Food, glorious food!

Our family has a long and delightful history in food making and fine dining. My fondest memories of my grandmothers on both sides, revolves around the dining room table!

My granddad use to make brawn and would always give us slivers of it on toast. Sometimes we would heat it up to become runny, and then eat it as a gravy on toast. When my mother and her twin sister decided to get married, my Grandmother B catered the food for the whole wedding!

Grandma A used to get up early in the morning and when we woke up, there were pap and vleis with a scrumptious tomato based gravy on it for breakfast! (those were the days before cholesterol, yogurt & muesli...)

My mom was forever cooking. We got a fully cooked meal everyday of my life when we got back from school at lunch. I grew up in the eighties, so everything was set in a form, gelatin was discovered :-) 

My parents entertained regularly and there was always freshly baked cakes and rusks in the house. My dad taught me to appreciate tripe (around a baked sheep head, which was not eagerly tried out by my brother...) and krummel pap with biltong, butter and milk.

I will never forget the first time I stayed home alone to cook when I was still a school girl. My mom asked me to wash, spice and put the chicken in the oven as soon as it had defrosted, while she went out. It defrosted all right... but after staring at it for an hour or so, even attempting to touch it a few times, I called her in tears to come home to help me. I have never touched raw meat before! 

So needless to say, cooking didn't come naturally to me at first. My mom however was very patient and soon afterwards I got the hang of it.

Today I love entertaining. Not necessarily the conventional African food I grew up with, I like to think my repertoire has expanded substantially. My mother just laughs at all my inventions and concoctions when we invite them over, and my dad is too scared to try half the things, but my friends love it!