Embroidery with Words

Corey’s posts at Tongue in Cheek, often release an outpouring of words in my head. This post of hers, combined with this one, with Cat's beautiful quilted art, that she linked to, mulled around my mind for a few days then this poem appeared on my screen. I thought I'd share it, though it's neither food nor family.

Embroidery with Words

Silks sewn
Beads glistening
Gold thread
A patchwork planet
Of hope.

Quilt
Optimism
Into its seams
Look
For the Angels
Watching
Over your dreams.

Embroider flowers
With bright silks of love,
Strew them as you go.
Let the hearts of others
Find the peace of your art
Comforting
Telling them
They are not alone.

Silver linings
Shot through with gold
Rainbows unfurling
Stories untold
Unpick the chain stitch
Reshape into flowers
Free from their fetters
And we from ours.

The stuff of life
Lived a thousand times
Worn in places
Torn, in holes
Made beautiful and new
With rich fabric from our hearts
Joined seamlessly with care and love
A new design
Stronger, more meaningful
Than before.

by Kit 2006

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Magic Mountain

Today we finally redeemed our promise to take the children up Table Mountain this winter. Ever since the July holidays we have been waiting for the right day: clear weather, not too much wind and no other pressing obligations. With only one more week left of the Winter Special, whereby two children get to go free for each paying adult (a necessary condition of going as taking the whole family would otherwise cost the equivalent of half a week's groceries), we gritted our teeth and went for it.

At home it was cloudy, but a phonecall to my husband in Cape Town, whose studio looks out on Table Mountain, elicited the happy news that the mountain top was clear. We piled into the car with our friends, way over European safety regulations (but this is Africa after all) and with only minor squabbles and whinges over the squashed seating arrangements, an hour later we made it to the cable car station. A chill wind blew as we waited for the cable car, but excitement levels were high, so all the jumping up and down kept us warm. The fancy new cable cars, that rotate 360 degrees as you go up so everyone gets the whole view, bore us smoothly to the top. Once there it was warm with a mild breeze, slightly hazy and a sea of cloud over the ocean, wisping around beneath us. Perfect.

The smooth weathered rocks just begged to be clambered over and even distracted the kids, for a short while, from the prospect of exorbitantly priced ice cream. Once that ceremony had been disposed of, more rock clambering ensued. Plenty of opportunities for spotting lizards, sunbirds and other wildlife but the famous rock dassies were absent.

Really it is just one big adventure playground up there, but with the added thrill of knowing you musn't go too close to the edge, as there is a very real risk of tumbling precipitously back down the mountain.

Youngest, for a while, refused to believe that we were really on Table Mountain, as it wasn't completely flat. It was her first trip up since she was a baby, so she suspected that we were trying to pull her leg.

We only came back down a short while before closing, when the last cable car was announced. A real special treat on our doorstep and appreciated all the more for its rarity. When the kids are slightly older we'll be able to walk up with them - an hour and a half for the quick ones up steep steps and rocky paths, then the ice creams will really have been earned!

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Abba angels

The children are working their way through our CD collection, finally having decided that grown-up music is as good as the Wiggles or nursery rhymes. Hurray, mostly, except for sticky fingers blurring half the tracks.

We were sitting around the table at snack-time listening to Abba when 'I have a dream' comes on. My eight year old son comments disdainfully:
"Why are they singing about believing in angels? EVERYBODY believes in angels"
He now thinks it is a silly song for stating the obvious so many times over.

He still believes in the tooth fairy and Father Christmas too - long may this state of blissful innocence last.

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Rusks Revealed

Corey, you asked for photos of my rusks - your wish is my command! First a scenic pic of them packed in the tin ready to bake.
Then the finished rusks, golden and crisp after drying out in the oven for a good while.

I have a confession to make. The in-between photo of them, baked but still in the tin, before being seperated out, didn't make it through the selection process. They had five minutes too long in the oven, due to circumstances beyond my control (howling three year old) and were a rather darker shade of golden than intended (kind of a rich mahogany). So I need to bake another batch to get photos of the whole process! It gets a bit complicated trying to combine baking with photography, a dusting of flour doesn't really do anything for a Canon snappy snap and the extra time setting up a shot exhausts the meagre stock of patience left to a frazzled mother being 'helped' in the kitchen. My career as a food photographer is still a fair way into the future.

My quiet mornings have been put on hold too. Youngest waltzed into kindergarten with barely a backward glance when she started there in April. Since the kids were all sick last week she has developed acute seperation anxiety, even clingy when we're at home, so this week she has refused to stay at kindergarten without me. I'm hoping it will be only a short lived phase and am letting her come home again with me, after we say goodbye to her big sister. I could wrench her howling from my arms and I'm sure she'd be fine after a little while, but it doesn't feel right. She's not quite four, I'm at home anyway, so there is no great urgency to pushing her out of the nest. Besides she is stubborn as anything and the best way to get her to do something is to take away the pressure and feign indifference. I just have to try and work with her around me and she is pretty good at keeping herself entertained for most of the time. But I've had to postpone a birthday massage from a friend that I was going to indulge in tomorrow, sigh. I wouldn't have been very relaxed knowing my child was out there howling furiously at my desertion of her.

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Meredith we'll miss you!

I only just heard about Meredith closing her blog Found in France. I missed her last post saying that she had accidently hurt someone's feelings and didn't feel she could continue it. I feel so sad - sad for her, because it must have been a difficult emotional time to make that decision and sad for me, because it feels like I have lost a new friend, that I was just getting to know and love. Our blog community has grown important to me, this delicate web of contact by writing, sharing thoughts and feelings and funny happenings. Losing a vital, warm voice from amongst us is like a friend moving far, far away out of reach of phone and letters. Anyway, Meredith if you ever read this, my thoughts are still with you, I'll miss your writing and sharing of your life and I hope that one day I'll bump into you again, in real life or virtual life.

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South African Rusks -The Recipe

I haven't written about food for so long. My children keep stealing the show, grabbing attention with their doings and sayings. One recipe I've had on my mind to put up here on my blog, is the one for rusks. South African rusks. A hard, crunchy, substantial, sustaining snack to dunk in tea at any time of day or night. Plain or with added texture from nuts and raisins or seeds. These are the backbone of South Africa. The stuff of stalwart settlers. Ouma's rusks are the staple snack here, with the legend of the doughty grandmother's baking saving the morale of a drought-stricken town inscribed on every pack.

My recipe came from a South African cook book, when we were first here on a long visit. I started baking them and was never again allowed to stop. The recipe returned to London with me and I faithfully baked every other week, with toddler son creating castles and moats in the mound of flour. Grabbing the opportunity, while his baby sister slept, we would merrily festoon our small kitchen in flour, the cup measures becoming diggers, the sieve a distribution system. My temper would fray rapidly, when the nap ended sooner than expected and I had to deal with the rusks, hungry infant and flour dusted toddler at the same time. Crumbs nestled in every corner of the sofa, as rusks were morning and afternoon snack material, in the bed from morning tea in bed on the weekend. Friends came, tasted, copied the recipe and sent it winging onward with relations to the far ends of the earth - America, Pakistan, Sweden.

Back in South Africa to live, I carried on baking them, through the third pregnancy, when baking was the last thing I wanted to do - only the rusks managed to sneak through the baking embargo. They used always to have raisins in, until toddler taste alterations resulted in picked out raisins lodging with the crumbs all over the sofa. Self-preservation edited out the raisins and the rusks stayed plain for a couple of years. Recently I have staged a restoration revival and tried the revolutionary tactic of dividing the dough in half and adding pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and raisins to one half, leaving the other half plain, which means effectively that half the rusks have my name written on - hands off, adults only. It also seems to mean however that the kids build up their tolerance levels to be able to swallow raisins in extremis, when the plain ones run out.

Here finally is the recipe that I use. I promised it months ago and have disappointed all those searchers who showed up here with the promise of a rusk recipe, only to find that I never got around to posting the article. A belated apology to all of you, you can come back now, it's here!

South African Buttermilk Rusks -The Recipe

1.240kg / 2lb12oz flour (I use 1kg wholemeal and the rest white)
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
2 teaspoons of salt
250g / 9oz butter
½ cup raisins (optional or add mixed seeds too)
2 eggs
1 ½ cups brown sugar
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup oil
(1 cup=250ml)

Preheat the oven to 190C/380F

Grease three loaf tins of base measurement 20cmx10cm / 8”x 4” approx or any combination of deep baking dish that adds up to about the same.

In a large mixing bowl sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar and salt. Cut the butter into small cubes and rub into the flour. Add the raisins if you are using them. You can experiment with various nuts and seeds as well, though the rusks are equally good plain.

In another bowl mix together the buttermilk, sugar, eggs and oil and beat until well combined. Stir liquid into dry ingredients and mix then knead to a firm dough.

Form the dough into balls about the size of a ping-pong/golf ball and pack them tightly in one layer into the loaf tins. I usually get six rows of three into each of my tins. Bake for 45 minutes.

Turn out onto a rack and leave to cool for 30 minutes before breaking up into individual rusks along the joins of the balls. Dry in a low oven 100C/200F for 4-5 hours until the centre is completely dry. These can be kept for ages in an airtight container.

Warning: crumbs guaranteed on the sofa, in the bed, over the carpet and the car seats!

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Spring has sprung, the grass is riz

Today was officially our first day of spring.

Balmy weather, the first horseflies, suncream unearthed, sunhats sought, doors opened to let in the warm air.

It was also the first day of the grape harvest...the children spending a fair part of the afternoon picking the ‘grapes’ from our ornamental vine, which is putting out leaves, flowers and shoots as fast as it can.

They produced a gourmet meal of salad, followed by pudding, with much hard work on the part of the youngest chef.


I celebrated by photographing arum lilies, up to my knees in wet grass, trucks thundering past on the main road as I focussed, composed, recomposed on a prolific patch of the waxy white blooms, casually growing in a ditch beside the N7.



My birthday present behaved admirably. (A Canon Powershot A620, pocket sized, great macro, sharp focus and big enough file size for our photo library). The best thing about it, is that it can see more sharply than I can, so I literally can point and shoot, without having to wear my ever-more-necessary glasses, though I have to wait to get back home to the computer and said glasses before I can see the pictures properly!

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