Eating is Believing

It was Helen's idea to start off with a tea ceremony  "If you only do what you can do, you will never be more than you are now."  Master Shifu Helen and Rebecca arrived with burnt fingers. From the damn fortune cookies that they decided to make from scratch, paper messages on the inside and all. Brave Panda worriers who overcame everything, even fire!  It was my 8-year old who invited the Kung Fu Panda to our dinner table this time round. So Aidan set us all off to China. It struck me that Po the Panda burnt his fingers too, just before he finally realises that he has mastered inner peace! We all  have a version of burnt fingers, even though none of us have mastered inner peace yet! And it set us off on a night as simple as this one. A night with just us. Friends, traveling through food, finding meaning in the here and now. Nothing more. Nothing less.  To celebrate this meal, we had some new friends over! Which brought new energy and new meaning to our group. Ai...

Helen, member of our Eating is Believing Club invited Sir James Galway to eat with us tonight. I of course had to look him up, and the more I looked him up, the more I wanted to write about  talent and choice and siblings... Come Eat and Believe with us!  Sir James Galway Helen's extra special love for Galway started in a blue Alfa Romeo when she was in High School, some forty odd years ago. She knew of Galway back then, admired him a bit and thought of him when she spent hours practicing her own flute. But that day, the one in the blue Alfa Romeo changed things for her. Not only in the way she saw Galway, but also in the way she saw her own sibling.  The Irish Beer&Cheese soup is almost like a fondu... Before our dinner, I became a little obsessed with Galway. He features everywhere. I've listened to interviews, and I listened to him playing the flute from almost every city in the world. I've watched him teach masterclasses. I've read dozens of articles, listene...

This ode is written for Anthony Bourdain and for those who stayed behind An Ode to Anthony Bordain   I watch you speak to a baby on the  Gaza strip, to a cat in Quebec and a  teenager in Beirut. You speak in order to listen, to understand, to bring voice, to celebrate. You listen  to those on the other side of the  track. The outsider, the immigrant... Those long forgotten. You speak to  the bikers, the loners, the dreamers. You speak to those who slink on the margins of our world, a room where the bed is  always unmade- for the romantics. You listen to how they chop onions and cook. You listen to their frying pans and their fires. You are watching them, your eyes are dry, but I know they are not,  and your hands light up, your eyes, your belly, that soft part on your chin.   You listen to the musicians as they play and accompany you to the eating houses and battlefields, the broken street corners and the wonder of inspiration, gods,...

Barakat, the movie, poster Mauritz and I met Mortimer Williams at a party at the end of last year. And we both fell in love with him immediately. He is one of those rare people who can look right through your eyeballs and see what you would find funny. He has a voice that was handed out by Apollo himself and we could see that he loved food as much as we do. After telling him about Eating is Believing , he invited us to his house, just like that, and  sommer so.  We usually invite someone inspirational to come and eat with us. Sometimes that person is dead. Like when we travelled to Lithuania to visit my long gone oupa. Other times its a book or a writer or a violinist. We have been to Finland, Mexico, and down the Cape Malay route... We've been to France, Lebanon and Italy. (And for those of you who don't know the previous blogs, we can't really go to these place folks. Because of Covid mos . We imagine that we go there and we cook 'n   storm los around this person'...