Everything about The Athletic Club & Social is beautiful. I think we had forgotten beautiful exists. But since it is just a few days before my husband boards a one-way expat flight to Sweden to work, with no idea how or when he will be able to come home, it felt like a good idea to venture out of a house we have barely left since lockdown and spend a few quiet hours together – not being worried; not being parents of teenagers; not being in a pandemic. And so it was that we stepped off blustery Buitengraght Street, feeling weird about wearing masks, into a seriously lovely space.
This triple-story building from the early 1900s was once an underground speakeasy-style bar for athletes. The owner, Durbanite Athos Euripidou, went to some effort to find pictures of sporting teams of people of colour, and these photographs of long-dead men dressed smartly in their sports gear adorn the walls, watching the comings and goings of this strange, new world. If they could live their lives again, what would they do differently? What words of counsel would they whisper from the grave? Being alive in the 1920s, they too would have lived through a pandemic. What lessons did they learn that they would share with us, I wonder.
The decor and ambience of this establishment are straight from another era: vintage wallpaper, leather sofas and dim, golden lighting make for a captivating atmosphere. Lush, velvet drapes and cleverly arranged furniture create intimate corners and places to tuck yourselves away if you so desire, and we did. In the middle of this busy restaurant, it is possible to be invisible. It is also possible to live with someone day in and day out for a long time, chatting constantly, without ever having a real conversation. And you only realise this when you start talking. Properly talking. At some point it started raining and the world outside became blurry. Our dams are nearly full and still the rains come. Remember when there was a drought. Remember when we thought there would never be enough water.
We talked about many things. Our thoughts, our current lives, a photograph my husband took of my dad speaking to my brother-in-law one summer in Denmark at the christening of our eldest daughter. Both men are laughing, sharing a joke. Making it look like my dad was easy to talk to; to laugh with. Maybe he was, just not to me. We struggled to understand one another, to find common ground. Yet, here he was, in a foreign country, totally at ease with someone he barely knew. Someone who shared his practical take on life and on the world. What was a man of his generation to do with a daughter like me?
Men walked in carrying musical instruments. Our waitress carried in plates of food. She had underquoted us on the special they are running, three courses including a glass of (nice) wine for R250 and she had mistakely told us R200. Even at R250, it is a ridiculously good deal. It was her first night and she was nervous. The manager came over and expressed his deepest apologies. He offered us more free wine. Then she came to apologise. I didn’t know I would be writing this so I didn’t ask for her name, but she was warm and sweet and professional and I wanted to hug her and take her home and give her everything she had ever wanted. Or, just a chance at something better.
I don’t know anything about her, but I know she didn’t drive to work in a Mini Cooper her folks had bought her or live in a flat in Vredehoek. And yet here she was, with beautiful hair and a beautiful smile and an utterly beautiful energy. Trying her best to be her best. Going above and beyond. Saying sorry to us, who could afford to pay three times that. I wonder what she ate for supper. I wonder what her siblings ate.
Early this morning a friend sent me a pic he he had just taken of a queue of people, apparently around 900, standing in the rain outside The Bungalow in Clifton. The restaurant had advertised that they were looking for staff. These people queueing would have gotten up at around 4am to shower and dress and make it to Clifton by 7am to be in the front of the queue. Only, everyone else had the same idea. The line grew too long so they had to form a second one. This is how many people are desperate for work. My friend said, ‘it makes me want to walk into the stormy seas.’
A jazz band started up. From our cosy corner we could see the saxophonist, playing for love. The lights on Signal Hill twinkled through the rainy window-pane. The food was perfect, and we are not the easiest to please. Charred cauliflower with tahini; smokey aubergine; lamb shoulder so tender it fell apart with a fork. Baklava cigars, cardamom cake. Live music. Wine. R250 for it all, y’all. In that moment even the ghosts that roam the passages of that old house would have had to agree that life was good. The sax player thanked us for coming, joking that he knew it wasn’t to hear him play. A corny love song came on 828 AM as we drove home through wet streets and we sang along feeling only a little bit self-conscious. Next time we go back the weather will be warmer and we’ll sit on the verandah. We’ll look out over the city and the buildings and the sky. We’ll have overcome another obstacle. Maybe even be stronger for it.
Grand Constance. Napoleon loved this stuff a lot and we totally understand why.
A few months back we went next door to our neighbour, Stu, for dinner. Stu is a dashing, 70-year-old confirmed bachelor with a mop of red hair and a racy red Porsche. His best friend is another handsome bachelor called Mauro, and when Mauro has volunteered to cook and we are lucky enough to crack the nod we are happy folk indeed. Because Mauro is an Italian man like they made them in the old days. He hunts kudu on his farm in Robertson, felling the animal with one expert shot and hanging it for ten days in its own skin. This, he explains in his accented English, makes all the difference to the meat. The kudu fillet he serves off the coals, rare, with a side of hand-rolled gnocchi and a smokey Shiraz melts in your mouth, and has none of that metallic, gamey taste you find in store-bought venison. But wait, there’s more.
Single parent Simon van der Stel looking pretty over it.
Mauro had also made kudu biltong which he traded for crayfish with a guy at the gym and then he’d gone to Atlas trading in Bo Kaap and asked the owner to mix him up the perfect blend of spices for a crayfish curry. If anyone knows how to make the perfect blend of spices for a crayfish curry it’s the owner of Atlas trading. While we threw back delicous wine and partook of this feast, one of the dinner guests entertained us with an extraordinary tale of how, being the wrong colour for the time, he had fled South Africa in the sixties at the age of 15 and sailed alone on a ship to Paris. With barely a penny to his name, some kindly working women took him in and for a time he lived in a brothel, though, in his youthful innocence, he had no idea that the nice ladies who fed and housed him were prostitutes. He assumed all French women wore bright red lipstick and walked around in their underwear.
We thank the Dutch tremendously for bringing WINE to the Cape.
Around 11pm, tummies full and spirits high, we went back home to our children and climbed into our cosy beds and fell asleep with the November south-easterly wind roaring about the city. The wind made such a ruccus that night that we didn’t hear the man in the grey hoodie break open our sliding door with a crowbar and for the next half hour move around inside our home stealing whatever he could find. We slept through it all. We were unharmed. But the what if scenarios as we sat on the couch early next morning looking at each other in disbelief wouldn’t stop running through our minds. We know very well what could have happened. Our children were sleeping metres away from where he prowled around.
Given the choice, I would take this over perpetual rain and a cross wife in the Netherlands any day.
And this is everyone’s greatest fear. Exactly this. Because in that moment you are utterly defenceless. Worse, you can’t protect your family. You are at the mercy of someone who would likely kill you for a cigarette. I looked out the window and accepted, for the first time, that our security situation was pretty lacking. We didn’t like the idea of electric fencing and the large, custom-made Trellidor we needed was going to be expensive. But I made a few calls, and in true South African style, within 24 hours we were electrified and Trellidoored to within an inch of our lives. Welcome to South Africa.
It’s very delightful that the folk of Groot Constantia went to such extraordinary lengths to replicate Grand Constance exactly as it was drunk in Napoleon’s day. It’s actually rude not to try it.
The next day I was due to attend the launch of Grand Constance, the wine Groot Constantia made for Napoleon when he was living on St Helena. We both felt a bit weird and shell-shocked after what had happened, but we gathered ourselves and went anyway. Groot Constantia wine estate is breathtakingly beautiful, its undulating vineyards and gentle vistas making you feel like you’ve arrived in another century. In a way, you have. There is something comfortingly timeless about these old manor houses scattered about the Western Cape. The grand rooms resonate with the history of this country. If you listen hard you can almost hear ghostly voices echoing through their corridors, and you feel the traces of a bygone era held fast in the thick, cold walls.
Champagne and oysters, tsotsis and guns. SA is a package deal.
We ate oysters and drank champagne under ancient oak trees before being take on a tour of the homestead. I learned that Emperors and Kings such as Frederick the Great of Prussia and King Louis Phillipe of France bought ‘Constantia Wyn’ at auctions across Europe, so marvelous was the stuff we produced. And continue to. Visit any wine shop in Scandinavia, for example, and South African wines dominate the shelves. This country’s oldest wine farm is so renowned that it appears in Jane Austin’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’ as a cure for a broken heart and is drunk to lift the character’s spirit in Charles Dickens’ novel, ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood.’
Napoleon setting off on his cat to find more Grand Constance.
In truth, we were rather broken hearted that day. As I sipped on the amber, honeycomb-flavoured deliciousness of the 2007 Grand Constance (if it’s good enough for Napoleon…), I pondered the situation of being in love with a country that doesn’t love me back. It’s not that unrequited love is a foreign notion for me. I’ve known it since Sub A when my heart was crushed by a 6-year-old boy called Matthew who spurned my timid advances. It’s just that, well, one can’t help feeling rather down in the dumps nonetheless.
Still, after a fair amount of ‘tasting’ (I noticed I was the only one quaffing it down, oh dear), my spirits did lift and I felt rather grateful to old Simon Van Der Stel for leaving Holland in 1679 with his knowledge of viticulture and starting this whole business. It can’t have been easy, with 3000 children in tow and no wife because she’d basically kicked him out and sent him to the farthest place on earth from Holland at that time, that being the Cape. But clearly he pulled himself towards himself, and I’m sure having all that wine and brandy at his disposal would have helped enormously when someone took off in the night with some of his favourite things. I think we would have understood one another, Simon and I. Not many people know that Governor Simon van der Stel’s mother was the daughter of a freed slave which means that, according to the apartheid government, he would have been called a ‘Coloured’ and relocated to Grassy Park. And lord knows what that would have meant for our current wine situation.
The gorgeous Anna de Koningh trying to decide if the apple is worth the calories.
I also learnt that in 1714 Groot Constantia was owned by a woman of colour, the daughter of a freed slave, Anna de Koningh. Anna was an extremely wealthy woman and fantastically beautiful, to boot. History narrates that she swanned about that homestead in a marvelous array of jewellery and kept no less than 27 slaves, clearly feeling feathers for social reform. Why should a girl iron her own pantaloons? A German traveller by the name of Peter Kolbe wrote a book where he recalls the time Anna saved the life of her friend, Maria de Haese, who tried to drown herself by jumping in the fountain behind the house. The reason for her death wish was the bitter lament that her life had become ‘one of terror on account of the many scandalous acts she daily had to hear and witness.’ Which does rather remind us that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Keeping our spirits up while understanding the lady who jumped in the fountain.
There can’t be a South African alive who hasn’t, at some point, wanted to drown themselves by jumping in a fountain. I get the impression that the early inhabitants of that magnificent estate would have agreed that life round these parts can be very wonderful and very terrible. I suppose it’s difficult to have one without the other. Maybe it’s a sort of a package deal: champagne and oysters, tsotsis and guns. We moved back because we love it: the beauty, the lifestyle, the friendliness, the contrasts. The good food, the good wine, the way the light hits Signal Hill at certain times of the afternoon. The noon gun, the call to prayer, Sea Point Main Road in all its grubby glory. And, of course, sitting under the ancient oaks at Jonkershuis contemplating all of life and the choices one makes and then lives with. There’s no such thing as a perfect deal. You find the place your soul has peace and you live with it, good and bad. For all the fountain-drowning moments I’ve never seriously contemplated leaving. Many do, and I get it. But for me… I dunno. It’s just where my heart resides.
Please understand that I use the word ‘boknaaier’ to describe Naturally Skinny Women (NSW from here on) with the greatest affection. My very best friend in the world is an NSW. If she wants to lose weight she’ll cut her daily beer consumption down very slightly and be emaciated by the end of the week. If so much as the froth of somebody’s draught is blown my way by the south-easterly wind and it happens to land somewhere near my person it is guaranteed that I will gain 4kgs instantaneously and have to change my pants. This is simply the way of my genes, and it is vexing in the extreme.
It is unfortunately also the way of my genes that I am perpetually starving. If (god forbid) 10am rolls around and by some extremely unusual series of circumstances I have not eaten breakfast, small children standing close to me are in grave danger. Also, I think exercising is very, very poofy. I do it because if I didn’t I would be extremely fat, but I don’t like it one iota and I skive off every opportunity I get. And yet, knowing all of this about myself, I remain in the deepest denial around what I know I can get away with eating (one tomato hold the basil), and even though I really, really do know better, I still to this day manage to convince myself that ludicrous eating plans which insist they have discovered the dieting truth and light continue to lure me with their lies and false promises.
Just last month I was eating eggs with my butter and telling my long-suffering husband how finally I had found the answer. All you need is fat. Even though I have followed this eating plan five times (five, people) without success, hope springs eternal in my damaged little heart. For 6 weeks I fried the chicken in lard, snacked on streaky bacon, and ate cake-sized wedges of cheese and then, heart in throat, tentatively got on my scale. To discover I had gained weight. No problem, Butter Bob on YouTube insisted; you’re retaining water. Wait for the ‘keto whoosh’ (a state where, Keto converts insist, your body ‘lets go’ of the water it’s been retaining and you wee a million times and be thin). I’m still waiting for the whoosh. Aint no whoosh comin’ this girl’s way.
To cut a long and sad story short, cutting carbs didn’t work for me. Nor did filling up on fat ‘so that would become my fuel’. Nor did rawism, veganism, juicism (invented word) or starving. Well, starving might have worked if I could have kept it up for longer than half an hour. And all those theories about not producing insulin and starving your body of carbs so you burn your own fat and and… I don’t deny that they work for some lucky souls, but for me? Not in the slightest. And people say, but did you do it right? Did you follow the rules? YES. For once in my life I really, really did follow the rules. Because I desperately wanted to have found the answer; to eat delicious food and STILL LOSE WEIGHT. Unfortunately, my body doesn’t like all that fat. Or, it likes it so much it stores it for the next fast. Which, now that we have uber eats, unfortunately never comes.
So, I’m back to square one – dry Ryvitas and Marmite and enough chicken breasts to make me start squawking. And finally, slowly, I’m losing a bit of the fat I gained from my bacon bonanza. Is it delicious? Not in the slightest. Would I rather be eating racks of ribs with my hands? Certainly. But best I suck it up because this is the way it is. And I’m vain and want to wear what I want to wear. And it’s a choice I make, and maybe it’s un-PC and if I were a better feminist I wouldn’t care. But I know when I feel my best, and unfortunately it’s not at my heaviest weight. So, onwards and upwards and we’ll get there in the end. Or not. But NSWs are boknaaiers, and that’s my final word on the matter.
So I read this really troubling thing yesterday. I was googling why am I fat – as one does – and I read that, past the age of 45 (which I am by 3, okay, 15 months) if you continue to eat what you did when you were in your twenties and thirties you will more than likely gain around 8kgs per year until you die. Which means that 10 years from now I will not be able to write this blog anymore because I’ll be taking up an entire king size bed and have a ventilator and a TV table holding a portable deep fryer where I’ll spend my days whipping up batches of bengali fritters while the producer from My 600 Pound Life asks me questions about my childhood and how this all happened and there won’t be space in all that gedoente for a laptop.
And the answer will not even be a mystery. I’ll tell that producer the truth. I’ll tell him about how, if you don’t start eating like an anorexic ant, this is what happens to you and so he’d better be careful. Also, wine. According to that sad article wine is just about the worst thing you can imbibe past 5pm, though food of any sort rates pretty high too. And my question to the writer of that article is the following: What is the point of life if you can’t imbibe food and wine past 5pm? What? And when are you supposed to drink said wine, in that case? Because I don’t know if breakfast would really be the best time in terms of productivity and getting your kids to school. The truth is that my whole day pretty much consists of waiting patiently (and sometimes not patiently) until I get to the point where somebody who loves me whips out a cold bottle of chardonnay and says there, there while they make my glass be very full and then they cook me an XL portion of pasta with bacon.
And this is due to the fact that all day long I’ve been driving around and doing stuff and watching kids play netball. What for the rudeness that now I must have water and cress? No. Not at all. So I suppose I must resign myself to this sad fate and be happy for small miracles, like the fact that my track suit pants and some of my jeans still fit me even though I refuse to accept that a bowl of cherry tomatoes will ever constitute a meal. For a while, in my twenties, I was au pair to the kids of somebody quite famous. She was very, very thin and not at all opposed to a dinner of cress. Cress was her middle name. Sometimes her landline would ring (that’s how long ago this was) and I would hear her saying, ‘I’ve just got in, can I phone you back once I’ve had some lunch?’
And I would pretend to play with the child but actually I’d be watching, closely, to see what lunch was going to be. Because, god knows, her fridge was a veritable feast of pork pies and patés and expensive things with prawns and I’m perpetually hungry and always envious of anybody who is eating. And I can tell you for free that if that was my fridge, lunchtime would be festive. And she’d stand and stare at these delicious items for a while as if trying to remember what real food tasted like and then make herself a plate of undressed lettuce leaves which she’d wash down with black coffee. And while I pitied her in her madness I was also a little bit jealous of the fact that sometimes she’d put on her 4-year-old’s jeans by mistake and look rather fabulous if I say so myself.
And these are the options you face if you’re a girl. Either – like me – you eat the XL pasta and anticipate life in a fat bed or you chop an Israeli cucumber into tiny little pieces and eat it with a toothpick. And it’s not even really a choice. Sometimes I hear people say, golly, it’s nearly dinner time and I haven’t eaten today. I forgot. And I’d like to say, come here, no closer, no closer, and just slap them quite hard. The day I forget to eat you can guarantee I’ve been abducted by aliens who are using my face. This is not really me, help! Anyhow. I suppose what I’m doing right now is called ranting because again, it’s a few weeks before I’m due to go on holiday someplace warm where a bathing costume is a distinct possibility and again – even though I swore I wouldn’t let this happen – I’m lardy-girl-pass-the-grey-poupon** and wondering if drinking get thin milkshakes for 7 days will make me lose 5kgs or I should just give up and resign myself to that nice king size bed. I’ll let you know which way this all goes.
*Please don’t everyone write to me and say, but you’re so skinny. I’m not, and I’m also not fat. Like most of us, I’m somewhere in the middle and wrote this on a day when I felt – like most of us do some days – porky. That’s all.
** Wayne’s World reference – the old people will understand.
Me and my friend, Lucy, who owns Hot and Spicy Szechuan Food in Milnerton This is easily the best Szechuan restaurant in Cape Town but you’ve probably never heard of it because it’s not on Bree Street.
Some weeks ago, over lunch at a new Cape Town restaurant everyone is queuing to get into but is actually crap de luxe and the kitchen staff secretly laugh at you for paying R135 for dry chicken in Nola mayonnaise I had a conversation with a friend’s 65-year-old mom who comes from a country the name of which I won’t mention except to say its climate is dodgy, lots of (sorry) South Africans live there and it has more sheep than people. And the conversation was irksome and went like this: *Someone makes a reference to Chinese people living in to Cape Town*
Her: You won’t believe how many Chinese have moved into our neighbourhood. In fact, parts of it don’t even look like Wellington! (oops, I said the place) anymore.
Me: (1,5 glasses of Chenin in and already forgetting my manners. Though lately, being nanoseconds away from The Menopause, it doesn’t take much to make me stroppy): How lucky for you! Must be a great improvement on the local cuisine.
Her: Well… I know what you’re getting at, Xenophobia and everything, but really… it’s just overrun! They’re everywhere!
Me *moving my leg so my husband can’t kick it anymore*: I don’t know why everyone is so nervous of the Chinese. What’s wrong with Chinese people? I mean, look at Chinatown in Milnerton. Chinatown in Milnerton has saved my bacon many times when I needed cheap things in a hurry and pretend soccer shoes for my 9-year-old and also did you know you can buy toilet paper for a fraction, a fraction of what Kak n Pay charges for the same thing. So I think we need to all stop being so weird about people who don’t look exactly like we do. Also, they make dumplings(this was the clincher, in my opinion).
Her: * Awkward pause* Well, I think you’re missing the point of what I’m trying to say, I’m not saying I don’t like Chinese people, I’m just saying, Wellington blah blah blah…
Dumplings. Is there even anything to discuss?
And yes, I’m probably missing the point, but it aggravates me when people say things like that and assume you’ll agree because personally and speaking for myself, I have less than no problem with Chinese people living in ‘my’ city (or even better, ‘my’ neighbourhood, then I don’t have to travel so far for dumplings) and to anyone who does I have two words to say to you: Peking Duck. Anyone who has ever tried to make Peking Duck will immediately have the deepest, most abiding respect for the people of China. Recently I decided to celebrate my new stove and its fancy rotisserie function by attempting to make Peking Duck.
I purchased a frozen duck (since I don’t live in China) from a trendy, overpriced butchery and also enough Chinese 5 Spice to season all of Yingdong and Fangshan and Poongking combined and followed the recipe to a tee. Significant was my excitement around my own cleverness because who on this planet doesn’t adore Peking Duck? (yes, yes, the vegans, but never mind them for now). Well. The fact that that duck had to leave its pond of murky happiness to end up a leathery grey thing on my sad dinner table fills me with shame and regret.
I will say emphatically that Peking duck is not a dish for non-Chinese people to attempt. Neither, for that matter, is Szechuan Spicy Boiled Fish. Which I haven’t tried to make but after the last thing won’t even bother. So, if for no other reason than the plethora of places in this (and every) city you can visit and order delicious dishes for a lot less than R135, let’s try not to say crappy things about the ‘foreigners’ who arrive on our shores. Because unless you actually did that swab test at Home Affairs and are 100% Khoi San you are also a foreigner, FYI.
Szechuan Spicy Boiled Fish. Yes, those are chillies and yes, you will cry like a little girl and then come back the next night for more.
I’ll be the first to admit that the Chinese have a reputation for being insular and are often not the friendliest folk you’ll encounter when you’re out shopping (although there are huge, massive exceptions to this generalisation, like my friend Lucy in the above pic who is basically sunshine on speed). But, in instances where we feel inclined to put people in boxes, it’s very good to stop for a minute and consider the reason why some people may behave in a certain way. Generally speaking, I’d say that living in a dictatorship on the brink of abject poverty (this is turning, but it will take a while) in a country where full-term girl babies were routinely aborted and where you work your fingers to the bone seven days a week for a wage below the breadline and never see your children is enough to make anyone a little taciturn.
Add to that the fact that basically everyone in the world hates you (last time I checked there wasn’t a notable lack of space in New Zealand) and you’re going to turn inwards and stick with your own kind. A few centuries ago, when everyone and their brother was arriving on South African shores in the hope of finding diamonds and living a better life (don’t we all hope for diamonds and a better life?), a large contingency of Chinese people arrived as slaves of the Dutch East India Company. And you can imagine that being a slave in the household of one Gerhardus Poephol van Schipol wouldn’t exactly have been a barrel of laughs.
Gerhardus Poephol van Schipol not looking thrilled about how the poffertjies turned out.
Then, to add insult to injury, between 1904 and 1910 over 64 000 Chinese were ‘imported’ to colonial South Africa (love the euphemism) as indentured labourers to work on the gold mines. So they basically helped build our country. And while most of these Chinese were returned to China (thanks for that, and good luck not dying on the ship), the Chinese population that exists in South Africa today are, for the most part, the great-great-great-grandchildren of independent migrants who trickled in in small numbers from Guangdong province as early as the 1870s. I would say that if your people have been living here for 150 years you pretty much qualify as a local.
And for these people, life on the whole has not been a thing of joy. Discrimination and racist legislation prevented them from obtaining individual mining licenses (pretty ironic, that). The ugly laws that governed South Africa at that time denied citizenship, prohibited land ownership and restricted trade for the Chinese. Classed as non-white and barred from entering the formal sector, most Chinese had to go under the radar to support their families, playing Mah Jong for money in the townships, getting arrested by the apartheid police and eking out an existence by running small businesses. Nobody wanted Chinese tenants or neighbours. To be eligible for a rental property you had to get written permission from every person living in the street that they didn’t mind you moving in there. Can you really blame them for being a bit poesbedroef**?
China Mall, Johannesburg
When you drive through dusty little towns like Vanrhynsdorp and Pitsonderwater and see the inevitable Chinese shop in the middle of nowhere selling everything from cheap clothing to fly swatters you’ve got to wonder at the lives of its owners. If this isolated, lonely existence miles from home and anything familiar is better than where you came from… wow. So, I say from our places of white, middle class privilege let’s try and keep the arrogance in check. You’d be hard pressed to find a race who work harder, longer and are tougher and more resilient than these.
Also, rather than going to cool establishments that serve Nola mayonnaise and don’t need your custom, support small businesses in off-the-beaten-track places run by people who work insanely long hours and try really hard to serve consistently good food. Many of them are supporting entire families back home in China. You don’t find a lot of Chinese people hanging out at Clifton and going for drinks at Caprice. They understand the value of money and what it takes to survive. Plus, there’s no reason on god’s green earth to make your own Peking Duck.
*South African for ‘watch out!’
** South African for ‘very sad.’
(If you want to also cry like a girl and go back the next night, Hot and Spicy Szechuan Food can be found about 500m up Bosmansdam Road if you’re coming from Koeberg and is tucked behind an establishment called Sables Bar and Bistro. I don’t think they have a phone and nobody speaks English. Go hungry and point at things).
As it cooks the chorizo lends a fabulous smokiness to the sauce.
As everyone in my family knows, I’m somewhat of a cheat. I believe cheating wherever possible is an intelligent way of getting where you need to be with a minimum of hassle and stress. I cheat at things like boule and Monopoly and now and again I forget to tell MyFitnessPal about the chocolate croissant I inhaled on the school run because anyway food that isn’t eaten on a plate doesn’t count. The thing is, if I didn’t cheat I would regularly lose at things which would negatively impact my self-esteem, and since I’m so kak at games of all descriptions, it’s a survival mechanism I’ve had no choice but to hone over the years.
Like this past July in Copenhagen when we went for Sunday lunch at some friends who were spending the summer in a fancy house by the sea where the rich people of Denmark live. After a wonderful lunch of steak and fried potatoes (our hostess was French where they not only eat carbs but fry them and yet remain as thin as mist), we did what rich Danish and ordinary French people do and went out onto the lawn to play boule. I’m not great at boule, and while I’m not a bad loser as such it just gets embarrassing when you’re competing against a wafer-thin French girl who wears silk lingerie and not beige broeks like me (I know this because I snooped around and found a clothes horse hung with tiny, diaphanous items of underwear, like Barbie had one hell of a night) and you’re coming totally stone last, being beaten even by young children.
Rich people of Denmark.
So, when the players ahead of me were distracted and talking about the various merits of a la-la-Pinot Noir I would subtly use my foot to get the ball into a more favourable position, significantly hoisting myself up in the rankings. The fact that I’d had several glasses of the above-mentioned Pinot Noir which impacted my balance somewhat and made me fall over once or twice alerting everyone to my tricks we don’t really need to go into, but they were polite enough to let me pretend I really came fourth.
Also when we play Monopoly, even when I try really hard to save and make sound financial decisions and not be like I am in real life somehow I end up alternately in jail or on Regent Street at the doorstep of the hotel my husband has yet again unkindly purchased and keeps laughing meanly when I land there round after round. So you can’t really blame me for taking advantage of the times my fellow players are momentarily distracted by the loud gwang of a hadeda landing on the roof and everyone gets up to look out the window to see if it’s a baddie come to kill us and I pilfer the money of the other players and hide it under the board so the theft is not immediately apparent. Because this is the only way I’m not bankrupt and out of the game within 15 minutes. And I know it’s not ideal that the people I’m stealing from are my own children, but on the other hand they need to learn that the world is full of robbers and swindlers and nobody should be trusted, least of all their own kin. But enough about that.
This French dish (which possibly isn’t even really, but it goes with the cheating theme and it does contain French tarragonois) is so ridiculously easy and yet appears quite fancy and sophisticated when you serve it to guests, so naturally it’s a hit with the likes of me. There are one or two things you can’t cheat with, though. It has very few ingredients, so you must buy good things. Pay more for your chicken and don’t even think about buying Chorizo from a poofy shop. It’s going to ruin everything and nobody will think you’re Nigella anymore which defeats the whole object of cooking for anybody ever. This is what you’ll need.
No filter on earth can make raw chicken look appealing. But see how few ingredients 👍🏼
Ingredients:
Several chicken pieces
Chorizo
bacon
2 tins of butter beans
2 tins of tomatoes
dried French tarragonois
chicken stock
an onion
garlic
rosemary
a bay leaf
Method:
Fry your chicken in olive (or any damn) oil and season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with flour if you feel like it. Remove browned chicken pieces from the pot and in the lovely, chickeny fat fry your bacon, then add your onion, garlic and chorizo not whole but sliced, obvs. When you’ve fried that for a while add your tomatoes, a tablespoon of tarragonois, chicken stock, fresh rosemary, 2 tins of butter beans and the chicken. Put the lid on the pot and let it simmer gently for a couple of hours. Serve with rice and/or crusty bread and a nice bottle of white. It’s very tasty and your friends will be impressed with your cooking skills. Also, the amazing thing about this dish is that halfway through cooking it you’ll find that you are thinner and also able to speak fluent French even if you didn’t speak a word of that language before. That surprised me quite a lot, but then life is full of surprises. Bon appetit!
If you ever happen to find yourself in the Scottish village of Drumnadrochit (population 813), I can tell you with authority that there is something better than catching a glimpse of Old Nessie, and that thing is getting yourself a bowl of Cullin Skink or smoked fish soup. For this serving of heaven you will have to make your way to the maddest, most eccentric hotel you will likely ever stay in in your days called – naturally – the Loch Ness Lodge Hotel. Being situated on the loch, and all. If you’re looking for a deeply, madly Scottish experience you won’t be disappointed. This hotel was surely decorated by leprechauns on speed and it’s completely fantastic (I know, leprechauns are Irish, but these ones were contracted in). What you get when you walk in is floor-to-ceiling tartan, 24/7 bagpipes and bedroom décor straight out of Alice in Wonderland. You also get door handles perfectly positioned for one of those leprechauns. In fact, we had to get on our knees to unlock the door. Needless to say, we were sold.
Unlocking the door to our hotel room.
We had no idea what a Cullin Skink was when it was at home in tartan pyjamas, but being pretty adventurous diners (we ate haggis and black pudding every day. Promise. Both are delicious) we wanted to eat the things we can’t get in Cape Town, and Cullin Skink certainly seemed to be that. What we didn’t know was that we would be struck silent by the mind-boggling deliciousness of this relatively unknown dish, talk about it for days and try to replicate it when we got home. What it is (said Google) is a soup consisting of smoked fish (any kind, but the Scottish version favours haddock), potatoes, leeks, dill, cream and butter. Just writing these words makes me drool. Imagine it’s really cold out (it wasn’t, but imagine it was), you’ve been Loch Nessing all day with barely an oat cake for sustenance (we’d been eating Pringles the whole drive down, sadly, but who knew that was on the menu?) you stumble inside and order a wee dram or three. You’re so hungry your bum’s nibbling the (tartan) seat and before you, like an angel, a waiter (who looks just like Spud from Trainspotting) brings you a bowl of this piping hot soup. It’s creamy, it’s smoky and it’s tasty as hell. I mean, a guy could sing an aria for the joy of it.
So much tartan of an afternoon.
So once we had scraped the last small droplet of remaining soup up with our fingers and gathered ourselves enough to speak we decided, then and there, that our mission in life would be to recreate this marvelous dish. Un-dyed Finnan haddock is not as easy to get in Green Point as it is in Drumnadrochit, but luckily the recipe assured us that any smoked white fish would do. So, off to the Waterfront City Market we went and bought this…
Smoked Angelfish from the Waterfront City Market because we like to pretend we’re fancy, but any smoked white fish will do.
…along with a large block of butter, cream and dill. We forgot the leeks, but decided large spring onions would have to do because the loser of paper-rock-scissors reneged on the deal (a-hem). The recipe said to simmer the fish in water with bay leaves till it was ‘cooked.’ A small discussion ensued around whether or not smoked fish qualifies as uncooked since it is, technically, cooked by the smoking. The loser of paper-rock-scissors lost that argument, too. Then, there was a discussion around when it was best to add the cream because some people in this house, even when they have never made a thing, feel that they still know more than the people who wrote the recipe. It went in at the end which I think was the right time. But enough about that.
Here is what you’ll need:
Ingredients:
Smoked white fish
A large yellow onion
Leeks (or overgrown spring onions)
Dill
A large carrot, finely chopped
2 Sticks of celery, finely chopped
5 Medium-sized potatoes, peeled and chopped into bite-sized pieces
Butter
A litre of full cream milk
A swirl of cream
Bay leaves
Fish stock or fish sauce or both
Method:
In a frying pan, cover the fish with the milk and two bay leaves and let it simmer gently for 10 minutes. In a large saucepan, sauté your onion in butter. Add your carrots, celery, potatoes and ‘leeks’ and schmoonk them around till they’re covered in butter. You might want to add more butter. Remove the fish from the milk and put the fish aside. Add the fishy milk to your saucepan together with a handful of dill and a splash of fish stock. Let it simmer until your potatoes are cooked. While they are cooking break the fish up into bite-sized pieces and remove any skin or bones. Let the soup thicken. Add a drizzle of cream and the fish. Let the flavours make friends for a few minutes and then add salt and pepper to taste. Serve very hot with bread and if you’re impressing people, parsley.
Cullin Skink. Ta da!
I feared making this dish at home would be a bit like Swedish herring which tastes amazing at a midsummer party with a maypole and schnapps but kind of wrong when eaten in Cape Town, but this soup was actually almost better than the one we had in Scotland. And super easy and super quick. You use a lot of butter so it’s pretty rich. I put the smallest amount of cream in because boiling the milk had made it separate slightly, but it’s not really necessary. Traditional recipes don’t include the celery and carrot, but I like my soup to have a bit of sweetness and I thought their inclusion improved the flavour. Lastly, I added a Knorr fish stock sachet thing. I couldn’t really taste it so I added a bit of fish sauce. I think it depends on how smoky your fish is. Have a spoonful and decide for yourself.
The hauntingly beautiful Highlands. If you’re able to get there in this lifetime, do. If not, just make the soup.
Possibly the best (effing) sandwich I’ve ever had in my days – toasted ciabatta with crispy bacon, avo, melted brie and caramelized onions. It was from Motherland Coffee in St George’s Mall. I still think about it.
Before I sat down at my computer right now I made myself a sandwich. As in, put things between two slices of thick, fresh bread (real mayo, cheddar cheese, cucumber, tomato, rocket and a bit of chutney, if you want to know), and not flaxseed ‘bread’ or cauliflower ‘bread’ or ‘bread’ made from dried, ground psyllium husks (what the hell is that anyway?), but the kind we used to eat back in the day made from wheat and yeast. Pretty retro, huh? And while I actually sat down to work on something else entirely, the strangeness of sitting down to eat a real-life sandwich struck me enough that I changed my plan and started writing about that instead.
Because the thing is, three months ago this sandwich would have made me quake. I mean, it’s a carb, for the love of god, and everyone knows carbs are very, very bad. Very. And believing this to be true, I would have substituted the best part for, well, anything. More lettuce. Seeds. Those psyllium husks. Anything but eating the bread part of that meal because if I did I believed I’d basically be obese or dead or both within the week. But bacon was fine. Oh, chow down, sister. Bacon’s not a carb. Neither is chicken skin or steak or butter or coconut oil. All of these things? Hunky damn dory. But a slice of melba toast? Well, you might as well go in a dark room and mainline arsenic.
And I don’t know, in this age of information, how we human beings can still be so stupid. Okay, maybe stupid is harsh, but why we fall so enthusiastically, so uncritically for these fads and trends instead of just using our noggins and good, old-fashioned common sense. And I totally include myself in the idiocy because I have done every. One. Of. These. Diets. Looking, as I was, for the holy grail of eating – the key, the trick that would let me stop fighting with food and therefore myself. And I ate the eggs and forewent the toast (so yuck, right?) and turned down the banana in favour of the smoked sausage. I mean, does any part of turning down a banana make sense? Potassium. Fibre. Nature’s own pre-packaged snack food. Perfect. A lot perfect-er than that piece of processed meat.
Because actually sitting down to an entire sheep at one sitting is not okay just because you skipped the mash. Putting butter on your 500 gram T-bone isn’t fine because you had spinach instead of chips. It’s greedy and it’s stupid and it’s killing the planet. Do we even think about what it costs in energy terms to get that cow onto our plates? And putting that amount of fat and protein into our bodies just can’t be healthy. I refuse to believe it is. It’s one of those cases of if it sounds too good to be true, it more than likely is.
I’m not a dietician, but I write about food and think about food and eat food a lot. And, because it’s something that interests me, I read books about nutrition and talk to people who are dieticians and doctors and have made it their life work to help us be healthy and when I ask them what they think of Banting and LCHF the sensible ones shake their heads in collective despair. For sure, no question we were eating too much grain (thank you, marketing campaigns of the 90s). We don’t need all that wheat and rye and barley and the kak that gets added to it. But removing all carbs is extreme and counter-intuitive and, frankly, cray. There is no way a sandwich filled with avo and salad is worse for you than a three egg omelette with bacon and a half kilo of cheese. Or that the fat of the (probably hormone fed) steak is better for your body than a nutrition-packed sweet potato. It just doesn’t make sense.
The other day I was chatting to a restaurateur friend of many years – someone who runs a few of the most successful eateries in Cape Town, and who’s made a very good career out of feeding people. And we talked about trends and food fads and the future, he told me something that made so much sense. He said, on the way out are the days where people will sit down and gorge themselves on a huge piece of steak and this is because we are becoming more mindful of what meat really is and where it comes from. We want to know it’s from a reputable farm where the animals are treated humanely and not pumped full of drugs and rubbish. Quality is replacing quantity, and it’s about damn time.
Contrary to the greed that permeates our food culture now and has for some time, we human beings seem to slowly be gaining respect for the fact that an animal lost its life so we can have those pork chops for supper. And, what’s more, restaurant patrons of the future will be presented with a ‘Provenance Bible’ where they can see exactly where the food they are ordering was sourced – the meat, the fish, the eggs, the vegetables, the cheese. Transparency will become de rigueur and, with it, accountability and a growing interest in and awareness of what we are putting into our bodies.
And with that philosophy guiding us hopefully soon we’ll start to pare down; reduce our portions; order one plate of meat and share it amongst the table. In his words, we’ll go back to eating like our grandparents did – not endless sandwiches made from cheap government loaf, but a few slices of good bread baked with organic flour and natural ingredients, savoured and eaten in moderation. Fresh fruit and vegetables we’ve grown ourselves or bought at a market served raw or lightly seared. Fruit, nuts, home-made butter, organic olive oil. Happy food that our bodies recognise and know what to do with.
It’s okay to eat potatoes now and then. Few things in the universe are more delicious than a French fry. Just remember that they’re high in energy so don’t eat more than you’re going to expend. Have the odd plate of pasta. My god, it’s good for the soul. But mostly eat salad. Eat the stuff that comes in the best colours (not smarties). A little bit of meat now and again when you feel your body needs it. Because it’s not about how to get as much food down our throats as we can get away with and still look good in low-cut jeans. It’s about eating gently and living gently. And looking after ourselves and our environment. And saying no to factory farming – not supporting those mofos because it’s really not okay, the suffering that goes on there and that we all collectively condone.
So, having after immersed myself wholeheartedly in the madness of diets and weird eating trends for the past twenty years and having learnt many things from that experience, the ultimate conclusion I’ve come to is this: eat meat a little bit, but let it be special; a treat. Aim for a diet that’s simple and light on the body (and the soul). And when it comes to food (and life), practice mindfulness and humility. Stop all this radicalism and the weird, self-imposed rules like taking the freaking croutons out of the Caesar salad. They’re the best part. Banting gets it right-er because it’s about going back to basics, turning away from processed stuff and incorporating a bit of fat. But it’s too extreme. Cauliflower is not the truth and the light. There’s a middle road that I think we’ll get to when all this hype dies down. And what I’ve learnt from all of it is to eat the effing sandwich.
I know a restaurant is my kind of place when the waiter shows you to your table, hands you your menu and asks you if you’d like a tequila. A tequila? At dinner, washed down with chardonnay? Obviously. Despite the fact that it’s a veritable stone’s throw from my house and an establishment frequented by many of my friends, somehow I’d never made it to dinner at Café Manhattan in De Waterkant. Which I realise, now, has been a big oversight on my part because it’s the kind of place you walk into, weary to the bone and bored senseless with the monotony of parenting and you remember, with stunning clarity, that you’re actually an adult who very much likes adult conversation and also wearing a leather pant and throwing back the odd shooter. In that order.
Within five minutes I’d cheered up so much I was barely recognisable to myself, and the evening was a joyful series of hurrah moments as I remembered important things like: I love that Cape Town has a gay district, and that I live a few blocks away from it; I love going out on a Friday night to places where children aren’t allowed, and I love talking to my husband while being plied with cold white wine and admiring the stylish, beautifully groomed young men who frequent this sexy eatery. The music is funky, but not obtrusive; the lighting is low but not seedy, and the service is friendly and attentive without you ever feeling harassed. And the prices are really, really reasonable. In fact, the burgers (which are huge and amazing) are cheaper than the ones we have when we go to that other place which does allow children. You know where I mean.
Anyhow. I was in an American kind of mood, so to start I ordered the corn and Arborio sliders which come on a generous serving of tasty roast vegetables (v. yum indeed), and Per had the salt and pepper squid. Both were delicious. Then, I had a very hard time because I almost never order the chicken in restaurants – it feels like such a naff, fence-sitty thing to do, and anyway, chicken is lunch – but this one I couldn’t resist the sound of, being buttermilk-soaked, coated in Texan spices and deep-fried, Southern-style. The portion is so big (think KFC’s family bucket) even greedy guts me could only manage half. Only order this dish if you walked here from Kimberley. Then again, it would probably be very nice with mayo on government loaf the next day.
Per had a T-bone with two sauces since he was having commitment issues – chocolate chilli and chimichurri which is an Argentinian thing made of parsley, garlic, olive oil, oregano and vinegar and goes very nicely on beef and also on double-fried chips and onion rings and vegetables and your finger. (Personally, I would have gone for the triple cheese or the smokey chipotle, but I only get to boss him around so much before he tells me to settle down and face the front).
By the time we were done we were too full to speak, but had to try one of the fun milkshake flavours for dessert. He voted for chocolate brownie, but since I was writing the review that was vetoed immediately and we had the apple and cinnamon (you can also have peanut butter and marshmallow and lemon meringue – yum) and it was completely divine, served with a dollop of apple pie and two spoons. They also do fun and unusual-for-SA things like root beer floats, soft shell crab and pumpkin pie, but those delights I had to leave for another day. If it’s been a long time since you had a decent conversation with your partner or it’s been a stupid week at work or life is just unimpressing you hugely, comfort food in a cheerful setting goes a long way towards making the world bearable again. Pull in, order the fries and say yes to the tequila. You’ll walk out a new man.
Café Manhattan is on 74 Waterkant Street, De Waterkant. Call them 021 421 6666 or check out their website http://www.manhattan.co.za/. They’re open for breakfast, and have a special Steak Knife Tuesday for when the weekend got really fun. The pavement tables are also good for an after work cocktail or seven.
So virtuous did I feel in the queue at Fruit and Veg City. TRY and find a samoosa.
Day 0
I feel blech. So awfully yuck. A kind of toxic, sluggish malaise has taken over me and I sleep too long and struggle to get out of bed in the mornings. Which is not me and tells me something is not quite right because I’m normally the energizer buddy. Though, I must admit, I haven’t been feeling energizer for a while. What I have found, as I’ve gotten older, is that there are certain foods my body really does not like, and wheat is the worst culprit. Within half an hour of eating that ciabatta I can feel my system regailing. It just makes me feel ill. And I have to face facts – that I was simply not designed to process grains. I don’t want to feel blech. I want to leap out of bed and feel amazing, and I know I can, and I know it’s about changing my diet. Which is not bad, but there is definitely too much toast and cheese going on. And coffee. And nachos. As I lie in bed, Enos under the belt for the huge sandwich I had at lunch followed by a steak pie for supper, I make a decision: starting the very next day, I’m going on a raw food detox. Just to see what happens.
Day 1
Since this has been a rapid decision I don’t have the right foods in the house, and breakfast has to be a small bowl of raw oats and sunflower seeds with apple juice. It’s been so long since I had anything as healthy as oats, I find the box crawling with small, brown goggas which I (not very painstakingly) pick out. I have my normal cup of filter coffer with milk and a quarter spoon of sugar because last time I did a detox the headache was so bad I couldn’t function. I SMS my raw food genie friend, Beatrice, and ask her if she has tips or tricks I should know about. She orders me to hot foot it to her shop, Raw and Roxy, where she hands me a cup of dark green, freshly pressed (not squeezed, there’s a difference) veggie juice which contains greens, the juice of two lemons and magical things things I can’t remember. It’s tart and delicious and tastes like it’s just what my body needs. This is followed by a thick, darkly red cleansing smoothie of sour cherries, berries, chia seeds, dates and about 100 other special ingredients to make me feel well again. When I get home I start to realize I feel odd – bouncy, sort of, and a bit hyper. I SMS Beatrice from the loo (where I’ve been three times in the last hour) and say it feels like the 90s and I’ve just had a line. I’m tempted to put on eighties music and have a shot of something, but I have to fetch the kids. She says she feels the same, having finished the leftovers of my various brews. I tell her her potions are powerful and that’s she’s the good witch of Woodstock.
Grapefruit is not ayoba, but it’s got great cleansing properties, so make a mulch with banana and apples and you won’t notice what you’re eating. Those red things are dried pomegranate, mostly for show.
Day 2
I wake up feeling awake. And, bizarrely, not wanting coffee. I’m a coffee fiend, and nobody must even look at me before I’m a half-cup in. I go with it and make myself a cup of hot water with lemon instead. I fear the headache, but decide to listen to my body. I’m amazed at the difference one day can make, but I think my detox process was accelerated somewhat by yesterday’s potent elixirs. I’m a bit mood-swingy, alternating between feeling light and energized and a bit edgy and irritable. For breakfast I make a mulch out of grapefruit, apples, a banana, linseeds I’ve soaked overnight and a tablespoon of chia seeds topped with gooseberries and dried pomegranate. By 11am I can feel a headache starting in my temples. I’m not really hungry, but at the same time I feel like want to eat. I make myself a small salad of cucumber, mint and lemon followed by a huge salad of spinach, cauliflower, grated carrot and a lemon-tahini dressing. I’m thirsty and drink glass after glass of filtered water. By 4pm there is a Tokoloshe perched behind me where I lie prostrate on the couch intermittently smashing my skull with a traditional weapon. I understand why people lose weight on this diet. It’s only day 2 and already I have lost the will to live, never mind rustle up another bowl of raw vegetables. I whatsapp my husband and demand to know why I’m doing this. He says he has no idea but suggests I have another glass of water and go for a walk. Clutching my head with my free hand I drive to the promenade where I hobble along the walkway, squinting and whining quietly to myself.
Day 3
By the time I got into bed last night I had the most severe headache I’ve ever experienced. Meningitis has nothing on this. On google I discovered it’s because caffeine restricts blood flow to the brain. Go off it and the blood flows like god intended, but the change can cause pain of monumental proportions. No wonder I’ve been forgetting everything for five years – I’ve had no blood to the brain. The sensation is of a throbbing whoosh above my eyes which a head massage with peppermint oil only seems to make worse. I mean, peppermint oil? Morphine would be more appropriate. Realizing I wouldn’t sleep a wink and that the following day was not one I would survive without sleep in desperation I took a single Panado (I know, I know) and managed to get some shut eye. This morning the headache is better, but there. Insanely I have agreed to have four children to play today whom I’ll have to drag around the shops to find a birthday gift for a friend, I have people coming to install a fence and a gate whose unprofessionalism has been a headache all on its own and then my cousin who’s going through a tough time arrives with her two boys for dinner and a sleepover. And I have two big jobs due by the end of the day. I stand at the kitchen counter weighing my options. A day of agony or more Panado or a weak cup of coffee to slow down the detox process to more manageable proportions. I go for C. Within 10 minutes I feel right as rain, and I realize that that innocuous-seeming coffee I throw back all day long is one serious mutha of a drug.
Salad with cucumber, mint, carrots and sprouts, and a linseed cracker with avo. Not horrible, as lunches go.
Day 4
The headache seems to have eased up which I’m relieved about. I’m also immensely relieved that my mom is having the kids for a sleepover because I’m not exactly in Mary Poppins mode. My mood is still swinging wildly as I vacillate between feeling happy and light and so immensely furious I could murder somebody with my bare hands. I sit through two hours of ballet Eisteddfod rehearsal watching the other moms swig away at XL polystyrene cups from Vida E, and it’s not like I crave the stuff, I’m quite smug about the morning’s hot lemon water and fruit mulch, but I would like to feel a bit normal. I tell myself to be patient and that this misery will pay off. On the way to drop the girls I stop at Atlas Trading in Bo Kaap and buy myself the detox and kidney teas Beatrice recommended. I have my first cup at my parents’. It contains buchu, and no words can describe its foulness. It’s like sipping rancid grass flavoured with urine. I’ve started to feel bad. Like you do when you’re coming down with flu – aches throughout my body and funny, shooting pains in my joints. I google detox symptoms, and apparently feeling like you’ve got flu is normal. So that must be it. I spend the rest of the afternoon under a blanky on the couch, sipping my vile teas and sort of enjoying how sick I feel. I read somewhere that the level of discomfort you experience during a detox is directly proportionate to your level of toxicity. Clearly – despite a regular wheatgrass shot and boot camp class – I was a human version of Chernobyl. Who knew?
Day 5
The flu symptoms have lessened, but I’m definitely not at the point where I moonwalk to the bathroom. It’s foggy on the sea front and the lighthouse siren has been sounding all night. I read the night before (yes, I’m reading a lot) that a brisk walk can help alleviate the symptoms, so I dress warmly and head to the promenade, considering a steamy, cleansing sauna at my gym afterwards. Ten minutes into the walk I’m so exhausted I have to turn back. A sprightly 75-year-old eyes me pityingly as I hobble back to my car and return to the sanctity of the couch, sauna plans long forgotten. Come lunchtime, the rain is pummeling down and I can’t face another plate of grated carrot. I need something warm and soothing. I google a recipe for detox soup with ginger, garlic and fresh turmeric, reckoning that the badness of cooking the veggies will be outweighed by the goodness of the ingredients. It’s delicious, and immensely comforting eating something hot. I go to bed at about 7:30pm aware that the geriatric from the promenade is probably dusting off her dancing shoes and getting ready to go on the razzle.
Raw ‘pizza’ with smoked olive paste, avo, fresh tomatoes and basil. Sooo tasty.
Day 6
Something quite astonishing (even through the pain) is the sense of clarity I am experiencing. It’s hard to describe, really, but it feels like the world has come closer, in a sense. Things seem more immediate – almost like there’s been a barrier between me and reality which has now melted away, and things have shifted into very (startlingly) clear focus. I don’t know how to explain it, and I’m the first one to pooh pooh all this talk of ‘toxins’ because, frankly, it’s immensely dull, but I suppose in the same way alcohol and drugs (like caffeine) alter our perception of things, maybe the nasty components of a so-so diet also fuzzy up our reality. In a very unscientifically proven way (then again, there are realms science can’t explain), I know I feel different, and it’s a good feeling and I want it to last. All the aches and pains have gone, and I’ve started to look forward to my morning lemon water and fruit. In five short days my taste buds have changed. Before, I couldn’t abide sweet things in the morning. Now, my plate of black grapes, chopped up naartjie with cinnamon and banana tastes completely delicious and I can’t wait to eat it. Go figure. There are a lot of salads happening, but you sexy them up with things like dried pomegranate, dried olives, good dates, fresh figs and, always, lashings of avo smashed up with lemon, cherry tomatoes and coriander. And I love that I can eat nuts and nut butter with wild abandon and not worry about the calories.
Day 7
So, this is the last designated day of my detox, only it’s not the last day at all because I like the way I feel too much. I’m light and clear in my head, I sleep well and wake up awake, I don’t crave coffee at any point in the day. I’ve learnt how easy it is to make my own linseed crackers (I like to add pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and organic coconut flakes) which I pop in the toaster instead of bread and have with avo or peanut butter. Instead of milk from a cow my nighttime drink is warm almond milk with a few teaspoons of almond butter and a swirl of raw honey. I love that I can eat as much as I want of whatever I want and that I still feel light and energized and, despite eating more or less non-stop have lost 3kgs in a week. And the food all tastes delicious.
This is a hard diet to follow 100%. It’s difficult to socialise and stick to it and boring to explain what you’re doing because everyone thinks you’re mad. And I refuse to be the person who goes to someone’s home and won’t eat the food they’ve prepared for me with love. Anyway, I like my meat and I don’t store iron well or absorb the kind you get from supplements so I need the odd rib-eye (with chips, because not having the chips is wrong on every level). So, my conclusion is this: I will continue eating raw indefinitely because it makes my body (and therefore, me) really, really happy. And my skin has never looked so good – I think it’s the high level of healthy fats. It’s kind of plumped up and glowy. But I won’t do it 100%, I’ll aim for 80%, maybe slightly more. At dinner parties and in restaurants I’ll eat what I feel like and give in to cravings, listening to what my body tells me because I’m a lot more in touch with it now. I’ve learnt about some amazing foods I’d never heard of and that I really enjoy (chia seed porridge is the BERRIES), and I know now how to eat filling, satisfying meals that don’t contain any part of a grain. I never get that blech, toxic feeling, and I’m happy to be off the coffee. It’s been an interesting experiment, and it’s kind of changed my world.
The Disco Pants Blog 