate of B's both in Taiwan and in Cape Town, and she is now living at the Mabula private game reserve outside Bela Bela in the province of Limpopo. Mabula is the HQ for the national ground hornbill conservation project, which Lucy is managing with aplomb.

But before we got to Lucy, we needed a break for tea and a nibble. As we drove out of Pretoria we saw an oasis above the N1- there was a Steers in the sky!

While not the most stunning view, we agreed that it was a good use of space.

Next we pulled into Bela Bela to buy some groceries. Turns out the Afrikaans locals really like me!

("lekker" means good/great in Afrikaans)

Mabula was stunning. It was great to have a few days out in the bush with nothing but friends and food and various animals sounds.

We met Lucy's hornbills and saw quite a bit of other wildlife (crocs, hippos, giraffe, rhino, an aardvark, lots and lots of various antelope).

And then before we knew it we were on our way back to the airport. We were a little disappointed to leave without seeing the elephants, but one was sick so they kept the herd cordoned off. Just after leaving the reserve we passed a group of five teenage ellies behind a fence on the side of the road. I shouted, B pulled over, and we went to say "hi." One of the men with them gave me a handful of food and let me feed one little fella. I was apprehensive at first- that is one seriously big, smelly hole I was going to stick my hand into- but got over it and had a big laugh. This was unlike any trip to the airport I ever had back in the USA!