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adventures / food / Friday / photo / South Africa — Comments Off
12
Jun 26

Flying fuel, or staying fuel

Today’s adventure, before tonight’s attempt to escape Cape Town, was to take a cooking class, Cooking With Love. We went back to Bo-Kaap, which we visited a few days ago. This wonderful woman named Faldela brings you into one of those colorful buildings, her family home. The three of us met a family of three and we got a lovely mid-day experience full of jokes and recipes, the medical remedies of turmeric and we made some amazing dishes. The best, lightest naan you’ve ever experienced is the stuff you made at the direction of a master chef.

We also had a curry, some samosas and a few other things. Ginger, fennel, tamarind and the sights and smells that come with them made for a wonderful lunch. All of it coming from the local fusion of Cape Malay cuisine. In this place African traditions have blended for centuries with the foods that Malaysian, Indonesian, and Indian slaves.

I have, for years, tried to figure out the exact words to flesh out my idea, but I would love to take part in classes or restaurant concepts which give you both food and the menu’s foodways, which is to say how the food and its cultural and traditional and historical origins come to us. This wasn’t that, but it was close enough to make me want to look harder for more experiences like that. Also, it was outrageously delicious.

Faldela cracked jokes on all of us — I became Kenny Rogers for the afternoon, and resisted the urge to sing any of his songs — and told us about her family and got everyone to talk about ours. The other people were a mother visiting with her two young adult children. One was in college and the other in graduate school, if I understood them right. Faldela brought out a stack of books, and these, she said, were her gifts to her children, her legacy. These were the names and messages of all of the people she has brought into her home to share the secrets of these delicious meals, and would you like to sign them.

Would I like to sign them. Would I like to fill up a page or two on my own?

She emailed us the recipes. I hope we make some of these things soon. Even if we get something wrong, we’ll just have to keep trying.

And that’s what we’re doing with a plane tonight. For the third time, we’ll catch a ride over to the airport, take part in the pre-flight process, maybe get on a plane, and maybe fly back to the United States. Is the third time the charm?

adventures / food / Monday / South Africa — Comments Off
8
Jun 26

Eating all the fishes

Slow day today, here in Cape Town. The weather wasn’t the most cooperative, but that’s OK. Winter is trying to roll in here, and the weather has been charming throughout the trip. Seldom do we take a trip, in fact, where the weather doesn’t accommodate the day’s plans. We got rained on one day in Switzerland a few years ago. Two years ago we had some weather happen some diving in Mexico. It’s just going to happen that you get a day that invites you to stay inside.

This is what we did.

We attended a bit more conference. My lovely bride had a meeting at the conference. I sat and read, which was delightful. The rains came in. We went to the spa and got massages. They were quite nice. Not as good as my last one, but also I didn’t feel beaten up after this one, either. There are always trade offs in the muscle moving game. Also, I think I’m getting a bit better at learning to relax somewhere closer to the beginning of a massage than the end. Progress!

We went to dinner at a place everyone who has been to Cape Town told us about, Codfather, in Camps Bay. They say they have an extravagant menu. They do. Their website asks, “Why eat when you can feast?” and, friends, this is the sort of gastronomical rhetoric to which we can all abide.

This is how it works. You make a reservation. You rent an Uber. The Uber drives us over a small mountain pass and into the appropriate place. He tells you to enjoy your dinner. You go inside and upstairs. It’s crowded and every space is filled with tables and chairs and people. It is loud. The few places that aren’t filled with guests are packed full of employees. There is a great hustle to the place, which we haven’t seen a lot of lately and it’s really quite off-putting.

We were stuffed into a little corner besides some guys all pretending for one another that they’d been in special forces. (One of them might have been in the artillery. He yelled loud enough.) The staff comes to tell you what dinner is like. Every table gets the same sides. You can order your drinks at the table, but you must go up to the counter to order your fish. There are a handful of guys standing there, waiting for you. They’re going to guide you through the selection. They tell you about everything they have available.

They tell you about the waters were the fish were caught, local and farther away. They tell you how the waters were there this afternoon, when your dinner was hoisted from the sea. They tell you about the personality of the mother of the man who brought the fish to the shore.

You go through all of the cases like this. It takes several minutes, because they have an extravagant menu. And if you aren’t perfectly attuned to the guy, or if you are somehow distracted by the din of the place, you’ll miss something important, like what was playing on the radio in the truck that brought this food to the store. Once you’ve gone through all of the cases you tell the guy what you want. He repeats this to a man behind the counters. And he’s smiling in an overly friendly way. It’s loud enough that some things need to be repeated, and this new guy is smiling all the way. And then you get to pick the particular pieces you want, and that man is now smiling like a maniac.

We ordered what seemed like enough food, and then got what seemed like a little bit more. Something about the entire process makes you forget yourself, your inhibitions, your idea about what’s right for two people, and the entire notion of what anything costs, because you have no idea.

But food here is either reasonable or entirely inexpensive. And tonight’s meal, which turned out to be both a lot of food and precisely the right amount, somehow, was inexpensive. Also, it was delicious. Go to the Codfather. I’d go again.

After dinner we walked down the hill and around the corner because it was time for …

Caught an Uber back to the hotel to address our things. Tomorrow is our last day here, but we still have a lot to do.

adventures / food / Friday / photo / South Africa — Comments Off
5
Jun 26

ICA presentation

Today was a conference day. My lovely bride once again had research accepted at the International Communication Association’s annual conference. My job was to sit and nod sagely, and also to take some photographs. I took some photographs. Her paper was on … well … the title slide does some explaining.

She used a screengrab from a BNL video. She was very proud of the idea. It was funny. I’m not sure how many people caught the reference. To be fair to all parties, that’s pretty niche, and the crowd was also a bunch of specialty scholars. The overlap might have been just three or four people.

It was another fine paper, and a good presentation. A few years back she won a top paper award at this conference. She’s a big deal.

And the conference is, too. Global affair. Security at the doors looking at badges, for some reason. I like going to conference sessions, but I can’t imagine anyone wanting to sneak their way in. I’d sneak my way in but, again, pretty niche.

We had dinner tonight at a fancy steakhouse. It was pick-your-cut kind of fancy. But the prices were in-line with an American meal. If they said this was the best steak in town, I’d believe them. I also think every other place does a great steak, because there’s an incredibly passionate meat grilling culture here. Bo-Vine in the City is surely one of the touchstones of the commercial part of the food culture. We’d definitely go back, and certainly recommend it to others.

adventures / food / photo / South Africa / Wednesday — Comments Off
27
May 26

We took a food tour, and you have to guess where we are now

Here’s a short of lists of things that, if you have the opportunity to do, you should avoid.

If you have the opportunity to spend two nights in a row on an airplane, don’t. If you have the opportunity to be stuck on a plane when the ground power unit keeps failing, don’t. If you have the opportunity to do the above in the middle of the heat, you definitely should not.

If you have the opportunity to do that and meet the British Karen … actually do that, it is quite funny. And, look, British Karen isn’t going to get that plane flying any faster. You know that. I know that. I suspect she might know that. British Conspiracy Theory Karen might not know that. But what she can do is make the flight crew hand out extra snacks to mollify the human cargo. So thanks for that, I suppose, British Conspiracy Theory Karen. But, mostly, thanks for going quietly back to your seat when you scored the extra biscoff.

All of that is what we did last night. British Airways out of London and to points beyond. But to where? You’ve got just a little bit more time to guess, because the answer will become apparent below.

We got a bleary-eyed ride to our hotel. Honestly, I don’t remember much about it. I’ve not slept a lot on two successive airplanes and I didn’t sleep much the night before in anticipation of exhausting myself for two successive airplanes. On the way we heard a local newscast. People in the country illegally was the top story. The third story was the Senate primary in Texas. (We are in neither Texas, nor the U.S., obviously.)

We are staying just around the corner from the local stock exchange. There’s an American-style steakhouse out front. The hotel is gated. There is a private security guard. It all feels safe. Plenty of happy pedestrians are walking alongside a busy two-lane street. The hotel is nice. It is a sprawling affair. (We got turned around once, because who needs to pay attention to the desk attendant’s directions, anyway?) The hotel does not have amenities. It has experiences. The first experience was politely declining every bellhop’s offer to help. We’ve only just arrived, and we don’t yet have the local currency. We walked by two pools on the way to our room. They were small, and also cold, because winter is coming along. By this time I was the combination of tired and restless that put me close to tipping with every American dollar I had in my pocket. Just get me to a room, any room will do, so things stop spinning around me.

This evening we were picked up by a local driver who told us he spoke nine of the official languages. No idea if that was the truth, or, if so, why he’s a driver. He said there are 12 all told — they’ve recently added sign language to the list, but he hasn’t yet found a way to learn it yet, I thought about teaching him how to finger spell, but he was working, and I decided against telling him about the many dirty word tutorials on YouTube, because surely they are there. He said some of the languages were very similar. I assume this was easy for him to say, perhaps in several languages.

He delivered us to his colleague who took us on a walking tour of four nations cuisines. After the fact, I can say this: for years now I’ve had this idea of learning about food and eating the food and it is a bit like art, I am not exactly sure what I mean by that, but I’ll know it when I see it. This evening, we had food and culture and a lesson or two out of that and it is pretty close to what I’ve always been looking for. I suppose we’ll have to go on more food tours.

Tonight, we had Ghanaian, which was good. It was earth, rich, flavorful, and I will remember that as being a funny, spicy experience. (I am a spice wimp.) We tried Ethiopian, which was perhaps the best. The base of it is injera, or taita, a fermented, spongy flatbread made of teff flour. You eat it with your hands, tearing a bite of this off and using that to pick up the other parts of the food, family-style. I probably did it wrong, but the tour guide had to know that’s an occupational hazard.

I’m not a food photographer, but I would like you to know that everything on this tray was incredibly fresh and delicious. I don’t even like lentils, but those lentils were amazing. The other vegetables were freshly cut. The beef had incredible flavor. The spaghetti is there, I think, as an homage to the time that Italy tried to colonize Ethiopia and failed. The pickled beets I could do without, but it was all delicious.

We also had Nigerian, which was a bit similar to the Ghanaian, but not quite to that same level of satisfying, though I did enjoy our spicy stew sample. (This could have also just been the place we were.) It was also a bit on the spicy side. Lastly we had meat from a South African braai. The only problem is that we were full by then and we, thus, probably laid insult to the restaurant. South Africa is big on red meats. They barbecue in all seasons, and the braai has deep cultural routes in their cuisine. Also it is incredibly delicious. By the time we found this out, we’d eaten our way through three countries.

I’m going to want more of that. Fortunately, we are in South Africa for the next two weeks. I’m sure we’ll have the opportunity.

adventures / food / Friday / photo — Comments Off
25
Jul 25

A day punctuated by three of my favorite things

One of the great things about my work is that, even in my off time I can do work related to my work! And there’s plenty of that to do. One of the great things about that thing, though, is that sometimes that work is just reading, which I, a latchkey kid of the 20th century, am prone to do anyway. To be sure, I’d probably read other things, at least some of the time, if it wasn’t work related, but some of the things we do in life we do in pursuit of the process, not the result. And that’s how the arts and humanities are made.

So, today was a reading day. Smack full busy with words. But it wasn’t lazy, because at least some of this will definitely be put to good use.

I’m coming up to the point where I need to make a notebook detailing which sort and set of notes is written down in which notebook. But, first, the weather rolled in.

We did all of the things required just before it started. Chairs moved here, umbrellas lowers, all of that. And no more than a minute after we got inside that Hollywood rain started. There was a thunderclap and then a deluge.

After dinner, which was lovingly prepared indoors by my lovely bride, despite her grilling aspirations being interrupted by the display of hydrodynamic gravity, the skies turned mellow again. This is at the top of the neighborhood.

And we were there because we went to the local creamery. To celebrate Friday, or the weekend, or try to take some of the heat off. I’m not sure. Anyway, I had a custard. They were careful to make it match the sign.

Afterword, at home, the air conditioner compressor made a nasty sound. The thing is four years old, but there was a rattling, grinding thing and no one likes that on a humid Friday night.

We turned the A/C off, and turned it back on. And, for now, it is fine.

Let’s hope it stays that way.