Tag: fun times

Food Help

3 Bean Chilli

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Now – we all find those odds and ends in the back of the cupboard or that we are given by friends (in my case – Haircot Beans). So I decided to do a lovely veggie version of my fave heart warming meal – Chilli!

Ingredients

  • 1 Red onion
  • 220g Haricot beans
  • 100g dried green lentils
  • 100g Aduki Beans (soaked but uncooked)
  • 500g Jar of Bolognese sauce
  • 1 Knorr Paprike and Sundried tomato stock pot
  • 3 garlic cloves
  • 375g Passata.
  • .5 tbsp tomato paste
  • Mixed herbs to your taste – cayenne, paprike, mixed italian, salt and pepper.

Method

  1. Heat a little oil in a saucepan (with lid available) on a medium heat. Add the chopping red onion and the minced (or crushed) garlic cloves.
  2. Once they are aromatic and the onions are soft, add the herbs and the tomato paste.
  3. All incorporated? Good add the Passatta, Stock Pot, Bolognese sauce, give it a stir.
  4. Add in all the beans/lentils- make sure they are all mixed in together.
  5. Once the mixture is boiling turn down to a simmer and leave on the stove for a hour.
  6. You will know it is done once the beans are tender to the taste. Try and not stir it too much during the simmering process.
  7. If the beans are not tender at this stage – keep on the low heat for 30 mins at a time until they reach the right consistency.
  8. Portion up and enjoy! Best service with rice I feel.

This is super tasty, spicy enough for me, but if you like a kick add more spice to it. I am a mild person – Lemon herb nandos and korma girl right here !

Food Help

Chickpea Coconut Curry

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Cooking is a love of mine. Who doesn’t love a homecooked meal at the end of the day. I am all for the meal prep and so I wanted to share this recipe with you for a lovely slow cooker ready, coconut curry.

Many of these are odd amounts because I hate food waste and so have been try to use up bits and pieces around the house.

Ingredients

  • 50g Leek
  • 2 Shallots
  • 2 Garlic cloves, minced
  • 160g Sweet Potato
  • 300g Chopped Tomatoes
  • 200ml Coconut milk
  • 175g Chickpeas (I used dried and soaked them overnight =cheaper)
  • 1/4 cup of Quinoa uncooked.

Spices wise I used, ground coriander, ground cumin, gram masala, cayenne, crushed chills and pepper – but add whatever is in your arsenal.

Nice and easy method to this one – throw is all in the slow cook for 4 hours on high or 8 hours on low. It might not look that appealling but I promise you it is yummy – you don’t even need to serve with anything. It’s just fine on its own.

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Soweto tour

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This post seemed to post without the images loaded properly so I wanted to re post with some more information.

Whilst in Johannesburg last year I took a tour of Soweto. And what a day it was.

If you want to go the same tour please contact TKD Tours – TK works with local schools and international communities to help get school children from local villages the uniforms they need to go to school. He is very knowledgeable about the area as he grew up here and is willing to share all of his stories – not to mention he gave a tour of Kliptown to Prince Charles and Camilla.

Moving on, so TK took me for lunch in Soweto at Sakhumsi which is a traditional african buffet type places. I was able to try all sorts of food, and have a local beer as well. It was just down the road from where Nelson Mandela lived and therefore easy for tourists passing through. It does get quite busy there but they turn the food over quickly so you know you are getting fresh food.

TK drove me all round Soweto showing me every corner I could ever want to see and more. He is a really lovely guy and I would recommend him to anyone and everyone. After walking round the main parts he took me for a walk around Kliptown.

Kliptown is a township within Soweto – it really showed me the “how the other half live”. I was really impressed with their resourcefulness, the kids seemed happy and were playing around in the streets. The houses were simple but the people were welcoming – although I have to say some of the children seemed confused seeing a white lady around – but always interesting interactions. TK helped to translate between me and the children and prompted their interactions. It was such a rewarding experience.

If you are in Cape Town or Johannesburg I really would recommend going to one of the townships to see how they live, interact with local people. It makes such a difference to a trip. I truly enjoyed it and found it really rewarding – talk to your tour operator about township tours.

Until next time. 🙂

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Wine Flies

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Location: Stellenbosch.

Wine flies is the tour company that do Wine tours around Stellenbosch. If you are in Cape Town and are looking for a wine tour then these are your guys! Legend was our guide, yes that is really his name. He was wonderful.

They pick you up at the hostel/hotel you are staying at in the morning and drive you to the first winery, Villiera. Here we do a brief history of wine and see the moving parts behind a wine farm, the full story from start to finish. The entire process for white and red wine. Legend gave it in such a relaxed way, made sure we are listening and taking it in. Even through we were definitely all waiting for the wine.

The tasting consists of 2 Sparkling, 3 white wines and 1 red, there was biltong and kudu sausage to eat as well. The wines were enjoyable and good to start the day with. We had a chenin blanc from a steel barrel and one from and oak barrel – the different was outstanding! The winery was nice and big, so we could sit out side and relax in the shade.

There was not too much pressure but we have time constraints as we needed to move onto the next place. This was definitely one of your more boutiquey wine farms. Cheese Pairing at Mitres Edge. 1 white and 4 reds. The pairings here were really surprising, a cows milk feta with white wine. Blue camembert with a red. For someone who doesn’t normally enjoy red wine, this was my most surprising tasting of the day. The tasting room was in the cellar which was lovely, it was a family wine place as well making it all the more special to have the wine maker with us to explain every element of the wine.

Lunch and the third stop was Middlevlei, lunch was a Braai which was lovely. Sausages and chicken which a whole range of salads and sides. It was delicious and I enjoyed the wine so much I bought two bottles of it. It was a chilled lunch, Legend making sure that our glasses were topped up with different wines every time they were empty.

After lunch we headed into the cellar, which was actually a separate building. We saw the old concrete barrels they used to keep the wine in. And we went into one of the barrel rooms where we could take wine out of the barrel itself! It was great. The wine they had deemed was not quite good enjoy to be sold and so needed longer in the barrel. The guide explained putting fake oak sticks and logs into the barrels when the barrels were older in order to increase the oakiness in the barrels.

By now we are well plied with wine, but still enjoying ourselves, nothing too rowdy. We head to Lovane – this is the only place you can buy their wine, they do not sell in anywhere else. This is where we had the wine and chocolate pairing – again something I didn’t quite understand to begin with.
Mostly red wines and even a port style wine was well! Some of the chocolates were well paired others were more debatable. It was interesting to understand their process and the story behind their wines. This was a boutique little place. Such a lovely stop on this tour, beautiful images to be taken with the mountains in the background.

Heading to our next stop we had a quiz to see how much we had learnt. Luckily I was in the front so I didn’t get involved, just laughing at the answers and being the DJ – naturally. The two teams tied so we all shared a small bottle of wine for the whole bus.

Our 5th stop was Vergenoegt, home of the runner duck wine. They actually have a duck parade here three times a day to teach the ducks to walk together. They use them during the growing season to keep the bugs away from the grapes- reduces the use of pesticides. The geese walk amongst them to keep them in line and stop other animals or vermin getting into the group.

The wines – lets move on – the wines where we had a white, rose and a few reds. I enjoyed the wines, but the rose and red were not quite to my taste. I preferred previous ones. I did however buy a bottle of the white wine to share with my family.

We did visit one final winery Peter Falke, this was extra and so we had to pay for it. It was R65 for 8 wines, only one or two white. By this point we had had so much wine. We were happy just chilling out in the gardens chatting to one another watching the sun go down. I don’t think we were paying too much attention to the wines, more to the conversation and if we enjoyed the wines or not.

We had a party bus on the way back, some golden oldies and good dance tunes – songs you can dance along to. All in all it was a lovely day, I really enjoyed myself and that is not the wine talking. I would highly recommend these guys and this guide. I would take another one of these tours again without hesitation.

Until next time

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Sea Kayaking

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Yes that is Lions Head above those clouds. Yes that is me in the Blue Kayak.

So my friend and I went Sea Kayaking with Kaskazi. It was R400 for a couple of hours. I really great experience. The office is in a shell garage in Sea Point. There are lockers on site for your stuff. They recommend not taking anything you.

So you get a small briefing before hitting the boats. You climb in and adjust the pedals at the back or the footrest at the front. The person in the back is in charge of direction and the one in the front is in charge of the power.

The morning I did this you can see it was a little cloudy and misty – made for an interesting experience. It was eerie when you lose all aspect of where you are paddling to just into the middle of the sea.

On these experiences you can sometimes see some wildlife, we spotted a seal for a short time and there were some dolphins in the vicinity but they were elusive to us. So we were paddling up and down along Sea Point and back to Granger Bay and the Waterfront trying to keep an eye on the wall as well as maybe finding some animals.

The guides and the staff at Kaskazi were great, I would highly recommend this experience. It was something completely different and amazing. I thoroughly enjoyed this. My arms not so much I was very very tired! Definitely want to do it again in the sunshine.

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Hermanus

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There is a lovely beautiful drive down to Hermanus, please do it, and do it slowly. You can look over the city up on the mountains. The roads are easy to drive, and well kept.

This is a small town, a perfect day out of the city. There is a charm to it. A few boutique shops and stalls as well as other general shops. Plenty of food places, most of them overlooking the sea. Fish is done very well here. See my review of Fusion if you are looking for something to eat.

Mainly this place is a good stop during the Whale Watching season from June to December. There are plenty of places to stay in this little town as well, so don’t worry about accommodation.

Hermanus is well signposted coming out of Cape Town. Parking is easy, my advice would be to always park where there is an attendant, they can keep an eye on the car for you whilst you go around the shops. I parked for an hour or so and paid R6.

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Cape Point

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I feel like this should be multiple posts. It is such an incredible day and I would recommend it to everyone. For reference I travelled with DayTrippers. Our guide was Pedro St Clair, a Capetonian.

Day starts at 8 am with a pick up from the hostel, mini bus and clients collected we are good to set off. There was only 4 of us on this tour which made the tour even better as we could really get to know one another.

Our first stop was Hout Bay, R80 would have taken us on a glass bottomed boat out to Seal Island. The sea was too rough this morning to be able to do it. But we did not not see them, they were all over the Bay. Some even joined us on land. You can pay to have a photo with one of them, but doesn’t seem natural to do that for me but we saw other doing it. This is a short stop without the boat trip but not wasted – good place for a coffee top up and walk around.

Moving on. There is a little stop place with bathrooms along Chapmans Peak – a real feat of engineering. Beautiful views back to Hout Bay. It is a road cut into the rock, into the mountain. Built on top of granite but into sandstone – the colours are phenomenal. A stunning drive even by itself. Or cycle if your brave enough…

We soon made it to the Cape point nature reserve, here we donned the helmets and grab the bikes off the trailer and set off. It is a lovely, mostly self guided bike ride, with the guide meeting you at the major turns as well as letting you know the route a head of time. First left, then left again and then right – hard to to get it wrong right… It was all tarmaced, we did the extended route about 12kms, rolling up and own mini hills. Good bikes with decent sets of gears which made things easier. Other than one of the pedals coming off one of the bikes, we made it to the lunch stop. Well deserved.

Lunch was a spread not to be believed! It was fantastic, so much choice from salad to pasta to artisan bread, meats, cheeses and biscuits. Not to mention fruit that was then available all afternoon. A good filling lunch.

We headed to a small beach for a walk – the water is cold, and a rest after lunch, watching the Ostriches walk along the beach too, before we headed to the base of our hike. It is a good 40 min uphill hike to the lighthouse with awesome views of both sides of the continent. You can walk all the way to the end of Cape Point, it is all paved or gravelled, and relatively flat. Just depends on your time. There is a funicular for those that can not walk that far. At the base there is a shop and a restaurant for before or after.

After returning to the base we headed out for the second hike an hour walk along boarded walks, mixed with rocky outcrops. It is a flat walk, one thing about both of these is neither are well shaded, so make sure you have sunscreen, hat and plenty of water. On the walk to the Cape of Good Hope, there is a beach, Dias Beach, however the steps down to it looked too steep for us to risk it.

The end of the walk is a little scrambling – just a bit of a rocky climb to the view points, and the same back down to the parking lot The view from the top is amazing though. All blue for as far as the eye can see. You are at the end of the continent – where the two oceans meet!

After the climb down and all the necessary photos have been taken – don’t forget – selfie or it didn’t happen! We headed to Simon’s Town and the famous African Penguin.

If you walk onto the little beach by the parking lot and all along the board walk , you can see the Penguins. You can pay extra to go into the nature reserve to be able to get closer to the penguins. The penguins are everywhere you will see them without paying if you so wish. I should say Simon’s Town is accessible by train from Cape Town should you want to go down without a tour, it is a lovely little Victorian town with many shops and restaurants as well as the famous penguins.

Upon finishing with the penguins we headed back to Cape Town. This day trip is just fantastic! It is a busy and tiring day, but you only appreciate that upon returning and looking at the time! The day just flies, and disappears. You will take hundreds of photos have many laughs and lots of fun. Highly recommend!

Until next time traveller.