after 31 years of almost every woman in my life trying to convince me to learn how to cook, i've decided, of my own accord, to learn. and by 'learn' i mean 'experiment' with cooking ingredients.
since arriving in south africa the majority of my evening meals have consisted of the following:
-ordering pizza, salads and chicken burgers from "pizza chicken/perfect",
-toast with chicken liver paté,
-various cheeses,
-sardines and clams, and
-caramel rice crispies
you might say it's exactly how i would have eaten in the states if it hadn't been for trader joe's and costco. the one new addition being a discovered fondness for chicken liver paté in all its variety (peri-peri, brandy, and bacon).
the "all in one" cookbook, a 30th or 31st birthday present from my mother, has been staring at me accusingly for the past several months (or years) and the book's slant on "quick and easy" has added to the guilt i feel every time i throw two slices into the toaster and pour myself a glass of fine port wine.
so about a month ago i found a recipe i liked, made a list and went to pick n' pay to buy the ingredients. i think it was supposed to be a rice and beef stew. several hours later my kitchen looked like a murder scene (beef fat and bones everywhere) mixed with a wedding scene (rice everywhere). it shouldn't surprise anyone that i managed to burn both pots of stew resulting in a week's worth of slop that tasted like cigarette butts. it also shouldn't surprise anyone that i put it all in tupperware containers and proceeded to eat all of it over the next ten days.
i learned that me cooking on my little toaster hot plates is a handicap akin to a legless man playing soccer blindfolded.
the lesson learned from the burnt food was that i should buy a slow-cooker. so i did and i set out to make the same beef stew sans the smoke and ash marinade. this time the rice soaked up all the juices and expanded to point where it lifted the lid off the cooker by a quarter of an inch (~8mm). it was a sloppy mess of gooey beefy mess. all the broth was in the rice. it took me another 10 days or so to polish this mess off...
when i ran to work with it, it was so dense that my arm got tired and i had to constantly switch the hand i was using to carry it.
i won't even tell you about the chicken soup except that it would not go away...
then one night in an unexpected about face with the trusty slow-cooker i decided that i should learn to cook indian food. the only hard part about the spices in this country is navigating the massive selection everywhere you go. paul and kate saw the spice stores in durban. it's like a candy store but with baskets overfilled with every shade of spice from bright yellow to bright red.
indian food and i turned out to be lucky match. in fact, the ladies at work flat out refused to believe that i'd made the curry i had with me. i lied and said that i'd gone online and googled "how to cook potatoes so's they're really soft". truth is a coworker gave me a quick how-to and i just paid very very close attention and then applied what i learned to my chicken curry. now i just need to learn how to eat it properly; without silverware.
the only problem i'm now faced with is that all the myriad spices, leaves, sticks etc. are taking up a lot of space in my tiny little flat and its tiny little kitchen. this leads into my next entry: i'm moving.
(Anthony's Song)when my old company, BCP, got bought by SSI earlier this year it was announced that there was gonna be some rearrangement of desks in the immediate future and in the long-term a new office block was going to be built in the newly established victoria country club (the vcc). naturally this new location is in a more upscale neighborhood (convenient for the more upscale directors who've had long commutes to get to work at our offices in town or in mkondeni) and this would translate into one hell of a morning run from my present residence.
after another run with drew a few weeks ago (this time the capital climb, a 15k run that is 7km of pure straight uphill followed by a knee-crushing 7km of downhill flailing) he mentioned that his parents' rental unit in athlone within walking distance of our new offices might be opening up soon.
i went and checked it out. it has a bigger kitchen, better parking, it's better suited for guests, and i can hang out with drew's parents and learn lots of embarrassing stories about him.
i'll be moving in the first week of october. come visit.
"love your friends and miss them when they go"that's a line from a jonathan coulton song "a talk with george". when i first heard it i nonchalantly equated its message to shane macgowan's "we watched our friends grow up together / and watched them as they fell / some of them fell into heaven / some of them fell into hell" but after paul's visit i realized it's not about life and death, it's just about life and change.
paul's eye is firmly set on the east coast and the thought of him leaving the santa cruz area gave me a heavy heart. far more heavy than i felt to take a job in africa. i realized his leaving is more symbolic than anything else. he's actually moving two timezones closer to me. but now california isn't the one-stop-shop for friends anymore.
so this is me saying to everyone out there that i miss all of you more than i've been able to express. more than i will be able to express. i always knew what i'd be leaving behind and maybe it didn't seem like i valued it enough seeing as i had no idea what i was trading it all in for.
as a one-two punch i then found it tough to say goodbye to paul and kate as they left to board their plane back home. us guys aren't typically blessed with both the ability and courage to really say a heartfelt goodbye and it's never more of a shame than at an airport.
despite the content of the last three paragraphs, paul and kate's visit in no way resembled a hallmark channel estrogenerational special (dibs on coining that term). it was the usual madness that anyone that knows paul and i would expect. kate was a real sport to be come along on a reunion tour for two friends that have been tight friends for well over a decade.
some highlights of the trip include:
paul meeting some giant turtles
trying to act brave in front of rhinos in cape vidal (st. lucia)
kate catching a firefly
giraffes, elephants etc at hluhluwe
acting stupid in front of a hippo at mlilwane
buying, cutting and overeating sugar cane
kate's ambien (see pictures for further detail)
please, if you're planning on coming out to visit me someday, check out the pictures i've put online. they were taken by all three of us and the best of them are up with the necessary captions.
Feeling SAACE
The south african association of consulting engineers (SAACE) hosts an annual relay race event in pretoria (just outside joburg) every year. last year and this year, the event is hosted by none other than SSI. so it's an opportunity for us to show all of our competitors our ability to host a fun event but also try to show them up with our physical running and biking prowess.
it's not uncommon for ssi to have a little tent at an event like this where there's a braai and beer for all those that participate and come out to support. but this year, because SSI were the hosts, we went sick with it. and to increase SSI's presence, pmb got to fly out our eight fastest runners to form a pmb rep. team. in the end we just sent the only five people in pmb who thought they could run 4km and a cape towner who happened to be in pretoria for work. she and our comrade's runner, dave, ran two legs each.
last year ssi pmb was the fastest ssi team and finished tenth out of several dozen teams. this year we were still the fastest ssi team but finished 20th overall.
for those of you wondering how 'fast' i ran my 4km. the answer is 17:45. that's a 7.25 minute mile. the time i ran should clearly reflect the fun we all had as a team... leslie (our team's fit "senior" runner) and i went to sleep with more than our share of wine and beer as caloric. today we discussed the idea of not drinking before a run and laughed it off as 'not worth it'. i argue that my lap time was positively influenced by my drive to get back to my beer before it got too warm.
Feeling Sassyspeaking of running, i'm currently hobbled with an ankle injury.
my run to work usually sees a handful of coworkers driving past and hooting. that's usually about the highlight of my run (not counting me chuckling to "the areas of my expertise" by john hodgeman {with musical accompaniment by jonathan coulton}). but a week ago on the run in who should be standing on the side of the road waiting for her ride but the young blond temp, noelene, who's been brought in to help with the archiving ahead of the big move to vcc. i slowed down to offer her a (piggy-back) ride to work but she declined. her loss. probably would've been tough making it up the two main hills with her anyway. she and her ride passed me just as i was getting to the gate.
however, today i saw her again waiting and thought i would pass her and get to work before she and her ride could pass me. i was carrying my curry with me and when i handed it to her she instinctively (and foolishly) stuck out her hands and confused took it from me. with my hands free i took off down the hill at a quickened pace (mostly to impress noelene) and about 50 meters later turned my ankle so hard that i felt it in my armpit. you know that pain when you can't stand on it and it hurts just as much to lift it? well, i waited until my adrenaline kicked in (pun intended) and ran the rest of the way to work trying to ignore the weird dull thudding pain. luckily the hobo names 100-200 and 500-600 served a strong distraction from the pain.
#143 robert fits-in-a-case
#172 microfiche roy the sidescroller
#587 don domasino deshithebed
Kicking a good habitthe epl (english premier league) and psl (south africa's premier soccer league) have started anew. on saturday i stopped into the city royal hotel to watch liverpool walk all over defending champions manchester united. in a similar vein, pietermaritzburg's local team (just returned from relegation) gave the most popular team in the psl (the same kaiser chiefs that paul and kate and i watched take on manchester united at king's park stadium last monght) with a convincing 3-2 whomping.
i've heard that with pmb united's promotion they've gone out and bought an american goalkeeper and he started off his time here by blocking a p.k. so now south africa has two americans on the big stage, the second being the evening weatherman for the e-channel news.
the last thought on fifa will be this: some months ago when they televised the 2010 qualifying draw in durban there was nervous chuckling when south korea was drawn into the same group as north korea. the group also has saudi arabia, iran and the UAE which has prompted me to inappropriately name this 'asia group 2' as the first 'group of death'.
