Category Archives: Posts

A fountain of knowledge

Question 1: Why is it grammatically incorrect if a waiter tells you to “Enjoy!” Answer 1: It’s a useless thing to say because if the food is good you’ll enjoy it whether the waiter tells you to or not. Answer 2: Because it might cause you to wonder whether your food or drink has been [...]
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Imagine a life

of work, food, sleep, and no time to blog. This is it. I can manage a cursory list, however, of good things ingested recently: Out: last night, braised guinea fowl (on a blahblah risotto, with blahblah sauce) at Rozenhof on Kloof; it was tender and delicious, but too much, particularly after the not-so-light souffle that [...]
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A beautiful woman

Elizabeth David (1913-1992; note the Ballantine’s. And the lovely kitchen table.)
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The Age of Kool

Kool-Aid has recently been making headlines in the The New York Times. The latest story is of pickles flavoured with Kool-Aid (apparently a hit with the kiddies). This worries the author: ‘Kool-Aid pickles violate tradition, maybe even propriety. Depending on your palate and perspective, they are either the worst thing to happen to pickles since [...]
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Five seconds to germ heaven

From the kitchen scientist, Harold McGee, on the 5 (or was it 7?) second rule; you know, drop food, pick it up quick and then it’s still “safe”: ‘It’s not surprising that food dropped onto bacteria would collect some bacteria. But how many? Does it collect more as the seconds tick by? Enough to make [...]
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But, did you know

that today is National Butterscotch Brownie Day. (I kid you not). And while we’re on the topic, don’t miss National Emu Week, slated this year for May 5-13 (OMG, that’s now. What am I supposed to do?) I will be looking forward to the Teacher Thank You Week, coming up in the first week of [...]
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Did you know

that making bread is “very much like the sexual act”? Go watch here
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Pills on legs

From a recent review of The Joy of Drinking (Barbara Holland) in the New York Times: ‘The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Holland writes, “claims that a moderate beer drinker — whatever that means — swallows 11 percent of his dietary protein needs, 12 percent of the carbohydrates, 9 percent of essential phosphorus, 7 percent [...]
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Seapoint, today

Just as some evenings are for whisky, some mornings are for walking. The sea, this morning, had that silvery sheen that, had I been a little girl who liked fairies and other pink things, I would have imagined the little buggers prancing around on the waves. Since I am not that girl, and neither do [...]
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Conclusion: honey is good

I’m doing one of my favourite things, which is to bake bread in the evening. My lounge is about to be overwhelmed by the smell of baking bread (bread that, contrary to souffle, rises beautifully in my oven), and that is a fine thing on a Wednesday evening. Someone I know is flying across the [...]
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