Quote: The Big Bang Theory

Season 2, Episode 2, The Codpiece Topology:

Howard Wolowitz: 'Renaissance faires aren't about historical accuracy. They're about taking chubby girls who work at Kinko's and lacing them up in corsets so tight their bosoms jump out and say: "Howdy!"'

Sheldon Cooper: 'Bosoms would not have said: "Howdy!" in the fifteenth century. If anything, they would have said: "Hazaa!"'

Moonish Superstitionliness :-)

While visiting my parents this evening, my grandfather (who is convalescing at their home after his stroke) mentioned that we should turn over some money in our pockets because it is a new moon. My husband has a special penchant for idioms so I thought I'd look it up for him.

As it turns out, it isn't an idiom but rather a superstition. As quoted in an article called Superstitions and the Moon - Myths and Superstitions Linked with the Moon by Carole Anne Somerville:

"Anyone seeking good fortune should bow to the new moon and turn over any silver coins in his pocket. The silver colour of the Moon is rumoured to have a direct affinity with the silver from which the coins were made. So if a person holds up a coin to a new moon and wishes for money, over the days ahead as the moon 'increases' in size, so too will their bank balance!

Being without money when seeing a new moon is thought to be unlucky but if a person has some coins and turns them over without taking them out of their pocket, they will have plenty money over the month ahead and the wish that's made while turning the coins will be fulfilled."

Cheers to that :-)

For you, for me, for us

"In the heart of every man,
wherever he is born,
whatever his education and tastes,
there is one small corner which is Italian,
the part which finds regimentation irksome,
the dangers of war frightening,
strict morality stifling,
that part which loves frivolous and entertaining art,
admires larger than life solitary heroes,
and dreams of impossible liberation
from the strictures of tidy existence."
~Luigi Barzini~

So here's to grabbing life by the kahunas, embodying la dolce vita, and tripping the light fantastic.
I love you (you know who you are).
xxx

I wantses it....my precious :-)

The Shire, New Zealand
http://www.hobbitontours.com/

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
~ J.R.R. Tolkien ~

Oh, I would that we could all reside happily
in our own little piece of the shire!

Musings on a past life

'A visual feast of food and words' is how I would describe Shauna James Ahern's tantalising blog Gluten-Free Girl.

Her post titled pickled figs posed the questions:
what has made you a better cook, and what do you like to eat with figs?

My answers tumbled forth as:

The Prue Leith College of Food and Wine (now the Prue Leith Chef's Academy) in Pretoria, South Africa made me a better cook...a trained chef in fact. It also made me agressive due to the time constraints inherent in food preparation, impatient due to the perfectionism demanded of the job and, eventually, loathsome of the thing that I had once loved the most to do. The celiac sealed the deal...get out unscathed before the profession took me down.

These days it is patience that has made me a much better cook. A willingness to see that there are many roads that lead to Rome, that all willing participants in the kitchen (mostly my precious husband) have their own style which can be best harnessed, and an inherent sense of adventure in trying out old favourites with new gluten-free ingredients.

With figs? Goat's chevin and free-range ostrich biltong, eaten with oven-roasted red peppers.

It's strange when a random question can evoke such strong memories and feelings of what now feels like a long-past chapter of my life. The way I see it?
A recipe is only as good as the quality of its ingredients. Same goes for a life.

Summer days are here again!

I love me some flowey, flowery, coolishly-cotton summer dresses! There's nothing like grabbing a dress out the cupboard that just "works", thereby avoiding having to co-ordinate outfits in any great detail.

I'm blessed to find myself working in a school with a casual-smart approach to dress code (rather than smart-casual or even, horrors, formal). Thanks, boss! :-)

Fresh Produce, Pick 'n Pay's clothing label, have a nifty range of summer dresses in-store at the moment. Pretty and reasonably priced, they're worth a gander if you have a well-stocked PnP in your area.

Summery dresses, plush new swimming towels, hibiscus in bloom, the smell of jasmine in the air and a warm breeze blowing inviting you to come outside and play - reminds me of the excitement of beach holidays along the South Coast as a child...and so does this poem. :-)

maggie and milly and molly and may

by e. e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

I spy with my little eye...

...something beginning with an, "Oops!" :-)


Teaching has its moments that bring a smile to your face. Today held just such a moment.

In preparation for their upcoming Cambridge exams, my AS-Biology students have been recapping their microscope skills (how to use eyepiece graticules and stage micrometers, etc.). Having just enough apparatus for each current student, I was suitably unimpressed when one of them shouted out:
"Ma'am, I can't see through the x40 objective".

As my stomach dropped, I walked over to assess the situation. Indeed, x4 and x10 were perfect, but x40 was entirely obscured. Hypothesis: probable cracked objective that could only be repaired next year.

In my second lab today, the same thing happened with a different student and a different microscope. Wondering just exactly when my students had become microscope cracking marauders, I strolled over to the offending object. It was then that something caught my eye.

The ceiling light glinted off the top of the eyepiece making a rather strange pattern. I removed the eyepiece and stared up at it. Lo and behold, the "crack" cascading across the view at x40 (thus, magnified to x400) was nothing more than eyelash streaks on the ocular lens, caused by anxious students pushing their eyes against the microscope. I rubbed it off quickly and quietly using the hem of my shirt and pronounced it to be "fixed".

I was let off the hook easy on that one :-)

Driving home, I realised that I often put my eye to every single microscope many times during one lab session to help out the students when they need it. Being a little bit obsessive when it comes to hygiene, I let out an internal, "Ewww", at the thought of all the skin grease my ocular orbits had come into contact with.

First stop on arriving home: basin full of water and good old Sunlight soap!

On faith and politics...

"The faith of a church or of a nation is an adequate faith only when it inspires and enables people to give of their time and energy to shape the various institutions -- social, economic, and political -- of the common life."

James Luther Adams

I encourage you to read a post by South African political scientist, Laurence Caromba, called "Is 'racial violence' worse than 'violence'?"

What does South Africa's current leadership and general status quo inspire in you?

Happy Birthday, Donna!

"Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time"

Jean Paul Richter

Donna is a lady of many talents. Aspiring writer, hobby-artist, small-business owner, wife, Womble-master, dear friend and general blessing - she is a charming person to know.

Many happy returns of your special day. I'm so glad you were born and that I have the pleasure of knowing you.

Restaurant Review: Fresh Earth Food Store

Since moving back to Pretoria from my beloved Cape Town, I have been silently mourning the lack of freely available gluten-free fare. In fact, most restaurants seem to think you are swearing at them when you enquire about the gluten-free status of menu items.

As fate would have it, I could've heard the heavens open up to hear old Will S. singing: "Sigh no more, lad(y), sigh no more...And be you blithe and bonny, converting all your sounds of woe into, 'Hey, nonny, nonny'", on the happy day I perchance stumbled across the website for Fresh Earth.

Situated in Komatie Road, Emmarentia; this health food store/bakery/eatery is a coeliac sufferer's dream come true. All suitable menu items are coded (gf) to offer peace of mind when ordering, and bakery items are labelled with a full list of ingredients when perusing the display cabinet.


The menu is diverse, offering breakfast options, salads, hot meals, burgers, sandwiches, smoothies, fresh juices, a variety of beverages and sweet treats. Temptation for trying a variety of menu items dictated that we conquer this corner of Emmarentia two Saturdays in a row. Below is the resulting photographic feast:

Frittata (gf)

Oven baked omelette filled with pesto roasted vegeatbles, saute tofu, goats feta and mozarella cheese.

This was delicately flavoured with a good balance of toppings. Vegetables were roasted to perfection, while the amount and varieties of cheeses used were not overpowering.

Avocado Pizza

Spinach, avocado and mozarella cheese (on a gluten-free base).

Base was crisp (a bit too crisp in places). Topping was, according to my hubby, "Simple yet tasty."

Pesto Pizza
Basil pesto, spinach, olives, Italian tofu, tomatoes, oregano and mozarella cheese (on a gluten-free base).

This topping managed to amalgamate a profusion of tastes, with none being singularly over-reaching. The basil pesto was sufficiently bouyant to make its presence known, while the Italian tofu was a little taste of vegan yum.

Tramazzini

Roast veggies, olives and mozarella cheese (served with a side salad) (non-gf)

While I can't vouch for the taste, my mom did take her leftover pita slices home with her, which is a testament of its own I suspect.

Chocolate Cake (gf)

Ah, the cake...my favourite part :-) Moist and dense without being overly sweet. The cocoa is what comes through here, which is exactly what a fan of 70%+ dark chocolate Lindt is wild about. Big thumbs up.

The Carrot Cake (gf) was also exceptionally good. We bought this as a take home version at R45 for a decent sized log cake. Ingredients are listed as: Rice flour; pineapple; carrots; oil; sugar; eggs; pecan nuts; cream cheese and spices. The topping adds a subdued lemon zesty zing, which balances out the sweetness of this extremely moist cake to perfection.

Since price and value-for-money are relative concepts, I can only offer that for two people (breakfast x 2, beverages x 3 rounds, cake x 2), the outing came to R240, while for three people (breakfast x 3, beverages x 2 rounds, cake x 3), the total was R340. Make of that what you will. A full menu with prices is available on the Fresh Earth website.

Having graduated from The Prue Leith College of Food and Wine in 2001 (now known as Prue Leith Chefs Academy), excellence in service was a mainstay in my training. As such, the make or break point of most restaurant outings for me is the service. Fresh Earth strikes a good balance here - friendly waitrons (fast, efficient, knowledgeable about their product, and attentive without being overly so...thank you Michael and Tryphina), impeccably polite manager (kudos to you, David) and smiling cashier (shine on, Rebecca!)

As with any production, the stage plays a part in making a lasting impression. The outdoor setting is lovely, with wooden tables under an awning, flanked by wheat grass and a red tractor (which seems to give most kids something to happily clamber about on, while having the odd side-effect of making my IT-ish husband want to refurbish old VW combis). The interior shop is well-stocked and lends itself to the element of 'browsiness', which I like.



In an otherwise stellar review, I have only two minor gripes. One, the bathroom arrangements are cramped, noisy due to the extractor fan, malodorous due to the trash cans and somewhat lacking in privacy should someone look out of their windows in the surrounding block of flats. Two, the indoor seating area. This space is cramped and lacks a good supply of fresh air, which isn't helped by the patroness using this area as a space for a rather loud Saturday morning business meeting at the adjoining table. That's it, end of complaints.

In summary, was the food good? Yes. Was the service good? Yes. Was the setting good? Mostly - outside is lovely. Would I go there again? A resounding, yes!

I offer up a hale and hearty high five to this quirky little gem :-)