ARE RESTAURANTS DELIVERING?

I am a serious foodie.  Burning up calories at the gym, swimming and taking long walks is what I do so I can go and eat in places that make good food.  These eateries don’t always add up though, so I’m going to put it out to other serious foodies what to expect at some of our Cape Town restaurants, in the hopes that they will jack up their systems – because we’d like to go back there once they’ve cleaned up their act!

A friend recommended I go to Manna Epicure, a relatively old fave which has gone from a bustling lunch time eatery to an evening dining experience, with a new owner and chef to boot.  Now, although the food was really good – the remaining pieces of the experience did not come together.  Our waiter, although efficient, was arrogant.  He delivered his service as though we owed him something.  Please, we don’t want waiters bringing their personal agendas to our table, besides they ‘shoot themselves in the foot’ by earning a mere 10% tip instead of a nice 20%+ tip.  And then…there was the food, which we had to find on our plate.  It was rather entertaining to watch two hungry American couples sit down at an adjoining table, order what they thought would be steaks the size of Texas actually evolve into steaks the size of a small village in comparison.  Were this my restaurant, I would be embarrassed to serve up such meager portions.  These steaks weren’t cheap either!  We won’t be back until they can at least double up on this act.

We decided to go and trend with the rest of Cape Town at Shimmy in the Waterfront.  The last time I ate there, I had a mean steak that was served up with fresh veg and a nice smile from the waiter.  This time I ordered the Baby Cob that was served with a delicious sauce and about a gazillion bones.  I managed to get halfway through before I called our waitress to remove my plate with rows and rows of bones that I had to painstakingly remove before eating.  There was quite a long wait before the manageress decided to offer me another meal.  By this time I had lost most of my appetite, so ordered the Calamari Starter, which was tough.  My husband said that it wasn’t worth the fuss when we received the bill charging us a 50% discount on the Cob and the full price of the Calamari.  We just simply won’t be back, leaving this place, which has lost it’s ‘Shimminess’ (it’s looking a tad tired), to other non the wiser future patrons.

Restaurants in Cape Town are doing big business.  Locals, people from up country and our growing tourist trade are making sure that seats are continuously filled, especially this time of year.  My husband and I have considered making a string of advanced bookings at our regular spots so we are not disappointed over the festive season.  Then again, we wonder if we shouldn’t just cook at home, given the possibility of under par service, ‘production line food’ being whisked out of hot kitchens fast enough to keep up with the demand etc – who knows what’s being really served up on your plate in these extremely busy times?  At home, you know what you’re getting…and we get to decide portion size too.

I think I speak for most when I suggest the following do’s and dont’s in restaurants:

Waiters, be nice, make eye contact and smile when serving your patrons – in other words, earn your tip.  Go the extra mile in getting what your patrons ask for e.g. water with lemon, no ice. (90% of the time, I get the ice).  Let your table know that you haven’t forgotten about them when you are suddenly very busy. If your patrons are waving their arms in the air trying to get another waiter’s attention, then you know you’re not stepping up to the plate (pardon the pun).  And to all the owners out there – if the food that is being served is not what it’s supposed to be, own up, say something that will bring hope to the patron (I’ve lost count of owners/managers who stare blankly back at you when I politely mention that there are too many bones in the fish for it to be edible, the steak is under/over cooked etc.).

In a nutshell, do whatever it takes to ensure that your patron wants to return to your establishment and spend their hard earned money on food that is fresh, well plated up and served with a smile.  Thank you!

Good places to eat that are consistently consistent…Cafe Paradiso (opposite Manna Epicure where you can get better food, double the portions at less the price), Illeone where Daniel the owner and chef serves up splendid fare each time without fail and even comes to greet you at your table, Anatoli’s – we’ve been going there for years and the food stays amazing, Kitima in Hout Bay is a gem for Asian food as is Saigon in Kloof Street.  Speaking of Kloof Street, Kloof House is pretty amazing too, with a great menu, great vibe, stunning decor from the library to the bar to the al fresco area.  Last but not least is my personal favourite in fine dining, The Green House in Constantia Hohenhort Hotel which I think is fabulously fab which in my opinion far outweighs The Test Kitchen which received 20th place in the world of best restaurants – but go figure for yourselves!

PILLS CAN MAKE YOU SICK SICK SICK

Granted, some of us need medication for various illnesses – always first consult your doctor before going onto or going off prescription medication – but the rest of us are taking unnecessary medication that is actually making us sicker than when we started.  Consider *Mary-Anne’s story of going from a pill popper to a pill free life.

Mary-Anne began to experience panic attacks some 5 years ago due to various relatively ‘small’ traumatic events which had led up to then.  Her doctor prescribed an anti-depressant which worked very well in removing the horrible anxiety that she was experiencing daily, not to mention the debilitating panic attacks that would find her almost frozen behind the steering wheel of the car she was driving or in front of her shopping trolley in the supermarket.  On a few occasions, she had to call her husband to come and ‘rescue’ her.

Fast Forward about 5 years and this is what Mary-Anne experienced without even realising it at the time but managed to figure it all out during a visit to a Psychiatrist after a melt down:  First year of taking the anti-depressant : absolute bliss – living without anxiety and attacks.

Around the Second year of continued use of the anti-depressant, Mary-Anne started to pick up ‘mystery’ weight. She was active and ate very healthily.

By year Three she gained yet more weight and by this time had ‘upped’ her exercise regime and ate even less in a bid to lose the stubborn weight.  Added to this was the sudden onset of insomnia, so her Doctor prescribed tranquilisers to help her sleep.  She also requested the odd sleeping pill from time to time, when the tranquilisers didn’t work.

Between year Four and Five, Mary-Anne had a breakdown and almost landed in a clinic, were it not for the support of her husband and Psychologist.  An intense history was  taken of Mary-Anne’s past 5 years regarding her issues relating to her medications.  It was discovered that 10 kilos of weight had slowly crept up on her due to the side-effects of her medication.  Her Psychiatrist recommended that she wean herself off all the medications, which she has done and has already lost 5 of the 10 kilograms that she ‘mysteriously’ picked up.

Mary-Anne wanted to know how she would cope without her medication in light of her anxiety which had by now been ‘pushed’ into submission.  N-Acetyl-Cysteine was recommended, which in a nutshell is a purely natural remedy made up of very intense herbs and which pretty much facilitates a feeling of extreme well-being – almost like a ‘feel-good drug’. This is what Mary-Anne has to say: “Its been almost 4 weeks, I have quit every prescribed medication barring my anti-depressant which I am still in the process of weaning off.  I am down to half my usual dose and doing very well.  N-Acetyl-Cysteine or ‘Nac” as it is known for short has taken the place of all those nasty little pills that used to rule my life.  I am sleeping like a lamb at night and wake up feeling refreshed and I have loads more energy than I’ve had in a long time.”

Much controversy has abounded in recent years around prescribed medication, which at times are necessary and can even be life saving, but which also hides an ugly truth.  Chemically modified concoctions that are mass-produced, FDA approved and then made available to the public with a view to removing various illnesses and symptoms are rife in our world.  Spare a thought for the healthy alternative which targets the cause of the ailment, not the symptom and which actually works if given enough time and which could leave you with far more healthy years on this earth.  A good doccie to watch to further inspire you away from what might be poisoning your system and robbing you of life is the well acclaimed “Fat, Sick and nearly Dead.”

Google/research ‘Nac” which is available at certain health stores, but be warned, it requires a prescription due to it’s strength.  A practitioner will suggest the correct dose for your weight/profile etc.

*Mary-Anne is not her real name, although this story is 100% true.

EASY PEASY ICE-CREAM

This is the easiest, quickest way to make the tastiest strawberry banana coco ice-cream.

Need:  Blender * Bunch Bananas * Punnet of Strawberries * Good quality Maple syrup (if its runny, its good – if its thick and gooey, its not good)* 1 Can Coconut Milk *                      250ml Cream

Do   :   Slice Bananas into discs – Clean Strawberries and slice into discs – arrange both on a baking sheet in a flat dish and freeze for 30 minutes – Blend frozen fruit in blender, add                    Coconut Milk and fold in the Cream which has been whipped – add a tablespoon or two Maple Syrup to your sweet taste – Pour into a suitable dish with a lid (cover first with                  plastic wrap before closing with lid to keep icicles from forming).  Allow to freeze for a couple of hours and voila!  Absolutely delish.

Tip  :   Because this isn’t your usual “heat the milk, then whisk in the eggs” ice-cream which can take forever to make, this ice-cream tends to get quite hard, but I have found that if I leave              it out for 5 minutes before serving, it’s easier to scoop out.

ARE YOU MIXING YOUR EXERCISES?

Do you, like me, get bored with the same old…same old…

Time to change and mix up your exercise.  My regime for example, looks like this:

Monday:  Power walk on the treadmill after a 2 min warm up = total 20 minutes + 20 min power cycle on a stationery bike.  Sweat if off for 15 solid min in a hot Sauna.

Tuesday: 4 km power walk in the forest (with someone, never alone)

Wednesday: 20 minute BodyTec session (These franchises are just about everywhere now, look up one near you – 20 min of this exercise is equivalent to an hour session they say).

Thursday:  1 hour Ashtanga yoga.

Friday:  The only exercise I do on this day is lift my (sore) arm to turn the pages of a nice new magazine and raise the other arm to feed myself a chocolate treat. In other words, take a break.

Saturday/Sunday: Either a minimum of 20 laps in a 25m pool, followed by a 15 min hot Sauna or a serious hike up the mountain or a hiking trail. (Not alone, with someone).

Word of advice:  You are not exercising if you’re not sweating for at least 30 minutes of your workout!

Press the refresh button on your marriage

I recently read an article on a woman who was encouraged to spend a week with her husband pretending to be the girl that had just become his girlfriend (without letting him know). This made me think.  Years worth of being in a marriage can sometimes erode the original love that first settled so deeply within us and looked to remain forever.  As we all know, the ‘honeymoon’ doesn’t always last.  I love the story of my mother who fell so deeply in love with my father (and who remains married for over 51 years now) and would sleep next to his jersey when he was away, just to have the scent of him.  Many years and 3 kids later, the only time my mother confessed to smelling my father’s jersey was to see if it needed laundering.  And so it goes…

Why do we stop doing all those fun crazy things.  Can children be our excuse?  There are a ton of babysitters out there and some of us are fortunate enough to have good grandparents who are happy to babysit. There’s no excuse. I guess it’s a bit like going to the gym – we need to get off our butts and make things happen.  Things like hitting the beach, sharing an extra large box of popcorn in the movies, staying in till mid-day on a week-end or even in the week. (Don’t we take time off to go to the doctor or dentist?) Well, why not take time off for your spouse? Be a little mischievous and adventurous.  Weren’t we like that when we met our partners?  Has our sex lives become mundane…the same old, same old?  Try new moves, surprise your man – go back to being in your early 20’s again.  Dig out those old archives that represent the fun you used to have and create new archives.  And don’t wait…before you know it, you’ll be sitting on the porch trying to recover from a recent hip replacement and then all could be lost.

Where do I store my food?

A good guideline is to look where your local supermarket stores food.  Ever seen tomatoes in their fridges…or eggs?

Any fruit or veg stored in the fridge stops the ripening process, so only if you need to store your fruit/veg for sake of duration, then keep it in the fridge.  Remember that tomatoes especially, lose their flavour in the fridge so if you intend making a tasteless spaghetti Bolognese, then you know what to do.

Baked goods come out best when using room temperature eggs, so keep them in a pretty bowl on the counter.  Let’s not forget that supermarkets and food stores have air-conditioning – most if all of us don’t have air-conditioning in our kitchens, so if you’re experiencing exceptionally hot weather, then pop them into the fridge.  Once again, as with the tomatoes, eggs lose their flavour when stored in their little eggy containers in the fridge, so leave them out – no harm done.

I learned from my late Greek mother-in-law that olives in jars don’t have to go into the fridge either.  The liquid that it is steeped in helps to keep the olives as fine and tasty as when plucked off the tree.  Refrigerated olives are tasteless in comparison.  There is much to be learned from our Mediterranean counter-parts – I tried a ‘village’ recipe once where tomatoes were left to ripen on a wooden board for 2 days in the blazing hot sun.  On day 3 the tomatoes were roughly chopped and a few sprinkles of sugar and white wine vinegar was added and left to blaze some more in the sun.  This was then added to a Bolognese or a Melanzone.  Deliciously worth the wait!

HAPPY COOKING – HAPPY EATING!

Small tricks to create space

As we all know, white is the magic that can make a huge difference to a room’s size…but we all love a little splash of colour and some texture here and there, so here are some tips.

Keep floors light in colour and uncluttered. Remember those 1970’s lino tiles that our parents used to lay down and marvel at?  They would last through many decades. I’m not saying we should deck our floors in orange and brown lino tiles, but Floor Specialists like Alberts Carpets (Roeland Street, Cape Town) has an amazing selection of lino flooring which has been screen printed with beautiful designs including wood grain look-a- likes. These floor tiles are very hard wearing, easily washable, warm and soft on the feet (under floor heating can be safely installed under the tiles for extra warmth) and it looks great!

Keep walls light in colour – Plascon Ivory Parchment is a winner and perhaps add on a feature wall to create some depth in your room.  If you’re into earthy colours, a good contrast is Plascon Baby Elephant, but only paint ONE wall.  Another great way to create space is to select a beautiful print of a forest or ocean, (GettyImages have an extensive library and can be easily Googled) and have it sized up to your selected wall’s proportions then applied as wall paper.  Your room will look twice it’s size in an instant! (Digital Express in Long Street can set this up for you).  Don’t forget mirrors too – I have a long but narrow bathroom to which I have added floor to ceiling mirrors on one side – my bathroom now looks double it’s size!

Hang your curtains right beneath the ceiling to create an illusion of length to your room and keep the colours light.  Add block out to the mix if you struggle to sleep through early morning light.  An alternative to curtains are roller blinds which besides being extremely practical, looks sleek in a room, once again creating a feeling of space.  Roller blinds come in fantastic cool colours and wonderful textures; they block out the sun, yet allows light to come through if your room is a ‘hot box’.

Lighting is vital to a room. If your room is small, make features of your windows by keeping furniture out of the way and by adding an outside feature (like a small fountain or topiary) that will ‘pull the eye’ to the outside and create an illusion of space.  Replace those old 80’s spotlights with energy saving ‘fairy lights’ which can be placed on a dimmer, so if your room also happens to be in a dark corner of your home, these lights can be left on dim if you are using the room during the day.

Finally, don’t clutter your room – this is a sure fire way to make it appear smaller than it actually is. Remove chairs that you never sit on or side tables that are collecting dust.  Keep your furniture light in colour and perhaps add a tall indoor plant that will also ‘bend the eye’ towards the ceiling.  Let pops of colour come through in your scatter cushions, throws or rugs, keeping the larger items such as cupboards, desks, chairs, couches and bedding in whites and creams.

Enjoy your new space!

Let’s talk about Eve…

Eve was our first lady, our first mother, mother of all.  Eve had no mother, so how did she learn to be a wife and mother herself?  Since Genesis does not elaborate much on Eve’s disposition as a woman besides her choice to sin, we can only assume that God must have equipped her with the emotions and femininity that lies deeply rooted within the female genetic code.  Let us not forget that God put that there, this was part of His creation in women.

What brought her and Adam together intimately?  Was it love or lust? (post-eating of the forbidden fruit), although goodness and Godliness still resided in their hearts.  How did Eve know that she had to offer her breasts to her children as a source of food – instinct? Since Eve was brought into the world as a companion for Adam, did she live up to keeping good company with her husband?  Was she moody; when she had her monthly menstruals, did she know what was happening to her or did she freak out everytime at the sight of blood?  Did she think she would die each time she gave birth, excruciating pain wracking her body?  What did Adam think? I can almost hear him saying “I was lonely, I asked for a companion, I received the most beautiful creation from God and now look at her – she nags, she complains, she screams blood curdling cries when she gives birth, every few weeks she ignores me and I never seem to bring enough food or design a good enough home. God please take her back!”

As we all know, God created Adam and Eve with utter perfection, but ignoring God’s one command changed all of that.  Until then, Adam must have really been enjoying Eve.

For one to understand Eve’s pre-sinful nature, we need to look at the Scriptures.  Even after the gates to Eden were permanently shut after Adam and Eve’s demise, God still had a plan, plan B we might call it, because He never gives up on us. That plan B was spoken through wise old King Solomon and it is mostly the book of Proverbs that we shall visit to decode the voice of God speaking to the hearts of women.

We all need to become Eve again, not the one of the world but the one that God designed.

(Look out next week for this follow up).

TREAT YOURSELF TO A SPA AT HOME

We all know that Spas can be quite pricey, although worth every cent.  So if you’re feeling a bit strapped for cash yet need a bit of a detox or de-stress…don’t deprive your body…go on, go it alone at home.  Yes, you’re doing all the work…but it’s better than no Spa at all.  You’ll be amazed how relaxed you feel.  Treat yourself at least once a month!

What you will need:

Half a day of time for yourself (let hubby take the kids for a day out; offer to do the same for him so he can do what he feels is relaxing too)

Your favourite calming music

Body exfoliant (Body Shop and Woolies have good ones)

Body cream             (Ditto)

A good bath oil preferably natural (grapefruit, neroli and lavender are relaxing ones)

Face mask (if you’re not into buying the salon ones, those ‘use once only’ packs at Dischem will do)

A comfortable fluffy robe

Some scented candles

Switch off all phones, in fact put your mobile where you won’t be tempted to see how many messages you’ve received.

Press ‘play’ to hear your selection of beautiful music.

Vigorously exfoliate your entire body with your body scrub – this will first feel invigorating as the blood will come to the surface, and then relaxing as it settles again.

Step into a warm shower and rinse the granules away.

If you’re a shaver, now’s the time to remove that unwanted body hair.

Apply lavish amounts of body cream and immediately wrap yourself in your fluffy robe.

Give your face a good wash, use a face scrub if you have one. Getting rid of dead skin is a sure fire way to feel revived and fresh again.

Apply your face mask, light your candles, lie down and close your eyes while you either listen to your music or the sounds of birds, water or the surf.  (These are easily obtainable on iTunes or CD from your local music shop).

When you’ve had enough, drink a nice tall glass of lemon water and treat yourself to a healthy snack.

End your day with a relaxing hot bath with about 15 drops of oil.  (Even after the rowdy kids have come home – plan in advance to have their dinner and bed sorted – this is YOUR day).

Read a book, drink a cup of chamomile tea after a light dinner and fall into dreamland.

Spas always ensure that there’s lots of water therapy.  Listening to soft rain, a trickling fountain, the rush of waves, wading in a pool, standing in a shower or relaxing in a bath are all forms of water therapy, so ensure that water becomes at least two thirds of your treatment.

This is how to get through to your spouse…

Have you ever expressed how you feel, as a substitute for throwing anger, accusations or hurtful words at your partner?  Ever noticed how the latter doesn’t work?  Try this next time: “when you don’t help me, I feel unsupported” or “when you speak to me that way, it hurts me.”  Letting your partner know how you feel can be a powerful tool to use in order to get him to understand your perspective.  Bite your tongue the next time you want to lash out and try something new.  Let him know how what he is doing or saying is making you feel and watch the difference.

Good words to use are “you make me feel –  unloved…unworthy…like I can’t trust you and I want to trust you….inadequate…sad…hurt…not good enough…diminished….abandoned and I love having you by my side…

Find words that express how your partner makes you feel and pass those words on to him.  Encourage him to do the same.