SIGN WITH AN E

So it’s been a week since I put the Philosophe on a plane that took him far far away. It’s funny how easily you forget to be alone – in fact I remember I used to take some pride in how good I was at being alone. I was adamantly not lonely – just alone, proud and strong. But that was because I had to be, and I’m generally quite good at buckling down and dealing with what needs to be done.

Which is also why the week has mostly been fine, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to be reminded that time marches on, even when days feel impossibly long.

I am not good at being alone anymore, because I know how much better life is when I’m not. But I’m also glad to be reminded of that (I’ll be even happier next week when  it’s over), and I’ve caught myself doing a few weird and wonderful things in between. One day I ironed for two hours.

That was strangely soothing, and pleasantly wifely.

I also discovered how to hypnotize Mogwai. I lit a candle and poof! She fell asleep:

I now keep as many candles on as possible to distract her from her infuriatingly perpetual greediness (I timed my last bowl of popcorn to coincide with her dinner, but she still came and scoffed half the bowl).

The other day I made coq au vin – or should I call it chicken in wine, for it was no old rooster, just a plain packet of chicken from Pick ‘n Pay. But I browned that chicken in duck fat and for a few blissful moments the kitchen teased me with the smells of duck confit. Unexpected things intervened so I haven’t yet had the pleasure of eating it, but it awaits in the freezer for a cold day (today is one, but another unexpected invitation has intervened).

Last night a well-known chef in this city gave me a secret recipe for “perfect” brownies which I will have to humour one of these days. I’ll need my calculator again – the recipe calls for 16 eggs!

I also have a rack of smoked pork ribs in the fridge. They whispered to me in my sleep that they want to meet the jar of sauerkraut that the Sailor neglected to eat while he was here, so Mogwai and I are thinking of spicing things up by borrowing some of Elise Bauer’s ideas about ribs and sauerkraut.

Ours will of course be so delicious that the Philosophe’s absence might become even more acute. But to paraphrase a sage tweet I sent out the other day, absence makes the heart grow fatter.

After variously sorting out the world in a bumper morning’s work, the Philosophe and I allowed ourselves the naughty indulgence of a Friday afternoon at the cinema, so off we went to Star Trek. I confess to being one of those culturally superior inferior people who have never watched any of the Star Trek films (nor even Star Wars), thinking myself a non-sci-fi kinda gal.  But it was great, and now I can say “beam me up, Scottie” and know what I’m talking about.

We enjoyed an after-movie whisky under the brooding sky of a Cape Town gearing up for a weekend storm:

(Free snacks are always good).

Ho hum, but we still had a couple of hours to kill before it was respectably dinner time, so we decided to check out the Sexpo. (We were hoping to get there to see the silly Christians protesting, but we imagined the weather put them off – apparently it didn’t, though we missed them).

It was altogether a pretty silly (and expensive!) experience. Not only was the space far too big for what was in there (meaning you never shake the feeling of being in a large warehouse with a few dildos), but there was very little raunch – not to mention the absurd stalls in between selling olive oil, and other gratuitous marketers like the stall selling pet cushions for “pussy lovers”, and “doggy style” (my, how clever!).

We watched Miss UK poledance doing her number – she was very good, but more of an athlete than a nymphette, and then we watched the Boerewors Brothers (which turned out to be one man) doing penis puppetry. What it is? I’ll leave that to your imagination, which will probably do a better job than half-bro Boerie.

We also saw Pricasso and his portrait of our new president, penned with – yes, you guessed it – his penis.

There were a couple of topless women standing around, and a couple of large wandering penises:

Ho hum. More crunch than raunch there. Anyway, it was certainly a different way to spend a Friday evening, and after we’d had our fill of fake genitals and whisky, it was thankfully time for dinner at a little bistro that made us decent versions of (appropriately) coq au vin and T-Bone steak.

Now we continue to await the storm, and since we’re both on strict diets, I spent the morning making sure we were armed for the rain:

On the left we have a naartjie cake which involved boiling the fruit whole before pureeing and adding to a polenta-olive oil batter with a touch of almond. For the syrup on top, I boiled down a last drop of Beaumont’s delicious Goutte D’Or dessert wine with some lemon juice and sugar. Since the naartjies were also gifts hailing from Beaumont, I’ll call it the Naartjie D’Or. Should hit the spot with afternoon coffee in front of the heater.

Oh, and on the right, one more pan of brownies. I am STILL looking for the perfect recipe, and this one comes from the one who will not be named. I almost hate to say it, but I think these might be the ones.

So it’s been a while, but it’s not my fault. I was in Swaziland, where my mother lives happily in a beautiful spot, but unhappily 2km short of the radius that would give her access to broadband. I had a good time there, quiet and lively as always – quiet because not much happens (good for writing most of a chapter of a book), and lively because the same people that nothing happens to lead amazingly dramatic lives, and give up much good gossip about it.

Anyway, I was going to write some dispatches from the Times of Swaziland, which is generally good for a laugh. Like the public apology they printed one day reporting, in an earlier article, that the Attorney General made a ‘rare appearance in court.’ The editor was sorry to have suggested that the AG is hardly ever there. (Turns out he had been in recovery from a car accident, so he actually hadn’t been there much. But you gotta keep people happy).

There was another great(ly depressing) story about an ongoing sex probe into some sexual probing by a schoolteacher – sadly a regular affair in Swaziland. I had to keep this one: ‘The name of the school and the investigated teacher are deliberately withheld as the probe is still going on. It is also alleged that the probed teacher is not the only culprit at the school whose conduct amongst female students ought to be probed.’ And so it went.

But that’s all over now, and I’m back in the chilly waters of Cape Town. The sun shines today, but we have felt ice, and know the big winter is imminent. (Thank goodness for the philosophe’s foresight to stock up on a functioning heater and plenty of gas in my absence. He knows there is nothing fun about a cold doctor).

These are times for big pots of warming meals. For a two-person household, that means freezer-space (ever tried making two servings of bolognese?). My problem is that the freezer was already pretty full, so it’s time for cleanout. Yesterday we enjoyed some chicken mole – the mole had been in there for a couple of months (talk about slow food), and was just as delicious last night on some freshly cooked chicken, scooped into home-made tortillas. The philosophe did what he could with leftovers at lunch today, but two tortillas remain. They are now in the freezer, and will become nachos one day when I have a pot of hot oil on the stove.

Then there was the portion of ragu “bolognese ” I took out this morning. But I didn’t feel like pasta, so with a teaspoon of cinnamon, two brinjals, and a righteous cheese sauce, it has just been transformed into a beef moussaka. The wonders of cinnamon, I tell you. You’d hardly even notice the lack of lambekins. It’ll be lovely after a day in the fridge, and I even hope for the cold to return so we can get to that bottle of Shiraz.

But tonight, we braai. A beloved country, indeed.

Love chocolate? Terrified of calories? Fear not: now Harvard scientists have come up with a chocolate whiffer that allows you to inhale the taste of chocolate to your heart’s delight, and never worry about the evil stuff passing your lips and ending on your hips.

It’s true:

Says inventor David Edwards: “Over the centuries we’ve been eating smaller and smaller quantities at shorter and shorter intervals.

“It seemed to us that eating was tending toward breathing, so, with a mix of culinary art and aerosol science, we’ve helped move eating habits to their logical conclusion.

“We call it whiffing.”

This is all very Heston Blumenthal-ish, and all very depressing. Almost as depressing as my inability to find a SINGLE candy-coated easter egg in the shops today and yesterday. Two weeks ago they were all over the place, and now there are none.

I just wanted one. I don’t want to whif it either. I want to lick the top until the candy-coating gets thin enough to bite a hole in the top, and then crunch my way through the rest of its sweet, processed delight. Is that too much to ask?

This bun likes to play games.

This is a really cross hot bun.

These buns just don’t get it.

And these buns show you what happens when you forget to slash crosses to let the demons out!