Sunday, September 22, 2013

World Peace, Bru

Our peace windmills. Photos & styling by George Dawson

 

I would love to say that our new routine has now kicked in and everything is running smoothly: Up at 6am. Early morning run. Schooling by 8:30am. Beautific little boys, eager to learn their spelling. Healthy lunch at Noon. Piano practice everyday.

We can all dream.

The fact that I'm hurriedly doing my blog posting on a Sunday morning (whilst listening to some awesome music - John Newman, Klangarussell, Daft Punk, Rudimentals) and have not done any other work on it as I'd previously intended to -  should give one some indication that as per usual everything is taking a little longer than it should do.

Plus it's been brain-numbingly, life-sappingly hot and humid. It's bang in the middle of our summer although we only have a few weeks of this and then it cools down a degree or two.

Anyhow I promise not to turn this into a homeschooling blog - they are almost without exception  ghastly but we did have quite a good week: Bear Grylls for geograghy and spelling (I learnt a new word: paracord) and then International Peace Day on Friday/Saturday - where we did a whole lot of stuff including poetry, making windmills and baking a love cake (you can see I'm avoiding maths).

Luckily I'm friends with quite a few teachers who are incredibly generous with sharing resources and experience (much needed) and I was pointed to the TES UK website, which I literally have open all day everyday, as it guides us through the UK National Curriculum. It has the most amazing links  which constantly sparks us in new directions, but I didn't think that we would find one of the best cakes known to mankind on it, which is what we did on Friday.

Alfred Prasard, exec chef at Tamarind, London joined forces with Peace One Day and Ocado (online Waitrose. Fabulous) and made this Sri Lankan delicacy,  a legacy from the Portuguese rule in Ceylon. It is heart-breakingly gorgeous and I can only encourage you to bake it. I'd love to say that we made it in the bakery and then handed it out, whilst showering rose petals and bestowing world peace on everyone, but it didn't get any further than our kitchen - until this blog, that is. Next year.

Pic from Marie Claire


Love Cake for World Peace Day
Ingredients:
150 g unsalted butter
350 g caster sugar
6 medium eggs
3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons rose water
Grated zest of 1 orange
Grated zest 1 lemon
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
200g pistachio nuts, chopped coarsely [optional]
250 g coarse semolina
50 g of glacĂ© cherries [can be replaced with wine gums of jelly babies]
25 g of mixed peel
25 g of crystallized stem ginger
Icing sugar to dust

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 150˚C/300˚F and line a 25 x 30 cm (10 x 12 in) cake tin with baking paper.
2. Dice 150g of unsalted butter and leave in a warm place to soften.
3. Once soft, cream the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.
4. Add in the eggs, one at a time and beat well.
5. Add honey, rose water, zest, nutmeg, cardamom and cinnamon. Use a spatula to gently fold through
6. Next fold through the nuts, semolina, glacĂ© cherries, mixed peel and crystallized ginger until combined. Do not over mix.
7. Turn into prepared tin and bake in the oven for 1 hour or until pale golden on top. The cake comes out best in a slow-cook process and should ideally feel chewy on top and moist in the middle.
8. Allow the cake to cool in the tin for about 20 minutes.
9. Turn out of the tin, and when completely cool dust with icing sugar.


Sunday, September 15, 2013

Floating World

Tyler and I snorkeled today for hours. The water is very warm at the moment (like about 28 C) and we swam through clouds of sparkling silver fish and watched little baby moray eels poking their heads out and fishies nibbling on the coral. 

I absolutely love the feeling of being suspended in water and entering into the magical,  Neptuney world of under the sea.  We met in the Maldives and our early courting was done whilst diving, with Tyler swimming ahead in his freedive fins which I thought deeply sexy and still do (guess what he got for his birthday) pointing out turtles and stonefish to me. Beats a disco anyday.

Luckily the children also share our passion for the sea and all swim and snorkel like little otters. When we arrived 3 years ago now, we had our 5 suitcases and our snorkeling clobber, which the kids had only really used in the swimming pool before. I think we were in the water within about 2 hours of arriving.  James is shortly to join us scuba diving, as his 12th birthday present was the PADI Open Water course and we are so looking forward to sharing this with him. 

It's when I remember things like this that I realize that we were probably destined to live in this place.

It really is a floating world.











Friday, September 13, 2013

Home + School

Thank goodness for TED-Ed.

Well this has been a rather different kind of week: Homeschooling. Something I had only had a vague notion of up until about 5 days ago, had done very little preparation for and certainly had no recognizable talent for.

First off I discovered that I couldn't literally think straight in our house. It's such a mess (yes, you Saffa Mama's - hard to imagine, I know) that I needed to tame that beast before I could think about the ABC's. So Week 1 of homeschooling was actually spent doing housework. We sorted out washing and boys cupboards and toy boxes and stuff like that, and the noble Kamla waged war with the Fabulosa and a mop and we now have something resembling a normal home. I'm sure the boys learnt something in all of that.

So this week has actually been Week 2.  And it's been a pretty steep curve, to put it mildly. "Just give me the syllabus" said my husband on Monday evening, as he is meant to take the controls for a bit on Tuesday. "Well we have the National Curriculum" says I, pointing to a very large file "but that only tells you what we need to achieve, and not really how to do it". There was rather long silence after that, with a bit of muttering too. Anyway he was too tired to teach so I think the kids just coloured in pictures or something on Tuesday. Watched TED, probably. Thank goodness for TED.

The text books have been duly ordered from England and are now awaited with much anticipation (by me mainly). In the meantime it's a bit all over the place. Some days have been quite structured and we've done maths and spelling and gripping stuff like that (I can't remember any grammar and I sit with my calculator) but most days it's all been a bit whimsy. We've done airplanes and jet engines since we'd just spent so much time in them (and watched a brilliant BBC film on the making of the A330). We also learnt all about New York and urban hierarchies and spheres of influence (how far would you travel to go to Peebles Hospital?) and today we did Superstitions because it was Friday 13th.

So I've learnt quite a bit this past week, although I'm not so sure about the kids. They dug out all their old schoolbooks today, for reassurance I think and to gently remind me that there is more to school than just the Discovery Science Channel.

What I've really learnt though, is how happy I am at home. Tyler has quietly given me the space just to pootle around here in Carrot Bay in our very beautiful house, re-educating myself in becoming a mensch again (oh yes, we also learnt about Rosh Hashanah as well).

This may make a sane (and educated) person of me yet. I have nothing but optimism about it all, despite not remembering what a syntax is, or what 9 X 12 is.



Saturday, September 7, 2013

We are One Years Old!

 

On Thursday, the bakery had its first birthday.

The past year has felt like about ten years if the truth be told and has been harder than we could ever have imagined in our worst nightmares, so I am grateful that not only have we survived, but that we are thriving. The conventional wisdom of business start-ups is that it takes three years before you  begin to fly - so I say hallelujah to that and hopefully the next two years will be slightly less eventful than this past one and just as productive!

Although Tyler and I constantly berate ourselves that we havn't implemented half the things we wanted too yet, we have come a long way from the few loaves of bread we started out with and not much else.

We have lots and lots of ideas and plans that we want to run with and now that we have begun wholesaling we can soon start looking at expanding in to bigger premises and our range.

Despite the sheer blood, sweat and tears that it has taken to get going - I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. We're the masters of our own destiny with a wonderfully well-supported business that the local community have absolutely taken  into their homes and hearts.  We could not ask for much more than that.

Food for the soul: Babylonstoren

The Glass House (photo by Tazzer)
By far my greatest inspiration in South Africa was a visit to the wine farm Babylonstoren in Franschoek. It has everything that I love: Gardens, old buildings, bakery, good food, wine, refreshing style and a beautiful setting.

It is the life's work of Koos Bekker and Karen Roos, and is to wine farms what chic bush lodges like Singita and Londilozi are to safari style.

The Garden: Photo by Babylonstoren

We went on a garden tour of the several acres of organic kitchen gardens and it is amazing to see what has been achieved in just 4 years. I'm most encouraged to try a few herbs here again on the island, sorely needed for the bakery's sandwiches and new salad range.

 
 
The farm has two restaurants - The Greenhouse for light lunches - where we ate and Babel - a proper restaurant where I chatted to the chef and had a look at the menu - all seasonal and using local produce and from the garden. 'Babel' has had mixed reviews and is apparently hard to get into, but we'll certainly try the next time we're in Cape Town, for the visual feast alone!
 
 
Beautifully presented using the organic produce from the garden & charcuterie
 
 


 
If this isn't enough the farm also has a stunning bakery, a charcuterie, a wine shop (with the wine it makes on the farm) a deli with delicious things like olive oils and Weck jars and a cheesery - with lots of gorgeous local cheeses (Dalesford is next door).
 

 
 
 



Last photos by Tazzer. Blurry ones are mine


We visited in Winter, so we asked our garden guide which was the best time for the garden and he said this month, September, as it is spectacular in Spring with all the fruit blossoms and the flowering indigenous clivias - see below.
 
Clivias (photo by Babylonstoren)
 
 Babylonstoren really is food for the soul in every way and I've brought back a lot of fresh ideas to use in the bakery. It really is worth a visit the next time you are in Cape Town or a virtual one online.
 
 
 



Monday, September 2, 2013

Summer/Winter

 

 
 

We've had an epic Summer/Winter as the boys and I travelled to South Africa for 6 weeks to visit family and friends. Travelling with three boys is certainly one of life's challenges and it is nothing short of a miracle that we didn't leave any behind, only scraped one rental car, didn't lose anything of irreplaceable value and may still have a few friends left in South Africa. I'm quite keen however not to see another suitcase for a few months nor face a US Border post for a while.

It is safe to say we were pretty much on our knees when we left the island after a brutal few months of living on the edge, albeit of the tropical island variety. A close friend immediately noticed how pinched the children's faces were which was an astute observation as the kids had also been through hell, just as much as Tyler and I had.

We got the trip off to an emotional start on our first night back at the boys former school, The Ridge, to watch the annual school production. It was probably the very last thing I felt like doing after a long Transatlantic flight, but we were overwhelmed by seeing old friends again, the sheer exuberance and quality of the production and the wonderful continuity of old things remaining the same. The island quickly felt a very long way away.

I was flooded with a weird mixture of remorse (for taking the boys away from something which they had loved) and anxiety (that we had sacrificed something material for something intangible) but then was also strangely re-assured that we were on the right track. I was constantly asked if we were now "ecstatic" since we were living our dreams, to which my general reply was that we were so exhausted that we didn't give it much thought but that we never had to second-guess ourselves: Trading suburbia for a tropical island will always seem romantic and dashing despite the actually reality that most of the time it isn't, so c'est la vie.

There is a creative energy about South Africa from which I draw much of my own. Cafes and restaurants are buzzy with sharply-attired beautiful young things of all hues, the food is good and the wine is always delicious. We had some excellent meals and I stocked up with all kinds of delicious ideas for our bakery as well as spices, recipe books and enough inspiration to keep me going for at least another twelve months.

The boys blossomed with the 24/7 attention of grandparents, cousins, aunties, great aunties & uncles, old friends, new friends and doting nannies. They rode ostriches and horses, went up cable cars, flew kites, climbed mountains, had sleepovers, were spoilt by godparents, ate calamari & chips at every opportunity and were roundly entertained like princes.

Our last week was spent mainly in the Midlands where we visited schools and had a good look around - all of which was satisfactory. The major upshot of our trip therefore is that the boys will be returning to SA at the end of 2014 to boarding school, as we feel that boys need playing fields and science labs and inter-house swimming galas and things like that. Both Clifton Notties and Michaelhouse have these things in abundance. We will then have to get used to possibly one of the longest commutes on the planet, but we do believe we may have just found the best of both worlds. The two cultures are strangely similar and it will be up to us to parlay the two and knit things together.

I've come back re-energized and re-inspired and the past year feels squarely behind us. I'm feeling strong about the future again and our place within in it, so the 6 weeks clearly worked its magic. Time always heals, it is true.