Halfpom

It's raining.......granadillas

Or to the non-Saffers who read this blog......passionfruit! Last Sunday I was invited to lunch & my hosts were desperate to get rid of some of their surplus crop.....& I gratefully accepted.... having a recipe for passionfruit cordial that requires large numbers of the fruit! Their vine is about 3 years old and just keeps growing, growing & producing these luscious little fruit...

 Okay, so they don't look like much here but trust me..the more wrinkly and ugly they are on the outside, the better they are on the inside......there's a moral in there somewhere...Cut them open and their true beauty starts shining through....and the smell is just divine.....I think typepad need to work on a 'scratch & sniff' option for blogs so that you can get the true flavour of this post...

And here is the finished product - 4 bottles of passionfruit cordial made to Granny's recipe....de....licious!!!

Neighbourhood Goods Market

Re my previous post about the Neighbourhood Goods Market in Salt River every Saturday morning from 9am until 2pm here are some photo's....Firstly of the gorgeous tied bunch of flowers from Okasie...

A new use for a Venter trailer....bread bin.....

There is lots of temptation here...why resist...

and then you can enjoy the spoils...

My favourite port producer (see earlier post) also has a stand.....very yummy indeed!...

  

  

An Education....

This last Saturday it was hot, hot, hot in Cape Town.....36 degrees Celsius in the shade so I decided to go to a movie.....nice, air-conditioned Cinema Noveau and one of the options of offer was 'An Education'. A pefect movie on a Saturday afternoon.....here is the Telegraph's review of the book. Please go and see it if you can....& I've added the book on to my wishlist.

   

Books, glorious books...

One of my New Year's resolutions was to try & live a simpler, greener life and to this end I've taken to haunting secondhand book stalls to indulge one of my great pleasures in life.....READING....Actually who am I kidding...I've always been drawn to any trestle table loaded with books....I came across this lot at the Country Craft Market which takes place every alternate Saturday in Somerset West. The Lions club run the book stall and it is a veritable treasure trove...Evelyn Waugh (never read anything of his before that I can recall), Joy Packer (an old South African author rediscovered) as well as Nevil Shute(an Australian author best known for his book 'A Town like Alice').

I've spent many happy hours reading all of them - the only one left is Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone with the Wind' - I never realised it was such a thick book.....One thing that has struck me is how relevant the stories still are today given that the average publishing date of the lot above is circa 1950's. And another thing....there is just nothing like the smell of old books....don't get me wrong, new ones have an irresistible allure all of their own but nothing like the rich aroma (& the odd stowaway fish moth) of the old stuff!

Neighbourhood Goods Market on Saturdays

I've briefly mentioned the Neighbourhood Goods Market earlier in this blog and had an opportunity to go again this weekend as a dear friend of mine was down from the eastern Cape & hadn't yet been to the market. Special tip....get there early as parking in Salt River is a nightmare....I got there just as the market opened at 9am & took a chance by parking on a yellow line. As sure as God made little apples there was a pink ticket fluttering on my window to welcome me back....I really should have known better!!

Other than that, it is one of the nicest ways to get your weekend in Cape Town started....loads of stalls selling the most delicious looking food - all very tempting!! There are also stalls selling flowers and plants but mostly food and then drink. Foodie mags and various blogs in the UK have been raving about these French macarons & the trend seems to have caught on here in South Africa, so I decided to live dangerously and buy some at the market....

There was a whole range of flavours on display so I opted out of any decision making (having had a fairly late night the evening before with abovementioned friend) & asked the stall holder to choose for me.... and ended up with a box full of very prettily coloured macaroons. I organised a number of taste testers to see what they thought and the verdict was fairly unanimous - the best things about macaroons are the colours. Flavourwise okay.....but nothing spectacular. Reminds of the children's story about the Emperor & his new clothes....but each to his own! 

Moppet & Emu..

During my last days in the UK, I came across a reasonably priced needlepoint kit - the paint by numbers type that has the design printed on the canvas and gives you the wool all in a neat little bag & I thought it might be a nice winter activity. Patience, however, is not my strong suit so I started it off a bit earlier than anticipated. I have a good reason for this as well - I'm a bit of a tortoise when it comes to needlework projects....so many other distractions......but I've started Moppet & Emu and I'll keep you updated...

Ahemm...it might take even longer than usual as my eyesight is even worse than it once was... don't you just love all the colours....

Wish me luck!

Rainbow shoes & purple toes

Had a lovely pedicure on Saturday - part of a Christmas present - decided to be daring & paint my nails purple...colour by OPI. Reminded me of the poem 'Warning' by Jenny Joseph which I love...

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

 

Another couple of chilled days..

I could seriously get used to this...the weather is a bit more temperamental today and we have a few showers but that does give us a beautiful rainbow - so its true what they say...every cloud does have a silver lining...

 

It doesn't last long & everybody goes back to doing the usual...wake boarding...

 
Paddling out to the fishing trawlers that come to the bay to shelter from the wind out at sea..sometimes they are open to a bit of bartering for some fresh fish..

Cleaning boats after a morning at sea...

And sometimes.....we just sits & thinks....

  

02 January 2010

This is the notice board at the slipway at Infanta & you'll notice there is a temperature at the top underneath the date. One could be forgiven for thinking this is the air temperature.....but no, no, no....this is the temperature of the water!! Doesn't it look wonderful..... There's always something going on at the slip - people swimming, boats being launched etc.

Retail therapy.....Infanta style

After our expedition on New Year's morning, an urgent need for after sun lotion was requested due to incorrect application of sun cream earlier in the day. So we all piled into the car for a trip to Ella se Winkel (translation - Ella's shop - for those who do not speak Afrikaans). This is a perfect little shop in a barn on a farm just outside Infanta where Ella sells anything & everything....takes me back to my childhood holidays at Witsand (on the otherside of the river mouth to Infanta) where there were no supermarkets either so Mum had to pack everything she thought we would need for a week including dog food for the hounds....if you ran out of something or needed fresh milk one of the farmers wives had a similar setup to Ella's shop.

 
That evening we enjoyed some delicious ostrich boerewors (transl:sausage) that we had bought at the shop...yummy!