Four Legs Good

I’ve never really been a horse person. I learned to ride as a child, because that’s what all the other girls did, when I was growing up in the English countryside, but I had a largely undistinguished career, the main memories that linger being freeze frames: me left hanging from the branch of tree when the pony decided to take a shortcut home and the steering failed; me on ‘my’ pony that refused to go over the jumps for me but obliged for more determined riders; the loss of my big toenail when a horse I was holding leaned on my foot without noticing. I hit adolescence and left ponies behind without a backward glance.

Once in Italy as an adult I joined some friends on a gentle country ride and was quite enjoying it, thinking that there was something to be said for horses after all, until on the homeward stretch a pheasant rocketed from the verge, startling the horse, who bolted for home and, my leg muscles having turned to jelly from the unaccustomed exercise, I gracefully slid to the ground, breaking a rib or two. My new found appreciation of the delights of riding was promptly doused, as I spent the next two weeks trying to make picnics for my clients without sneezing or laughing.

Now we live on a smallholding and have plenty of space. Youngest has been dreaming of having a pony for years. Last year I took the girls riding with their friends for the first time and they had about 5 minutes each on a pony. Youngest’s face was beaming the whole time and I felt guilty for my reluctance to associate with these big four-hooved creatures. Finally at the beginning of this year I organized proper riding lessons for her and told her that when she’s big enough to look after a horse entirely by herself then perhaps we can give a home to one.

She immediately loved riding, taking to it like a natural and trotting comfortably on her first lesson. It was a huge confidence boost for her, as she settled in to her first term in big school.

Ginger and Youngest

Within a couple of weeks of her starting riding lessons, the extra murals we’d found for the others dwindled (our son didn’t enjoy the cricket club, which was too far, too late and too boring; Middle Daughter found photography something she could do anytime, so was looking slightly enviously at the riding lessons) and the older children both tried out riding too. Our son was OK but not enthusiastic enough to continue, but Middle Daughter also took to it like a natural, so I found myself being drawn into the world of ponies.

Roxy and Middle Daughter

And then my husband took the girls to their riding lesson one week. By the time he returned home he’d signed himself up for lessons too! He’d never been on a horse in his life, but has wanted to learn for a long time, so that one day he can go riding on horseback through the forest or along the beach into the sunset.

All three of them have turned out to be naturals at it, according to their teacher, picking up the rising trot easily and with a good seat. My husband’s muscles were jellified after the first lesson, but he is determined to get fitter.

So this leaves me having to become acquainted with horses again, if only to hold reins and feed carrots, and dredge from my memory all the terminology I acquired as a child studying the points of the horse and the names of all the straps on the bridle. The ponies and horses at this stables are far more friendly and obliging than the ones I remember from my riding days. They seem to allow themselves to be caught and saddled without cantering to the far end of the paddock. They usually trot when asked and steer in the right direction, and ask for carrots very politely without pushing you over!

The girls have been in for their riding stable show(best walk and trot on the leading rein, with Dad on the leading rein as Mum bottled out) and won rosettes already, and a pony camp is threatened for the holidays and then another show. Soon we’re going to have to go out and buy them jodhpurs and their own riding hats and riding boots …it’s a bit like being caught up in an inexorable fast flowing current, but I’m standing firm on one thing. We do not give a home to pony, even if it is a gift horse, until they are old enough to do all the looking after themselves... the age is rapidly decreasing ...I thought I was safe for at least five years!

Their first rosettes

If family riding holidays are going to be part of our future I need to do something about my thigh muscles too. I wonder if belly dancing exercises the right ones to help stop me falling off again?

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Blog Awards and Addictions

Thanks Robyn for this fabulous blog award!

Now it's my turn to pass it on to five other fabulous bloggers that I read with pleasure every time their name pops up on my Bloglines reader. Seeing as it's the time of the SA Blog Awards, I thought I'd make this an African theme and nominate my own five top African blogs

Planet Nomad for wonderful writing from the top of Africa.
Reluctant Memsahib for evocative musing from the middle of Africa.
Homemade Heaven for loads of recipes from just down the road in Cape Town.
Charlotte's Web - great writing by a South African in a small town in Germany
Cooksister - fabulous recipes and writing from a South African in London.

To accept this award, these lovely bloggers need to follow these rules:
1 Pass it on to five other Fabulous Bloggers in a post.
2 Include the person that gave you the award, and link it back to them.
3 List five of your Fabulous addictions in the post.

So my five addictions ...
1. Chocolate has to be at number one, the darker the better, but in times of stress even Smarties will do.
2. A novel, the more escapist the better, but it must be well written with believable characters and not have too many spelling mistakes or it will drive me crazy.
3. Rooibos tea - it's doesn't have the caffeine that coffee pulls you in with, but it is a habit, and now I take teabags with me when I travel, just in case.
4. Bloglines - I try not to open it first in the morning, but the minute my attention wanders from my work, there it is with lots of tantalising posts lined up for me to read.
5. Marmalade - I can live without it, but why even try when it tastes so good on a piece of fresh homemade bread.

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Nubivagant Words

A nubivagant post off in lala land, wandering among clouds… I’ve adopted a word and have to use it to keep it alive and protect its dictionary listing. Nubivagant (means: moving through and around the clouds) is one of the three I chose from a great site that I was pointed to by Robyn of The Egypt Experience.

The site is called Save the Words and is huge fun – click on any weird word and find out its meaning. With some of them you can quite understand why they are in danger of losing their place in the dictionary, but there are some great ones which will extend your vocabulary, besides giving you an erudite air if you ever find yourself in scholarly company.

My other two chosen words were quibbleism (the act of beating around the bush) and frutescent (having the habit or appearance of a shrub) lots of garden references there – it must have been on my mind last night.

Both of us spent almost an hour surfing and choosing words to adopt yesterday evening. My husband found five he couldn’t resist, so we now have a family of eight words that we have pledged to use whenever possible.

I got a certificate of adoption too. I have a feeling that several others have adopted these words , as I came across a few poems using nubivagant in conjuction with daffodils when I googled it.

Save the Words is as much fun for word-lovers as FreeRice, though you don’t get the kick of feeding the five thousand with your word prowess that you do with FreeRice. I spent several evenings there when I first discovered it and still go back and visit sometimes whenever I need a wordy diversion. But maybe Save the Words has a more short term appeal. After all there are only so many words you should adopt, in order to devote enough attention to each one, and of course remember its meaning.

Have a look and let me know if you adopt any words yourself – they could have a play date with mine – abstruse poetry anybody?!

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Flower Fairies on Hot Days

On hot days flower fairies make rose petal ice cubes to float in their spring water spritzers.

My girls made several ice cube trays of flower fairy ice cubes, back in January, while the roses were in bloom. One or two petals per cube, water poured over and frozen. They stayed in the freezer for ages, almost forgotten until this last run of hot weather sent me looking for cool inspiration. We got out the fairy ice cubes for lunch one day, one per person. And I couldn’t believe how much flavour one petal gave to the glass of water. It was delicious, like sipping fairy nectar!

The nasturtium flower cubes of course had a slightly peppery flavour, but were still good and refreshing. Anything that brings fresh flavour into the doldrums of hot summer lunches has to be good. Next summer when the roses bloom I’ll be buying more ice trays. I can’t help thinking how gorgeous they’d look in a big, tall, clear, glass jug of water. I wonder if the girls are still going to want flower fairy birthday parties – it would be such a perfect showing off touch for the tea table!

We’ve finished all the flower cubes now. Just have to wait for spring now or think of some other edible winter flowers to freeze. Can you think of any other edible flowers that would work?

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Paying by Numbers

My numerology for March said that money would be flowing out fast…. I wasn’t too surprised, as it does that most months. The first week was true to form: bill for son’s OT treatment after breaking a finger playing football (he saved a goal but it cost over R1000 in all, and it wasn’t even a major league match); filling at the dentist for Youngest (where she was hugely stoical and put up with it without a murmur); fairies purchased as a reward for the above (and middle daughter was owed one too for dental treatment previously unrewarded – I reckon this is the one area where bribes are essential!).

What I hadn’t been bargaining for, and what the numerology was obviously talking about was our car: our beautiful car, new to us last year and only a mere spring chicken at 2 years old, still under warranty. It took my husband into Cape Town last week and promptly overheated, dumping him at the side of the road. Annoying, we thought, a pain as it had to be towed to a busy Cape Town garage instead of our friendly local one, to be fixed under the warranty. Irritating, when two days later they hadn’t even looked at it. Infuriating, when yesterday they called us with the diagnosis and said that it probably won’t be covered under the warranty, and by the way it will cost R15,000 to fix. Foot-stompingly rage-making, when they tell us that a bit of mud had covered the heat sensor so the fan hadn’t worked, hence breaking that fan, this pipe and the other something else and perhaps it has a design fault.

Mud is a part of our lives here in winter. The 3km dirt road that leads to our smallholding is un-tarred and any amount of rain is enough to turn it to a clay ploughed field. So if the mud from one summer rainstorm is enough to wipe out the car, then it is never going to survive a winter here. It’s a design fault, they tell us and perhaps you’ll just have to clean the fan every time you go out in the car. Well that is three times a day in the school week. We realize that even if we get it fixed we will most likely have to trade it in and get something else less mud-sensitive or the winter will be a nightmare.

So here we are stomping our feet and trying to make our case with the dealer and then the manufacturing company. Eventually they say they will send an inspector …next Thursday, in ten days time and it has already been at the garage for a week …(hair tearing and steam boiling from ears at this point)

So we don’t know what will happen next week – I’m keeping fingers crossed that they will cover the repair costs. But if they don’t, I’m going to tell everyone not to buy an Opel Zafira, unless they are city creatures who never go near a speck of mud in their lives, because the Zafira doesn’t like mud and is very expensive to fix. Anyone have Jeremy Clarkson’s contact details here? I’d like to register it as a crap car, even though it has a nifty way with extra folding seats in the back.

Luckily the numbers said that money would flow in nicely from May onwards!

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Rock Buns on a Hot Summer's Night

It’s hot. It’s dark. It’s nearly nine o’clock on a fierce summer’s evening and I’m in the kitchen, next to a hot stove, baking rock buns. Is this early onset dementia or just plain madness? No, it’s just yet another class bake sale.

With three kids in the school we now have a bake sale just about every other Friday and we’re supposed to send them in with some sort of marginally healthy baked goods or fruit or yoghurts to sell to the other children to raise funds for their class trips at the end of the year. Usually I get the children to bake something themselves, but today it was just too hot. After a schizophrenic February that couldn’t decide whether to be autumn or summer, March has decided to go all out to compensate, with a series of 40C days.

So instead of setting my son to work baking this afternoon, we staggered down to the pool to cool off and then couldn’t tear ourselves away. Late supper and then bed straightaway, meant that the baking was down to me.

Still there is something soothing about rubbing cool squares of butter into silky smooth flour in a gentle repetitive motion, when not even a breath of breeze enters through the gaping open doors to cool the house down after the heat of the day. Hot fingers seek out the fridge-cold chunks and it takes less time than usual to rub them in.

Rock buns are a very undemanding baking recipe. A little bit more or less butter or flour and they still turn out fine. I even completely left out the baking powder one time and they still tasted good. They don’t take too long to mix up and only 20 minutes to bake, so are a good solution to late night baking and their gentle spiced aroma is calming, with reminders of cool Christmasses that seem very far away.

I might have posted the recipe before, (I’m coming up to my three year blogaversary and my first ever post was about baking in the heat of a late March day, so I’m beginning to suffer from déjà vu here) but I’m sure it could bear a repeat if I have, so here it is.

Rock Buns Recipe

2 cups self-raising flour (or plain flour + 2 teaspoons baking powder)
pinch salt
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon mixed spice
125g / 4 oz butter
½ cup sugar
¾ cup mixed dried fruit / fruit cake mix
1 egg
2-3 tablespoons milk

175C / 350F

Sift together the flour, salt and spices. Cut the fridge- cold butter into dice and rub them into the flour, until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the mixed fruit and sugar. Beat the egg and milk together then stir it into the dry ingredients. Mix till it starts clumping together. Use a bit more milk if it is still too dry. Place in rough heaps on a greased baking tray. Bake for 15-20 minutes until light golden brown. Cool on a rack.


If you don’t have fruit cake mix you can just use any combination of raisins, sultanas and candied peel or try experimenting with some variations that include nuts if you like.

Please excuse the flash photo here. I know I won’t get around to it in the morning and the whole batch will be whisked off and devoured at school, so this is the only chance to record them!

They’re cooling on the counter now, to a sound track of whirring ceiling fans in the children’s room, frenetically revolving sprinklers on the lawn outside, passionately chirping crickets somewhere in the house and dogs panting heavily in an attempt to cool down. This is the kind of evening where a midnight swim wouldn't go amiss, but I think I'll probably just melt elegantly into the sofa with my book now, before the mozzies hound me to seek the solace of the mozzie net and ceiling fan in our bedroom.

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Pine Nut Gatherers

Pine-nuts have always seemed to be the stuff of delis to me, expensive sachets of delectable morsels that vanish in no time and add interest to salads and seed mixes. I had never even tasted them until I went to Italy as an adult and discovered them as an ingredient, used them in loads of invented salad recipes and tasted them on innumerable versions of torta della nonna in restaurants all over central Italy. Now in South Africa they have returned to my doorstep.


The girls, via some kids’ grapevine that totally passed me by, have discovered the rewards of pine nuts for themselves. They seem to know exactly which type of pine cones to look for and after every riding lesson come back with two or three trophies and then set about harvesting the pine nuts for themselves. I then set about sweeping the loose pine nuts and pine cone bits from the car seat.

In case you also grew up in a deprived country that didn't grow and harvest its own pine nuts, with the help of my children, I have put together an illustrated guide to the intricacies of harvesting them:

This is the right sort of pine cone!

Bash it firmly on the ground, upside down, to loosen the nuts inside.

They look like this, a hard shell encasing the delicious pine kernel.

Sophisticated tools are needed to extract the pine kernels.

For just twenty minutes hard work, you have your own deli sachet of fresh pinoli for free! Now I just need to work on the children to harvest some for me, so I can cook with them. I can see accusations of slave labour being heaped upon me very soon! These were all consumed within minutes for their snack time.

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