Becky Brown is back in town (and so is Brendan)

After our absolutely fabulous three month hiatus, the MBs are back in CT! While I originally planned to post some updates from the road, we made a last minute decision to leave behind our iPad and thus were device-free for our time away. It was one of the best decisions we could have made. Other than the odd visit to an internet cafe or use of a hostel's computer, we were entirely unplugged. We spent more time enjoying each location, reading books, and chatting with each other, and less time trolling the interwebs. But now there is lots of catching up to do.

Pictures and stories are to follow soon. We managed to take about 5,000 pictures whilst away, which our buddy Graham calculated to be about 1 picture every 15 minutes of daylight hours. Needless to say, we have to pare things down. No one wants to see 5,000 pictures. Not even me. Not even Parker the cat.

And with oodles of parties, our move back to our cute house, and visitors from/travels to the USA there will be lots to talk about. And oh the cooking I see in my future. I'm looking forward to getting back into the kitchen.

To keep this from being a picture-free post, below is a my proposed hairstyle for Anna's 30th birthday party this Friday night. She is throwing a 50s Hollywood glam themed bash. In addition to the cooking, I also see red lipstick in my future.

Happy to be home!
xx

Adios amigos!

What am I doing this week? Going to Buenos Aires. No big thing :)

The last few days I have found myself singing "I want to be a part of BA, Buenos Aires, Big Apple!" Name that musical (that shouldn't be too hard, as I think there's only one famous musical set in Argentina)!

Big B and I leave very early Wednesday morning for our South American adventure. We are pumped to tango in Buenos Aires (what with meeting in a tango class five years ago and all), see the Andes and Iguazu Falls, trek to Machu Picchu, visit the Bolivian Amazon, stand in the Great Salt Flats, drink Argentine and Chilean wines at the source, walk on glaciers in Patagonia, and enjoy the feeling of discovering new places together & muddle through being totally out of our depth together. We know this is a tremendous opportunity and are so appreciative of the chance to take it!!

I'm not sure how much blogging will actually happen, as we are not bringing any sort of computing device, but I hope to post the odd tidbit here and there. There will be Facebook updates and emails from time to time too. And certainly there will be some sort of multi-stage epic recap once we are back home in Cape Town.

Adios, everyone- see you in May!

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

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!

the Northern Hemisphere trip

** Sorry for the technical difficulties- YouTube didn't approve of my original musical accompaniment. It should work now!**

We got back from our epic Northern Hemisphere whirlwind trip about a week and a half ago and we are still glowing from all the fun...and finally not jet-lagged. I had just over three weeks of family time, friend time, birthday time (hello 30!) and treat time with some favorite American delicacies (hush puppies! Carolina BBQ! Reese's peanut butter cups! bagels!). Big B was gone a bit longer what with his trip to Brown University (a total success by the way). Our return wasn't the smoothest- more in a later post- but it is great to back home in Cape Town, enjoying the beautiful weather, catching up with friends and family, and setting our sights on spring.

There was just too much goodness to share conventional blog style so instead here is the under four minute highlight reel! Enjoy!!

3 things

Tomorrow I begin the Great Northern Hemisphere Tour of 2011. There will be visits with friends & family, hot weather (at least once I get to the US), oodles of good food & wine, a special wedding, belated, future, and on-time birthdays to celebrate, a reunion with Big B who left nearly two weeks ago, and a birthday of note for yours truly. I'm beside myself with excitement. I'm even taking my famous guava swirl cheesecake on the road, where it will be making guest appearances in York and ol' Virginny with the two fams. Good times.

But before I say adieu for now, here are three quick stories of the recent goings-on around here.

Brendan has been an all star in the birthday department (which will be getting its own post next month). We went away to Franschhoek a few weekends back for a pre-bday celebration as I won't be seeing him until after the big day. Among the many wonderful gifties I received were two pizza baking trays, thus ensuring Brendan with an abundance of my absolute favorite savory treat food for years to come. I wanted to take the trays for a test drive before he left, so I dug out a pizza crust recipe and got to work. However, being winter here, it was a cold, drizzly day and I was nervous the dough wouldn't rise properly. Time for Plan B: I filled a hot water bottle, rested the dough bowl on top, tucked it into our bed, swaddled it with the duvet, and voila! Parker and I might have crawled under the covers to spoon the bowl, enjoy the warmth, and have a nap at some stage too. The end result was delish. I highly recommend the snuggle-your-dough-to-make-it-rise method.

On said weekend away we came to possess about 30 lemons. I'm not going to go into details about how these lemons came to join us, but let it suffice to say they became ours after a champagne tasting at the Graham Beck Estate*. After a few glasses of pre-lunch champagne, anything sounds like a great idea. So last weekend I made lemon curd with my friend Annabelle. It is tart and bright yellow and the next best thing to sunshine on a winter's day.

*As an aside, the Graham Beck Brut was the sparkly stuff we served at our wedding in Connecticut AND it was the bubbles of choice for Obama's inauguration. I can't believe he took our idea. I bet he gave our wire beaded animals as favors too.

Finally, a lesson in parenting. When asked what he wanted for his birthday, or nephew James asked for a dog. Kate, being the generous mom that she is, responded that James could have Digger. James was thrilled. Digger is her parents' dog, who lives in South Africa (while Ant, Kate, James & Matt live in England). James is now a proud "owner" of a dog that his parents never have to care for. Best parenting move ever! To continue this trend, Brendan and I decided to give him a "cat", so James got a large printout of Parker to call his very own. As James prefers chats with Parker to us on Skype, this seemed a great plan. So Parker now lives a double life, and James got two pets for his birthday. 

Enjoy the rest of June. Have a glass of champagne on the 23rd for the youngest looking 30 year old around!

Nepal- the food edition

What did we expect of the food in Nepal? Dal...lots of dal. As part of our "training" we were eating dal at least weekly (although admittedly it was nothing like the dal we got there). We also expected to be inundated by yak milk butter tea, a drink that is said to be as grim as it sounds. Being the forward thinker I am I packed Milo (a chocolate drink powder) to surreptitiously add to the tea to make it more palatable. It turns out you don't actually encounter the stuff until higher elevations (because yaks don't live in the low territories). Unfortunately no yak tea was had on this trip. I spent my time at the highest elevation we reached communing with the squat toilet. I'm not sure what Brendan's excuse is.

The biggest food surprise in Nepal was that, like the country itself, it is a blend of the influences of the two major countries on either side of it: India and China. There were lots of curries and chapatis and the like right alongside chow mein and chop suey. Add in a little Tibetan flair and the continental food that pandered to the tourists and it was quite the food fest. Here are the highlights.

Momos (Tibetan dumplings). Really delicious. 

Thukpa (Tibetan noodle soup). Also really delicious. 

The one, the only dal bhat. Lunch of trekking champions. There are many awesome things about this dish, two of which are that a) it is one of the only ways to get a pretty balanced meal given the menu offerings along the trekking route and b) you keep getting refills of rice, dal, and/or curried veg until you cry for mercy (or just say that you're done). Now that is value for money!

Apple pancakes, black tea, and fresh mint tea. Our typical trekking breakfast.

Roadside pastries (and by "road" I mean dirt path). The Nepalis have clued into the fact that lots of their visitors have a soft spot for baked goods and there are now many German bakeries along the trekking route. I have no idea what makes them German, though, as there was nary a strudel in sight. Brendan is showing off his cinnamon bun here. This is definitely the prettiest dang place I ever ate a cinnibun.

Clearly not cutthroat business people.

Everest beer. This is the special Sherpa Nimbu Gombu edition dedicated to the man who summited Everest 12 times. Clearly a beer of champions. 

Nepal videos

Here I am paragliding in Pokhara on a very overcast day. Yes my helmet is too big for my head, and yes that is me yelping as I sail off the edge of the mountain. There is something wholly unnatural about going off the edge of anything so high, but I loved it and B and I are looking forward to paragliding again in Cape Town. Oh, and you'll have to tilt your head for this one...we thought the camera would auto-orient the image but alas that was not the case.

Next we have some Nepali street musicians/dancers. Keep your eye out for the particularly amusing whirling-dervish old guy!

Brendan's original plan was to not shave at all during the trip, heaven help my poor lily white cheeks. The day before we left for the trek he decided to clean up and have a shave at one of the Nepali barber shops. Nature took its course of the rest of our trip, however, and it was a surprisingly good look for him...far better than that horrific mustache.

And finally, a glimpse of the start of our trekking adventure. We rode for 3 hours from Pokhara to Besi Sahar, and then another hour by local taxi to Bahudanda where the Annapurna Circuit officially begins. The bus was overcrowded and the seats were minuscule. I felt sausaged into my seat, so you can imagine how Brendan- who is approximately twice the size of your average Nepali- felt.  While this video is entirely blurry, you get a sense of our jarring, dusty, musical experience.

Nepal pictures are up

At long last we have condensed our 1600 pictures into less than 100. In no particular order, here are a few highlights. In the next few days I will do a post on the food we ate (is anyone surprised that I want to talk about food?) and put up a few videos. Scroll to the bottom for the link to the full album.

Swayambhunath Stupa, Kathmandu

the breath-taking Himalayas

 arriving in Manang, elevation 3580 meters/11,745ft

 

keeping warm whilst reading in our room in Manang (and yes, it really was that cold)

a rainy day rickshaw ride in Kathmandu

Kathmandu, in all its exhausting and colorful glory

Durbar Square, Kathmandu

To connect to the full photo album click here.