The Wisdom of Solomon?

We have our main meal in the evening, together as a family and my sister-in-law usually sits with us. It's her time to catch up with the children, read them a story while I'm cooking, share the events of our day. There are often two simultaneous conversations going on at the supper table - adult conversation interweaves with the children's non-sequiturs and general clamour as all three kids try to get in their 2 cents worth.

Last night the conversation turned to Jacob Zuma (recently elected president of the ANC, despite a contraversial impending court case) and the latest newspaper headlines of his plans to take on two more wives this year, making a total of five. The adults shook their heads in despair at the retrogressive international figure he is cutting and hoping against hope that we don't end up with him as president of our country, feeling sure that fate will come to our aid and deal out some just desserts. One of us commented on his sheer irresponsibility and the terrible example he is setting to South African men in treating women as possessions and in fathering as many as 25 children.

Our son had obviously been following the conversation, for here he chipped in with:

"That's nothing. Solomon had 200 children. He had lots of wives. I think he had a weakness for girls…"

We collapsed.

Modern life holds no surprises once you've studied the Old Testament!

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A Recipe for Rainy Day Soup

Sometimes it rains in summer here too - an ideal opportunity to enjoy being cool, the smell of damp hot earth, lavender releasing its scent, the novelty of raindrops splashing on your head and finally get a chance to use those umbrellas ... as a camp for your owls on the stoep ... and cook them some soup with 100% organic ingredients. Here is my children's recipe for rainy day soup:

1. First catch your rainwater.

2. Add some finely ground clay dust for colour and thickness.

3. Stir it up with lavender leaves.

4. Grind some shale into rough chunks and add to the mix.

5. Cook slowly for a minute or two.

6. Serve straight from the pan. Spoon feed if required.

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It's the SA Blog Awards again!

It's that time of year again - the time when all South African bloggers chew their finger-nails in the exciting contest that is the SA Blog Awards, elbow each other as they hustle up the red carpet all for the honour and prestige of it...and of course the grand prize of 2008 south african cents or to put it into perspective R20.08. which will almost buy a bar of Green and Black's Maya Gold chocolate ...almost ...you'd have to scape together the other R5 from your loose change bowl in coppers, but it does go some of the way towards satisfying an unsupported chocolate craving!

Anyway you've got till Friday to nominate your favourite SA blogs so please click on the button to choose me, me, me!!! Then fill in all the blanks with some of the other fine South African bloggers such as Cooksister, Charlotte's Web, Vanielje Kitchen or look at Cooksister's list for more inspiration! They've increased the number and scope of categories this year and asked you to give reasons for voting for the blogs you like, all new and improved on last year.

Here are the rules which I have lazily copied and pasted from Cooksister!

Once you've had a browse and decided who you like, head on over to the 2008 SA Blog Awards site, read the small print and get nominating. In short, the important rules are:

• Only ONE nomination per person is allowed, so do give some thought to your nominations. Send a second sheet and your first will be cancelled.
• You MUST nominate at least three different blogs
  
• You will need to provide the URL of each nomination and a reason for your nomination.
• You MUST provide a name and valid e-mail address in order to nominate.
• You'll get a confirmation e-mail and will need to click on the confirmation link for your vote to count.
  

Nominations are open until Friday 22 February 2008, after which the 10 blogs with the most nominations in each category (taking into account their relevance to the category in which they have been nominated) will go through to the finals. Final voting will be open to the public from Monday 3 March 2008 till midnight Friday 14 March 2008. During the final voting stage, you will be able to cast your vote on the 2008 Awards website and a panel of bloggers and "celebrity judges" will also judge the nominated blogs in each category. Their and your votes will be tallied and the top blogs resulting from this in each category will be announced as winners on 3 April.

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Language

Driving home from dropping the older kids off at school, Youngest on the back seat, apropos of nothing, comes out with the F word. It sounds strange and innocent tripping off her lips.

After a pause I calmly say:

" You do know that that is a very rude word don't you?"

"Yes," she replies, "it's not Afrikaans, it's German for poo."

What can I say, we live in a multilingual society here in South Africa!

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Home Again

I'm back home now and back into my everyday life again. It took a while to adjust back. The contrast between a Somerset winter of mild grey days and the South African summer with its dry air and shimmering light; the sleepless night flight and travelling; the emerging from the insulated bubble that seems to surround you after someone has died with its intense focus on that person, the reminiscences and the practical pulling together as a family; with all of that I felt like I did when we used to visit South Africa on holiday - unreal, foreign, not quite all there, with my feet hovering above the ground.

A weekend of drifting and then the demands of school, of picking up the thread of work again with my clients, pulled me back into myself again. Youngest's start at kindergarten hadn't gone well. My husband had tried to take her when the school term started while I was still away. She had refused to join in with anything and when he left her after two hours had stayed behind a curtain, refused to go to the loo and only eaten her sandwiches later outside on her own. Wisely he'd decided to leave another go until I was back.

So this week I spent two mornings at kindergarten with her, to try and make her feel secure enough to at least try and join in. Part of her problem is that she is shy of strangers and refuses to let anyone she doesn't know touch her or help her.. and that includes the teachers. Plus she has an innate fear of failure - hating to get anything wrong and she'd rather not join in with a song or game that she doesn't know than risk embarrassing herself by getting it wrong - a big burden for a five year old, who hasn't had time to learn everything in the whole world just yet.

The two mornings went better than I thought and on the second day she actually went off to play out of my line of vision with two girls that she knows from before. I'll have to keep going a bit longer though, as any new song or activity puts her back to the starting point of insecurity and the teachers are still Public Enemy Number 1 in her eyes! So another two mornings of unutterable tedium for me next week - I need to find some sewing or something to keep me busy so that I can gradually fade into the wallpaper as she finds her feet.

Meanwhile we are having hot hot weather, relieved a bit by rain last night, though it is still horribly humid and the worst indignity of all - a mole has killed off my mulberry tree, which was growing brilliantly and had the most delicious fruit, and it has now sunk into the ground and is lolling at a drunken angle. There are still a few roots attached so I've filled in the ground around it and watered profusely, but I think the mole is just saving those roots for afters, so I don't hold out much hope. We are seriously considering putting our organic principles to one side and resorting to gassing the creatures. BTW these aren't the cute little English moles, these are great huge African moles with long teeth, capable of turning a lawn into the Sahara desert in a matter of days and dragging tasty plants and trees into the ground to munch on at their leisure.

I want to say a huge thank you to everybody who commented here and sent messages of sympathy to me and my family. It was enormously comforting feeling that wave of energy and the sense of community from the blog world, from friends and friends of friends, and we all really appreciated it.

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My Dad

Thank you for all your thoughts and good wishes.

My Dad died peacefully this morning, so I'm flying over to be with my Mum for the next little while.

I think it was just his time. He'd been uncomfortable and in pain for a while now, though nothing specific had been diagnosed. Anyway now his spirit is free and on its next journey. I wish him well and hope he can see all the love and support that we are still sending him. The children have drawn some amazing pictures for Granny and Grandpa and want me to put them in his coffin to go with him to heaven.

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Apples and Thyme - For both my Parents

My earliest memories of cooking with my mother are those of a salivating onlooker, eyes just about clearing the wooden trolley that was her work surface in the small galley kitchen of our flat, anxiously watching as she all too thoroughly scraped the chocolate cake batter into the cake tin. Her hand-written recipe book, bursting with loose leaves of recipes tucked into the back, would be somewhere on the trolley with a light dusting of flour on its pages.

We were always convinced there wouldn't be enough left for us and clamoured as the spatula did its job too well for us. In the end there always was plenty for us to 'lick the bowl', scraping out with our teaspoons, but the draw of the cake mixture had us under her feet in the small space from the word go. She must have borne with us patiently enough, for a few years later I was proudly baking my own biscuits, drop scones and cakes, having absorbed the know-how over the years of impatiently waiting for the cake bowl to be handed over. Now my children are right there at my elbow in a frenzy of anticipation just the same - I have to do a little surreptitious scraping of my own before handing it over - I haven't grown out of wanting to lick the bowl yet!

My preference for baking cakes whenever I need to make our house feel homely, my opening the recipe book (mine is a file of plastic sleeves stuffed with pages of copied down recipes) even when I've made a recipe a thousand times before, have all been handed down directly from her... and we both make a pretty good cake!

This is part of the post I've been meaning to write for ages for Vanieljie Kitchen's Apples and Thyme blog event, which celebrates time spent in the kitchen with mothers and grandmothers.

What makes remembering my childhood poignant to me at the moment is that my father, Derek, is in hospital back in Somerset in the UK, with pneumonia. His whole system is tired after months of struggling with ill health and we are all sending him positive healing energy, prayers and love to help him recover and get home as soon as possible. I would love it if some of my blog friends could help by sending thoughts, prayers, energy or light to him. And of course to my mother, to help her with the hardship of seeing one's loved partner of so many years in pain and trouble.

Daddy, I've been sending you South African energy all day, looking at Table Mountain, sending you thoughts from the cricket field where your grandson was playing a match today: green grass; nine years olds shouting at each other to try for fours 'cos they're safer than sixes, you don't get caught; disappointment as he got caught for 1 run; triumph as he bowled a maiden over. I hope the distilled essence of it reached you, with the scent of a hot summer's day and the smell of cut grass, tall trees shading the edge of the field, the sides of Table Mountain looming benevolently. All the family are just going to the circle to send you some more special energy now. All our love, Kit

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