Weekend Escapades (Review of Taste of Cape Town)

It’s Tuesday already, could you believe it? Mondays are normally such a blur for me, that it takes me a day to catch up. Be that as it may, I wanted to tell you what I got up to this weekend… (Eating mostly)

You wouldn’t necessarily know this about me, but I am a competition junkie. I enter every competition I come across. Well, not every one. Only the ones with cool prizes. Especially with the wedding planning and budgeting (eeeeek!), I’m entering a plethora of bridal/wedding-related competitions. Also ANY kitchen competition. So when I saw that The Pretty Blog was giving away double tickets to the Taste of Cape Town I just knew I had to enter. I ended up being one of the 20 winners who got tickets! I asked my bestie to come with me, and I was elevated when he told me that he was in Cape Town for the weekend anyway, and would join me for the festivities. Among our many shared interests, food is a major one. We love it. We email each other almost daily, and the majority of our conversations are either about food, or being hilarious. Obviously.

We met up at the Green Point Stadium, where we had to park, and the festival was held at the Green Point Cricket Club. In terms of venue – it was quite good. There was plenty of space to mill about, looking at the food and drink stalls, but there was VERY little shade in which to sit, so every bit of shade was a revolving mess of people sitting down to eat, getting up to get something to drink, and back to searching for a cool place in the shade (Saturday was a scorcher).

The festival works on a voucher basis, where you buy a booklet with 20 vouchers in for R100.00, and everything inside is paid with that (except the products that you buy to take home like olive oils, pesto’s, chili jams and so forth). Bestie very graciously purchased a booklet for me, and a booklet for him. So, to taste some wine would cost 1-2 vouchers. A pint of craft beer would cost 5. A cocktail 6. And most foods was between 5-9 vouchers. This system is a bit of a rip off, I feel. I mean, even to taste wine, you have to pay? Not even for a full glass of wine. Literally a sip or two. Really?

Then, I’d also like to mention the variety of food stalls. Or lack thereof. There was maybe 15-20 food stalls, each with 1-3 items on their “condensed menu”. There was about 3 or 4 Asian options. I found it somewhat disappointing. I ended up drinking two pints from Mitchell’s Brewery – South Africa’s oldest craft beer, which was really good. I almost always go for a Lager, and this time I wasn’t disappointed. Bestie had some Paella, which was wonderfully tasty. The portion wasn’t big – but the aromatics were spot on. We also got some Jalapeno Poppers from Beefcakes. The filling was delicious, and they weren’t too spicy (not spicy enough for me, but I do like the burn!), however, since they weren’t exactly made to order, they weren’t hot anymore, and the batter was no longer crispy and crunchy. Which was a big downer, because I adore Jalapeno Poppers…

He also had a Spanish Chorizo Sandwich, which looked wonderful, but disappointed tremendously. The chorizo was not cured, so it had to be cooked before serving. And because the sandwiches looked so great, the line was super long. Which probably led to the person who was responsible for cooking the sausages to spinning a little, and leaving us with a raw sausage sandwich. Yum… Our last stop however, saved the day! We got some Fish Tacos and I’m sad to say that I forgot what the vendor’s name was. The fish was lightly battered, incredibly fresh and gloriously golden and crunchy. The tacos were just lukewarm making them just pliable enough, and cool enough to handle. Inside, there was an almost sweet but still amazingly acrid red cabbage slaw, and some chunks of mandarin to lighten the whole shebang. It was amazing. I had three. I have no shame.

We’ve come to this conclusion though: We would not buy tickets to go again. If it wasn’t for me winning the tickets, it would have ended up being a ridiculously expensive day, and to be fair, not really worth the money. Maybe if they can step it up a little, and work on the pricing structure. Maybe. But for now, I’d much rather go to The Good Food and Wine Show. But, it did give me the opportunity to see my friend for the first time in ages, and I couldn’t (and wouldn’t) put a price on that.

Did any of you go? How was it for you?

By the Way

Hi kids,

I’m detoxing again this week (ugh!), so there will be no Try-It Tuesday. I know we skipped last week, but there is NO WAY IN HELL that we’ll be doing some fancy schmancy new recipe, and I can’t have any. So. There. I said it. Not happening this week. On the job front, well, it’s not looking so rosy. But I’m going on interviews, and trying my best. It’ll work out. Right? Right? I hope so.

I’ve also realised that I really should stop watching TV series aimed at teenagers. First, I’m 25. Second, the hopefulness of youth rubs off on the viewer. The hope of life and love being epic and perfect creates a false security. And did I mention, I’m 25? No more. Vampire Diaries? Out! (I’ll miss Damon, though) Awkward? Definitely OUT! Glee? Done. Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl? SO out. I’ll miss them though. Especially Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerhalder). Good lord, that man… He does things to me. Dirty things. Unspeakable things. I need to stop.

Since there will be no recipe this week, I shall share our Red Hot Chili Peppers concert with you. It was an awesome night. And day. Epic overall. I went to meet my sister in the early afternoon in the city. She had the afternoon off, and I had the day off, so we decided that we should start drinking. And so we did. We had a good couple of beers, mixed with some old fashioned gossip, a touch of crying and a dash of heart to heart. Much needed bonding. We met up with our men, and went for drinks at friends since we didn’t want to see the opening act, which happened to be Die Antwoord. Blegh. Anyway we walked down to the stadium, thoroughly juiced and super psyched for RHCP to come on.

We (I) went photo crazy! It was unbelievable. I loved every minute. The boys were not so much interested in seeing the band, nor were the friends. Turns out everyone came, just because my sister and I so badly wanted to go. The upside of that was that our boys were just hanging at the bar, and kept our drinks filled while they were chowing down on hotdogs, and slurping their beers. I so love concerts. The vibe. The people. The electricity in the air. The fact that you can lose your inhibitions, go crazy and weird, and nobody cares. Which is exactly what we did… See the video. Speaking of, to film the video, I just arbitrarily handed my (NEW) iPhone to a random guy behind us. Thoroughly boozed, and completely entranced by the good vibes of the show. But he didn’t run away. He gave it right back. Lucky drunk me. Faith in Humanity restored. Anyway. The Peppers rocked our socks off. It was so worth the hangover. And the severely stiff joints, since we walked just about right through the entire CBD of Cape Town to get back to the car. With my sister bitching because they didn’t play Otherside. But they played very few new-ish songs, mostly old, dusty, well-loved tunes, which is amazing. You can view the video here: http://youtu.be/S5lP5HwrHLY. Fair warning: it is dark, and blurry, but the sound is pretty good and you can see the silhouettes of the drunky-singy-bouncy-jumpy-sisters. And on this note, enjoy the show (and apologies for the crooked landscape of the stadium, I was trying out the Panorama function on my phone, and cropping it off doesn’t look right):

Standing in line to
See the show tonight
And there’s a light on
Heavy glow
By the way I tried to say
I’d be there waiting for
Dani’s the girl is
Singing songs to me
Beneath the marquee

Greenpoint Stadium

Sis & Hubby

Bro-in-Law

The man & I

Sisters

The man & I

Sisters

Bromigos

Much Love ❤

All the colours you can imagine

Hi friends!

I have not posted in a long time, and I am so very sorry. Life has been incredibly busy, and since I work in Retail, the Christmas season is my busiest, so I have not had much time for anything really. But let me catch you up:

The man and I have been looking into buying our first home, but so far, unsuccessfully. We have however made two offers on two places, but both were rejected. The last one devastated me quite a bit, it was my perfect home. So, the search continues, but less vigorously. Our Christmas was fantastic though, and he really outdid himself this year with my gifts. (But then again, so did I!) I got him the new Jeremy Clarkson book, and gorgeous worn leather wallet, and for my grand finale: The Star Wars Blu-Ray Box set. He got me the final season of Will & Grace (which now have the complete set of), the new Nigella Lawson cookbook, as well as the Jamie Oliver Professional series of cookware by T-Fal! Oh.My.Greatness. Such an awesome gift! Pretty soon I shall be blogging all about food! Yay! The summer is also officially here, and let me just say, it is going to be a scorcher. I am not loving it.

I recently went to an area in Cape Town’s CBD called Bo-Kaap. It is a very old neighbourhood in the centre of the city. What makes this place so special is that it’s residents (who are mostly Coloured people with a Malaysian or Muslim background) paint their houses in the brightest, most vibrant colours, and because of their heritage, as you walk through the neighbourhood, you can smell the most sensational and fragrant curry smells. It’s a sensory delight walking through there, hearing the children play in the streets, smelling the delicious foods, seeing these brilliant colours and feeling the warm ocean breeze on your face. I took some photographs, which is actually the main reason I went there, but I would like to go again, but much later in the day, when the sunlight isn’t so very harsh.

Here is one of the photos that I shot. You can view the rest on http://www.facebook.com/urbananarchyphotography . My absolute favourites are the ones I took of my mom. She’s lovely.

As always, these photos are my intellectual property, so please ask if you want to use it.

Much Love ❤