"Eh" is a two letter word..

I don't get it. You are walking down the road, people all around are shouting: "Watch out for the snake!" You carry on walking. More shouts: "Watch out for the snake!", you hear them but because the sun is shining and its a beautiful day, you refuse to look down. After all, you are not going to let these idiots spoil your walk on this glorious day. A few steps later, sure as Bob is your Uncle and not your first cousin, you are a pair of bite marks richer. You fall down in agony, people rush to your aid and as they put you onto the stretcher and into the ambulance, the onlookers hear you whisper: "Why did nobody warn me?". That is what I do not get.

You are probably wondering what this has got to do with Saturday evening. Well, to tell you the truth, not much. It was part of the conversation we had, but as the story that was told is as old as the hills and the person involved refuses to listen to warnings about snakes, potholes or any other obstacles, we labelled it as "boring" and continued to much on our quesidillas.

It was a bit of an impromptu Fat Saturday. We met some friends in Kingston and that lead to coffee, coffee led to a play date and a play date led to them cooking us supper in our own home. I must admit, there is NOTHING better than being entertained in your own home. For the first time ever, I could sit back and relax, have a conversation and the food was placed in front of me. I did not even have to cook it, prepare it or even cut it myself. Absolute heaven! Thanks guys, it was an absolute treat. I do not know the precise recipe they used, but found this version on the Jamie website: Quesadillas with Guacamole. What wonderful guests! They bring their own food, cook their own food, serve you a meal and feed you chocolate afterwards. Not any chocolate, no, Lind Sea Salt Chocolate. Jip, Salt and chocolate, my perfect snack. I am not a fan of too sweet things, so this chocolate is just perfect! Just as the sweet gets too much, the salt kicks in. Heaven for this salt junkie!

SO back to the snake thingie. It is weird isn't it? I once heard a lecture where the guy started off by saying: "The only thing we learn from History, is that we learn nothing from History." How true. Why can't we listen to people who have had the same experiences and have seen how badly things can turn out and save ourselves the trouble? Why do we have to look the other way and think that we are so wonderful and that we are so unique that our stories are going to turn out differently? When will we realise that we are not the exception, but the rule?

I blame the media, I blame this whole positive thinking ideology that is all around us. We are being trained NOT to ask questions, NOT to doubt anything. Just believe everything you are told, because if we don't, you are being negative or you are the prophets of doom.In the olden days these guys were stoned to death, nowadays, they fire them or shun them from the church gatherings. I saw a very interesting clip on YouTube lately by journalist, author and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich. In the clip she explores the darker side of positive thinking. It is called Smile or Die. I must say, I think it is worth the watch, although it mostly talks about the economy, I think it is a general problem in society. I probably make so many people mad by being like this and frankly I do not understand why I am like this myself. It is much easier to look the other way and to pretend that everything is just fine.

We ended the evening on Saturday with a game of scrabble. A beautiful two letter word was used by Stefan to gracefully win the game: "Eh". I looked it up in the dictionary and read the following definition:

eh  (eɪ)
— interj


an exclamation used to express questioning surprise or to seek the repetition or confirmation of a statement or question: Eh? What did you say?

I will use this word liberally in my next conversation with the party referred to in above "boring" conversation. Maybe if I express my questioning surprise or seek confirmation of the statements made by said party, I will gain a little more understanding as to why the warnings against the snake in the road are so flippantly being ignored.

Until next week...

Lets leave it to the Professionals..

What an enormous FLOP! That is the only way I dare describe my pathetic attempt at making Peking Duck. It was so bad, Stefan refused to eat it and I refuse to publish any of the horrific photos. Jip, it was so horrid, it ended up very nicely in the bin. There is no one to blame but me. I was too lazy or to tired or maybe a combination of both to carefully read through the whole recipe beforehand and ended up running out of time. I did not let it stand long enough, cook long enough or did anything else the recipe told me enough to make it vaguely taste like anything yo may find in the shop windows in China town. Nope, I have decided, this mother does not have the time to reattempt this recipe, she will leave it to the professionals.

I should have known I was in trouble when I looked up how to de-feather a duck on Google. It involved paraffin and wax and something else. Not any substances this city girl just has lying around in her cupboard. This meant that I spent hours trying to get rid of the feathers on the bird..with tweezers! I think that already put me off. I am all for this farmers market thing, but next time I am going to plead with the dear man to please clean his duck properly, as I do not feel like spending another second of my life with a dead bird and a pair of tweezers.

I had to somehow salvage the evening, I mean, it was ruined. No food, unhappy husband and unhappy mommy. So all I could think of was to make something with noodles as that was kind of on the menu before and I had bought some stuff in case the duck did not work. I guess I had a feeling. Anyway, I Pad Thai-ed it. It was OK, but not at all what I felt like eating. What a miserable end to a very tiring week. This week I will NOT make the mistake again. I feel that I should take on something simpler. Something that requires WAY less time and WAY less effort. I've forgotten what sleep deprivation feels like. Ella has two teeth to show for it and us, a miserable dinner. I am trying desperately not to think of the fact that she still has a whole mouth full of teeth to go. I will make up for it this week, I promise Stefan, I promise! Otherwise, we will have to call in the professionals... of the Chinese Take Away kind!

Acceptance

I have had a hard time trying to write today's blog. There are so many things happening. There are so many thoughts racing through my head that I am struggling to quiet them all down enough to write something that is not nonsensical gibberish.

I have had to make a big decision today. I don't want to get into too much detail, but it involves acceptance. When I was 12 years old, my dad took me to school in his white Builders "bakkie" (truck) wearing the little hat he always wears. As it was raining, he lovingly drove into the school yard instead of dropping me off outside as usual. I was so embarrassed! Here I was, Term Leader of the School, getting out of a dirty "bakkie". I spent the rest of the day trying to rid myself of this social catastrophe. Later that night as I lay in bed I replayed the moment over and over in my head and I got all stressed out. It was then when I decided that this was ridiculous. I lay there and made a decision about my dad: I was not going to be embarrassed about him, his bakkie or his hat ever again. He was my dad and I loved him and as far as I could see I did not do too badly in the father-lottery, so I might as well get used to him. He wasn't going to change and thinking back now, I am glad he didn't. I made the same decision about my mother a few days later. I was finally free! Free from any embarrassment.  Free to accept them exactly as they were (and are).I did not have to spend any more energy worrying about what my father was going to wear when picking me up at the next party or what my mother was going to say in front of my friends. It was just them and I could accept them for who they were. I was truly and utterly anxiety free.

What I realised today is that I made that decision years ago about only two members of my family. For the life of me cannot explain why I did not make it for all of them. I could have spared myself a lot of pain, tears and fights if I applied this to all the relationships I have with all the members of my family. So today, I decided to accept. I will accept them for who they are, for what they are, with all their flaws, all their quirks, all their dramas. I cannot change them and I am going to stop trying. It is time to set them free.

We changed our Fat Saturday to Fat Sunday again this week. Partly because we had guests for lunch and partly because our little baby girl has been really sick. She kept us up all night Friday and by Saturday evening I was too exhausted to cook. This will also explain, but not excuse my next confession: we made the same recipe AGAIN! I did not have time to search for anything new. We were going to Weber some ducks, but the weather did not permit us, so we decided to go for a tried and tested favourite. After all, that is why we are doing this; to learn to impress guests! You can never go wrong with Jamie's paella, so I took the easy way out and prepared it again. It was, a winner, yet again.

Beautiful Paella

I did manage to make something new for dessert though. Porfiteroles with Chantilly Cream and Dark Chocolate sauce. My sister is getting married soon. When we were children this was her favourite dessert I thought of her with every bite. I hope her day is going to be as sweet as these Porfiteroles were and totally, and utterly, anxiety free.

Golden Lovelies

Filled with Cream

Drizzled in Chocolate

Yummy!

Until next week...