On safari with a green milkshake

The lime green milkshake caught my attention first. It just seemed so incongruous to be drinking such a bright green, milky drink with a huge seafood platter – prawns, crayfish and all. I wondered what flavour it was – lime, as its colour suggested, or cream soda, as its colour could also suggest. I wondered if she’d like to join us but looked at her face as she sucked some green milk up and decided, perhaps, she didn’t wish to be disturbed. Her face was not one that invited conversation.

Dressed in camoflauge clothes that shouted “I’m a tourist”, she sat alone in the restaurant. Well, not exactly alone – she had her green milkshake, and the company of various well-cooked creatures of the sea. Again, I was compelled to make conversation, but saw her sullen face, and decided not. I wondered if I was being silly and she was just genetically doomed to have a sour look. It just seemed impossible for her not to at least look vaguely happy about the feast before her, not to mention the cheerfully-coloured (if incongruous) green milkshake.

For some reason there’s a type of tourist that come to The City Beneath the Mountain and insist on wearing safari gear, even to the most cosmopolitan of shopping malls, such as the one we were unlucky enough to find ourselves last night. It’s as if they think they may need to hide behind a bench in one of the passages in case of an elephant seeing them as they walk out of the Louis Vuitton shop, new handbag hanging off their trunk.

And that's when I decided why she looked so unhappy – perhaps she had been misled somehow and was cross about not finding an elephant shopping for a Louis Vuitton handbag, or a giraffe looking for a long enough tie in the Hugo store (I had to look that up… my designer clothing knowledge leaves a lot to be desired.)

I just hope she’s going to go out into the African wild, all got up in her safari gear, to see the real deal… where designer gear is not only unnecessary, but is simply ridiculous.

The Roundhouse

I was very surprised to find, on arrival, that The Roundhouse is really round. I hear you sniggering in the corner there, it shouldn’t have been surprising, I know. It’s been a long week. So, it’s a round house that was used by Lord Somerset as a hunting lodge. He used to hunt lions there. Lions! I was surprised by that, too. I didn’t realise we had lions down here. Had being the operative word.

I am always rather scathing of (mostly American) tourists who have the very skewed idea that lions and giraffe roam our streets (how disappointing it must be to find they don’t). I must now bite my tongue, because I had no idea that, in fact, until quite recently, they really did. I thought lions were only found further north.

They are now, of course, due to nice people like Lord Somerset and his cronies who shot them, all dead. And then some other bright fellows came and deforested the beautiful hillside skirts of the Twelve Apostles (mountains) to make way for the millionaires of Camps Bay to build their cocktail bars and showy houses over which The Roundhouse looks.

The view is spectacular. It must’ve been even more so before us humans planted our bricks-and-mortar-and-electricity thumbprint on it. Or maybe not. Watching the lights come on as the sun set behind the grey cloud over the bay was very pretty and twinkley indeed. In them olden days I suppose the view was just, well, dark, when the sun set. And possibly quite scarey, with the roar of lions. Oh, it must’ve been wonderful.

It was wonderful last night too, though. It’s a Very Expensive restaurant. One of those where you pay a set price that could pay for a small car and then choose four courses from four options for each. Everything was delicious. I started with a Blumenthalesque organic garden starter complete with ‘soil’ made from reduced/dried/some-other-fancy-word-for-dessicated mushrooms and the tiniest, sweetest, whole mushrooms.

Then I had smoked tomato risotto with crayfish and parmesan. Yum. Smokey tomato is good. Interspersed with sweet pieces of crayfish: even better. For my ‘main’ course I had the slow roasted pork belly with an apple brandy gravy. Succulent and fatty (as pork should be). I’m started to sound like a food crit. I’ve been spoilt this week with eating out.

Pudding, my best part, was a beautiful chocolate nut mousse concoction served with tiny cinnamon doughnuts. It had a larney name that I can’t remember and tasted like heaven.

On taking our orders, the waiter asked each of our names. At the end of the meal, he took my plate and said: “How was that, Shiny?” Of course he didn’t really say Shiny because that’s not my real name (my parents aren’t that cruel) but called me by my real name, which is an uncommon and not particularly easy one. Impressive to say the least.

The staff were incredible. It always makes me slightly uneasy having people rush to my every whim, it’s not my thing. It’s wonderful to be treated to an extravagant meal like that in such a beautiful setting with fabulous company but I can’t help wondering what goes through the waiter’s minds as they serve beautiful but little food for exorbitant prices to perfectly manicured people with lots of gold jewellery, present company excluded.

Somebody jumped to attention each time anybody got up to go to the bathroom, opening the interleading door, then folding their napkin while they were there. Shuzi, one of our party, made it her mission to rush off to the loo as soon as nobody was around. The maitre’D came running, but missed her. How we laughed (him too).

I did wear my pretty filigree silver earings in honour of the occasion, and enjoyed it thoroughly and slept like a baby thinking of those little, tiny mushrooms frolicking about in my tummy. It’s lovely to be treated every now and again, isn’t it?

Habitual dinner

I go out for dinner regularly with my parents and their old friends who I call That Other Lady and That Other Lady’s Husband. They’ve known me since I was born so they’re always a comfortable kind of dinner. We always go to the same steak house around the corner, owned by a grumpy man who I adore.

It’s all very predictable always. That Other Lady’s Husband brings a bottle of red wine which they share, although sometimes That Other Lady abstains and drinks lime and soda instead. My father brings a bottle of white wine, which we share, with lots of ice.

We all order the same things each time, altering only the choice of baked potato or chips, according to the time of the month. My father allows himself chips once a month, otherwise goes for the healthier baked potato option. I normally have the baked potato, because I like the sour cream. My dad always orders his steak: “Rare, underdone.” My mother and That Other Lady have their’s medium, I have mine rare and That Other Lady’s Husband has his medium rare.

We talk about how much fun it is to be retired (them), how busy I am at work (me), whatever sport is going on (oh, our boys at the World Cup, sigh) and, newly, because they too now have their first grandchild, the grandchildren.

Last night was a little different, though. A shared close friend of ours, a woman whose kids I grew up with, died on Saturday after a long battle with cancer. She was a warm, generous character with three sons who were the most destructive creatures ever created. She loved them, despite this. I remember being mortally affronted when they broke our much-loved hammock when we were children. She longed for daughters so loved my sister and me and we loved her.

Her youngest son produced a daughter with his girlfriend aged 16-years old about 16 years ago. She was there to catch the baby and had a most joyous 16 years helping raise her. The daughter she’d never had. She was oh-so-brave, and went through three sets of chemo and then decided, with the last recurrence, that enough was enough. We spoke about her a lot last night, remembering her loveliness, her abundant love. I hope she’s peaceful now.

Also different last night, was the empty red wine bottle. Well , not that it was empty, that's normal. However, unbeknownst to those drinking it, them being my dad and That Other Lady’s Husband (That Other Lady was on lime and soda), in amongst the delicious wine were four floaty things, which we only noticed, stuck to the side of the bottle, when it was finished. Four, differently lengthed, furry-looking things.

I tried to fish them out with a long spoon but had no luck. It provided much amusement during pudding as we wondered how many had been in there to start. I have e-mailed them and wait to hear. I’m hoping to get a case of wine out of the deal…

My weekend

We should have known from the show times – Friday 6 pm, Saturday 3 pm. We went expecting physical theatre – bodies being thrown to each other, bending in ways you didn’t know they could to music that buries itself deep in your tummy.

Instead, we got High School Musical – a lively bunch of pretty young things prancing about on stage singing (some with beautiful, skin-pricklingly clear voices, others not) while teaching us all about the angsts of adolescence – from poor body image to cutting to HIV to abortion to anorexia to the dangers of listening to rap music (WTF?), it was all there. I loved it – it was full of poppy little songs that I wanted to sing along to, including a rousing rendition of Pat Benatar’s We Belong.

After that, dinner at a Mexican restaurant owned and run by a real Mexican family with the best margaritas I have ever tasted and delicious food. The waiter greeted us with: “I am Arturo Garcia. I am from Mexico”, in the most gorgeous Spanish accent, before showing us on the map exactly where in Mexico. Did you know that Mexico has 32 states and each and every one has its own version of the cuisine? Me neither. It was yummy and Arturo reminded me of that dude in The Princess Bride who says over and over: “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” I must watch that again, I loved it.

Saturday brought with it an ill-advised trip to shopping mall hell. We were clever, however, and just snuck through the maddening crowds and into a dark cinema, where we watched The Kids are All Right. Fabulous. Watch it. You must. Then home to watch Caramel, a film set in Beirut. Also fabulous.

And Sunday I had lunch with H, my varsity friend, at a beautiful place in the middle of a vineyard. Fantastic. A good weekend, filled with culture.

The larney dinner

It's one of those places where there are terribly polite, slightly disturbingly obsequious people around every turn, wanting to open doors for you, offer you drinks, carry stuff, wipe your nose. Okay maybe I'm taking it too far, but you get the idea. It starts when you drive up the driveway and park next to the extravagant water feature and two dudes in suits rush up, one to open the door and one to offer to take your car away for you to some unseen garage. The only cars allowed to stay in the vicinity are big and black, with tinted windows and huge price tags.

You walk into a triple volume (possibly even quadruple) room with an enormous chandelier thingamy above a bar and little groups of chairs huddling around small tables on which to set your designer drinks. It's all very gracious and stylish. One whole wall is glass with a view of The Mountain (the one I refer to in the phrase The City Beneath the Mountain). It's beautiful. Here, too, many men quietly ambush you with menus, drinks etc. I had a Rose Petal Mojito. It was as beautiful as the decor, filled with blood red rose petals and deep green fresh mint. Very Christmassy colours really.

Then next door to the restaurant where Aubrey, our waiter, placed an enormous file on the table - the wine list, all gazillion pages of it, complete with index. Now, here I need input. The wine could be bought in a number of formats - 50ml, 150ml, 250ml or a bottle. Honestly, who drinks 50ml of wine? Do you think they give it to you in a syringe, like you give babies muti? I went for the 250ml, expecting a carafe. I got an enormous glass, into which they poured it. I kept looking to see if there was a goldfish in it.

The menus were printed on large pieces of paper, embossed with the chef/owner's name. Next to us, a married couple sat, looking not-too-pleased to be there. What a waste to go to such a special place and not enjoy it. That's beside the point though, the funniest thing happened. While Shuzie and Pop discussed the merits of the wine list, and I glazed over (I'm a pleb when it comes to wine), I suddenly smelt burning. The not-so-happy-man's menu had caught alight on the flame of the oh-so-stylish little candle on their table.

The food was sublime, I asked many questions about what was what, it had lots of unpronouceable-but-delicious-sounding things on it, as predicted. The company was even more sublime, and we all ordered different things and classily handed them all around the table so we could taste everything. C's order of pork belly was the ultimate winner - delicate medallions of pork, each with a little jacket of perfectly crisp crackling.

G managed to join us for pudding, leaving the monster boss behind. She chose the 'Lemon and Olive Custard'. I was pleased because I'd been intrigued by it. That's what it was called and beneath its name it said 'Cocoa crumble, chocolate mousse, chocolate tile'. It came in a large creme brulee dish - yellow-looking, half the top covered in dark chocolate (tile?) with a small ball (mousse?) covered in edible (I hope) gold paper. It was horrible. Tasted like... well... olive oil. Turned out the crumble was underneath.

When Aubrey came back we discussed this with him. Unfortunately somebody else took our pudding order and he sympathetically told us that he would have warned us against it had it been him! It did not detract from a fabulous evening, though, the beginning of my Jolly Season and we left, through the door opened by another dude-in-a-suit, satiated with delicious food and good company.

Who could ask for more?

'Tis the season to be jolly

Okay, that’s the Pity Party done for the year, black jelly beans and stale Cheese Curls all eaten up and I’ve left the party, with not a glance backwards. ‘Tis now the season to be jolly. Tinsel and sparkley things. And jolly I plan to be.

I’ll be starting the jollification process with a very delicious sounding meal tonight, at one of those very smart, very in, restaurants where I have to ask the waiter a million-and-one questions because I don’t understand the menu because it's filled with oh-so-fashionable-but-unpronouceable ingredients. Normally in the form of a foam or a jus. I can always see them shaking their heads and rolling their eyes when they turn away, at my ignorance. I’m persistant, though, and normally have them on my side by pudding.

I’m going with three of my favourite people. It was supposed to be four, but G’s boss is a monsterous ogre with fourteen arms and one eye and she has to work late and is not allowed to come. I shall attempt to smuggle out a small something for her, probably unpronounceable, but which, I’m sure, will taste delightfully delicious. I’m sure they won’t mind washing out my lunchbox from work lunch (tuna stir-fry) and putting it in there. Why would they?

A confession

WARNING: This post may be slightly over-dramatised*

I have a confession to make. It is very hard for me to admit, as I fear excommunication, or at least mild shunning, from contemporary society. I have been hiding it for years and years, since the first showing of it. It was just so “order of the day” and everybody loved it, I couldn’t reveal my dark secret.

I thought, perhaps, when it first showed its face in the early ‘90s that it’d be a passing phase, that I could get away with my terrible truth. I endured occasion after occasion, smiling sweetly and making the right noises, while inwardly I felt my bile rise.

I have realised now, with ever more daring versions of it constantly being thrown in our faces, that it is here to stay, and now I feel I must clear the air, be honest, and tell my truth…

I really, really, really don’t like pesto. In any form. Its green mushiness does nothing for me. There, I said it.

I wonder if I’m alone on this?

*See? I wasn’t kidding. That’s what boredom at Real Work will do for you on a Tuesday afternoon.

Food, glorious food

We went to watch Julie & Julia yesterday. It was fabulous. It’s a movie worth seeing. Not on an empty stomach though. It will make you starving. Hell, it'll do that even if you have a full tummy at the beginning. You have been warned. We left the cinema hurriedly at the end, before I started gnawing on the carpeted walls…

It’s the side-by-side story of Julia Child, the cook from the '50's, and Julie Powell, a blogger in New York in 2002, who decided to work her way through Julia Child’s cookbook (the entire thing!) in a year, and blog about it. Both stories are, basically, true. It’s a fabulous food-filled film (did you see that alliteration?), but also a great inspiration for blogging. And finding a ‘project’.

I love foodie movies. And I love the cool darkness of the cinema, the smell of popcorn, the anticipation of a story. There is just something so delicious about the escapism of it all, and I always feel slightly dazed and confused when I come out, back into reality, into the bustling mall, daylight flooding the scene, people all over. People without the story that is so freshly in my head, in theirs…. I think there should be a secret tunnel out of the movies that takes you straight home, to avoid that onslaught of sensory… urm… thingies. Good heavens, I’m going off on a tangent and my English is a bit dodgy.

Basically, it was a fabulous Sunday afternoon movie filled with epicurean delights watched with somebody I want to watch many more movies with.

In other news – it is my annual Christmas tree decorating party tomorrow… I invite everybody I know, and their mini versions, and we decorate the tree and braai and people come and go, as they please (or as their mini versions dictate), and, over the course of the evening, the lights get strung up on the outside of the house, and the tree gets decorated, and it’s just sparkley and twinkley, and lovely.

Who can’t be happy with tinsel, sparkley lights and the good things that are in one’s life right now? (Yes, yes, the full story is forming, and coming…)

How finite is your dinner table?

As everybody knows, it was Earth Hour on Saturday. So The Pond and I decided to invite a couple of people over for a braai. Then Saturday morning dawned, grey and rainy. So we changed the braai to soup. But this post is not about the food (although, knowing me, I'll mention it again). It's about the fact that The Pond and I do not have the ability to have a small dinner party. We just don't.

Now we do share many friends in common and, when we initially thought of our little Earth Hour shindig, we came up with a nice, short, list of about eight. Perfect to sit around the table in the kitchen. However, as the week expanded, so did the list. The thing is, you see, that both of us find it impossible not to invite anybody who phones us, or we bump into miscellaneously in the Spar etc, during the week leading up to any kind of 'intimate' dinner party. I fear that, in fact, were we not aware of the fact that the house is of finite size, we'd probably invite the lady she chatted to in the queue at the Post Office and the guy I met while reading the notice board at work... you get the picture. Sometimes the finity of the house alludes us.

Despite all this, and with three people cancelling last minute, and two people not pitching, we dragged the outside table into the lounge, moved the kitchen table in too, and had a (very) cosy, candlelit, Earth Hour soup dinner, with twenty of our closest friends. And it was great. An ecelectic mix of people, lots of chitter-chatter, laughter, wine and yummy soup, bread and cheese. So some people had to sit on the heirloom pear wood coffee table which was charading as a bench (my granny would've loved that actually), and a couple of people had to eat their soup with the measuring spoons, but nobody complained. And my nasty neighbour even turned off his lights at 8:30. He is now my not-so-nasty neighbour.

I do like the fact, though, that the dinner table in my brightly-coloured house, seems infinite.

I wonder if I'll ever have something I can refer to as an intimate dinner?

The glitz and dinner

So, the BFF came over, we gorged ourselves on spagetti bolognaise and milk stout (my new favourite drink, it takes me back to varsity), and then settled in to watch the Oscars last night. As far as I'm concerned, there is no point in watching award ceremonies on your own. Unless you're one of those people who talk to themselves. I'm not. I'm not averse to my own company but stop short of actually striking up a conversation with myself. What if we didn't get on?

I'm not sure the BFF agrees that you can't watch them alone, but he listened patiently as I chitter-chattered in his ear, probably only to about 50% of my comments but, well, ja.

It was a good one, I think. I haven't watched for a couple of years because, really, they do become a bit dull, but this one had some funny bits, some very gorgeous shiny, twinkley, sparkley dresses and jewels and some beautifully sad moments... Read: Heath Ledger's family accepting his award. They got it just right. So human, which I think must be the hardest (and most heart-wrenching) thing to do in the plastic drama, media circus of Hollywood. They were there simply as his family. Who loved him. And miss him. Two fat, hot tears from me. Just two. Unusual for me, but it was just so perfectly simple.

And, of course, the fact that Slumdog Millionaire, a baby budget, developing country movie swept the awards up is fabulous. Makes me grin and instills a new sense of faith in humankind. That faith often gets bruised and bashed in me when watching Hollywood movies. But I think we'll be okay.

A few more comments on dresses, put-on comedy by presenters and singing-dancing antics, and we were bored. Flick, flick and the channel was changed, leaving the plastic glitz and put-on smiles in it's wake. We ate lammingtons soaked in sherry, with custard. And were joined by a tiny baby lizard on my bedroom wall. I love that.

I wonder how long it takes to lose your grasp on reality in Hollywood?

No punctuation

We went for the celebratory birthday to the very smart restaurant at the terribly elegant hotel. It was one of those places where everyone looks like they've just walked out of the pages of a magazine. I felt underdressed, even though I’d especially put in earrings and be-mascara-ed myself for the occasion. You know those places: Where the staff are obviously hired not only for their waitering talents but also for how good they look in their black waitering outfits (ours was gorgeous. More on him later); where there is music, but it’s that subtle kind, in the background, tinkling away, almost as if there’s a dude in the rafters above playing his piano. The kind of place that just oozes, well, subtlety. I always feel a bit like a bull in a china shop in them. It was lovely though.

The wineglasses were huge. It was like drinking out of a fishbowl. Luckily without the fish. My father is a connoisseur of wine. I’m a pleb. I can tell the difference between red and white (and so proud! Don’t blindfold me though). Anyway, Papa duly ordered some delicious wine to pour into the bottom of our fishbowls.

The menu. Well, it’s what they call Asian fusion I think. Everything sounded mouthwateringly delicious. But the menu has no punctuation. Whatsoever. An example:

venison –
springbok shank terrine potato mushroom puree carrot puree herb emulsion savoy cabbage buffon pangratta crumb jus

Hard to work out really, what you’re getting. I had scallops to start, with a crunchy deep-fried seafood specimen on top, served in some seafoody tasting bisque. It was good. I’d only had scallops once before. They had stuffed this version with some fragrantly delicious red stuff. Then I had rib eye steak, vacuum-cooked (?) for two hours, served on garlic mash. Yum. The others had various things, some of which we could discern what was what, others, well, just tasted good. We may never taste those tastes again. It’s difficult to recreate the taste of something when you don’t what it is. We're the pass-around-the-table-so-everyone-tastes variety (as are the neighbours (my parent's neighbours who are like family and actually have a gate between their houses so their kids can come and go freely and swim in their pool), luckily). A smorgasbord of tastes.

The waiter looked like a grown-up cherub. We were a table of six and he payed me lots of attention. I like that. In fact he payed me so much attention that I thought perhaps he might (mistakenly) think I was paying the bill. This was odd, considering the paternalistic (is that the right word?) society we were in (the hotel was one of those Old School kind of places) and I was a younger woman at a table which had amongst it’s guests, two older men. We'll not get into that feminist debate thing. At least not here, now.

Anyhow, I’m going on a bit, let’s leave it at: The food was beautiful, the company great, the hired help delicious and the violet flavoured marshmallows sublime.

When making violet marshmallow do you think they actually crush the petals into the mixture?