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

Becky Brown, best in town

It is because I love cooking and baking,
because so many friends/family members have encouraged my efforts,
because it's nice to have an outlet for creativity,
and because it just seemed like it would be fun...

that Becky Brown is here!

If you're in Cape Town and would like delicious home-baked goodies made to order, just ask Becky Brown. Call 076-588-9530, email becky.brown.baking@gmail.com, or visit beckybrown.moonfruit.com.

becoming a locavore

I recently read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a book about her family's quest to eat locally and sustainably for a year. It was an enjoyable and thought provoking read that made me reconsider how and what I eat. While I'm not ready to raise chickens or grow most all of my own food, it did get me keen to put a bit more energy into eating seasonally and locally. I want to become a locavore, or at least more of one.

My first step was to sign us up for a weekly local, organic, seasonal food bag from Wild Organic Foods in Woodstock. For R150 (about 20 American bucks) we got a big bag of fruit and veg grown in the greater Cape Town area. This week we got our first bag and I was delighted by the contents.

In addition to the butternut, beets, celery, baby leeks, carrots, sweet potatoes, satsumas, and mushrooms you see above we got a packet of herb salad, 1 kg/2 lbs of apples, a load of green beans and these little babies...

Gooseberries! Cape gooseberries are a real treat to me. I grew up in a place where the native gooseberries are very sour and totally inedible unless a horrific amount of sugar is involved (or at least the ones that grew on the bush in front of our house were like that; my brothers and I used to dare each other to eat them). I'll admit the gooseberries in our bag are a little on the tart side, but I think they will bake up nicely with some of the apples. I smell an apple gooseberry pie in the making.

I ate a satsuma as soon as I got home. They are delicate, sweet, and (best of all) seedless. Fruit with seeds that get in the way is pretty high up on my list of ridiculous things I don't like, along with meat on bones. We are cooking dinner with friends tomorrow night and a beet and satsuma salad is on the menu. Yum. For dinner last night we combined the lettuces, half the beans, half the celery, and a handful of the carrots along with some other veggies lying around to make a salad with prosciutto, goat cheese, and a poached egg on top. We are WAY into poached eggs at the moment, and have declared this our "winter of the poached egg"...but that is a whole other blog post.

Here's my take on all this: Could we have gotten conventional versions of all these fruits and veggies at the grocery store for less? I'm pretty sure of it. And while I'm not an organic food nut, I like that these veggies are organic...it is better for the soil they are grown in and better for our health (mostly in cases where we are eating the skins of things). It also just feels pretty stinkin nice to support local growers. Perhaps most of all, I like the challenge of getting a bag of whatever is in season now and making a plan with that. I love beets, but I never buy them. Now I have them and have to make a plan to eat them. And if I get a repeat veggie, I need to come up with ways to prepare it to make it novel. It's all a really fun, culinary game to me. Next week's bag will include pears, satsumas, bananas, avocados, oranges, salad mix, parsley, spring onion, rocket/arugula, swiss chard, sweet potatoes, red onions and turnips. I'm thinking there will be a roast chicken with turnips, onions, and sweet potatoes, and maybe a savory tart with swiss chard and caramelized onions...I can't wait.

lately

We've had lots on the go lately. Last week was Valentine's Day and as per our tradition we had a fabulous meal at home, this time with our friends Annabelle and Dave. We dined on a feta and peppadew spread with veggies and mini pitas, a lemon, thyme & mascarpone risotto with walnut crusted chicken, and braided lemon bread for dessert. Yum all around.



We attended a protest in front of Parliament. School students and education activists were petitioning for increased financial support for schools in the Eastern Cape (like No-ofisi, the school that Write Our Future is assisting).


Our wonderful friend Atheen is here for a visit and work collaboration with Brendan. Last week we all had our debut visit to the Eastern Food Bazaar and loved it. It is basically an alleyway of cheap and great quality Indian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern foods. We are all very keen to get back there and try some more goodies.


And- perhaps the most exciting thing of all- we saw U2 last Friday night at the Cape Town stadium. It was the most amazing spectacle I have ever witnessed. The stage was trippy, political messages abounded, there was a great video clip from Desmond Tutu, and we sang our hearts out for two full hours. It was one heck of a cultural experience. I'll post a couple video clips from the show later in the week.





Oh, and pie. There has been lots of pie lately, like this peach and whiskey pie with a gluten free crust.

Good times.

local flavor

The word on the street is that 2011 is the year of the pie. Music to my pie-loving ears. If you don't believe me, read this or this or this. In my opinion, the secret to great pie is in the crust. I don't use shortening. It weirds me out, and there is no need to be weirded out when you can make a supremely delicious crust using good old fashioned butter. Mmmm butter. My recipe is very easy and very tasty...two of my favorite things.

Pie crust
practically identical to the recipe featured on Smitten Kitchen
makes 2 pie crusts (or a top and bottom if you are making a topped pie)

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks cold butter (or 226 grams if you live in a place where butter doesn't come in either sticks or tablespoons- dang metric system)
1/2 cup water with ice cubes in it

Mix all your dry stuff together in a large bowl. Cut your butter into little pieces and add them to the flour mixture. Use your hands to break the butter apart, really mixing it in with the flour, and ensuring that the butter gets evenly distributed. After a couple of minutes of this you should have pea-sized pieces and the contents of your bowl should look sort of crumbly. This is good. Next add a couple tablespoons of the icy water, and continue to mix the dough with your hands. Continue to knead, adding water slowly if needed, until it all comes together into a big non-sticky ball. Too sticky? Add a touch of flour. Lovely. Now split that ball in two, flatten into disks, wrap them in cling wrap, and chill it in the fridge for at least an hour. The dough will keep in the fridge for about a week, and longer if you freeze it. Voila. Easy as pie.

So what did I do with my pie crust this weekend? I made a nectarine and passion fruit pie with a lattice top. I chopped about 10 nectarines from the Kirstenbosch market and mixed that with a tin of passion fruit, some cinnamon, ginger, lemon juice, and flour. Baked at 350 for about an hour. Scrumptious.


In other food news, I had some litchi sorbet yesterday at the Italian ice cream shop on Hout Bay main road. Yum.


And this sign gave me the giggles at the Imhoff farm stall in Kommetjie.


My guess is that it's the chocolate chips that make those cookies American style...you can't get chocolate chips here to save your life. I've already mentally allocated space in my suitcase for a bag of Nestle's Tollhouse chips when I return from the States in July.

Thanksgiving highlights

We had a whole lot of Thanksgiving this year. The cooking began on Wednesday for a tremendous feast Thursday night. Our friends Candice and Warren joined in the feeding frenzy.

The food was outstanding (if I do say so myself) and the company was even better. There was, however, one unfortunate accident. In an attempt to get a shot of us at the dinner table using the timer (as opposed to the extended arm self-snap you see above), my beautiful little camera fell to its death from the bookshelf. RIP lovely sort-of-new Canon digital elph SD1400. You were a star. I hope this bit of news will also serve as a fair warning as to why there will be a dearth of pictures on the blog for the next little while until my sweet little camera's baby sister comes to join us in South Africa later next month.

Aside from my camera's untimely demise, the night was wonderful and made even more wonderful by receiving my Christmas pressie early from my darling husband. He clearly knows me well enough to understand that I can't handle the suspense of presents. He also knows me well enough to have surprised me with this:

A Le Creuset 5 quart kiwi oval enameled cast iron pot. This is the dutch oven of my dreams. I'm so in love. I kiss this dish at least once a day. We will live happily ever after together. The end.

Saturday we had a very happy Thanksgiving-themed housewarming bash. We served Thanksgiving sandwiches (turkey, cranberry & stuffing), sweet potato "hummus", pumpkin and feta muffins, sweet potato & coconut pie, eggnog pie, pumpkin pie, and a big bowl of Thanksgiving popcorn. The popcorn (recipe here) was probably my greatest triumph. I swapped the cranberries (which I couldn't find here due to the lack of bogs in South Africa) for dried apples and pears. De-lish! People will love you even more than they already do if you give this to them.

And now it is Monday and I begin a week-long Art of Living course this evening. Started in 1981 (a good year to start things, as that is when I made my start in the world), the Art of Living is a non-profit educational and humanitarian NGO focused on stress management and service. It operates in 151 countries, and is all about helping people fully actualize their potential. I am really pumped about what I will learn and how I will grow from the instruction this week. I might also be a bit thrilled to gain access to their ashram in Bali.

Tomorrow is also the last day of Mo-vember. Oh how I have missed the sight of Brendan's upper lip.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This day always serves as a wonderful reminder to stop and take stock of the multitude of things I have to be thankful for: good health, an peach of a husband, wonderful family and incredible friends who are like family, one seriously hilarious kitty, a beautiful home in a beautiful country, wonderful food, upcoming visits with loved ones, great books, inspiring travel, peace and joy and happiness....and pumpkin pie for breakfast in the morning!

Brendan and I have agreed that every Thanksgiving in our future will start with pumpkin pie for breakfast. I've planned a wonderful little feast for our first Thanksgiving in Cape Town: roast turkey, peppery whipped potatoes, gingered green beans, apricot and hazelnut stuffing, caramelized corn with mint, that jiggly cranberry sauce from a can that I just can't get enough of, and pumpkin pie for dessert.

So be thankful for all the good things you've got, enjoy the day, and have some pie!

lately

Here's a smattering of what we've been up to lately. I must admit that I've forgotten my camera (gasp!) or forgotten to take pictures (double gasp!) of many things. The moral of this story: our life is even more fun than these pictures convey.

Last week I developed a new obsession- Miya's sushi restaurant in New Haven. I had lunch there with two of my nearly-former Peer Health Educators and it has changed my life (mostly because now I want to eat there every day).

I look weird in this picture because I'm trying to hug two people who are a little too far away from me. But they look great. 

Miya's will get its own post later this week. I am also considering going back for some additional research. 

Last week also brought an abundance of pie, which is never a bad thing. My lovely co-workers held a little going away gathering for me feature 6 varieties of my favorite food group.

Naturally, I needed to eat a slice of each.

I have been lucky enough to work with some of the most intelligent, inspiring, fun, fabulous people for the last nearly-four years at Yale. This Thursday (my last day) is going to be a toughie. 

And then, because six pieces of pie on a Friday isn't enough of a treat, we went to Miya's for dinner. Swoon.

We spent Saturday with our friends Krissy and Tim and their ridiculously cute girls. 

Krissy made me the *MOST* lovely apron as a going away gift. It's made of this soft flannel, has corset-style lacing in the back, a tea cup applique on the pocket, and the daintiest ruffles around the edges. I adore it so much, and now am even further convinced that she needs to hurry up and start a business so I can buy every last thing she puts her needle to.

Krissy also makes really cute children, but she won't be selling them in her shop. 

Ella and I played outside for a bit while the food was grilling. 

We had some great salads with our meal. I made a mango slaw and Tim made an orzo salad with sultanas and pine nuts. I'm going to strong arm him into giving me the recipe. 

After sups there was birthday cake for the Krissy. Happy summery times.

In more recent news:

As part of the never-ending stream of work to be done so I can be employed in South Africa, I found out this morning that I needed a full criminal record check and to be fingerprinted. Thankfully I had a friend in the Yale Police Department who could help me out. Now if only I had a friend who really like completing paperwork...