Grub.

A South African Feast!!

By now you might have noticed that my favorite part of these adventures is the food.  I have always enjoyed trying food from different areas and now I have a great reason- educating my kids!!  So really I can blame them for the extra weight I'm gaining eating all this wonderful food ? I wish!  Let me tell you this- if you like flavorful food  South African food is awesome!! Because Capetown was a main port for ships going around the horn of Africa on their way to the West Indies for spices, there is a lot of interesting spice mixing going on.  It's spicy but not hot spicy.  My husband, brother and I ate this food all week and really enjoyed it.  My adventurous son ate quite a bit, my daughter ate the bread and fruit I served with it.  The cuisine of South Africa is heavily meat-based and a common form of cooking is barbeque or "braai", so I made a steak kebab dish called Sosaties - so good I used the marinade on some chicken and we had it again the next night.  Another staple dish is yellow rice, which was spiced with tumeric, cinnamon and raisins.  It was a little too strong for me but I think with a little less cinnamon I would've like it better.  The third dish we made was our favorite.  It was called Chakalaka (!) and was a real surprise.  The ingredients sounded really weird but it all came together well- much to my surprise :) It was good on the rice, it was good with flatbread dipped in it, it was good cold on a sandwich.  Chakalaka is as much fun to say as it was to eat. Chakalaka.
I will share the recipes for the sosaties and chakalaka- if you'd like the yellow rice recipe it is available online at www.food.com

Sosaties (South African Kebabs)

For the marinade:

• 2 T butter or olive oil
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 cup vinegar (I used red wine vinegar)
• 2 T curry powder
• 2 T sugar
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 T cayenne pepper
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 T mustard
• 2 T soy sauce
• 2/3 cup ketchup
• 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
• 1/3 cup cooking oil

1.Heat butter in frying pan and cook onions until soft.
2.Add wine, water, vinegar,curry powder,cayenne,black pepper,bay leaves and sugar
3. Bring to boil and cook for a few minutes then remove from heat and cool til warm.
4. Blend in the rest of the ingredients.  Your marinade is done.

For the kebabs:

• a few pounds of beef cut into chunks
• 2 crushed garlic cloves
• 2 T crushed or finely chopped fresh ginger
• onion chunks
• dried apricots

Mix all ingredients in bowl, pour marinade over the top and let sit overnight.  Thread onto skewers alternating meat, onions and apricots and barbeque until cooked through.  If you're using wooden skewers make sure you soak them in water first so they don't burn.

Chakalaka

• 4 T oil
• 1 onion finely chopped (almost pureed if you live in my house)
• 4 - 5 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 T fresh ginger, finely chopped or grated
• 1 jalapeno, seeded and finely chopped
• 2 T curry powder
• 1 (14oz) can of whole tomatoes
• 1 green pepper finely chopped (I don't like green so used red)
• 2 carrots, coarsely grated
• 1 (8oz) can pork and beans in tomato sauce (I used chili beans in sauce)
• salt and pepper to your taste

1.Heat oil in pan and cook onions until soft.
2.Add garlic, ginger and jalapeno. cook for a minute or two and add curry powder.
3.Add vegetables and beans, bring to a boil then turn down heat and simmer for 15-20 mins.

I served our food with some leftover Naan from India week and we really enjoyed it all.  Really.  I'd tell you if it was bad.  I'd love to hear if anybody tries it - I know there were a lot of ingredients but none were very fancy and it didn't take too long and as you can see it all looked delicious!

A fitting feast to bid farewell to South Africa!!

A little Zulu and a project you should NOT do!

Do you Zulu?

Raise your hand if you know anything about the Zulu tribe? Anyone?  Well, good, we'll both learn something new.  As I mentioned before, South Africa has more than 30 different ethnic groups, but the Zulu tribe is one of the largest and possibly the oldest.  The tribe was first documented in the 1620's, it was a bunch of different groups who all lived peacefully but separately, until Shaka, their most famous king, joined then together in the 1800's to become the powerful Zulu nation.  Nowadays, most Zulus live modern lives, but traditionally they lived in beehive shaped huts made of saplings and thatch mats.  Men on the right, women on the left and a hearth in the middle.  They raised livestock and lived off the land.  We WILL NOT be trying some of their native foods because they didn't sound appealing - charred meat, sour curdled milk that would give you courage (I bet) and boiled beans, one recipe had the nickname of "thundering buttocks"!  Umm, no thank you.  So since we're not trying the native food let's learn the native tongue.

Zulu ,or isizulu as it is sometimes known, is one of the most widely spoken languages in South Africa.  It has over 19,000 words and one of the most complex grammars of any language.  It also uses many clicking sounds and tones that we (I mean Americans) don't normally use.  The website I learned these from http://www.thinkquest.org/pls/html/think.library had the pronunciations if you really want to go into great detail, but we just said them how they looked like they would be pronounced and were pretty close :)

Hello - sawubona     goodbye - sala kahle     friend - umngane
thank you - ngiyabonga   monkey - inkawu   elephant - indlovu
lion - ibhebesi    giraffe - indlulamithi-thutlwa 

Learning the Zulu word for giraffe leads me into our next project...

The Giraffe that almost wasn't...

We had such a good time making our Statue of Liberty paper-mache project (week 1) that I thought a paper-mache giraffe would be fun.  Well, it wasn't.  On paper it sounded easy, but unless you have: 1. a lot of patience  2. a lot of time  and 3. a degree in engineering, this might not be the best project to undertake.  But we (mostly me) muddled through and finished.  To make the project you will need:

• 3 balloons for body (big), head (small) and one uninflated with something heavy in it for the tail
• paper towel tube for neck
• cardboard or tubes for legs.  We were out of tp tubes but I think they would've worked better - our legs kept bending!
• Flour, water and newspaper for paper mache
• paint - yellow, orange or tan and brown
• tape, plenty of tape
• PATIENCE.  this was in short supply for some reason this week :)

1. Tape the paper towel tube to big balloon to make the body and  neck.
2.  Take small balloon to tube to make head.  Tape some ears and horns on too. 
3. I would recommend using tp (toilet paper) tubes for the legs.  We used heavy cardboard and the weight of the neck and head made our giraffe super tippy and hard to stand up. So...
4. Put a small but heavy rock in a balloon and use it as a tail and also to counterbalance the head/neck.  Kinda worked.

5.  Cover the whole deal with paper- mache.  Kids abandoned me at this point so Steve (my husband) helped.  Big mess since it kept falling over!!  My daughter posed with it like she helped though.

6. When the big mess has dried, paint it tan or yellow and put some brown spots and eyes on it. 

 You are now the proud owner of a giraffe.  Would love to hear about your adventures making it and maybe some helpful hints I could've used.  Could've , should've, whatever ... I'm laying off the paper-mache for awhile!!

Take a trip...

Field Trip:  Photo Safari

I don't know about you, but I would love to go on a safari in Africa.  See the animals in their real environments and not just hanging out, bored at the zoo.  I have a friend that went to Africa  as part of a missionary group and spent a few days on Safari.  I think it changed her life.  But, my reality is that I have 2 small kids, very limited funds and no prospect of getting to Africa anytime soon.  Plus, my friend had to get like 15 shots and take malaria pills so that kinda turns me off too.  So for our little field trip we went to the Oakland Zoo.  The zoo in SF is a good zoo but pretty generic, the Oakland zoo has an African theme throughout most of it and a replica of an East African hut.  Now I know we are learning about South Africa but I figured the kids wouldn't be able to tell the difference :)  So lets pretend we are visiting Kruger National Park, the oldest wildlife sanctuary in Africa (started in 1898) and one of the largest at 6.2 million acres.  While Kruger has over 500 bird species and 147 different mammals, we found a good variety ourselves (except for the lions who were hiding)!!

Replica of East African Women's Hut
and (below) some interesting taboos

Reticulated Giraffe

Common Eland

Grant's Zebras

Meerkat

African Elephant

 and this bad boy- a fossil of a croc-like dinosaur that used to live in Africa 112 million years ago! The sarchosuchus!!

All those animals and I didn't have to fight off malarial mosquitos and spend $$$$ (well except on snacks!!)

Week 5!! South Africa

Week 5 -  Welcome to the Republic of South Africa!

Wow, I can't believe we're already on week 5!! I hope people are enjoying our adventure as much as I am- please leave me some comments or suggestions on projects, recipes or countries you'd like to visit.  This is all go-with-the-flow and if there's stuff you'd like to see I'm there!!  This week we decided to go south, South Africa that is.  Interesting country, lots of different ethnic groups (30!) so lots of different influences, 11 different official languages, and a history of deep racial prejudice :)  South Africa has a lot to talk about!!

Located at the very southern tip of Africa, the capital city of Pretoria (there are actually 3 capital cities) is located at 29º12' S/ 28º10' E  on your world maps.  Archeologists have found human fossils in the area of South Africa dating back 3,000,000 years, making it considered by some as the Cradle of Humankind. It is also sometimes called the "Rainbow Nation" due to the 30 different ethnic groups that are living in South Africa.  The democratic government includes all of the different ethnicities but it has not always been so.  Between 1948 - 1990, the practice of Apartheid was the cause of much racial division.  The segregation among the black Africans and the English-speaking whites and Afrikaaners (descendants of Dutch settlers) meant that the native black population was living in poverty while the white colonists were getting rich off the county's wealth of diamonds and gold.  Since President de Klerk abolished apartheid the country has worked very hard and successfully to regain a peaceful equality.  The flag of South Africa represents that idea.

The green band is said to represent the joining of seperate ideas as they begin a new road. I admire the attitude and the willingness of the people to join together as one.