Trigger warning: you may want to stop reading now…

Everyday there are so many decisions to be made in order to “live good and do good”. BUT the way things are and what is seen as “normal” is totally bizarre. Mass production in animal agriculture is cruel for the animals and for the workers. Thinking about their pain hurts. But so many other things also hurt. Millions of babies are wearing 8-10 nappies a day and their plastic wrapped shit is going into landfill along with millions of dog owners’ plastic-wrapped dog shit too. BUT that is not as bad as seeing people suffering daily. There’s a beggar at every traffic light in every major city in South Africa. I feel sad whenever I am walking or driving around. It also hurts that so many privileged people don’t pay their staff a “living wage”, and that so many only pay the very low “but legal” minimum wage AND there is no way for hard working people to escape poverty. It hurts to live in a city with over 20 golf courses on well-located land and simultaneously people living in shacks on the outskirts who are expected to travel 2-3 hours a day each way to and from work, if they are “lucky enough to have work”. It hurts me that governments around the world are killing people and that the strong are abusing and raping the weak. It hurts me that I am silent often because I think there’s no change that comes from political debate around the middle class’ dinner tables. And in the words of Drake, “Im here for a good time, not a long time” so I try to try to focus on the beauty instead of the brutality, do a little good and be a little better but ultimately I know that the world will still be a mess whether we eat the cheese or not.

This ice cream cake was something I looked forward to in the 80s. My paternal grandmother loved to live indulgently. This was how I experienced this spirit of hers after a grocery shopping trip.

I have never been to Jamaica but I discovered Jamaican food in London. Rice and peas, plantain and jerk chicken. I had jerk oyster mushrooms last time I was there and that was pretty good too.

For a South African like me, what I like about Jamaica is that it seems very mixed and mixed heritage is talked about openly I hear. There aren’t many places where you can find black people with a combination of Chinese, Indian, European and African heritage.

I’d love to visit or live there for a few months. In the mean time I will travel there through recipes and make my own jerk spice. Anyone from Jamaica, have a jerk spice recipe for me…? I’m getting used to not going anywhere for a whiiiiile and getting ready for a winter of “virtual travels”.

To travel through recipes, I look for authentic recipes by people who come from the places I want to experience online by starting with a search on YouTube. What I’ve learnt is that if you start with a standard Google search, you inevitably end up with recipes created by white Americans which is not the goal.

South Africans love reggae music, Bob Marley, there are lots of Rastas here and bars with Jamaican themes called Cool Runnings, Banana Jam and Trenchtown (the ones I know) but no good Jamaican food sadly… or maybe I just don’t know where to go?! Tell me…

*fetal alcohol syndrome problem (and many other social problems as a result of the wine industry)

I think it’s time that people of colour in South Africa stop aspiring to getting married at wine farms. Start to think critically about wine farm culture. It’s not that lah-di-dah…

Wine farms were not made for people of colour. They were designed to oppress people of colour and create wealth for people of European descent.

Today, they still create wealth for those they were designed to create wealth for… and they still oppress those they were designed to oppress…

ps: if you already got married on a wine farm, it’s ok. I also once got married on a wine farm. I was young and stupid then… and if you haven’t done it, don’t do it…

There are recipes you can find online for making traditional Okonomiyaki but I enjoy my plantbased remix using a batter with cabbage, seasonings, sauces, seaweed and sesame seeds. It is a LEAST EFFORT MOST REWARD recipe… In case you are new here, that is one of Deepak Chopra’s 12 Spiritual Laws of Success that I have been trying to live by my whole life. Least effort, most reward. In cooking, that means easy recipes, short cooking times and low cost BUT HIGH (I repeat HIGH) WOW FACTOR…

Happy Thursday! I recommend keeping OKONOMIYAKI in your least effort most reward recipe artillery! Kids love it. Your inner child does too. When they say DO KIND THINGS WITH YOUR YOUNGER SELF IN MIND, making okonomiyaki is of those things.

I was turning 23 and had spent ten years in a newly democratic South Africa. The other 13 years were spent in a non-democratic (apartheid) South Africa.

Pre-democracy, l lived in lower income areas where people of colour lived in flats, or small homes, close to each other, kids played cricket and football in the street, there was a vibrancy, a sense of community. Post-democracy, I lived in an area with wealthier people and high walls. It had been a whites-only neighborhood during apartheid. Supposedly better, it was safe, clean and green but there was no vibrancy and no sense of community. We were of the first few brown people to live in the area. It was a place I felt trapped in in that first decade of freedom.

When I discovered Brixton in London it felt familiar, my new home but weirdly nostalgic.. exciting, with a vibrant community and established diversity.

We didn’t get plantains in South Africa then and still don’t get them easily now…

My friend Rhonda found me in a kitchen eating a raw plantain… She grew up in Jamaica and this probably amused and horrified her. I’m grateful she stopped me from doing things the wrong way and taught me how to cook and eat plantains the right way… They are delicious fried.

Plantains are a reminder that home is a feeling and not always a place.

Over 5000 different types of potatoes in the world, originating from Peru mostly…

I have a story. From the Berlin chapter. I was hosting pop up dinners where the theme was vegan South African food, diversity on a plate, an experience that was impossible to find in South Africa at the time and still now. The first thing I made was the bunny chow with sugar beans curry. I had never made either of those things before. I also made pap and chakalaka. I had never made either of those things before too. ACTUALLY most of the dishes I made there were learnt through recipes I found on the internet.

At most dinners, I made chillie bites with pudina pickle (a peanut, mint and tamarind chutney), sometimes vada, always bunny chows, pap and chakalaka, carrot sambal, a tomato sambal, rice, dhal, maybe a couple of veg curries, sometimes a soya “mutton” curry, sometimes a lentil bobotie, sometimes a veggie potjiekos. For dessert, I tried making malva pudding, a vegan milk tart, lamingtons, apple crumble… but the winning dessert was always a trio of spiced coconut chocolate bombs.

Often South Africans would come to the dinners, but the majority of my guests were European. A diner named Themba* once asked me what was on his plate. He said my pap was not pap! I felt embarrassed but then explained that my food was as traditionally South African as I am traditionally South African. I told him “it’s MY version of pap. I couldn’t find the real South African maize meal so I just used polenta. Polenta is basically the same thing and this is symbolic pap!” He didn’t understand THIS WAS ART and I was trying to be an artist…

I have since learnt how to make proper pap. But I prefer to make what I call Golden Pap TM

Pap with turmeric and tempered spices (optional greens). It’s Afro-Asian & Plant Based!

*not the real name

The Koesister, which is found in Cape Town and the Dutch “Koeksister (with two Ks)” are not sisters. They look and taste nothing alike. The Dutch version is braided and crunchy.

The similarities, however, between the Koesister and the Gulab Jamun are obvious – deep fried sweet dough in oval shapes drenched in sweet cardamom sugar syrup and covered in dessicated coconut. The Gulab Jamun is denser than the Koesister’s donut consistency but they look and taste like family.

In the Cape… “In the decades 1690 to 1725 over 80{ae311ba94da7d335bbfff01fbeaf6f5d60594b962c09feba26a61aa96ddcea74} of the enslaved were Indians. This practice continued until the end of slavery in 1838. They made up the majority of the enslaved that came from the Far East and were by the 1880s totally integrated into the Cape White and Coloured communities.” (edited the original text and use the word “enslaved” instead of “slaves”)

I’ve used this quote above from @sa_history before. I think there is a great deal of denial and erasure of the history of Indians and their influences in South African food culture especially Cape Malay food culture. When people talk of Cape Malay food, which is a category that Koesisters belong to, they often refer to Dutch and Indonesian influences and ancestry but very seldomly do they speak of Indian influences or ancestry.

The dreams started around the same time as the lockdown in March 2020. I’ve been dreaming about the meat texture which can never be matched by meat substitutes. Dreaming about potatoes, soft and drenched in a spicy, fatty gravy. Dreaming about sucking the marrow out of the bones. As children, my brother and I would fight over marrow bones which we called moola bones.

A friend of mine who was vegetarian for over 20 YEARS started eating meat during the lockdown. She went straight to steaks… OVERNIGHT, she said. She became a carnivore. Hit the hard stuff HARD and didn’t know how to explain it or what came over her. It was a primal scream from within. HOW MANY OTHERS have succumbed to this pandemic pandemonium?!!

When I went vegan in 2013 it was an overnight too. I cleared out my fridge and went ALL IN for a month. Then kept going for years…

ALSO just so you know, I am not an animal lover. I DO NOT LIKE ALL ANIMALS EQUALLY. NOT IN MY HOME OR ON MY PLATE. I like seeing them in the wild, in the water, in the sky…

SO in terms of eating mutton curry after eight meat-free years… Here are my pros and cons. 1. I think I might get sick and my body would reject it. 2. Whenever I see a meat dish on a table, I visualise the raw ingredients – ie. the animal. And this might not be something I can just move past. 3. If I could eat it, and IF EVERYONE was a bad-but-aspiring vegan the WORLD WOULD BE A BETTER PLACE than just a few people being perfectly vegan. 4. My overall “harm footprint” is small. Being a childless vegetarian who composts, recycles and is trying to live minimally while others do the opposite, I would not feel too bad. I could happily eat mutton curry (or meat in general) twice a year and be at peace…

Let’s see how the year goes. I PROBABLY WON’T do it but it could happen. Dream analysis machines HMU

[recipe title= “Vegan Thai Green Curry” servings=”4-6″ time=”30 minutes” difficulty=”easy”]

[recipe-ingredients]

– 2 aubergine, sliced

– 4 potatoes, chopped

– 1 green pepper, sliced

– 1 yellow pepper, sliced

– 2 cans coconut milk

– 3 cups water

– 3 tablespoons curry paste

– coriander

– lime/lemon

– fresh chillies

[/recipe-ingredients]

[recipe-directions]

1. Add curry paste, water and coconut milk to a pan.

2. Bring the mixture to a boil and dilute paste.

3. Add all vegetables.

4. Cook on medium heat until potatoes are soft.

5. Serve on its own or with rice.

6. Garnish with lime/lemon, coriander and chillies.

[/recipe-directions]

[recipe-notes]

Tips & Tricks: You can use any combination of vegetables but it’s always nice to include, peppers, mushrooms and potatoes.

[/recipe-notes]

[/recipe]