Eating is Believing

Prayer flags, for our sanity and our country " Speak to us of good and evil.... Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil. For what is evil, but good, tortured by its own  hunger and thirst?" Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet This blog is about pretending that things are okay, even if they are not. It is about imagining flight when you are stationary and bound, mostly to your own home. It is about escaping the harsh reality of feeling like a hostage of your own mind. If I could, I would have invited the whole of South Africa to this Lebanese feast. Because hell knows, we needed it.  I promised myself not to linger on reality, but I need to say that our country has just been through quite a harsh struggle. The looting and destruction of property last month showed political shades of grey we didn't even know existed. What was real? Who are we? Truth is, that no matter how you argue the unrest,  there were only losses, fear and the dismantling of the last little bits...

Front cover of The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston le Roux We were sitting under a billion stars when Rebecca told us she wanted to invite Gaston le Roux to the next Eating is Believing. He wrote The Phantom of the Opera (I found out later) and it is filled with gothic mystery, dank and dark dungeons and the love between Christine (an opera singer) and Erik (a phantom who initially appears as a ‘voice’)     I was excited about this, because it could be a gloomy Eating is Believing and a little on the horror side of things. Something we haven’t had before.   What I liked even more than the doom&gloom, was that Erik the ghost was actually just a deformed man, that had to hide from public view. My cup of tea for sure. I so wanted to write about the ghost we all fear, only to discover a darkness inside of us. A darkness we had to make peace with. My mind went wild, especially after I heard that there might even have been some real prisoners under the Parisian opera house. ...

Inviting the gorgeous Nico Tortorella and his Italian ancestors to our lunch would be easy to write about, so I thought. It was indeed a spectacular setting, and the lunch that went on for hours was like sitting in an old Italian village with people you love. Food, wine, music, deep thought, frivolous giggles and more food kept on rolling in. But to write about Nico and our conversation was hard. Mostly I think because I don't belong to Nico's world. I understand it, and love it, and will stand up for anyone who needs me, but it's not my battle. And so I tried writing about it humbly, over here:  Nico Tortorella with his Italian blood and our South African landscape The Threshold So, we all arrived on The Farm. The one that belong to our dear friends Catherine and Herman. (They had emigrated to the UK, but had left their little farm in South-Africa behind, like an orphan or a gemstone.) I’ve refused to go back there. Without Catherine who always put  stronke  in the old...

Today we had lunch with Aysa Safal. The person who changed our lives. The woman who made all of this possible. Many moons ago she made Mauritz walk into the ocean and willed him out of the west coast waters with a lobster in one hand. Our honeymoon. She also made him pack  a whisk, an egg and a small bottle of olive oil in the camping gear. She was the one that spurred us on till we had that perfect mayonnaise.  And she must have watched and winced at our lack of decent clothing.  Today we wanted to remember her smells, her influence, her love. We wanted to celebrate the huge impact she had on Mauritz's tastebuds. She is the one that made sure that I stay out of the kitchen. Also that both our children show a keen interest in being curious about food.  Our family wanted to give thanks to her open hands, her life, her dedication to food and her kindness. And the only way to do this, was to have a kind of  wedding . A big celebratory Cape Malay wedding under the ...

Before: The guest and the guest  Today we invited a book to eat with us, but also another real life guest. A twin. A sister that I met on the steps at Wits while learning Portuguese. She has always been on a wild horse, showing the way. She has no fear. Her whole world is filled with love. Welcome Yolande !    A picture of Tita, our heroine. Pic from Aminoapps.com The re-read: 2 weeks ago PASSION The only thing I remember of  Like water for chocolate , is passion. I was in my early twenties when I read it for the first time, and Tita was cooking her desire for Pedro into some quails using the roses he gave her earlier that day. Pedro smouldered at the dinner table, but nothing compared to Gertrudis, Tita's sister. Darling Gertrudis was so overcome with this meal, and what was cooked into it, that she had to have a shower, see. She was steaming! So badly that the wooden outhouse shower set on fire, Gertrudis ran from it, naked and simmering, into the arms of Juan...