Once upon a time a Kiwi met a South African chick picking kiwi fruit underneath a vine. She had strapped to her front the sexiest of sacks that held up to 10kg of freshly picked fruit, her feet were ensconced in the blackest of wellies (and not those new Hunter type ones either…) and it was winter so she quite possibly was moaning and miserable and vloeking lekker in Afrikaans because being in New Zealand no one apart from her boet could understand her.

The kiwi of course didn’t fall for these charms immediately, ohhhhh no….she had to woo him with her epic tequila skills and mad dance moves but in the end he could no longer contain himself and plotted a way forward that would see him the owner of 5 dogs, 1 cat a horse and 3 small womanish children…a wife, a house some cars and no frigging clue how he got here.

What he did though allllllll those years back was bring her coffee in bed.

And we all know that one has to start off the way one expects to end and so rain or shine, fight or no fight I will wake up to find a cup of coffee next to my bed. Sometimes its not even next to my bed its in the microwave and I get a rather tense message saying he left early and its in the microwave, but much like death and taxes are constant, so is my morning coffee. But I appear to have rocked that boat somewhat as due to my attempt at Intermittent Fasting my morning coffee cant have sugar in it – no big deal one may say – however when for 24 years one sugar has been spooned in lovingly to now switch that to a sachet of sweetner I really shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was when i received my daily dose. I was REALLY surprised, not quite as surprised as when I was pregnant and after a horrendous few months of puking my guts at the sight of food could finally tolerate the small coffee that I made myself  and being blissfully happy that at least I could add coffee to the menu again when my last mouthful of coffee saw a small ghekko fall into the back of my throat, I can understand that the ghekko was equally surprised as i’m sure he didn’t quite foresee his future ending so abruptly, but not as surprised as the pregnant chick who projectiled the remaining coffee over the wall.

This wasn’t quite as bad as that…its 17 years on and i’ve just gagged, I kid you not!!!

So my last sip of coffee and this substance slips into the back of my throat.

“WTF?????” I scream in my head and try desperately to NOT chunder over my white (ish) duvet cover – because why? because we are still in a drought and I have 5friggingdogs and white duvets should only ever be in Pinterest!!! So I don’t hurl but have NO idea what is in my mouth, it feels like a spoonful of sand but it isn’t crunchy.

My muffled yell must have elicited some kind of anticipated response from the maker of the coffee because the response time was way too quick.  His head pops into the room.

Me “what did you put in my coffee”

Him “sweetner”

Me “then what was the weird mushy sand but not sand-like stuff that fell into my mouth?”

Him “oh, I used another sachet but I tasted it after I made the coffee and the coffee tasted fine”

Me “so you put something that looked like sweetner in my coffee but wasn’t and you don’t know what it was.

Him “yup”

Its my fault completely, I really should have learnt from previous experience. Like that one time he made me Avo on toast…….

Me – thank you so much for my yummy toast and avo
G -you welcome
Me- what is this brown liquid on it? *sniffsit*….is it worcestor sauce????
G- yes…isn’t that what you put on your avo?
Me – ummmmm…..no…..that would be balsamic vinegar…..

….*silence*……
G- really?
Me- really really……
G-…wow….well, its the same colour?
Me – that it is…..
G – Seriously???? balsamic???
Me…yip……balsamic and not worcestor sauce…..

….*awkward silence*…..

It Just goes to show that after 20 something years you can STILL learn something new about your pardner!!

It turns out the urban hunter and gatherer is alive and living in Kommetjie, who would have thought.

There are many nights gathered round the dinner table when the husband duly and solemnly says “children, I’d like you to give thanks for the food on the table and for your mother who stood in a long  Woolies Queue to buy it”

Its true, I’m unashamedly at that stage in our feeding routine that dinner times have become ridiculous, and where I’ll be lobbing things on the table in boxes uncooked still in wrappers and simply yell “you can Lord of the Flies yourselves I’m DONE!”

The teens who have just started Lord of the Flies for their setwork book will know how precipitously on the edge I actually am while the 11 year old will just roll its eyes and say “I don’t eat flies!”

Well, just add that to the effing list of things that you don’t eat why don’t you!

The one teen is flirting between vegetarianism and veganism after her friend laid down a 30 day Vegan challenge (I swear to the food gods that this is possibly the only other thing, apart from the taxis, that made my conservative Catholic mom drop the “F” bomb)

My mom, you see, is a feeder.

Her love language is food. Awesome warm-your-heart food, lasagnas, Boboties, Chicken pies, curries and her epic meatballs to name a few.  There are grown men who live in countries far far away that would  fly around the globe just for her meatballs.

But I digress.

So sweetpea is on a 30 day Vegan challenge, and kudos to her even my epic rant of “veganism isn’t a challenge it’s a way of life blah blah blah, you are only making my life even MORE challenging in regard to food blah blah blah don’t expect me to spend forty bucks on rice milk either!!”

Was met with a pouty  comment thrown behind as she sulked into the scullery “you don’t have to dad does”

The dad at this stage is slowly reversing out the door realizing that he is the enabler to what has now become the thorn in my culinary sock.

“its not what you think” he squeaks, “I just get her one every now and then …and only if the shop has it in stock.”

So we are muddling through dinner options where we have the vegan challenge now into 19 days, I can see the stress showing on her freckled face, her aspirations of making a vegan cake that tastes the same as her normal cakes have failed dismally and she is basically hanging in by her fingernails until her birthday which signifies the end of the challenge and she will be able to celebrate by eating the most decadent of chocolate cakes everrrr   ……………and then she comes home from school.

She is very very annoyed.  Very!  It would appear that the Vegan challenger buddy realized after day 2 that she needed to drink a glass of cows milk every day with her medication and infact was not going to follow through on said challenge.

She Failed to inform her buddy.  Her Buddy that had been declining cheesecake, and butter on her potato and creamy mushroom sauce and adding grey hairs to an already colour challenged head of hair on said mother.

I laughed……a lot……..

She did not, she was thinking back to the cheesecake that she had declined 2 days back.

So we are now back to some kind of normalcy where we have one vegetarian, one pastafarian, one non carbatarian and one iveeatenonthewayhome hope you didn’t cook me dinner-arian?

Personally I’m happy with a few crackers and a glass of red, carbs and a fruit, nailed it!

 

It started out as a rather boring conversation with a teen about being late for school and “insert eyeroll” time management or in her case the lack of….and it reminded me quite vividly of possibly the best excuse for being late in the history of late excuses ever!

Way back in the day the husbands  lovely foreman had to go to a funeral in the Eastern Cape, his brothers mother-in-law passed away suddenly and a couple of days later they were all driving in convoy up to EC.

They were all in taxis (3 in total) when the first taxi caught fire just outside Beaufort West.

They all managed to safely get out with their baggage and watch while the taxi burnt.

There was however a small problem, there was a trailer attached to the taxi which they couldn’t get to…

And inside the trailer…

Was the body.

So, they are watching the taxi burn, and the trailer starts to burn…they manage to put the fire out, there is now, however, a partially burnt trailer with a body inside, a body that is approximately 3 days old at this stage.

There is also a contingent of unsuspecting patrons who when purchasing their ticket to Matatiele were not informed of the contents of the trailer attached to their taxi.

It is also 40 degrees outside.

Things are not going well, so off they go to the nearest Engen service station and buy all the ice they can….to put in the trailer and keep the body….. “cool”!  This as you can imagine was not working well and now the partially burnt trailer with its 3 day old body was leaking melted ice.

The occupants of the taxi are freaking out, some because they have just been told about their silent non paying passenger, and some because they have to perform a 3 day ceremony or face the wrath of the ancestors (not too sure what the ancestors think of the body in the trailer, but must be fine with it as its apparently a done thing)

The new taxi is only arriving from Cape Town in 6 hours and the body is starting to …um… “do things”

The saving grace is that someones friends, brothers, friends sister’s uncle works in the local morgue and they are able to pop the body in the chiller until the new taxi arrives which they then hitch the partially burnt trailer to , pick up the body and arrive a day late in EC where they have to perform a 3 day ceremony in 2 days.

……………there was a long pause while the husband processed this information,  as a Kiwi he is not as familiar with the finer details of trailer and corpse transportation and all he could retort with was ……..  “So in a nutshell” , he said,  “you drove all through the night after the ceremony but have just arrived now in Cape Town now and that’s why you are late?  That’s Brutal mate!”

He was told  to get some sleep and come in the next day…..

When they say “only in Africa” i think this is one of those things they are talking about.

#onlyinafrica #truestory #kiwi

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton