So, when your super-mom and her hiking team invite you to join a 6 day hike along some of the most beautiful terrain in our country, what do you say? Well, I said yes. Having just returned with broken knee caps and faulty ankles you can only imagine what sort of hike this was. I would consider myself an average hiker, I mean I haven’t climbed Kilimanjaro or anything (which is apparently easier than what I signed up for myself) BUT, I can hike.

The Amathole mountain range in the Eastern Cape is not to be fucked with! People, this mountain range means business. 100km in 6 days. Thats what lay ahead of us as we took the 12hour drive from Cape Town to Hogsback (which by the way is a very pretty little Tolkienesque town and completely put me at ease with the fact that I would be sleeping in a hut, showering in cold water and pooping in a hole in the ground for the next 6 days). I am not going to go into the details of each day but, I am going to say that I am still happy to be alive.

The place is beautiful, its that simple. Almost nothing can beat sitting in the middle of nowhere surrounded by mountains and watching a thunder storm approach and then crash about around you. Or traversing down some slippery slopes and finding yourself at the bottom of a massive waterfall. We forged a brand new path through what I affectionately began calling ‘Orc Forrest’ and if there was ever a thorn bush that lived, it lived in this part of the world. ‘Mordor’, ‘Spikeland’ and its sequel ‘Spikeland 2: The Valley of the Death Spike’ are only a few of the other places we adventured through in order to get home in one piece.

At the end of the day the hike was a challenge of mind over body and although my body gave up on day one I managed to make it through 5 of the 6 days (we cut our quest a day short in order to ensure the safety of our clan).

the Ent forrest

rainbow

stormy sunset

me and mom

mordor

water

mnyameni hut

the mist

end in sight

I hope that everyone has had a great year. Lets hope 2012 will be even awesomer!

Here are some highlights from 2011 – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

solo dog

new york snow

namibian nothingness

paris... again and again

oslo

being home with the D man

christmas bicycle

beach holiday

And so to remember those long days where one day flowed so freely into the next, I give you some photos from my childhood.

mom and me

me and a curious buck

dad and me

mom me and little sis

dad and me

I have a thing for photos. The tangible ones. I like sifting through them and checking the details that were picked up by my dad when he photographed my mom. I notice the out of place things. I notice the things that are so much the same in people, yet so different. A gesture, a look or a way of styling a belt. I love that I can see myself in my mom. The memories we create are based so much around these photographs. Things we thought we had forgotten come back, and memories that will never leave us are cemented onto card and there for you to share. That frozen moment in time. Memories though, are also created from photographs. Like that photo of me and that curious buck. I can’t say that I can actually remember the moment that buck strolled into our bungalow, but I feel like I do because I have looked at that photo so many times, studied it and made up a memory around it. Nothing beats looking at old photographs… Only perhaps looking at old photographs with a great, big glass of wine and some good music playing in the back!

Here is what I have been enjoying on some pretty summer weekends in the mean time:

shadow playing

solo dog

night time working

tannage

sunsets

I think I’ll tell you a little more about our Slow Food experience, Kobus van der Merwe and Oep ve Koep. I have been foraging around the internet to find out a little more about slow food and veld food, and Kobus’s name always pops up. Once on the Slow Food Mother City’s site though I found a really interesting little tidbit – they were organising a trip out to Oep ve Koep for a 5 course meal, along with an hour long dune walk with a botanist. The reason behind the dune walk was to explain where Kobus found some of his veld food ingredients; how the changing landscape along the West coast sustains so many varieties of fynbos etc; to just help us identify what would be edible and what could be poisonous out there in the wild, and to show off the awesomeness that is the West coast in winter.

oep ve eet

secateurs chenin blanc

Once back at the restaurant, we picked out a little table under a flowering tree (which constantly dropped little presents on our hair, in our wine and on our plates). We picked out a bottle of white wine, and an amuse bouche of pickled waterblommetjies, fresh homemade ricotta made with unpasteurized milk, and wild flowers was served up.

amuse bouche

wild sage tea

What followed was a calamari bobotie, served with a banana encrusted with dehydrated coconut dust, mange tout, sea lettuce and a soil of dried banana and ground peanuts. In essence bootie isn’t that difficult to make, and it is a standard Afrikaans home dish but, Kobus managed to jazz it up with all the added extras of texture and flavour. As a palate cleanser we were served a wild sage, pickled onion and chilli tea/soup. Drunk like miso soup out of a small bowl this interesting pungent concoction was a burst of flavour that cleansed more than just the palate – no one was going to get a cold for the next week! Onto mains… and definitely my favourite dish of the day: Sandveld potato dumplings, veldkool, kappertjies (nastersians) and pine kernels braised in a burnt sage and soy butter glaze – all served with a twig bread stick.

sandveld potato dumplings

Kobus in the tiny kitchen

And you think it stopped there? The final sweet course was a heavenly honey maize cake. Served with sweet corn and smoked meringue swimming in a shallow milk and honey bath. So basically we rolled home. Full as eggs… and running out of petrol. Thankfully we got home. And that was that weekend.

This past weekend was filled with Toffie. As I mentioned in the we-are-awesome.com post, one of the components of the festival was the secret home dinners. When we found out that Will from {field office} was hosting us, there was a sense of anticipation for what was to be expected that evening. Here is what was on the menu:

secret dinner menu

And for those of you unable to read ‘blur’ here it is in plain old type:

Artichoke, papaya and chorizo salad served with a parsley lemon dressing.
Baked asparagus wrapped in parma ham

Lobster tail with Mojo sauce, chilli apricot silverfish and new potatoes.
Baby spinach and rocket salad with macadamia nuts and walnuts.

Poached pears with a saffron syrup, served with vanilla ice cream.
Cheese board.

how pretty?

I cannot say that my love for food started way back before I can remember because it didn’t. As a child I refused to eat almost anything green. Veggies were a no-no as was fish. We snacked on health bars and dried fruit thanks to a super health-concsious mom. We ate the quick-oven pizzas, and fish fingers and other fast food home meals like everyone else, but only once a week or so as my mom seemed to love cooking. There was always a salad with every meal followed by a fruit platter.
Here is a brief summery: I only ate my first piece of proper fish (since fish fingers smothered in tomato sauce, I found out, didn’t actually count as fish) at age 20! I would only eat salmon sushi and would not touch a prawn.
On the veggie front, avo and cucumber were no-go zones until around 18. Broccoli was forced down my throat at my Ouma’s Sunday lunches – and that only went down when swimming a puddle of white sauce.

So I guess you could say that my palette was a late developer. Having only started eating across the food board at an average age of 19 I felt that I had missed out. So now I have pretty much tried almost anything that I can lay my hands on. From Goose intestines in China, to plain old avo in my salad – I feel I have come a long way.

Another thing that I have come to really love is cooking. I just kinda dived into food and went full steam ahead and realised that I am pretty good at it! (HA!) At least D thinks so. Cooking is that thing that I realise I miss a lot when I travel, but only once I get home and into a fully functional kitchen again. It’s no fun cooking for one. So, when I’m home my sister (miss J) and I, who happen to work so well together in the kitchen, start making feasts. And what better time to cook up big yummy experimental meals than winter?

poached eggs with chargrilled avo

Here is a little something-something I made the other day for brunch. What is that you say? Well, its a poached egg sitting on a bed of onion marmalade (homemade – fancy!), which in turn is sitting on a piece of rye toast. Topped with my first attempt at a hollandaise and accompanied by chargrilled avo and tomaraisins. Yummm.

Here is something exciting: Last Sunday I went on an outing with my mom and sister to Paternoster. What, why and how will be explained further in a guest post I am writing for my friends at we-are-awesome.com. See this weekend there will be a follow-up to my last weekend’s excursion. So be sure to check it out over there once its up. And since they are an actual ‘real’ blog I’m going to have to sort my shit out and get writing!

whatever is over there is way more interesting than getting my picture taken

I have also finally met my godson (and my semi-nephew, our Facebook relationship status would say: ‘it’s complicated’). He is SO small! And in the pic he is looking all ‘geez whatever is over there is so interesting’. He also likes to pull the ‘worried’ face a lot. Not having any kids of my own or having any brothers/sisters/cousins/friends with smallies yet I find brand new babies a little scary. I seldom have contact with them, and honestly I think I might just break them, which would suck. So when mommy-Maz gave him to me to feed on the first night I met him, I tried to do it while he was sitting up right in my arms. She and my mom just laughed at me. How was I supposed to know babies can’t swallow all by themselves from day one? Blind minute puppies can… so that got me thinking: Us as humans, we are so much further down the chain of evolution than we think we are. Yes, I can use my dexterous fingers to type out this wonderful (and hopefully entertaining) post on a small touch screen device which another human being thought of, and then another human being actually made. But if you really think about it – it takes us a year to start walking! A YEAR… thats all I’m saying.

Examples of multi-beings:

Hanneli Mustaparta

blogger, photographer, model, vogue.com contributor, stylist... and hot!

Lorraine Pascale

model turned bake-queen turned tv-chef turned sainsbury's new spokesperson - win win combo

DJ Venus X

dj, film producer, party organiser and only 25.

The most Uber Multi-Being, Hedi Slimane

designer, photographer, art director, label developer, general cool creator - the list is endless.

For more examples of multi-beings pick up your newest Dazed and Confused and Interview, or have a gander at the Satellite Voices site. As a matter of fact just look to your left… and possibly to your right, and ask your colleagues what they do in their spare time, at the weekend or when they are free-lancing elsewhere. Perhaps you want to get more proactive and quit your day job, walk into an agency and sign up by ticking the stylist, photographer, model, art director, copywriter and videographer boxes. Anything is possible to a multi-being. Perhaps you can even start your own agency and sign yourself up.

The multi-being is the here and now. It is the neo-human.

In other words, the multi-being is the new black.

Having been home for just over a week now I have been seeing friends and family, including getting introduced to a new human being (my ‘sister-in-law’ had a baba boy while I was away and he is just so small and sweet and sleepy); catching up on sorely missed cooking time; cuddling the cutest dogger out there who has grown into a tall skinny thing; helping out with work stuff for D; spending way to much time sitting in a sliver of sunlight on my computer reading through blogs and saving too many pictures for my trusty laptop to contain and thinking about the possibility of a new venture. Exciting times. Too little time and too much procrastination!
It is thanks to UNISA that I am not able to actually complete my degree this semester, and therefore have some purposeful thing to do in the spare time I have found so graciously awaiting me upon my return. Due to a technical glitch my request for a semester transfer of 2 courses was not processed and so here I sit. With nothing to do you find so many things to do all at once and the problem becomes one of refining. Where to focus energy and when to just sit back and have a good old resting period.

One thing is for sure I want to spend more time here:

And yes, for some reason Mr D is pulling a Mourinho ‘duck-face‘. Clearly my hair was smelling particularly good that day, uh… or maybe not.

But now onto London. Apart from the fact that London is falling to pieces thanks to the hooligans in numerous neighbourhoods, I managed to avoid the hoodlums and had a pretty good and quite fantastic weekend – mostly in the East of London too. As Friday was my birthday I spent a very happy day in Battersea park soaking up some friendship love and rare London sun. Since my trip was so very spontaneous, I contacted everyone on Facebook with a message and a link, sending everyone to a most fantastic place called The Albion in Redchurch Street just outside Liverpool Street station where I planned on having dinner. Once there and standing in line to get to the rooftop bar area I found out that in fact my link had sent everyone to another pretty cool bar in Islington, also called the Albion. According to a friend on FB I had a case of ‘linkage failure’! Oops.
Never the less, everyone ended up at the same place and we had an amazing evening amid the rooftops of Shoreditch and then a super-super dinner at a much-more-fancy-than-expected Boundary in the cellars of the same building. So what was on the menu? For most of us it was venison haunch -wow! – and lobster and langoustines. As birthday girl I decided to take full advantage and had an escargot entree, and the lovely haunch as a main and the BEST champagne and berry soup for dessert! Hmmmm… it was yummy! In fact it was so yummy that I forgot to take any pictures of anything that night. Darn! Thank you to all friends who came to celebrate at such short notice.

Saturday was festival time. My loveliest friend Julia bought me a ticket for Field Day, and so off we went through rain and shine to watch Darkstar, Twin Shadow, Warpaint, Wild Beasts and The Horrors. A pretty awesome time was had amongst some of the strangest dressed people I have ever come across. (Yes, I am talking to you bearded man in fur gillet and brown minidress!) And then suddenly London time was over.

Now it is time to head back home. Europe its been wonderful, but what the hell did you do with summer? And do not fret, our time has not ended forever. I shall return to you in September!